The White Lotus is another in a long line of HBO series that have garnered both critical acclaim and favorable audience reception. Created, written and directed by Mike White, the series follows a group of affluent guests at the White Lotus resort at Hawaii, casting them in an unflattering light as they interact with the staff and go about their vacation.
The show focuses on three groups of guests. First, there is the Mossbacher family, headed by Nicole (Connie Britton), a tech CFO, Mark (Steve Zahn), her beleaguered husband, her son Quinn (Fred Hechinger), daughter Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and her college friend Paula (Brittany O’Grady). Then there are the newlyweds Shane Patton (Jake Levy) and Rachel (Alexandra Daddario). Lastly, there’s grieving daughter Tanya McQuoid, who has brought her mother’s ashes to scatter into the ocean.
On the staff side, the most prominent character is Armond (Murray Bartlett), the gay resort manager who gets into a petty war with the self-righteous Shane. There’s also Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the spa manager who is enticed by Tanya with the prospect of opening up her own wellness business. There are other minor characters, such as Kai, another staff member who catches Paula’s eye.
Each of these characters are flawed. Not only is Nicole too concerned with how her background might look for her Zoom meeting, she also makes it a point that white males like her son Quinn have been unfairly persecuted against in recent times. Her husband, Mark, is trying to be a good dad but he is blindsided by first a health scare and then an unexpected revelation about his father. He also turns out to be the face of woke white men dealing with white privilege- when Paula presses him about what he stands for, he starts off with ‘obviously, imperialism was bad’ and ends by saying that no one is going to cede their privilege no matter what their sins of the past were.
Olivia and Paula are mostly concerned with getting high and pretending to read complicated books by the poolside. Olivia bullies her younger brother into giving up his spot in the room and sleeping first in the kitchen and then at the beach. Once she notices that Paula is cozying up with Kai, she tries to flirt with him herself.
Paula, on the other hand, is secretly resentful for how she is treated by the Mossbacher family. She is well aware that she isn’t as well off as they are, and when she gets a chance to spite them and help out Kai, she sets things in motion that have dire consequences for several people.
Each of these characters have a lot of going on. There’s Shane, who gets obsessed with getting even with Armond, and Rachel, who is quietly realizing what she married into and how her own career isn’t going how she wanted it to. Armond starts to spiral out under the pressure and dip into the drugs stash he found in Paula’s bag after it ended up in the lost and found. Tanya is aware of her tendency to use her money to get people to pay attention to her, but she makes no effort in rectifying it. And then there’s Quinn, who finds a new passion and purpose in life.
If all these character conflicts make you think The White Lotus is an exhausting affair, then you will be happy to know this is actually a pretty funny satire.
The distinct soundtrack adds flair to the show, and the acting from the cast is solid throughout the show.
As much as we want to leave everything behind during vacations, we can’t really get rid of our baggage and flaws. The White Lotus works because it shows how we are casually cruel to each other in ways that we sometimes aren’t even aware of. Give this a watch, it’s one of the most compelling dramedies out this year.