REVIEW: 'The White Lotus' (2021; Season 1)

It’s hell in paradise in Mike White’s shockingly good dark comedy, The White Lotus (2021). The critically acclaimed six-episode miniseries from the writer of School of Rock (2003) is streaming on HBO Go, starring Steve Zhan, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Connie Britton and a brilliant Murray Bartlett.

An acerbic tale of white privilege in the age of “wokeness,” White’s social satire takes the viewers to Hawaii to follow a group of wealthy white Americans staying at a 5-star tropical resort.

Instead of featuring Hawaii’s natural colors of aquamarine waters and verdant mountains, The White Lotus is awash in highly saturated yellow, giving you a sensation of watching through a pair of sunglasses.

This veil of golden palette evokes a sense of depersonalization and despair. Accompanied by a penetrating score that sounds like a bunch of mating baboons, White’s stylish treatment sets the mood for a series of unpleasant events

“White Lotus” is the name of the fictional hotel resort where the major characters clash. It’s the perfect setting for White’s story of socio-economic disparity — on top of which are rich, white Americans and their First-World problems.

In the midst of tiki torches, heavily themed rooms and ocean views, the rich and lower class behave badly and come undone — punctuated with eerie ASMR, Klonopin, cocaine, philosophy books and swollen testicles.

The drama-comedy switches between the ultra-rich, white and privileged guests and the hotel staff that is headed by Australian general manager Armond (Bartlett), whose one small lie to a client triggers a series of distressing situations.

The pilot episode begins with macabre information: Someone has died at the White Lotus. And then the story rewinds to the previous week to introduce the main players and for us to guess who the victim is.

But it’s more than just a whodunit. Instead, this black comedy turns into a commentary on colonialism, race, class and gender, with the murder mystery just lurking underneath. 

We follow three sets of characters: Honeymooners Shane (Jack Lacy) and Rachel Patton (Daddario); the dysfunctional Mossbacher family, headed by the matriarch (Britton); and a lonely, grieving solo traveler, Tanya (Coolidge’s best role to date), who wants to scatter her late mother’s ashes in the ocean.

White’s characters are richly drawn, vividly human, and convincingly flawed. There are no absolute villains in this dramedy— and this is what makes the characters deliciously complex. There are no caricatures here; White is clearly invested in his volatile characters, and he knows them inside and out. Hence, you tend to care for everybody while finding it difficult to side with someone. 

White neither apologizes nor defends the white and privileged, but emphasizes they are just as human, toxic, and broken as the lower-class hotel staff serving them.

Episode 1 may not quickly show the brilliance of the series (an hour per episode), but it keeps getting better as the tension builds up to unpredictable levels.

Sharply written and bitingly critical, The White Lotus is outstanding and hilarious — and oftentimes an uncomfortable watch.

4.5/5 

Published in the Daily Tribune