Tag: White Lotus

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The White Lotus (Oct. 30, HBO/Crave)

Leave it to Tanya McQuoid, the rich tourist brought to absurdly funny life by Jennifer Coolidge, to voice two lines that perfectly encapsulate the satire in Mike White’s Emmy-winning anthology series “The White Lotus.”

“Whenever I stay at a White Lotus I always have a memorable time,” she tells Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), the tightly wound manager welcoming another boatload of self-absorbed Americans to a White Lotus resort, this one in Sicily. It’s a line that’s a masterpiece of understatement if you remember the events of the Hawaii-set first season.

Later, while lamenting the departure of now-husband Greg (Jon Gries) — remember him? — who has flown home for what may or may not be a business emergency, Tanya asks her bored assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), “Do you think I’m oblivious?”

“No,” Portia lies.

“I sometimes think I should have started that spa for poor women with that girl from Maui. She was a real healer, the real deal,” Tanya says, referencing the resort employee she screwed over in Season 1. But then the obliviousness kicks back in as Tanya ventures that healers are witchy and that one might have put a curse on her.

For this latest lot of spoiled, blinkered travellers, everything that goes wrong is always someone else’s fault.

The boat also brings grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham), father Dominic (Michael Imperioli) and son Albie (Canadian Adam DiMarco), ostensibly there to explore their Sicilian roots although what they end up laying bare is a family history of womanizing.

Newly rich guy Ethan (Will Sharpe) and his judgmental wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) are travelling with his former college roommate, finance bro Cameron (Theo James), and wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy). Harper considers Cameron’s and Daphne’s frequent PDAs to be fake and Cameron finds Harper emasculating, but neither marriage stands up to close scrutiny.

Throw in gay expat Quentin (Tom Hollander), who takes Tanya under his wing after Greg’s desertion; his “nephew” Jack (Leo Woodall), a bad boy for whom Portia abandons a budding romance with sweetly idealistic Albie; and a couple of young Italian women, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Granno), who troll the hotel for rich Americans to finance their ambitions and let the games begin.

Like Season 1, Season 2 of “The White Lotus” begins with a dead body. Whether that person’s identity and cause of death will be as momentous as the first season’s remains to be seen (I screened five of the seven episodes).

Other familiar beats include the Cristobal Tapia de Veer music; the creepy opening credits (although the lush images in this instance turn more sexual than menacing); and footage of water as a metaphor for the turmoil in the guests’ lives.

But this time around, the tourists’ casual destructiveness wreaks havoc on each rather than the staff. Themes of class, conspicuous consumption and environmental degradation are superseded by ones of sexism, gender conflict and toxic masculinity.

One thing that hasn’t changed are the ever blurring lines between heroes and villains.

Albie, for instance, accuses his father and grandfather of being nostalgic for “the salad days of the patriarchy,” and defends escorts Mia and Lucia as “victims of a fucked up system,” which doesn’t stop him from paying for sex.

For me, this season took a little longer to find its footing and I missed Murray Bartlett’s Armond and his epic grudge match with guest-from-hell Shane (Jake Lacy). But there’s still pleasure to be had watching this particular group of self-deluded visitors and waiting for their inevitable unravelling.

Odds and Ends

I didn’t have time to screen it, but I’d say your best bet on Netflix this week would be “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities” (Oct. 25), an anthology series of eight horror stories, each handled by a director hand-picked by del Toro with what looks to be an impressive cast. Netflix also has the documentary “Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn” (Oct. 26); the thriller film “The Good Nurse” (Oct. 26), starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne; the new competition series “Drink Masters” (Oct. 28); true crime docuseries “I Am a Stalker” (Oct. 28); and animated film “Wendell & Wild” (Oct. 28), which reunites Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.

If you’re a fan of crossword puzzles, you’ll probably enjoy the documentary “Across and Down,” airing on CBC’s “The Passionate Eye” Oct. 28 at 9 p.m. and on CBC Gem. It might surprise you to consider that something as innocuous seeming as a crossword clue can be loaded with gender and racial bias. The doc checks in with various people who love crosswords and their efforts to open up their creation to a more diverse group of cruciverbalists. CBC and CBC Gem also have “Ridley Road” (Oct. 24, 9 p.m.), a British period drama about a young Jewish woman going undercover with members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in the 1960s.

Disney Plus offerings this week include Season 2 of “The Mysterious Benedict Society” (Oct. 26) and yet another “Star Wars” spinoff, “Tales of the Jedi” (Oct. 26), six animated shorts featuring Jedi parables.

Finally, Prime Video has “High School” (Oct. 28), based on the memoir by Canadian twin sisters and singer/songwriters Tegan and Sara about growing up in Calgary in the 1990s; and “The Devil’s Hour” (Oct. 28), starring Jessica Raine as a woman woken every night at exactly 3:33 a.m. by terrifying visions and Peter Capaldi as the sinister target of a police manhunt.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.