The White Lotus

This is the big show of the year. ... Nothing about this second season phones it in.

As rich, complex and satisfying a comedy-drama as you could hope. Enjoy another five-star stay in this luxury place.

The second season of The White Lotus is better than the first, as it feels like it’s not trying to prove as much. The characters are given the freedom to take precedence and the action unfolds from there on more smoothly.

Whip smart, sexy and with an artistic sentiment as relentlessly focused on audience gratification as the lowest-denominator reality TV: this is as moreish, and mouth-watering, as a big bowl of spaghetti alle vongole. Grazie (prego).

In Season 2, he [Mike White] doesn’t just recreate the magic of the first installment, but he stretches his own creative muscles. The White Lotus Season 2 is a resounding triumph.

"The White Lotus" is still a buzz of capitalist hypocrisy, absurd indulgence, clueless privilege and mordant wit. The beautiful people have changed for the most part, but the abundant anxieties and kinks beneath their shiny surfaces are apparently universal.

You’re going to want to book a trip to Sicily, pronto, after devouring the dazzling new season of HBO’s The White Lotus. ... Sicily, and The White Lotus, are to die for. [7 - 20 Nov 2022, p.4]

Prepare to be wowed. Mike White returns for a second season of his Emmy-winning series and tops himself by digging deeper into this stinging satire of white privilege., this time in Sicily. A top cast (hello again Jennifer Coolidge!) delivers TV at its seductive, sneakily unnerving best.

As easily digested as gelato, this season has action that hinges on those two young women (Beatrice Granno and Simona Tabasco) making visitors feel welcome. That means the stakes are high and the room service bills even higher. Coolidge continues her winning ways (Emmy No. 2? It’s possible) and DiMarco has just enough innocence to make you wonder what his future will be. “The White Lotus” still ranks among television’s best.

An upstairs, downstairs ensemble dramedy that feels a bit too eager to replicate the beats of its predecessor, but that nonetheless develops into an exquisitely agonizing snapshot of heterosexual romance as currently practiced.

Between the acting, Alex Bovaird’s costuming and White’s usual written standards — as seen on this series, “Enlightened” and beyond — each “White Lotus” character is immediately distinct from the next. Spending time with them is never boring, which is maybe why the season takes its time setting up the players, indulging White’s gift for dialogue to the point that the first few episodes (each a solid hour long) lose some of their urgency. ... “The White Lotus” remains one of TV’s most purely visceral, evocative shows as it digs each of its guests up by their roots.

Equal to season 1, and in some ways (the fashions, humor) superior.

Last year's six episodes were near flawless television, and returning ran the risk of losing the expectations game. But the new seven-episode season is comparable, and most importantly keeps the tone alive. If more sophomore seasons could learn from the "Lotus" example, television would be better for it.

If sometimes, despite the shift in setting, these new episodes can feel as familiar as a trip we’ve taken before, The White Lotus remains television’s most intriguing and precise murder mystery-cum-social satire.

The White Lotus hasn’t lost any of its intoxicating allure, shifting its mix of rich-people problems and staff struggles to a new island (Sicily), with Jennifer Coolidge as the one holdover from the Emmy-winning original. It’s an impressive exercise in reloading by writer-director Mike White, who based on this encore should have plenty of frequent-flyer miles in his future if he chooses.

Season 2 of The White Lotus hits on a lot of the same themes as last season, but it still offers a terrific cast and insightful social satire.

The guests are a lot more palatable as characters this season, with White having a very effective understanding of how to withhold their backstories in order to draw in the viewer’s interest. ... Half the fun of the early episodes is coming to understand who these people are and why they’ve come to this place together, and once those relationships are established, the season moves like lightning towards whatever trainwreck the finale promises.

The second season initially feels like a mere echo of the first. ... But the first five episodes suggest that White has undergone his own unclenching. The airless sociological fatalism of Season 1, which was matched by a claustrophobic production due to covid-19 restrictions, gives way to a more mature drama, as well as a deeper exploration of how the characters’ class concerns converge with gendered angst.

In a nutshell this series is funny, but not as funny as the last one. But series one took its time to take off too. And, having watched ahead only five episodes; I don't know the denouement be assured that Mike White builds the tension exquisitely and there is much toxicity to gorge upon. ... I love Tanya. She embodies the show's essence: that being filthy rich doesn't make you happy. Indeed, it can make you wretchedly miserable. Enjoy the schadenfreude.

This season of "The White Lotus" makes it very easy to be taken in, and the checkout may even be sweetly agonizing.

For some viewers, this all might feel like a slight rehash, idiosyncratic as it might be. But though these new episodes (of which five were made available to critics) meander at times, Season 2 is more tightly plotted and there are enough new ideas, with even the most staid insights heightened by White’s razor-sharp writing, for it to feel fresh.

