Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The White Lotus’ Season 2 On HBO, Where A New Group Of Troubled Tourists (And Jennifer Coolidge) Visit A Resort In Sicily

The White Lotus was an hit in its first season largely because of Mike White’s writing and directing, but also because it had a number of great performances, most notably by Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge. But it was also because it was a good satire of how awful privileged people can be to each other and to the people who are working hard so they can have a good time at an exotic resort. Coolidge is back for the show’s second season, but there’s a new setting (Sicily) and Coolidge’s character Tanya is surrounded by a whole new set of miserable tourists.

THE WHITE LOTUS SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Rows of umbrellas on a gorgeous beach in Sicily. A woman is spraying sunscreen on herself as two other women sit in the chairs next to her.

The Gist: The woman, who’s about to leave the resort the beach is next to, tells the women that the resort was top notch, then goes into the water for the last time on her trip. It’s there that body parts start floating around her. As bodies are pulled out of the water, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), the manager of The White Lotus Sicily, tells her assistant manager that they can’t be responsible for what the ocean does. But he tells her that these are all guests.

One week earlier, three sets of guests boat out to the resort. Introvert Ethan Spiller (Will Sharpe) and his prickly wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) are vacationing at the invitation of Ethan’s broish college buddy Cameron Babcock (Theo James) and his wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy). Cameron is a millionaire tech entrepreneur, and Ethan has recently cashed in on a company he co-founded with Cameron. As the trip begins, Harper wonders how Ethan and Cameron could be friends, how Cameron and Daphne can live without even watching the news, and how the two of them are still touchy-feely after being married for five years.

There’s also Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge), arriving with her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson). She’s there to meet her new husband Greg (Jon Gries), whom she met when she was at the White Lotus in Hawaii. Although he knows that she is an emotional mess, he still upbraids her for dragging Portia along with her on the trip, because he figured they’d be alone. She tells Portia to get lost but lay low in her room, making Portia wonder just how she made such poor choices.

Dominic De Grasso (Michael Imperioli) is there with his son Albie (Adam DiMarco) and father Bert (F. Murray Abraham) to visit the village that Bert’s grandparents were from. Dominic is embarrassed by Bert’s constant flirting with the female staff and his talk about his rock-hard erections at dinner. Albie meets Portia at the pool and the two of them immediately take a liking to each other. Dominic, on the other hand, is dealing with a soon-to-be-ex-wife who curses him over the phone for his indiscretions.

Also trying to infiltrate the resort are locals Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò). Lucia is there to greet a “client” — she’s a prostitute — and is trying to encourage Isabella to join her. The uptight Valentina, though, is constantly booting them out of the hotel, not wanting to sully her property with a “slut” like Lucia.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The White Lotus season 2 of course reminds us of the show’s first season; despite there being a (mostly) new group of miserable tourists, Mike White has retained not only the misery but a pattern in the writing that for now feels more comfortable than tired.

Our Take: As good as the first season of The White Lotus was, we found ourselves more engaged with the first episode of Season 2 than the first episode of the previous season (which we also liked). It could have been because we now now the show’s “game”, so to speak, and were excited to see it play out with a new group of people. But it’s also because White has started this season off with a set of characters who are more complete and compelling off the bat than the first season’s characters were.

Let’s start with Aubrey Plaza, playing a bit against type as Harper Spiller. She generally plays sardonic and/or weird, but she always is able to convey all manner of annoyance, irritation and bemusement with just a curl of her mouth or a side eye. As the more officious, uptight Harper, she uses those skills to belie her character’s closed-off manner. Sharpe appropriately underplays the introverted Theo, and the all play well off the guileless performances of James and Fahy as the Babcocks.

Abraham gives us some of the funniest moments as the wildly inappropriate Bert, which feeds Imperioli’s signature simmer as Dominic. And of course, we’re already charmed by Coolidge’s Emmy-winning portrayal of the messy Tanya; we like the dynamic that Greg brings, because he’s not polished. While some of what he tells her about her weight and eating macarons feels borderline verbally abusive, he may still fill a piece of Tanya’s soul that desperately needs to be filled.

What strikes us about the characters in Season 2 is that their awfulness is more grounded in reality than some of the characters in Season 1, who were sometimes just cartoonishly terrible. The most cartoonish one so far this season is Bert, and he’s so hilariously old school that we’ll give him a pass.

Sex and Skin: Tanya and Greg have some awkward sex that ends with Tanya telling Greg about a weird vision she was having. Cameron and Daphne get in a tickle fight before doing anything sexual. We do see Cameron’s butt as he brazenly changes into a bathing suit in full view of Harper.

Parting Shot: As in the first season, there’s a voyeuristic view through the window of Dominic’s room as he starts to do with Lucia what he paid to do with her.

Sleeper Star: Sabrina Impacciatore does a nice job as Valentina, especially when she keeps trying to chase Lucia out of her hotel. “She’s one fast slut,” she says after Lucia disappears as she goes after her. Funniest line of the episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I do a lot of Dateline,” Daphne tells Harper about what she does while taking care of her kids. “I love it. Husbands murdering their wives. Happens a lot on vacation.” Is that a bit of foreshadowing?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The second season of The White Lotus is just as compelling as the first, with a new set of characters to that viewers will love to loathe.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.