The Prestige TV Podcast - 'The White Lotus' Season 2, Episode 1 Recap

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Bill and Joanna get together to talk about the Season 2 premiere of 'The White Lotus' on HBO. They begin their conversation by examining the show's evolution from limited series to Emmy-winning juggernaut heading into its second season while also shining a light on director Mike White's stylistic contributions. They then dive into the show's character dynamics, talk about the effectiveness of releasing a series in a weekly format vs. an all-at-once binge, and debate why 'The White Lotus' is so special.(7:02) Finally, they rank their favorite subplots, appreciate Aubrey Plaza's impeccable performance as Harper Spiller, and break down the pivotal scenes from the episode.(28:49) Hosts: Bill Simmons and Joanna Robinson Associate Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You can listen to This Blue Up on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a prestige TV podcast. My name is Bill Simmons here with Joanna Robinson. One of our favorite shows is back. White Lotus. It's back. I like the way he said that. White Lotus is back.

This is a show that was not intended to have a second season. Even as the show was starting to gain momentum, I think episode 2, 3, 4, I think HBO is even wondering, wait, what does this mean? This was supposed to be a one-off. Nobody was ever supposed to see this show again. And it became a little bit of a phenomenon by the end.

it is a good example of a show building over the course of a few weeks, which is a strategy. A lot of these streamers are kind of shying away from. HBO, I feel like it's the number one reason White Lotus works. What do you think about just like the week-to-weekness of it? Oh, yeah. If White Lotus had been a binge, it would have not hit the way that it did. It built word of mouth, but also on, you know, the dialogue is full of so many rich, almost memeable moments

that I just thought building and building on social media as people shared lines that were just killer and other people got curious about what the show would be. But yeah, nobody anticipated White Lotus season one, I guess we now call it, to be a thing. But, I mean, they got a mountain of Emmy nominations. Like, it was just a huge, huge thing after the fact. And I think that the question we always ask

when something like this happens, it was never meant to be a multi-season show, is like, are we sure we want a second? season. We always want more of what we like, but sometimes when something is contained to one season, meant to be one season, and then keeps going, it's diminishing returns. So, were you worried about that at all with White Lotus season, too? Or you just... I was. I was very concerned. I think some shows

you could argue should have just been one season. I think Homeland's a great example of that. Homeland Brody should have just died in the last episode and maybe we're done with Homeland. Now, they ended up getting seven seasons out of it. It was way more lucrative to do it that way. But sometimes you should be a one and done. I think the difference here is Mike White, who has had a really fascinating career, and we've talked about it on a bunch of our podcasts,

and Chris and Andy certainly dove into the Mike White kind of really unusual career arc in a lot of ways. But this has become, like, he's so good at this show and this style and how to weave the characters in it. The thing I really missed watching it, it was a little how I felt like with Succession. I would watch these twice,

The second time was so much better than the first time because it's like, all right, I know what's going to happen. Now I'm really concentrating. What's he trying to do with this scene? That scene. And just everything, the way it's cast, the dialogue, like the little, the facial expressions, everything is so meticulous. There's not, there's how many shows actually like this? Like less than five? It's so hard to put a finger on what it makes White Lotus so special.

And I think you do have to be sort of steep. in it to really feel it. I loved rewatching these episodes because, yeah, once you get a sense of who all the players are and what their personalities are, then you can dive into those deeper moments. And I think part of it has to do with Mike, like Mike White, you know, as I'm sure Kristen Andy have talked about, Mike White is a huge reality show fan, right? He was on Survivor. And so what he's done, I'm not a big consumer reality TV, but what he's done with these White Lotus seasons is create essentially a reality TV cast. of characters and rather than abandon them on an island,

you know, took them on a yacht off to an island, but you're still all these personalities in close proximity clashing against each other. And there are good parts and bad parts to every single one of these characters. And that's, I think, what makes it so chaotic and fun to watch because you never quite know who exactly you're supposed to be latching onto at any given moment. Yeah, it's almost like the anti-air thing. He loves the class stuff.

I think this show, as good as Eddie's show in recent memory, has been able to skewer the upper class. In a way, Succession is a little bit like this, too. And both of them, I think, have resonated with people. But think about the audience. The audience is mostly, it's older, it's middle upper class. It's like they're enjoying watching themselves that skier. There's that scene in the first episode when Arby Plaza's character and her husband, and they're like, what, you guys don't watch the news?

you don't read, and she's so dismissive of them. And there's a piece, like, everybody knows somebody like that, right, who's super judgmental and who looks down to you because culturally you're not, you have an ascended like they have. But it's just all that little stuff he puts in there. It's so good. There's, I don't know of another show that does it as well, where you can see little pieces of people you might know in these different characters.

