‘The White Lotus’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap: A Big Misunderstanding

When was the last time your life’s course changed because of a wacky mix-up? Think hard now, it’s important! Double points if the mix-up in question could have been resolved with thirty seconds of discussion, but you got interrupted and the moment passed, apparently never to return again. Happens all the time, if you’re a character on Frasier! In real life, and in good dramas? Not so much.

That’s what made this episode of The White Lotus’s most serious storyline, involving Cameron’s infidelity to Daphne and Harper’s suspicion of Ethan of the same, so freaking frustrating. Of all the ways this subplot could move forward, writer-director-creator Mike White goes with Harper discovering Cameron’s discarded condom wrapper in the sofa cushions and thinking it belongs to Ethan? And her first question to him isn’t “Where did this come from?” And she just stews on it for an entire day? And when Ethan presses her on why she’s acting so weird, they both allow Cameron’s knocks on the door to cut the conversation short? 

And while she keeps probing at him to confirm his dishonesty — he is, after all, lying when he said nothing happened the night before, even if his own involvement was brief and pointedly unconsummated and even if he’s lying primarily to preserve the “bro code” to which Cameron swore him — the only thing she does with the actual evidence she found is leave it passive-aggressively on the bathroom sink for him to find the next morning, if in fact she doesn’t think better of it and throw it away before that happens? Come on, man. Come on.

It’s not the only time this episode (“In the Sandbox”) takes a sitcom shortcut to zany hijinks while still ostensibly trying to tell a serious story about the human foibles of the wealthy and their hangers-on. Take Mia’s dalliance with the louche piano player Giuseppe, for instance. She finally agrees to bang him in exchange for his music-industry connections, but she insists on doing so right that very second. When he can’t stay hard — they are fucking in a deconsecrated church, to be fair, and even Mia has her hangups about that — she runs off to grab Lucí’s supply of Viagra, only she can’t figure out which pill is Viagra and which is molly. 

Naturally, she tracks down Lucí at the beach to ask, but for no apparent reason whatsoever, Lucí can’t hear her over the gently breaking waves despite being 20 feet away from her at the time, and Mia leaves rather than walk ten feet to the water line to repeat this very important question. And lo and behold, the Viagra-and-MDMA cocktail she gives to Giuseppe just to make sure winds up sending him to the hospital. It’s zany, it’s wacky, and it makes no human sense.

Folks, this stuff is what I’m talking about when I air my grievances with the hour-long wealth-satire dramedy format. The drama, the exploration of the human condition if you will, is short-circuited by the comedy, in which human beings function as joke delivery mechanisms. Which would be fine, if it weren’t for the insistence that such joke delivery mechanisms also walk around making serious points about class and sex and gender and whatnot. It’s the worst of both worlds!

That said, there are some, if not laughs, then laugh-adjacent moments in this episode. I loved the throwaway bit where a raspy maitre d’ welcomes Tanya to the beach club and she mutters “That’s the weirdest voice I’ve ever heard.” I liked the bit where Tanya’s new admirer Quentin, ringleader of a fantastic pack of international gays, tells her “Tell me everything, from the beginning,” and she goes “Well, I was born in San Francisco…,” and he goes “Oh, from the very beginning! Okay!”

In fact, I loved this whole subplot. The instantaneous affection of Quentin and his merry men for Tanya livens the character up immediately, keeping the magnificent Jennifer Coolidge from having to play the same whiny sobbing Kirstie Alley in the last few seasons of Cheers notes for the duration of the season. Meanwhile, the presence of Quentin’s decidedly heterosexual “naughty nephew Jack” (a frighteningly charming Leo Woodall), aka the hunk Portia hungrily eyed in the pool last week, gives Tanya’s assistant the kind of strapping young lad she’s been searching for. 

And this in turn spurs Albie to make a love connection with Lucí, who along with Mia got partially stiffed by Cam on their “date” the night before and is regretting her brief dalliance in sex work. Both couples hit it off right away, both couples have palpable chemistry (even if Albie is reluctant to ignite it), and both couples wind up having pretty hot sex scenes, too. The way Jack parts Portia’s thighs with his legs and the way we see Lucí’s hands wrap around to pull Albie’s ass toward her face are both pleasantly explicit details, and are presented in sharp, lively contrast with Dom’s joyless look a porn site. So sue me — in this particular case I think the pleasure of watching attractive actors get it on outweighs the cringe-comedy courtship of Portia and Albie. 

One last development bears mentioning: Hotel manager Valentina has, pretty much overnight, developed a harassment-level crush on Isabella, the employee who complimented her on last week’s episode. This is a funny, unexpected development that will wear out its welcome real quick if it becomes a “look, a woman harassing a woman, isn’t it ironic, dontcha think?” situation.

So it was a mixed bag, this White Lotus ep. In a way, I can’t help but admire White for trying to stuff so many different things inside that bag, and the result may have been the most entertained I’ve been by an episode this season. I just wish the results more consistently matched the ambition.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.