Last week, I watched the first season of the much touted HBO series The White Lotus for the first time. Being sick with Covid over the past three days gave me the chance to binge the second season. That these are six- and seven-part series respectively makes it easier to binge a season as opposed to the typical 10-to-13-part series for many shows. The two seasons are very similar in some respects. Both take place in an international resort hotel called The White Lotus in an exotic location.

Season 1 unfolds in Hawaii. Season 2 happens in Sicily. Both are beach and poolside resorts giving ample opportunities for parades of flesh. Apparently Season 1 was filmed during pandemic restrictions which limited the variety of settings. Most of the action takes place in the hotel or on the beach. Certainly, it doesn’t do justice to the gorgeous variety of Hawaii that one comes to know and love over many visits to its different islands. Season 2 offers a more lavish portrayal of Sicily including the beach town of Taormina where the hotel is located, and the city of Palermo. It is far lusher visually, much more integrated with the locality, and will make anyone who sees it want to visit Sicily (I know I do). No wonder the Italian government offers a 40% tax break to make such shows in country.

In terms of themes, the first season is focused on the haves versus the have-nots with a healthy dose of colonialism thrown in for good measure. It's somewhat of a Gatsbian tale with wealthy, privileged, and connected people getting away with irresponsible behavior while causing collateral damage to those less fortunate around them. The entire ensemble does a fantastic job of portraying these intertwining characters and stories. The scene stealer in Season 1 is Armond, the hotel manager, who is a wound-up ball of mad energy and so much fun to watch. None of the other characters is likeable except Belinda the spa staffer (who is mistreated in the end) and perhaps Quinn, the sullen teenage son who ends up joining a squad of local Hawaiian rowers. Hands down the most uplifting scenes are of Quinn getting Shanghaied each morning on the beach to join the Hawaiian bros on their craft. And the breaching whale is a touch of magic.

Season 2 hovers around the theme of illicit sexuality, with a craven carnival of concupiscent carnality leading to carnage by the end. Again, the ensemble cast do impeccable jobs of portraying various modes of the human condition, including horniness, excess, selfishness, peevishness, jealousy, irresponsibility, duplicity, and dissatisfaction. In Season 2, my two favorite characters are the gorgeous young local hooker Lucia and her talented musician friend Mia, who frequent the hotel and seek gainful opportunities by manipulating various guests and staff members, outwitting them at every turn.

The only person to appear fully in both seasons is the dysfunctional and physically and emotionally bloated heiress to a massive fortune named Tanya McQuoid. Her terse lover and then husband Greg also appears in Seasons 1 and 2. While Jennifer Coolidge’s performance of Tanya is outstanding and one of the highlights of both seasons, I found her character and role to be the least believable in the series. How could a woman so amazingly wealthy be traveling abroad to such exotic locales alone and unprotected? Basically, she is shark bait.

(Spoiler alert) When her mysterious aging and obviously ill hotel neighbor Greg falls for her, we know something is up but we’re not sure what. Is this just a casual fling of opportunity? Given her physical and emotional unattractiveness (though she sure knows how to dress the part), why should a guy like Greg jump into bed with this woman? He makes clear on several occasions in his gestures that he is repulsed by her, yet he wants to sleep with her nonetheless. Later in Season 2, we find that Greg has married Tanya and later it is revealed that he is indeed plotting to get rid of his wife and claim the bounty of her inheritance. For this nefarious task he employs an old British expat friend based in Sicily named Quentin (played with great finesse by Tom Hollander) along with his gay companions. When Tanya shows up in Sicily with only her assistant, a clueless young American girl named Portia out for an adventure, only to be abandoned by Greg who returns to the USA for mysterious purposes, we know trouble is brewing. Eventually the odd companions figure this out, but only after it is too late to avoid the consequences.

It is hard to imagine that a woman like Tanya with that much financial clout wouldn’t be surrounded with an entourage of people serving all her needs including protection from all the hustlers, opportunists and other evil doers who must circle around such people like sharks. And how could she not hire better assistants? She claims at one point that she has bad luck hiring people, but come on, this woman has access to half a billion dollars. Is there any reality to this scenario? And yet it drives a significant portion of the plot.

Most of the other scenarios are more believable, with families and friendships festering with internal conflicts, rivalries, and secrets. In Season 1, the emasculated father Mark, powerful mother Nicole, college age daughter Olivia, and teenage son Quinn portray an authentically dysfunctional family dynamic that strikes me as somewhat universal. Only the classmate friend of Olivia, a girl of color named Paula, has a bit more nuance and bravado as a character, if in a tragic vein. The story of the newlywed couple Shane and Rachel strikes me as realistic. He is a wealthy and arrogant young man who can’t stop complaining about everything that doesn’t go his way and thinks money is the cure to every problem, while she is a beautiful and idealistic young woman from a modest background who must now come to terms with having married into the moneyed class.

The trio of men in Season 2, including the patriarch Bert (played fantastically by F Murray Abraham, who is the main reason I wanted to see this show in the first place), his son Dominic (played by Michael Imperioli of Sopranos fame) and grandson Albie are fun to watch as they attempt to discover their ethnic and family roots in Sicily while dealing with issues of infidelity and sexual addiction. Meanwhile, the foursome of thirty-somethings who get tangled in their own sexual rivalry of sorts are amusing to watch and they put on a credible show as they sort out the complex dynamics of their new relationship. “Alpha Dog” Cameron reminds me of a typical Dartmouth fraternity bro who went on to NYC to engage in high finance. High octane testosterone runs through his veins. His college roommate Ethan “Big E” is an introverted and nerdy guy, who made it big when he sold his tech company. Now Cameron is angling to get into a business relationship with his long-lost pal. Meanwhile, their wives Harper and Daphne are trying to come to terms with each other’s alien value system and outlook on life while dealing with the explosive and troublesome friendship between the two bros. Toxic masculinity is a keyword here. While none of these characters are likeable in any real way (expect perhaps the kind-hearted Albie though he is hopelessly naïve—and maybe that’s why we root for him in the end, like some hapless character in a Woody Allen film) they come across as real and nuanced people.

Yet ultimately what I find unconvincing is how the main characters all leave the country at the end of each season just after major crimes have been committed and need to be investigated and prosecuted. They are not detained as witnesses to sort out the sordid details of said crimes. Is this an indictment of the Hawaiian and Italian justice system a la Ripley (also a fantastic series recently aired by Netflix)? It seems incredibly naïve to think that major theft and murder cases would be left to the locals to tie up, while the perpetrators, abettors, and witnesses fly away unscathed. The end of each season turns tragic, so you could say this is a tragicomedy masking as a dark situational comedy.

Despite these caveats, the series was a great deal of fun and a blessed distraction from my second round of Covid. Sometimes laughing at others’ pain eases your own. And the next season which takes place in Thailand—one of my favorite places on the planet— will surely be just as delightful.