The White Lotus returns with promises of more carnage and even more rich assholery
Season 2, Episode 1: "Ciao"
I wish I could tell you that doing the same thing over and over again yields the same amount of success, love, and adoration as it did the first time, but if I’ve learned anything in my economics class, returns are diminishing. (Or something like that. I don’t know if I love that class.) Last year, The White Lotus offered us six tightly packed episodes of a dozen characters all affected in some way by their class, whether that blinded them to the people they saw as under them, or made them desperate to get away from it all. It seems easy, when looking at “Ciao” and its new characters, to deride The White Lotus’ return as trying to do exactly what season one did all over again, but aha, that’s your mistake—now you too are like the Mossbachers, the Babcocks, unable to look beyond the basic ideas. The first season, set in Hawaii, had an interest in colonialism, and yeah, that checks out, doesn’t it? But season two is set in Sicily, and now the centerpoint is sex. There’s a little bit of a connection between class and sex, but yeah, the main idea is focused around sex.
So why is that? Italy, and tourist-y Europe in general, is automatically considered a sensual, romantic experience, because…it just is. We like the idea of a foreign yet tamed culture because it’s simply different from ours, but not to the point that we can’t relate to it, or temporarily exist in it. We like difference, because if we’re rich enough, everything kind of becomes the same. With Hawaii, the pleasure for the characters came from how neat and orderly this once ungentrified area was, but now in Sicily, everything has been this way for centuries. It’s the exotic feeling of living in someone else’s skin. Or, you know, getting to see some skin, in this season’s case.
The first scene of the episode could be what makes the strongest case for “oh, it’s just season one again”: two people try to converse with someone that we come to learn will be a major player in the season’s events. Unlike Jake Lacy’s entitled manchild from season one, disillusioned with the collapse of his relationship and his accidental murder of the resort’s manager, Meghann Fahy’s Daphne is cheery and looks back on her trip with warmth. “Oh, you are gonna die,” she promises the two women she gushes about her week to—not the most subtle indication of what she’s about to find, but whatever—and plunges into the water for one last swim, only to find more than she bargained for.
Whereas the first season had one body, season two has multiple, and they all appear to be guests. Short-tempered manager Valentina arrives on the scene to be met by one of her staffers. “The ocean is not hotel property,” she insists when she learns of one body found drowned in the water. Things are different here. The problem isn’t necessarily a clash between those stuck in the resort and those able to come and go as they please—it’s a conflict solely between those with a choice, and it’s left disaster in its wake. “Ciao” is all about setting up these different groups of well-off individuals (of which there are three) and the factors surrounding them, all of which will surely build up into a disastrous climax.
The only characters present in Sicily that we also got to meet in Hawaii are Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, who is now married to Greg, the supposedly terminally ill man she latched onto in the back half of the first season. If there’s one thing The White Lotus loves to keep consistent about its characters, it’s the way they can never truly abandon their biggest issues, and that rings very true for Tanya. First it was her late mother, then the hapless spa manager from Hawaii, then Greg, and now her young assistant Portia. She doesn’t have to bring her along for what is supposed to be a romantic trip to Italy with her husband, but Greg isn’t responding to her texts, so she does anyway. When he finally shows up, she’s forced to send Portia away—but she can’t bear to be without the person she’s already attached herself to, probably because of Greg’s increasingly shitty behavior, so she instead instructs her to stay out of sight but close by. Her relationship with Greg is clearly fraying, perhaps because she ignored his more troubling behavior while believing he was going to die quickly. “I got swamp crotch,” he grumbles when she tries to initiate sex. “God, he’s always thinking of me,” Tanya sighs, as though she’s trying to convince herself. I enjoy these scenes between the two enough, but Tanya, like in season one, ends up being the least interesting part of the episode. Not to say that Coolidge doesn’t sell the hell out of the performance, but at the same time, there just wasn’t enough to really keep me into all her scenes.
