The first season of Mike White’s comedy-drama The White Lotus was set in a luxury resort in Hawaii, where the lampooning of the pampered rich and the obsequious staff, won it five Emmy Awards.
A Season 2 just had to follow, and this time it is set in a sumptuous resort in Sicily. The wealthy guests are just as spoiled, though the staff is a little less fawning. The manager is a crabby woman this time, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), who right in the first episode calls an 80-year-old guest “old.”
As in the last edition, the seven-part show (Disney+Hotstar) begins with a dead body, maybe more than one, floating in the placid sea. (“How many dead guests are there?” asks the manager. “I don’t know. A few,” replies a dazed employee). It then goes back to a week earlier when the guests start arriving, among them just two returnees, Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge), the vapid heiress accompanied by the man, Greg Hunt (Jon Gries), she met in the last season. Evidently cured of his terminal illness, he treats her with disdain and calls her overweight. Tanya brings along an assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who annoys Greg and is ordered to stay in her room, when she wants some romantic adventure with a hot Italian man.
Three generations of Di Grasso men, of Sicilian origin want to get in touch with their roots—the grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham), thinks it is his right to flirt with every woman in sight; his son Dominic (Michael Imperioli), a beleaguered movie producer, is having woman trouble, and his son Albie (Adam DiMarco) hopes to enjoy the holiday in the company of the growling seniors.
There are two ‘happily’ married couples: Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne Sullivan (Meghann Fahy) have invited his college buddy Ethan (Will Sharpe) and his ill- tempered wife Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza), to vacation with them. Harper feels superior to the other couple, who admit to watching trash TV and never voting. Under his charming exterior Cameron is obnoxiously entitled and finds ways to demean the newly rich Ethan.
The harried manageress, who has her hands full running the hotel to the standards of her superrich, also has to try and keep out a young sex-worker Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and her along-for-the-ride friend Mia (Beatrice Grannò), who cause no end of trouble.
This time, with no Covid restrictions the guests go outside the resort and the full beauty of the stunning location is on display—a tribute to The Godfather is inevitable (parts of the classic movie about the Mafia were shot there). The humour is not quite as boisterous as the first season, but the satire is just as sharp and the dialogue sparkling with wit. It is as if White were saying, with a wink, that money can’t buy happiness; it can, however, buy sex, sunshine, designer outfits and Instagram-ready bodies. For armchair viewers, it is a good way to feast their eyes on glorious Sicily, and wish they could be there.
The White Lotus Season 2
Directed by:
Cast: F.Murray Abraham, Jennifer Coolidge, Jon Gries, Sabrina Impacciatore and others
On Disney+Hotstar
