Everyone knows the best gossip happens outside of the main group chat. People are so polite when they’re all paired up, too afraid of saying something a little too honest. And so it happens when Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza) head to Noto, Sicily’s Baroque city, while Cameron (Theo James) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) stay behind to water-ski. The resulting nights out, the girls on edibles, the boys on MDMA, provide The White Lotus’ second season with its first stand-out moment, and a reminder – as if you needed one – to never go on a couples holiday.
Before that, we meet at breakfast. Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) and Albie (Adam DiMarco) are discussing their kiss; he doesn’t want to appear aggressive, she doesn’t think that’s possible (Albie looks pretty put out at this). Meanwhile, Bert (F. Murray Abraham) has caught out Dominic (Michael Imperioli) for his liaisons with Isabella (Eleonora Romandini) and Lucia (Simona Tabasco). Harper has decided to be the designated fun one on holiday, and is doing her best to liven up her table, which lands her on a day trip with Daphne. This is surely a career best for Plaza, whose attempts at seeming laid-back are intensely relatable, but truly, there’s no weak link among these two couples.
Daphne and Harper’s day trip quickly becomes a night away at a beautifully-appointed mansion – wealth does look quite appealing, to be completely honest – where the girls trip out on edibles and white wine. The boys, after a water-ski joust – another sign of this season’s looser, broader comedy – hook up with Isabella and Lucia and a pillbox of party drugs. This week, it’s Daphne and Cameron’s turn to shed some layers. Daphne tells Harper she loves playing games with Cameron, while Cameron, well, he likes cheating. Daphne’s conversation with Harper about her coping mechanism (“I do what I want so that I’m not resentful”) was the first time Fahy has been able to flex her considerable talent. The contrast with the hotel booze-up, and Ethan’s deeply sad kiss, was electric.
Portia and Albie are this season’s mouthpiece for the youth who teach the adults about words they can no longer use (gypsy) and how the Godfather films are the henchmen of the patriarchy, though that particular approach is starting to get old. The memes of their predecessors, Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O’Grady’s fearsome college students, were funny, but even that characterisation was a little ungenerous. Now it’s almost cruel. Far better is their relationship, in particular Albie’s attempts to be both more aggressive (which, in this episode, equates to encouraging Portia to go on a sight-seeing tour) and nice-guy feminist. He’s quick to point out his dad’s flaws, though it’s more entertaining to see him trip over his own.
This season of The White Lotus is currently split between two very good storylines (the holidaying couples, Portia and Albie’s romance) and two tedious ones (Dominic’s cheating and Tanya’s marriage breakdown). They all converge around a single, compelling idea – how do you stay together? – but only the former plots are yielding anything interesting. Dominic’s infidelity has been fairly one-note so far, a journey of hesitance, indulgence, and regret. Compared to the storylines from Season 1, which, if anything, felt too targeted at current discourse, Dominic’s is as stale as an unwashed beach towel.
But the reintroduction of Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) feels like the most ill-judged part of this season. It’s not that the character doesn’t have her memorable moments – being confused for Peppa Pig last week, and this week, screaming at a fortune-teller – but it all seems like a tiresome retread. This week, her panic about Greg (Jon Gries) leaving on a worktrip just reinforces what we already know about her: she’s selfish, needy, lonely. You can understand why the show’s creator Mike White was tempted to bring her back, and Coolidge is certainly not phoning it in, but it really drags. Perhaps that’s a good warning for future seasons, which certainly seem likely, that it’s better to leave audiences wanting more than giving into all their desires, which also seems like a good lesson for this show’s characters (perhaps it is a meta-commentary).
Still, there is a lot to like. It may be a curse to follow up a widely-praised, unexpected first season of a show; how many conversations must surely start, “I’m enjoying The White Lotus, but it’s not as good as the first season”? But mostly, I’m enjoying how White is distinguishing this series from what came before. These characters, especially Albie and Daphne this week, have more emotional depth, and the earnestness is a nice respite from the constant attempts at satire. Previously that was reserved for the hotel workers – think of Natasha Rothwell’s poor, crushed masseuse – but painting a more complex view of the paying guests is an intriguing route. Perhaps White realised the limits to that earlier mode, because really, is laughing at people’s weird hotel requests that deep anyway?
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