Portia is left sitting by the pool, weeping on the phone to her friend about how she’s stuck in her room, per Tanya’s orders—but is, funnily enough, by the pool. Actress Haley Lu Richardson herself comments on how fortunate Portia is to essentially be getting an Italian vacation where all she has to do is avoid her boss as opposed to what she would be doing if Tanya needed her—you know, work. “If I had half a billion dollars, I would not be miserable. I would be enjoying my life,” she insists to her friend, but is that really true? Her inability to set boundaries and tendency for getting steamrolled feel parallel to her boss, and with that comes the same blind spots and entitlement: if she had Tanya’s fortune, she would be just as miserable.
But then comes one of the bright spots in a show mainly obsessed with superficiality and misery: Albie Di Grasso, who has a very low-key and sweet interaction with Portia by the pool, until they get interrupted by his grandfather. F. Murray Abraham has always been an actor I’ve enjoyed in just about everything I’ve seen him in, and this is no exception—he chews the hell out of every scene as Bert, playing his sleaziness with such perfect sweet old man demeanor that it almost isn’t, you know, sleazy. “You’re very kind,” the resort staffer he hits on laughs shortly as he continues to shower her with compliments. “You must be very popular!” he smiles, oblivious as only the least aware of men can be. Mike White’s directing seems to lie in the way he commands actors—both in terms of the people milling about in the backgrounds of big scenes, or scenes like this one, where all three actors feel so perfectly in tune with what the scene requires. Abraham, Michael Imperioli(!), and Adam DiMarco all work perfectly off of each other in every scene they’re in, as do the other groups present in the episode.
And oh yeah, Michael Imperioli is in this new season, isn’t he? He was one of the main reasons I was so excited for a second season of this show and why I had faith that it would work out well, and does he add to it? Well, honestly, I don’t know. There are some scenes where I found him to be doing a great job, but others—specifically where he calls his wife, and we learn that he’s not as chill around women as he seems to be—felt just a little off. His expression feels unreadable, and not in a way that works for me. It almost looks like he’s smiling. And yet, like Tanya, Dominic is someone who can’t stop himself. “You can relate to that,” Bert chuckles to Dominic on the subject of his attraction to younger women, and it’s true—whatever he did to make his wife as hateful of him as she is definitely seems related, and the way he awkwardly talks around young prostitute Lucia’s attempt at a conversation reads to me as someone who understands how to talk to younger women. Contrast their interaction with Mia and the piano player’s, where she tells him that she too wants to be a musician. The player isn’t interested—all he wants to know is how much she costs, because he assumes that she too is a prostitute. One woman is and one is not, but in the end, the implication is that they’re too poor to be in this hotel, they’re young, and they’re pretty, so what else would they be doing here? The psychology that intertwines class and sex is in full effect.
And oh yeah, Aubrey Plaza is also in this new season, isn’t she? The Spillers and the Babcocks make for my favorite part of “Ciao” by far. Next to Imperioli, Plaza was my most prominent justification for my anticipation of this show’s return, and yet unlike him, there was never a scene I felt she wasn’t selling. From the instant we see the two couples on the boat to the resort, we know everything we need to. Cameron and Daphne are all touchy with each other, while Harper and Ethan barely look at each other, the former’s gaze directed straight forward in abstract disgust. Plaza plays her sometimes quiet, sometimes barely restrained contempt for the Babcocks perfectly, both in this moment and all those that follow. “Like, who does that?” she scoffs at the idea of how affectionate the other couple is in public. “Happily married couples?” Ethan posits with restrained emotion of his own, clearly trying not to roll his eyes. “Can you just please try to make an effort?” he requests of his wife in hopes of getting her to keep her cool around the Babcocks, and gets a non-answer in return—and that kind of says everything about their relationship, doesn’t it?