The truth is that even if the themes are taking longer to lock into focus on this journey, the dialogue and characters are so sharply written that the flaws can be easily forgiven.

Like most things in season two, Coolidge is not as revelatory here as she was in the show’s first season, even while she is excellent. Once it changed from a one-off into an anthology series, “The White Lotus” became a formula — this season also opens with a mystery, as a number of bodies are found — and as such it is a tad more predictable. But that didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment, watching this collection of high-end guests, played by an able cast, squirm and skirmish while sitting in the lap of luxury.

The Sicily season is a bit thinner, focused mostly on sex and the grittier aspects of romance, with only some slight, and occasionally perfunctory, nods toward the grander sociopolitical storm of the present day. At least, that’s true of the first two episodes. As it moves past those beginnings, the season adds layers of tension and meaning, potentially setting us up for a wallop of a finale that says some pretty grave things about the haves and the have nots, about men and women, about money and its influence. One just has to be patient, I suppose.

While the new installment doesn’t cut quite as close to the bone as the first did, it alights upon more than a few observations sharp enough to draw blood.

The White Lotus isn’t quite as insightful as it thinks it is and suffers from all the characters being different flavours of unlikeable (see also: House of the Dragon). But there is the implicit promise throughout that this ghastly gallery of vacationers will receive their comeuppance. Paired with the dramatic Sicilian landscape, that cocktail of sunshine and delayed schadenfreude goes down irresistibly.

As long as Mike White can cut to the core of today’s culture of wealth and excess, viewers will want to book into The White Lotus again and again. Season 2 prods and provokes as mischievously and movingly as the first time.

While much transpires, we still have little clue as to which character(s) will be killed, and who will be doing the killing. It’s a tribute to the depth of the writing and the excellent work by the ensemble that whoever winds up floating in the sea, I’m gonna feel bad for them but I’ll also probably understand why someone wanted them gone.

Even if the plotting is less urgent and the comedy, when it flares up (not often enough), is less biting, “White Lotus” remains consistently watchable for White’s finely-drawn characters, whether it’s Daphne’s sunny disposition that masks uncomfortable truths or Dominic’s justification/excuse for his cheating ways.

Season 2 makes a convincing case that this heavenly-hell luxury franchise will be very pretty even when it's pretty familiar. Sicily looks lovely, but the tension is palpable.

There are so many elements about this season that make it better than the majority of shows on TV right now — not limited to the writing and the acting, but the sweeping cinematography and pitch-perfect soundtrack as well (the new theme song might actually be better than the original) — but when you know how good The White Lotus can be, why would you want to accept anything less?

“The White Lotus” may not feel as light on its feet as last summer’s surprise hit, but it’s certainly not resting on its laurels. Despite what resorts catering to the status quo may contend, comfort isn’t everything. Some things need to be shaken up.

While The White Lotus Season 2 is certainly gorgeous to look at, it falls a bit short once again as any sort of legitimate social commentary. It’s obvious that these people are generally awful: spoiled, self-involved, and lacking the sort of basic self-awareness we often see in so many (generally American) travelers abroad. But beyond that, is there anything worth really saying about them, or the journey they’re on?

For all the goings on, the first five episodes don’t exactly build up a narrative head of steam. It’s hard to tell where any of these stories are heading, or if they’re heading anywhere. That’s not a criticism, exactly; it’s easy enough to hang out here, with the actors and the scenery, and the series is not without a subtle sort of movement.

The White Lotus Season Two is definitely not boring. Once again, it boasts a great cast — Emmy-winning returnee Jennifer Coolidge is joined by the likes of Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, and F. Murray Abraham, among others — gorgeous scenery, and the acidic wit of writer-director Mike White. But there are times when it’s hard to disagree with Portia’s larger concern that this has all been done before, and better, the first time around.

It didn't quite measure up to its predecessor. Certain developments and details have been borrowed from season 1, which lessens the intended effect, and some of the character dynamics are more compelling than others, giving the series an uneven feel.

The result is a portrait that feels like half–Tennessee Williams play, half–Men are from Mars, Women Are From Venus. The cast, in particular Aubrey Plaza and F. Murray Abraham, elevates the material’s gender-based clichés (women are shrews, men cads) with performances that are precisely bemused or aggrieved. ... But without a greater guiding thesis about why marriage reaffirms gender roles for people who otherwise consider themselves progressive, or a secondary plot focus to round out this vacillating heterosexual frivolity and panic, The White Lotus feels defanged.

Nothing remotely insightful has been said about the rich other than they’re terrible to the planet and to each other. At this point, it seems the show is mostly just interested in reveling in the spoils of the rich (there’s a particularly gorgeous villa featured in one episode) and that’s it.