And I think that group of four, the Aubrey Plaza group of the Cameron Daphne, couple and the Ethan Harper couple are so interesting, right, because Ethan and Harper are the newly rich characters in here, so they're not steeped in this world. And so they do come at it from a place of Ethan more acceptance, her, more judgment, but like a lot of these people deserve to be judged. And then you've got Cameron and Daphne who, I mean, Megan Faye, who's not an actress I know very well, is playing Daphne is like maybe stealthily one of my favorites. The show starts with her, like applying sunscreen, and she's the one who finds a dead body, right?

So we can talk about the murder mystery aspect later, but her character, like, the way she delivered the whole, like, I think I voted. I'm sure I voted. Like, she's just so awful and, like, beautifully sweet and basic all at the same time. And I think that kind of character could seem 2D, but the way that Mike White writes these characters.

And, like, again, you're not sure what you're supposed to be rooting for, because on the one hand, you know, Aubrey Plaza's character is very certain that she and her husband have things figured out, and these two privileged rich idiots are the assholes. But then don't they seem happier in their terrible, blissful ignorance? So, like, I think Mike White is asking the question of, like, what is right or is there a right way to engage in this world?

You know, do you need to be hypercritical? or can you just enjoy it or is there some middle ground, you know? Those two couples are the key to this season. And I want to go back to them because I think the most important stuff we're going to talk about, at least in this first episode, is those four people. But let's go through the characters. So we have Harper and Ethan, played by Aubrey Plaza. I don't know the name of the other guy.

Will Sharp, yeah. He just hit it big in some sort of ambiguous tech thing. Newfound money. She makes that comment early about the happy couple that you mentioned, Cameron and Daphne, who the show starts with Daphne, but that she's dubious of why they're going on this vacation. He's going to hit you up for money to owe you watch. And she's just skeptical of the whole thing.

So we set them up. It's clear that they don't know each other that well. The two guys do because they were college roommates. But even then, they don't seem like they're best friends. And then the wives are getting thrown together. I think this is good because everybody's been on some sort of vacation or weekend where you're thrown together with other people. And it seemed like a good idea until you're actually, you know,

day two into five days or four days. You're like, wow, this is going to be a long. So you can feel that instantly. So you have that. Then you have the three generations. You get the farting grandfather, no, no, Murray Abraham. It's like, lock him down for an Emmy nomination now. It's just like put him in the ballot.

You know it's going to happen. Perfect old guy role. Our guy, Michael Imperiali, Dominic, he's the son. Chris Romultesanto, yeah. And then the dorky grandson, Albi. So you get the three generations. And all of them are trying to say something, right? The grandfather's, the old, he doesn't know anything about the PC era, right?

He's just throwing it out. He doesn't care what people think. You have Maltesante, aka Dominic. He is like borderline cancel culture guy, like clearly had some affairs and stuff like that. He's maybe morally his compass isn't awesome. And then the son, who is like the classic. like Gen X. Like he's,

I feel like Mike White's making fun of stuff with that character. So the three of them together, you're just throwing them in, it becomes super goofy. I feel like that, that trio is meant to be like

sort of these, I don't know, masculine toxicity or masculine, whatever, like sort of diluted through the generations. Because you've got F. Marie Abraham's character, Bert, being just overtly harassing

every young woman that he encounters, right? And then, yeah, Michael Imperiali's character, Dom, he has the social awareness that you shouldn't harass, like, the hotel employees, but there's still, he's still blown up his family, you know. And he's still getting young hookers sneaking in, get into his room, stuff like that. Exactly. And then Alby, I don't know, I've got questions about, like, how, like, right now he seems really sweet. But is there, like, something, can you escape? this generational thing, or are you a part of it? Something I feel like in White Lotus, I would often make the mistake of thinking I was rooting

for a character to escape a cycle, and that seemed to be not what Mike White was interested in. He was just sort of like, no, we're in these cycles, and we don't really break them. We just stay in them, you know? We stay in bad marriages. That's what we do. I like the three generations and how, like, the stereotypical. versions of masculinity

each generation is kind of apparent even with Alby because I think we'll see. Episode 2 has some stuff with them too.

Then we have Jennifer Coolidge is back. She's our only repeater. Tanya. They triple down on how weird she is.

She's with Greg. Greg meets her there in Italy and then her assistant Portia, played by Haley Lou Richardson

who is somebody that, I mean, she was the teenager her in like a hundred different movies. She was the best friend in age of 17. Yeah. I've always really liked her.