It builds to my favorite scene of the episode, the first time the couples really get to sit down and talk for a while with a beautiful view behind them. We learn that the Babcocks deliberately avoid the news (“What can you really do, right?”) and instead have a fondness for Ted Lasso, choosing the escapist and ideal reality of that show where the line between kind and cruel people is very defined and everyone has someone to work on their issues with. Harper, of course, does not watch Ted Lasso. Despite the fact that her eyes are hidden, you can see the annoyance build on her face and in her voice as the scene continues, and it gets worse when Cameron changes right behind her, the room’s mirror giving her a good view of everything. Perhaps trying to satiate Ethan, she allows her pure disgust to show in a simple noise and twitch of her face after Cameron leaves the room. Only over dinner, when she observes a little glance and an awkward scratch of the face Cameron and Daphne share while she complains about the fish being too “fishy,” does she finally give in. Even the seemingly perfect Babcocks have their complaints.
There’s a lot of things that look and sound like bad omens in “Ciao”. When the couples arrive in their suite, (separated by a wooden door that doesn’t seem to block sound very well) Ethan makes note of the strange statue sitting in the room, and the staffer explains the story behind it, of how a Sicilian woman cut off the head of a Moor for lying about his marital status. In the conversation over drinks, Daphne brings up how many wives are killed by their husbands while on vacation. Nobody is safe—not men, not women. “Men are so disappointing,” Lucia sighs as she tries to pick out who her potential client could be from the arriving boat, and she laughs with Mia about impotence. But like these apparent harbingers of death that keep popping up, the greatest—the dormant volcano Mount Etna—is present in several scenes, serving as the most dangerous symbol of all: the one that lies impotent, until it doesn’t. Until it erupts.
Rating: 8/10 (B+)
Completely unrelated to this episode, but my friend went as Armond for Halloween and did a great job with the accent. (I went as Lyle from Better Call Saul, which is even less related, but I thought it was funny.)
I really don’t like hearing Imperioli speak without a pronounced accent. I really don’t.
Creator Mike White, who was the runner-up on a season of Survivor, actually brought in two of his costars from that season to play the women in the opening.
Not a lot of development on Valentina here, but she looks somewhat affected when Lucia points out that nobody would want to have sex with her. Given this show’s track record of White Lotus resort managers and having sex with people they shouldn’t be having sex with, I’ll admit that this worries me.
Good detail: Albie seems to be the only one apologizing every time Bert says something inappropriate. Dominic just kind of scolds him, perhaps speaking to how he too may hold these ideas, but knows it’s best not to express them. Time will tell, but I can’t say I trust him very much.
So, who’re the dead bodies? If one of them is going to be Cameron or either of the Spillers, my gut says that it’ll be all of them. (Daphne is safe, for obvious reasons.) Could also be Greg, (the Testa di Moro head watches over him and Tanya as they fail to have sex) but for some reason I feel like it won’t be any of the Di Grassos. At least, I hope it’s not Albie if it’s going to be one of them. Season one’s happiest ending went to the “overlooked young man” character, so I hope that carries over, unless Albie turns out to be a dick. (Don’t turn out to be a dick, please.)
Cristobal’s trademark distorted female humming samples are present in the score at points, straight out of Utopia and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Never change, big man. Congrats on your Emmy.
Greg is a total dick, but I too would be put off by the foot-on-breast move.
Yes, that was Laura Dern on the phone.
Is Cameron acting like a monkey while messing around with his wife a reference to a much more awkward scene from season one? That was more to play up Steve Zahn’s character’s impotence and status in his family, but this is more just to illustrate how seemingly carefree the Babcocks are in contrast to the Spillers. Guess I need to keep thinking about it. Also, Harper on Daphne’s laughter: “Is he hurting her?”
Good detail in the theme of class: “You should go,” Dominic says of Los Angeles while talking with Lucia. “I don’t have the money,” she sighs.
Ethan was reportedly “the original incel” in college. Hmm.
“Totally disregard the text about the Ambien, I have located my Ambien.”
“Doctors say you need to jerk off once a day?” “That’s right.” “Which doctors say that?”
“I think we’re their diverse friends.”
“It’s a penis. It’s not a sunset.”
“So, did you have a good time?”
hey! are you still planning on doing the final two better call saul reviews? i love them! thanks :)