'White Lotus' Is Stuck in Prestige Autopilot

I enjoy the HBO series White Lotus for two main reasons: 1. There are heightened caricatures of rich people being absolute messes, and 2. Talented actors are cast to make meals of these caricatures’ many tics, foibles, and vanities. It’s fun to watch ridiculously rich fools sow casual ruin at every achingly beautiful resort they visit like a never-ending Real Housewives cast trip. White Lotus strives for more “important” prestige profile as a series with searing, incisive things to say about Big Ideas (class, race, capitalism, etc) and achieved an unearned reputation as a satire. The show has returned for a third season in autopilot, repeating many of the same characters and dynamics from past seasons that gesture weakly at themes the series isn’t interested in exploring. Instead of straining to be a sharp-eyed satire, White Lotus should embrace what it is: a well-acted prestige riff on Fantasy Island.

White Lotus could, in theory, successfully mix social satire with rich-people-behaving-badly stories; the two topics go pretty naturally together. In fairness, there is some — some! — satirical bend to the series. Each season presents a cavalcade of rich folks blithely traipsing through foreign lands, treating local cultures like amusements for their consumption. The themes are there, but they’re way underexplored. The first season gestured at how Hawaii is treated as a playground for vacationers that see Hawaiian culture as little more than the entertainment during dinner. The series’ focus, however, was on the ridiculous antics of the rich, mostly white, people and the extreme lengths they drove the hotel staff to. In its second season set in Italy, the show seemed to flail for a satire-flavored angle. Stale platitudes about marriage and sex were saved only by the performances of Aubrey Plaza and Meghann Fahy. White Lotus skims the surface of social satire but largely refuses to go further into it so it can play lurid games with its cast.

White Lotus wastes time with the half-hearted satire when it seems to be more comfortable stirring up splashy drama, so why not play to that strength? Maybe White Lotus feels some prestige-TV duty to engage in social comment as a sign of its depth or maybe White Lotus is afraid to step outside the formula that made the first season such a smash hit and is trying to play to audience expectations. Either would explain why the series seems compelled to start each season with a dead body despite the deaths having underdeveloped connections to the rest of the series. It would also explain why the series’ third season (streaming on Max) is recycling characters so heavily. Take the Ratliffs for example: rich, dysfunctional, allergic to having an ounce of perspective, they are a remix of season one’s Mossbachers. Parker Posey and Jason Isaacs, as the Ratliff parents, shine through the archetypal nature of their characters, but the same can’t be said about Patrick Schwarzenegger, who plays the oldest son Saxon. There’s been some significant praise thrown towards him for his work on the show so far but never has a “charming rake” character felt so flat and boring. A trio of frenemies on vacation (Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, and Michelle Monaghan) are the most exciting part of the season, in part because their dynamic feels fresh. Seeing them spar “playfully” with smiles that never quite reach their eyes is exciting, in no small part because Bibb, Coon, and Monaghan find texture and tension that are lacking from the rest of the season so far.

If the first season was meant to tackle colonialism and tourism, and the second had the earth-shattering revelation that sometimes people cheat on each other, then the third aims at wellness capitalism. It’s fertile ground to explore, especially in the context of how Americans commodify East Asian culture as alternative medicine. Sadly, like it’s done twice before, White Lotus merely gestures at critiques that mainly amount to “these rich tourists sure are shallow.” Thailand is presented as exotic, and Buddhism is made to feel mystical in ways that can feel like Orientalism. It’s unclear whether White Lotus intends to criticize this perspective, which is what makes the series such poor satire. Successful satire needs a clear point of view and without it, it’s just tossing grenades in random directions. Considering how shallowly White Lotus engages with its satire, wouldn’t it be easier to just not?

White Lotus is a fun show weighed down by satirical baggage that it doesn’t know what to do with, and the execution drags the show down. The series feels less than the sum of its parts and more dependent on its cast to elevate the material. White Lotus needs to drop the half-assed satire and commit to the soapy misadventures it seems more interested in.