And now she's the kind of young adult, frazzled assistant. But I thought to me she was the breakout, other than Aubrey Plaza we'll talk about, I thought she was the breakout like, oh, this is a really good performance. This is kind of a part that in the wrong hands could fall apart. And I'm just with her and you're rooting for her. And she's kind of the proxy. Who is the one that the one that Tanya made friends with? in season one who worked for the hotel.

Oh, the spa. Yeah, the spa lady. And she became the one you're kind of rooting for. Right. She doesn't belong with these people, but, you know, this is who the assistant is, it feels like. Yeah. And I just want to, yes, and your love of Haley Lou Richardson. Like, I love her in Edgison team, but like support the girls.

She's incredible in that movie, Columbus. And she's really... Wasn't she an un-pregnant? Yeah, un-pregnant as well. Yeah, she's getting un-pregnant. Yeah. she's really surprisingly like chameleonic. Like she is, you could, when she showed up and support the girls, I thought I understood what

she could do. And then I started seeing her in other things. And I was like, oh, you are capable of so many different flavors. And yeah, she played a teenager like, I think well into her mid-20s. Did you know she was in this? Yes. Yeah, I did. So I didn't know.

And I was like, who is that? And I went and looked. I was like, oh, my God, Haley Lou Richardson. Whoa. So she threw like a different look, too. It's just a different version of her, which I appreciate it. Yeah, I love it. So we have those three.

And then we have the new hotel manager character, Valentina. And then we have the two, do we call them hookers? What are pseudo-hookers, hostitutes? One of them is definitely doing sex work, right? Lucia. I was calling them the local girls in my name. We'll call the locals. The locals, yeah.

And then Mia is, like, debating whether or not she wants to try sex work at all. Whether she wants to go down that world. So we have a bunch of characters thrown in place, and we have an opening scene with a dead body. So we're back. The White Lotus. Who's staying at the White Lotus? There's just dead bodies everywhere. I'm not staying there.

I know. This is like the Tanya character is like the old murder she wrote joke where it's like, don't go anywhere Jessica Fletcher goes because like people die. So like don't go on vacation with Jennifer Coolidge because people will die. And it's not just one body. It's like a number of bodies, I guess. Were you excited or bummed out or both that it started with a dead body again? I'm curious.

I'm like, because I think I love a mystery and I love a theory. And you know, you and I, like when we were talking about yellow jackets, like that was a fun part of yellow jacks. This is trying to like figure out what's going on. I don't remember White Lotus season one being sort of overwhelmed by the murder mystery. Like you were constantly kind of wondering, reminding yourself, oh yeah, there's a dead body at some point. Like, I wonder who it is. And this one, it's, oh, there's, okay, there's multiple dead bodies at one point.

So you don't have to, like, focus on which one character. We know one of them's white. Yeah, sure. Yes. And maybe male. But, like, again, I think if he does it the same way he did the first season, it won't feel like we're not constantly going back to, like, an interrogation. You know, this isn't the affair or Big Little Lie season one.

Like, we're not constantly going back to an interrogation room. It's just sort of that ominous thing in the back of your mind. it could all fall to pieces, but I'm just sort of, I don't know, I like a mystery. What about you? How did you feel? I feel now they're locked in every season has to start with the dead body at a white lotus, right? Because now we're like, it's real life, but also this would be ridiculous now if this happened in Jennifer Coolidge on two different vacations. So now this is just how the show has to start. We have to accept, it's a little distorted view of whatever and it's a murder mystery,

but it's not really, that's not why I think any of us like the show. No. It's the class stuff. It's the way like, you know, the way the assistant is treated where the guy in front of her is just like, she's got to go. She can't be on our vacation. But the assistant's watching this, watching Greg and Tonya argue about this. And then Tanya comes over and says, you don't really have to go, but you have to stay in your room the whole time. It's like, this is awful. You don't treat people like this.

No. But that's, I think, part of what Mike White cares about. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think we saw it a lot more with the staff characters in season one. But, yeah, though, I mean, I guess Haley Lou's character is staff. Yeah. It was sort of, like, in that opening when you have the dead body and Valentina, the new manager of this White Lotus, or the new manager character this season, versus, oh, it's okay, it happened in the ocean. That's not hotel property.

It reminded me a lot of succession, no real person involved. Like she's just sort of like, okay, not our problem. And that idea of no real person involved, like, is this my problem or is this a person that I have to register as a person that I have to care about? I think that's in that just stay in your room this whole time. But stay close. I need you sort of treatment of Portia. So we have the, there's the murder stuff. We have just the way different types of people are treated in the world of the rich.

we have some of the class stuff, we have the new money versus older money, we have some generational stuff. The other thing White Lotus does really well is just like we're in a cool place. Like he uses Italy as a character on this show, at least in the two episodes that we've watched so far, in an amazing way.

