The problem with watching television as a job is it can begin to feel like work. Not so withThe White Lotus. When the first season of Mike White’s ensemble black comedy aired last summer, it caught people off-guard, elevating its trashy premise (murder! at a luxury resort) to the status of satirical masterpiece. Now it returns with an almost entirely renovated cast and the action moved from Hawaii to the sunny shores of Sicily, but don’t worry: this is every bit as dark and delicious (and unpacific) as its Pacific counterpart.
The premise of The White Lotus is simple: something terrible, involving multiple deaths, has happened at a five-star hotel. Now we rewind a week and watch different families and couples descend into chaos, always with an eye as to who will end up a cadaver. You might call the genre a whosnuffedit. At the heart of this season are two sets of yuppies: Cameron (Theo James) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) are college roommates turned successful businessmen, vacationing with their wives, perma-smiling Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and chilly, neurotic Harper (Aubrey Plaza). But they are by no means alone at The White Lotus. Three generations of Di Grasso men (F Murray Abraham’s flatulent grandpa Bert, Michael Imperioli’s sex-addicted Dominic, and Adam DiMarco’s “nice” Stanford grad, Albie) are reconnecting with their Sicilian roots, sampling the local, um, culture. And then, of course, there’s Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya. “Whenever I stay at a White Lotus, I always have a memorable time,” she announces, ominously.
