I know, I’m late on the The White Lotus train. But I got around to it recently and got caught up. With season 3 ongoing, I thought I’d review the first two seasons together. 

The White Lotus is an black comedy anthology show on HBO that follows a group of visitors usually over a week of this time at a luxury (and I mean luxury in all caps) resort called The White Lotus. Each season follows a different group (with maybe one or two characters reappearing) at a different resort in a different part of the world. It comes from the mind of writer Mike White whose previous projects include School of Rock, Freak and Geeks and The Emoji Movie. Not the most prestigious backlog, but he’s managed to create something here that finds the right balance to be a really good show. 

Point 1: Eyecandy

The first thing that I think will catch anyone’s eye is the beautiful location of each season. The B-roll on this show is fantastic whether it’s the picturesque beaches of Hawaii or the idyllic small town vibes of Sicily, one thing you definitely won’t miss out on is the visual treat through the TV. The particular strength of The White Lotus is not only capturing these elements, but also seeping it into the DNA of the show itself. The location is important and almost plays its own character in each season, giving it a lot more weight than it otherwise may have had. 

Now I know when you read the first point, you thought of hot people. Well, worry not because The White Lotus has you covered on that end too and there’s something for everyone. In season 1, you’ve got the more conventional eye candy in Alexandria Daddario and Sydeney Sweeney spending plenty of time in bikinis. If you’re into some older eye candy, Connie Britton provides that too. Meanwhile, on the men’s side, there’s Lukas Gage with Murray Bartlett and Steve Zahn representing the older eye candy. 

Meanwhile, in the second season, there’s a bit more for the men lovers with Theo James, Will Sharpe, Adam DiMarco, and Leo Woodall all having major roles and showing off plenty. The women more than carry their weight too with the cast boasting Aubrey Plaza, Meghann Fahy, Haley Lu Richardson, Simona Tabasco, and Beatrice Granno taking center stage with plenty of skimpy outfits. 

All that to say that half the appeal of the show is what you see rather than what you watch, if you catch my drift. There’s plenty of topless and swimsuit scenes and people getting it on. You won’t be bored, that’s for sure.

Point 2: Tropes on Tropes on Tropes

Now when you’re making a show about extremely rich people on vacation, there is only really one direction to go: satire. And the best way to do satire is make sure you are playing off tropes. And boy, is this show collecting tropes like Pokemon. Whether it’s the obnoxiously rich people oblivious to the world or the younger members who tout progressivism but are just as much leeches as the others around them, if you have an archetype of a rich person in your head, they’ve got it here. 

The first season especially seems to really lay it on thick with the obvious tropes. There’s a couple where one person is constantly nagging and harassing the staff, there are the college kids that are constantly doing drugs, and the other storyline follows Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya who seems to have let being rich become her own personality and lives on another planet completely. The second season deals with the trope of right wing vs left wing rich people as well those who take advantage of the rich to profit. 

Now I’m not saying these are negatives. These are staples of the satire genre and it’s part of the experience. I think these are all intentional and are done very well. The characterization and the performances by the actors are top notch, making you really invest in the breakdown of these types of people. Sometimes though when your whole show is basically based around the premise of showing you tropes, the writing has a hard time putting something coherent together that really ties it in a bow. 

When you watch something like Succession, another show about very rich people, everything shown to you seems to have a purpose and details come into play later. Of course these are different shows, but sometimes, it just feels like you’re watching certain things for the show to make you react a certain way but that was the whole point. It can feel a bit hollow at times because of it.

Point 3: A Show for Haters

I think the best audience for this is people who love reality TV shows. That’s not to say it’s only for them. There’s something here for everyone. But this will really nail it for the people who love to see the awful people, the drama and the dysfunction that are staples of reality TV shows, specifically the matchmaking ones or the ones where people have to spend a lot of time together.

So many of the characters are just awful and even when they show their soft or more sympathetic side, it’s hard to get over the awful parts to really like them. For some that’s not an issue but for others it will be. Not to keep comparing it to Succession, but what differentiates the two in that aspect since both follow very unlikeable people is that Succession lets you spend time with the characters and really meet them in their world and on your terms. Yes, they’re awful, but everyone is awful and it changes the scale altogether and then plays it against you when they do especially awful things and breaks you out of that world. The constant interplay of the mostly obnoxious rich guests with the staff makes it hard for you to ever really put aside the awful parts of the characters. You are constantly reminded of it. 

It’s again one of those things that doesn’t have to be a negative. If you can find joy in just hate watching bad people and seeing bad things happen to them over the course of each season, then you’ll be fine with it. But if you’re someone who needs more to latch onto and feel like you can root for someone, this might be harder to watch. The first seasons especially lays it on thick with the amount of unsympathetic characters. The second season I think finds its groove a bit more in balancing it out. I ended up finding just one or two characters to really root for each season while just wanting everyone else to just have the worst time because they deserved it.

And hey, to the show’s credit, most of the awful people usually have something bad happen to them. So at least there’s some catharsis!

Point 4: Jackhammer Over Scalpel

This final point dovetails well with the last two. For me, what stops The White Lotus (at least in the first two seasons) from reaching the echelons of the other prestige shows is the lack of subtlety. At almost every turn, the show decides to use a jackhammer to drive its points home rather than a scalpel. That’s part and parcel of following 3 or 4 different stories at once and still trying to constantly be entertaining. But there are times where it feels like the writers don’t trust you to just get it. 

They really hand feed you what’s going on and what it means. There’s always someone on screen to basically say what you at home are saying to yourself about what’s happening. Whether you find someone annoying or whether you might be psychoanalyzing someone, the show will let you know how to read the situation itself at every turn. 

Now the flipside to that is that if you don’t go in expecting a prestige show with the type of strong writing you see in Severance or Shogun or Succession (weird how many great shows these days start with S), I think you’ll be happy with the entertainment level you get from the laughs and stupid situations the show puts in front of you. It is certainly not shy to just be extremely weird either, for better or for worse.

I realize this review sounds like I didn’t like this show, but that’s really not the case. I think the tone of the review ended up being like that because the reputation of the show was that of a prestige series on the same level as many others on TV right now. And perhaps, that’s what ended up making me a bit more critical. However, I legitimately had a great time watching both seasons and I think even my negatives get better season over season, as I’m noticing while watching season 3 now. 

The one thing I think you should check out though is the fantastic opening credits to season 2 of the show here:

If you’re looking for something more in the prestige genre to watch, I recommend checking out my review for Silo to see if that may be up your alley.