Almost like how talented Mr. Ripley, Italy becomes like a huge character in talented Mr. Ripley. He just gets it. He sees all the part. You're watching like, wow, I got to go to this place. This looks amazing.

And it's just always there. You feel like you're on a vacation, which I think he did well with White Lotus, too. White Lotus, you know, you're in Hawaii. And it was like, this is cool. I really want to go to Hawaii after I've been, even though the White Lotus was kind of a dark show. So there's an escapism to it.

The White Lotus, I feel like one of the reasons it took off in the first season was the pandemic and just people's desire to escape where they were just trapped in their apartment or their house or their condo or wherever they were. you're trapped, you're going nuts, and then you could kind of disappear into the show

and be away even though you weren't. Now it's like life's normal again, but it's still cool. Well, it's interesting because, like, I was thinking about that. I was thinking about all the health stuff that is in season one, like with Steve Zon's character.

Yeah. He's got this, like, health scare that he's worried about. Tanya's husband, Greg, and in the first season, had this health condition, you know, that he was worried about. And that aspect isn't part of this season. yet, but there is, you get Haley-Lew's character in the first season talking to her front

on the phone, and she's like, I can't believe to go back in my room. I feel like we've just been inside doom-scrolling, you know, forever. So it feels like that sort of emerging from the pan- even though they're not talking about the pandemic, COVID is not overtly a part of these shows. It is Mike White sort of exploring what does it mean to emerge from feeling like you've been locked inside for a really long time? And Porsche is just like, I got to go back inside. Are you kidding me? I'm here in Italy, and you want me to stay in my room?

I don't think so. I love how she keeps saying, like, well, I got to eat. And I'm like, do they're not have room service at the White Lotus in Sicily? Okay, I don't know. Good scene when she calls home, too,

and she's upset, but it seems like realistic upset. She could have overacted it. She's so good. I think she's really good in this show. Before we dive into a couple of things we liked about episode one, are you surprised that this show

became as popular as it did? Because it doesn't check, Like to me, you could have told me that this just became a niche show that people liked that just was kind of over on the side and the critics really liked it, but it never caught in a mainstream way. I feel like this show for whatever reason, we talked about like the week to week, maybe it was on at the right time and in the right stage of the pandemic. But people got into it in a way that I think is unusual. I don't think this is a show that normally succeeds the way it did. This is one of HBO's biggest shows. And I just wouldn't have guessed that.

Yeah, I think part of it, so, you know, I wasn't working for you when season one came out. But like this prestige feed and what I was doing before, you have to look at what's coming and make a decision, like, are we going to go all in on covering this show? Are people broadly going to like this? Or is this one for us? And we're going to cover it just because we want to cover it. And I think if my memory serves, like we took a gamble on White Lotus season one, just sort of, we. liked it, but we didn't think everyone else would like it. And then everyone else did like it. And I was very surprised. I thought it was going to be super niche. Well, Andy and Chris were going nuts about it.

And that was one of the reasons I got excited to watch it because they were so unusually excited about it. I was like, all right, I got to, you know, I just wasn't expecting it. Anyway, I interrupted. Well, no, no. And Andy's such a good bellwether, I think, for these things. Because like, if Andy is excited, then, you know, you know, it's good. But like, I think that it came right off the heels of Merrives Town, right? And so I think people, it's that Sunday not HBO thing where HBO has been so good at keeping us habitually hooked because they do, you know,

they've experimented with expanding it a bit into Monday nights. I think Chernobyl was a Monday night show. But keeping their programming mainly to that two-hour block on Sunday means that a lot of us who are creatures of habit just know that we want to watch an HBO show on a Sunday

and feel that communal, that monoculture, we're all watching something together feeling about an HBO show on Sunday. And so I think especially coming up a, like, you know, and not every HBO Sunday night show is a hit, but coming off of a monster hit like Mary Vistown. And this one's starting with a dead body,

so feeling like it's almost a murder mystery, I think people are like, okay, we're back in, we don't have to leave our Sunday night high prestige, glossy, you know, great actors, murder mystery show. And The White Lotus isn't that, but like it was so good anyway that people, stuck around. I think that's my best guess is to kind of what happened there. I agree with that, and I also think HBO Sunday night is the last place left where people just will say,

I'm giving this a chance. Yeah. Netflix has kind of burned us the last few years, right? And so something like when Dahmer or Watcher, the Watcher, hits big recently, I still don't totally trust those are going to be good shows when I start watching it because Netflix has lost my trust. with their bigger shows because they've dumbed down a lot of their content. So much of it is algorithm-driven. So if they get behind a show, I'm still a little dubious, right? Same thing for Apple. Apple's very celebrity-splashy.

