The White Lotus

 

Just when you think humanity couldn't get any more annoying, someone new checks into “The White Lotus.” Ending its six-episode first season Sunday on HBO, this sly satire, conceived, written and directed by Mike White has been getting lots of media attention, social and otherwise, for a variety of reasons.

I first learned of it in a Maui News story a few months ago about the unexpected boon filming had provided to the island's economy during the dark days of the pandemic. The series was filmed entirely at Wailea's Four Seasons Resort, bringing a chunk of revenue to the property while many of its neighbor resorts were shuttered. At the same time, it allowed cast and crew to be sequestered in its luxurious environs in a virus-resistant bubble.

That all seemed to add up to a rare case of win-win, a silver lining to the dark cloud of lockdown.

But now that it's out there for all to see, there's room to wonder whether Four Seasons management might be second-guessing themselves. Series creator White, who has a home on Kauai, is knowledgable about Hawaii's culture and history. He's also supportive of activist grievances about the sort of “aloha” resorts like the fictional White Lotus sell to their guests for thousands of dollars a day. 

There's an upstairs-downstairs chasm between the pampered and the pamperers, With a cynical scalpel, the scripts tend to portray the low-wage local staff members struggling to make ends meet as smarter and definitely wiser than their obscenely wealthy clientele. Not to mention, more soulful.

Sorta like real life.

“Just watching them eat sometimes makes me want to gouge my eyes out,” harried resort manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) confides to spa manager Belinda (Nathasha Rothwell).

With his clipped Aussie accent, he advises his staff to give the guests what they want – even though they don't know what they want. They're children, he explains.

A superb ensemble fleshes out the guest register with neuroses, entitlement, and obnoxiousness in all shapes, sizes and ages. Awesome Connie Britton shows a more unpleasant side as high-powered tech CEO Nicole Mossbacher, vacationing with husband Mark (Steve Zahn), who's on a downward spiral of quiet desperation 24/7. Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and her friend Paula (Brittany O'Grady) are the bitchiest of know-it-alls, as only college-age daughters can be. Younger son Quinn (Fred Hechinger) rarely looks up from his screen to notice he's in paradise.

Rich prick Shane and journalist-turned-trophy-wife Rachel Patton (Jake Lacy and Alexandra Daddaro) are in the luxury suite, although smart money would bet their marriage won't outlast their honeymoon. Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) was also in their party checking in, arriving by yacht. She's walking comatose, self-medicating into a sort of forced friendliness that gives everyone else the creeps. Her first massage at the spa from Belinda convinces her that she's suddenly transformed into a new person. She launches into an unlikely friendship with the resort employee, dangling the promise that she'll set her up in her own business.

Yeah, right.

In the scene that opens the first episode we learn that one of the characters in the White Lotus will die during the series' week-from-hell time frame. That's the mystery that's got social media buzzing up to the Sunday finale. It's not a whodunnit so much as who got done? But as one amateur critic on the Internet Movie Data Base so aptly put it, you begin by wondering who died, but quickly find yourself wishing they all did.

For folks on Maui, the show bores into far deeper regions. Prior to her retirement, my wife Karen worked for more than a quarter-century in the very same Four Seasons, part of the staff earning five-star ratings for the property and making it a top island destination year after year. Word has it that some employees still on the job don't think the show's a comedy. One said it's just like being at work … without getting paid.

Watching all the beautifully shot on-property settings, accompanied by Cristobal Tapia de Veer's amazing musical score triggers plenty of memories for me, too. I also logged lots of hours in those luxe environs, often in the presence of beautiful movie stars at Maui Film Festival time. Some of my happiest only-on-Maui experiences took place in the ocean off Wailea Beach where some key plot points are set. 

It was just a few miles up the road, at the film festival's Celestial Cinema where I had the dream assignment of interviewing Connie Britton herself. At some point I asked if she would ever like to make a movie on Maui.

“Omigosh, when?,” she answered. “Tonight, tomorrow, what time's good …?”

I'll chalk it up as another of those moments of personal prescience, even if no one can see them but me.

It's probably just coincidence that the series setting and its creator are both named White. The filmmaker's stamp is everywhere, from his regard for the environment and its people to his sardonic point of view that often doesn't feel like comedy at all.

The resort guests launch into convenient, politically correct bromides, not realizing they themselves are the embodiments of all the social ills they bemoan. And yet, for as clinically he dissects their flaws, Mike White still reveals abiding empathy for their humanity.

Matters of modern Hawaii are trickier still – a sort of contemporary American caste system with the poorest serving the richest, no questions asked. There's the dilemma of islanders having to commodify their culture and sell it, just to survive in a land that is rightfully theirs. Is it still paradise if you can put a price tag on it? 

Where do haoles even fit in, really? There's that word “White” again, further confusing the issue. Obnoxious rich people are easy targets. But what about us malihinis – newcomers – who call the place home? Hearing newly arrived transplants talk about “Mother Maui” or “the aina,” conflating new age slogans with Hawaiian spirituality doesn't help.

“The White Lotus” leaves these questions hanging, like the green flash the moment the sun disappears over the ocean horizon that you're never sure whether you saw or not.

Do you think it will hurt Four Seasons business when the guests realize what the show makes them look like? Karen asked me.

No, I answered. They'll think the show's about someone else.

So will all the rest of us.