What was given is over. Seven episodes and ‘The White Lotus’ shows that it was not a flash in the pan just to entertain us in the summer scene. Once season 2 is over we can say that the HBO series It has been claimed as one of the greats of this 2022.
And it is that the change of setting and characters for these new vacations of rich people was not simply aesthetic. Mike White changed the series (for my taste for the better) towards something slightly more ambitious, more referential (there are the tributes to the cinema) while in passing he delighted in the symbology and the Sicilian lore.
By the way, we are going to talk about the end of ‘The White Lotus’, so it is assumed that there may be plot spoilers.
Although the balance of season 2 has been quite positive, in fact I liked it more than the Hawaiian batch, I have the feeling that Mike White It has not been entirely fine when it comes to shelving to these seven episodes.
Arrivederci, Sicily
It’s not because of the shocking death of Tanya—again somewhat accidental to emulate Armand’s in season 1—but because I think the resolution of that plot seems to me done something with a broad brush with a certain feeling of frustration (sought, yes) by not giving us a clear answer about what was happening.
It is true that part of the fact that White does not want to make things easy for us and beyond reunions and the occasional nice reconciliation, decides to leave free interpretation what is really happening (or has happened) with each of the blocks of characters and their problems. But nothing happens thanks to a certain consistency with the maxim that life does not give you easy answers.
Already with the first episodes I commented that the barriers that we encountered with the characters of the first season did not exist here. Or, at least, there was not that sensation of insurmountable first sensations. C.I believe that in this sense the viewer has it easier to get involved with all the plots.
Another thing is that all the characters and plots have worked at the same level. After a rather attractive start, I have to admit that once the springs were set in motion, there has been some plot that, no matter how much White insisted he did not give much more of himself. Fortunately, the magic of the series lies not in what happens but in the characters themselves.
This, of course, It’s been the season of the Aubrey Plaza Harperclearly the most complex and interesting of all that this season 2 has offered us. Others, although promising, have been somewhat more basic (the di Grasso), but in general they have been quite entertaining and well done.
In this way, in my opinion, ‘The White Lotus’ once again gives that feeling that, as stupendously written and directed as it is, something stays in an “almost” and sometimes it’s more cartoony (sometimes Coolidge doesn’t have to be so screwed up) than it needs to be.