What famous person can we put on the title of our show? So you get a show like Blackbird that I think everybody loved that show or at least really liked it. And it never kind of took off because it didn't follow the Apple blueprint of, here's our famous person in the box on top of your Apple TV. You go on down the line, I just think people have this kind of prove to me I should watch this. Whereas HBO Sunday nights,

they're given that first show a chance. HBO is earned and a lot of it has to do with, you know, what Michael Lombardo and Richard Pupper did during their time. But then how Casey has been able to really maintain that. There's a taste level with HBO stuff. And, you know, granted, we do the music. and HBO, so this sounds like an HBO infomercial. But this is a thing when there was that whole thing about AT&T was taking over HBO,

and it was like, people were really scared. HBO was going to get ruined because they really valued the taste of the shows. And in 2022, I feel like they've kept it. Part of that is the content demand, right? Because so the streamers racing each other to, you know, see who can put the most out because like that's what Netflix decided was going to win the race for them was like if we have the most shows, the most films, you know, there's a niche for everyone. We have seven new things every week. Nobody can beat the amount of content. Exactly. But as you say, it's like it dilutes the

brand to do that because then you don't know what you're getting. HBO did something very clever at the end of the day here when they launched HBO Max, their streamer, which is they have HBO Mac shows in the aviated, but they're not touching that sort of golden couple hours of HBO on Sunday, for those who still have cable. I think a lot of people who stream don't know the difference necessarily between an HBO cable show and an HBO Mac show. Yeah, nobody under 25 knows the difference. That's probably true. I don't think.

That's probably true, but I still think that idea of appointment television Sunday, they've held on to that long after like NBC lost must see Thursday blocks and stuff like that. They held on to that one time when we're all together. And again, they're not, I was worried that HBO was going to start programming. Like when Chernobyl went to Monday, and there was some other show on Monday as well, I was worried they were going to start programming every single night. And I just really like that they kept it to Sundays. And then they just own that block. And then as you say, like any show that debuts on that block has passed some sort of test with them.

And so the audience is willing to give it a shot. Isaiah, who's producing for us today, he just nodded vociferously. when you talked about young people not being in a total difference. Do you even know what Sunday night HBO is, Isaiah? No, I don't. Oh, no.

Same thing for my daughter. My daughter was like, White Lotus is coming back. Why is it on HBO Max? And I was like, I'll be able to get screeners, so don't worry about it. But it premieres on 9 o'clock on Sunday night on HBO.

And she's like, I don't just put it on the app. Why do I have to go to the channel? Like she barely even knows how to operate a remote control. It's just like click the HBO Max. and shows come up. It'll be on HBO Max. All HBO shows are on HBO Max.

It's just not all HBO Max shows are in HBO. I know. Isaiah's right. It doesn't really make a difference. But I think as far as like... No, it does make a difference. No, it does because the HBO Sunday night, 9 o'clock still matters. Yeah.

And if it's like, if they have anointed a show to be in that slot, that means they think it's a good show. And until they have enough stinkers that they lose our trust with that, we're going to give all those shows a chance. And it's like, we have Kate Winslet as a cop in Pittsburgh, I'll give it a chance. Yeah. Whereas on Hulu, I'm not sure I'm giving it a chance. Right. And it depends, again, on that word of mouth or people, again, that appointment television.

I mean, I think I sound fairly old-fashioned when I'm like, oh, I miss when there were fewer shows and we all watch them together at the same time. But there is something really, I mean, I think that's part of the whole House of the Dragon phenomenon is like people saying it's not as good as Game of Thrones. I agree with you. but the joy of gathering around and all talking about this stuff on Sunday night, you know, that is more than anything is something I think people are really, really responding to with House of the Dragon. Yeah, the what'd you think element were on Monday.

You ask like the three people you know who watched it, what you think? Do you like that one thing they did? Yeah. That's it. That's what Netflix lost was stranger things, which we talked about before, but to just give that away and have it be a binge watch

where everything is confined to like a five-day window, of what'd you think, and then it's gone, versus just being able to peter it out week after week after week. Like, if House of the Dragon was a binge watch show and they just dumped 10, I think people would have been overwhelmed by it. I don't think it would have worked. I know we're talking about the bigger picture here, but I love that there's like a conversation about this with the Cameron, Daphne, Ethan Harper group where they're talking about what

they're watching. She's like, binge. I just love binging. I love a binge. I love a binge. Ted Lassow is so likable. And like, I like Ted Lassau, but I also like that Mike White is making fun of people who love Ted Lassos. So, like, it's a, yeah, I love a binge, says Daphne.

But yeah, I've been pretty anti-binge culture. Or, like, a lot of people nowadays, I know, well, because they've lost trust in shows, we'll say, oh, I'll wait until it finishes and everyone says it's good, even if it's a week-to-week. I'll wait until it finishes. And people, if people say it doesn't, you know, shit the bad and the ending, then I'll binge it all. And I'm like, no, man, watch it with us week-to-week. Listen to a podcast about it. Like, that's, to me, that's the more enjoyable way to experience a show. We saw that happen with Succession, which I think was a slow burn.

And it was around episode four or five, it became a What You Think show. And then the people who missed out initially went back and caught up. And that's the other thing because I've talked about this before. But Friday Night Lights was like that way back when, 06. If you missed the first couple episodes, there was no way to catch up because we didn't have the streaming infrastructure yet. So, it had to TiVo it. Yeah, around episode 5, 6, 7, it became a beloved critical darling.

It became a What Do You Think show? But if you missed the first four episodes, you're like, what do I do? I guess I just have to wait through the DVDs. Now it's so easy to snap back. I remember with ALEAS, when ALEAS first premiered, that was also sort of a lit, like, you know, took a few episodes for it to really start to catch fire. And what ABC did is they did like a mini marathon of we will re-air all like the first seven episodes so that you can catch up and join the conversation.

Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha for hapuccino drink or a sweet vanilla, smooth caramel maybe, or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Rappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Rank for me, I'm going to give you four plots. So we have the two couples.

We have the three generations of dudes. We have Tanya and her husband. I'll give you the assistant as her own kind of thing. And then we have like the whole hotel, the managers and the hookers, the whole Italy side. Out of those five, what's your favorite? Just for the first episode. Then we can, when we do episode two, we'll go dive into a little more. I think it has to be the couples.

I think it has to be Cameron, Daphne and Ethan and Harper. So I agree. Yeah, they're awkward conversations. and their oil and water sort of dynamic is really fun to watch. We see them on the boat. Aubrey Plaza, who I think is a pretty much one-note act as an actress, but is still really good at the one-note.

And she's just on the boat, and she's looking at the other couple, and they're a little PDA-ish, and she just unleashes an incredible resting bitch face. And you're just like, oh, I can see where this is going. And like, you know, and that's one of the great things about how Mike White has a show. You get a feel for the characters pretty quickly. And in this one, it's like, oh, I know who this is going to be.

And then she's even where, I mean, she's the star of the first two episodes. She's even more heinous than you think she's going to be. And she's just so uptight, so judgmental. It's impossible to have an interaction with her where she doesn't put somebody else either on the defensive or she's not offended in some way. She's always insisting everything is okay, but it's not. And it's a little, it's close to the Sydney-Sweeney character in White Lotus season one. Just that same kind of, I don't really like other human beings, but it's a whole other level.

I was really impressed by it. I think this is the best she's been in anything. Yeah, I really liked her in the happiest season, the Hulu rom-com. column that came out last year where I think she played actually a different note than we're used to from Aubrey Plaza. Oh, interesting. But, you know, and Ingrid Goes West is also like another good example. But like for the most part, yeah, she's Aubrey Plaza doing an Aubrey Plaza character.

And I think I agree with you that this is the best version of like what we got to know in Parks and Rec, etc. But I love the body language of all the people on the boat. I love that she and her husband are dressed in, like, whites and neutrals, and the other couple are in, like, bright colors. And so, yeah, you immediately understand the contrast between these two. And what I like about her is you're not wrong that she's so dislikes people and is causing conflict. But at the same time, like, every time she's trying to make nice, you get the sense that she's trying to do it. it for her husband. She's not being honest about how she feels, but that's not because she's

duplicitous because she's like, he wants a smooth holiday, so she's going to, you know, barely conceal how she feels in order to make him happy or make everything feel calmer around her. And then also some of the things that she objects to, this other couple is more fun, but some of the things she objects to, I'm like, I object to that as well. Yeah. I object to people. Yes, yeah, we're good.

Or people who are like, did I vote? I'm not sure if I voted, you know. I'm like, ugh, you know, or like, I don't, you know, oh, the news is just who cares? And I'm like, well, I mean, you got to, you should care a little, maybe sometimes. So. It's a perfect oil and water combo because just putting those two couples together, they're just predisposed not to get along. And the other couple's so nice, they know she's a bitch.

They don't know how to kind of navigate it. So they're trying to even be nicer to make it work, which makes it even more awkward. And then she's got the bizarre relationship with the husband. Like they're at dinner. She's telling them, I think that was the first episode. She's telling him, I think we'll have the salad. And then, like, they're going to split everything. Oh, the fish.

Yeah. And he's like, I kind of want the fish. And she's like, oh, it's going to be fishy. And it's like, why are you ordering for this guy? This guy's an adult? And why don't you just get your own dinners? Yeah. And she's like, you can have it later in the week.

I was like, why doesn't he just have it now? I didn't understand that. But at the same time, then she, like, clocked that the other, everyone else felt like she was being difficult. And so she's like, okay, we'll have the fish. You know what I mean? So she's like, at least self-aware. And also, like, when she says what she does, which is, you know, settle employee, employer,

like, lawsuits and stuff like that. And the Cameron character is like, oh, we're dealing with all these fake claims. And she's like, cool, not all of them are fake. You know, like, again, I'm like her. side a lot of the time is just the demeanor is off-putting, but she's also making a lot of good points. So, yeah. She thinks she's right in every situation.

And you're right, probably in half to two-thirds of them. She's probably on the right side of whatever it is. She just has no idea how to get that across without making the other person feel like she hates them. Right. And maybe she does hate them, honestly. Maybe she does. How did you interpret the sex or aspirin claims? Because my wife and her husband.

and I, my wife was just over the moon with these two episodes, but they have the swimsuit change, which is kind of the pivotal moment of this in episode one. He goes up to a room to get the other guy's swimsuit. As soon as they go off, I go, boy, here we go. Something's happening. And she's in the bathroom and he does a change and he's butt naked, kind of sees Johnson. And she, her whole body changes, it seems like she's 25% horrified and 75% this is the most thrilling thing that's happened over in five years. And when you tie into the sex harassment thing that he's like, oh, we've been dealing with that. It's unclear whether it was his company or him. So then when he does that, so then that's sent all the theorizing with my wife and I,

we're like, so was this guy, do you think he's sexually harassed people at work? Like, why did he do this is this guy a secret horn dog and that's why it's great that this isn't a binge show because we have a week to be like what's going on with this guy is he a horn dog is this a weird moment is you going to try to fuck Aubrey Plaza how is this going to play out I mean I think he could um it felt like a power moment because like at first I was like oh you know maybe he's just he's just changing in the angle of the mirror whatever she happened to like see you know she's not now he knew intentionally but then he walks up to her he's like is this kind of tight you know he's He's like sort of like, yeah, he knew what he was doing.

So yeah, it felt like a power move to me. She's definitely attracted to him. And, you know, that's a dynamic that we're familiar with of like he represents everything she finds repulsive. And yet there's sort of this like primal attraction to him, you know, that she, that goes against all of her intellectual impulses. And I think that's something that White Lotus, I mean, this is a much more sex-obsessed season than season one was.

I told my mom, I was like, you're going to love this. This is in my mom's wheelhouse. All sexual overtones and innuendos and it's just secret looks at a mirror at somebody changing. Yeah. She's like, forget the undertones. Give me the overtones. She's like, give me the tones. Give me all the tones.

But yeah, so this is the hornier season of White Lotus. And I think Mike White, again, these places that they go, Sicily, Hawaii, like in uncomfortable ways often is examining, like, what happens to a straight-laced, I go to a five-star resort, rich person in this environment where it's bumping up again. You know, we get that, like, that right at the beginning of that test of the moral thing, the head of the more, the story. Like, there are these statues of all these disembodied more heads of this story of this, you know, This guy who comes to Sicily, sleeps with a woman, she finds out he has a family back home,

she cuts off his head, and they make vases out of them, and the vases are in every room. And that's sort of this, like, you know, ancient, primal sort of feeling that's part of this, that, like, how is that going to spread to the various guests who are here at this resort, you know? Good point. The other thing with a swimsuit scene. So I googled it Because I tried to read Where they put the stories out

About what was the point of season 2 I was like I'm going to read a couple of these Without trying to spoil anything And that actor has been naked I think his name's Theo James He's been naked in a couple other movies And down to Navi right? Right he said

There's a more over the top version Of the nude scene they shot That actually pushed it too far So they dialed it back for what we saw Or it's like a brief glimpse of You know whatever But I think I think they went way bigger.

So that makes me think that's a really important scene. If they were like, what's really dialed up for this moment, then something's going on. So that's something to watch. You know, it's funny, this shows relationship with wealth and how it doesn't lead to happiness. I think was kind of the point of, or one of the points of season one, was all these people who seemed like they had everything going, they don't. that just because you have money that doesn't necessarily translate to

being happy, being happy with the people you're with, etc., etc. So this season, you have that swimsuit guy and you have Daphne and they're just over-the-top happy. And I'm wondering, like, that's, from what we know about Mike White

in this universe is creating, I'm suspicious. Yeah, at one point in my nose, I wrote down hot dummies. Like, are they the hot dummies who are just like, blissfully, you know, going through,

or is there something we're going to discover about them? Yeah, so we got that. Then we can cover the three generations more in the second episode. And the same for Tanya. The assistant, that's the one for me where I'm not sure how that evolves over the... Because I feel like he's positioning her as the key character. And I want to know how that evolves, how she navigates this whole world. Because episode two, there's some revelations, which we'll talk about that it just feels

like she's going to be the crucial character, but I don't know where it's going. So where do you think it's going? I think she's crucial because like similar to that character in season one that you mentioned who worked in the spa. Like it's the sort of everyman part. Like she's not there because she can afford to be there. She's there because she's someone's assistant. And so she's supposed to be kind of us point of view character in the mix here. I like that, you know, I said the thing earlier about like you can't order room service, but like I don't think she should be locked up in her room. at all, obviously. And I like that she's sort of slightly defiantly straying out of her room.

But at the same time, like, if she is her point of view character, there's the moment when F. Murray Abraham's character comes down and he, you know, he has a fall. But like, a couple times she's like, he's such a sweet old man. Oh, your grandfather, he's such a sweet old man. And we're like, no, no, he's not. Yeah. Like, no, no, he's not. In front of the hotel staff.

Right. And, like, hit on everything moving. And so if she is our POVie, character. We know that her POV is not a very sharp or observant one, right? Because she thinks that he's harmless and, you know, he's not really harmless. And then Lucia, the host of two, will be kind. But she had a couple good scenes, too, especially when she's screaming at the hotel manager, where she, that scene was great. So we know she's an odds on favorite to be one of the dead people at the end of the show, I think. Oh, you think so?

Oh, but they said there were multiple dead people, so that makes me wonder. Speaking of dead, Greg Tanya's husband, who was battling terminal cancer allegedly in the first season. No mention the cancer this season. Now they're married, not happily. Looks like that's headed the wrong direction. But do you think we're going to find out more about Greg in the second episode, but do you think he made up the cancer thing? Oh, my God. Are we heading that way?

What a theory. You also love a theory. Three years later. Where's the cancer? Yeah, he's got these like whispered phone conversation. Yeah. Like what, you know, there's something like, he's obviously distracted by something, like something's going on. And like, you know, your first instinct in this sex-laced season of White Lotus is like infidelity.

But maybe there's like a twist there and it's actually having to do with his health. I don't know if the cancer is like remarged or something like that. But I hate him. And it's really funny because, you know, because he's like such like, Tanya, obviously. is a mess and a handful. And, like, I don't think I would want to spend a lot of time with her. But, like, the hope of season one was that there is, like, a lid for every pot. Like, even absolute bonkers, weirdo, kind of borderline terrible people like Tanya maybe deserve love.

And then Greg turns out to be an asshole who's, like, harassing her about how many cookies she ate and stuff like that. I found the two macaroons. I only ate three of them. Shut the fuck up, Greg. Isn't she paying for the room? Like, what are you talking about? Why are you complaining, Greg? How about when he said, do you want me to wash up first?

I got swamp crotch. She says he's always... He's always thinking of me. She's like, Jennifer Coolidge, she gets that dreamy, maybe I'll win a second Emmy look on her face when he says that. Yeah. But he's high on my list of, I actually kind of hope he's one of the dead people in the water. Well, I mean, he tried to kill Dylan McKay in season five and nine.

That's who we know. I've never forgiven him for that. Love it. And he kept showing back up. Like, screw that guy. All right. So we're going to wrap up before we do. Who won the episode, episode one for you?

I think Haley Lou. Haley Lou Richardson. I think it's Haley Lou and Aubrey Plaza in the finals. And I think it's Haley Lou just because when that character was introduced, I was like, this character is going to suck. And by the end of it, I was like, I'm rooting for this person. So good job, I hair. All right.

We're going to wrap up. Thanks to Isaiah Blakely for producing. We'll be back every Sunday night. White Lotus coming back next week. Thank you, Joanna. Good to see you. Good to you.