Before I begin, I do want to caution anyone who is about to read this that yes, yes, yes there are spoilers not just skimmed over details so be sure to not read it if you plan on watching unless you’re one of those people. Anyway…
Characters
So, even before I get started, right off the back the cast was a delightful motley of the familiar and newbies. In fact if I am being honest, Connie Britton was a big draw for me, she has never disappointed and I was an avid watcher of hers in the first season of American Horror Story, Nashville and loved her performance in Promising Young Woman . Armando’s actor, Murray Bartlett, I also have seen in Looking and he too, was amazing to watch and I will get into that a bit later on. Jennifer Coolidge playing Ms.McQuoid was also perfect for her role and of course it was my absolute pleasure to see Natasha Rothwell from Insecure killing it, as usual. That being said, all of the newcomers certainly gave the bigwigs a run for their money, especially those playing the roles of Olivia, Quinn, Lina and even Greg.
And so it begins.
So, Nicole, high-powered tech-giant and white feminist to a t. I mean, the portrayal was just unbelievably spot on, complete with the defense of ‘poor young white men’ whose time has passed. Not to forget the typical aspiration to simply achieve what white men have, all the while leaving the grotesque edifice safely in place for when its’ their turn to rule.
Interestingly though, while that was exceptionally portrayed, I loved how humanized she was in the middle of all this. She is still a woman herself, living in a patriarchal world, and we get to see how her success and bid to sustain it, hurts her. How her family’s ingratitude to her hard work coupled with her husband’s infidelity really wounds her. Underneath all that privilege and white feminism is a woman, and we are sort of made to empathize with her situation and I think that was a pretty remarkable feat.
Next up, Rachel, a woman who finds herself landing in the lap of luxury by marrying well and is quite conflicted about it. I love this character so much because from the actress’ interview, her perception of Rachel was quite different from mine.
For one, she simply thought this character only needed to be heard by her rather obnoxious husband Shane, who might as well be deaf at this point. I disagree though because by my estimation, she wasn’t the innocent trapped woman she seemed to be portrayed as. She might have, quite a bit of self-doubt but weak is not really what I gathered.
She seemed to me, a woman who did not want to admit who she was because as much as she goes through hell with Shane, at no point is she really, absolutely tied to him such that she cannot leave him. Of all his horribleness his one silver lining is that he does however, at all times, allow her to make her own decisions even though he proffers heavy misguided input.
And the decision she keeps making, is to stay, even as things grow more and more intolerable. I think she just cannot believe that she still wants ‘the life’ even in the face of the ugly day to day of it all and this is confirmed in the final episode. In fact, I think she is not an unremarkable journalist, she just cops to that in order to feel better about not choosing to make her own way and opting for the cushy life he offers her.
I also tend to think the reason she dislikes her mother-in-law, Kitty, is not that she is intrusive, rather that she is a mirror, a few years into her own future. She wrestles with the fact that she wants to be that woman, her mother-in-law, even though that woman is an abomination. I mean, all you have to do is just remember how delighted she was at the beginning to be addressed by his name, Mrs. Patton, right before she did the whole fake modesty of acting as though she is not quite used to being addressed that way. Please. Alexandra Daddario delivered that one expertly too.
Then Armando. For me, he really was the very best part of the show, delivering my two most memorable lines ,’…the idea is to create a sense of vagueness, where they get whatever they want but they don’t even know what they want….’ While informing Lina of how to treat hotel guests. As well as his last night of mayhem when he told Dillon, the employee he ogles at throughout the show and who he finally ‘gets’ so to speak in exchange for some perks, ‘…They exploit me, and I exploit you…’ Genius.
Using him to depict sexual harassment of men at work was amazing because I do believe we don’t get to see that much of, on screen and even less in real life where sexual assault on men is one of the more underreported crimes, and some may say it was transactional but even for that to be the case, the workplace need to be pretty toxic. We see all this while the man grapples with various addictions, then as if that isn’t enough he finds a bunch of pills and ketamine in the girls’ bag.
His back and forth with Shane is also quite amazing to watch and though he pays the ultimate price, he certainly isn’t blameless in the tug of war but it was incredibly sad to see him die. As they say, the punishment did not fit the crime but oh well, it happened and that’s that. Its just that kind of show.
Shane, a.k.a classic Karen with a sharp pineapple knife. Busy body to death, unable to live without stirring things up unnecessarily. He literally insists on calling the manager even after he gets the Pineapple suite and the knife by the bedside thing did seem like it would end up badly, which it did. The thing that struck me the most was not that he killed the guy but the response to it. He managed to fly home unquestioned, unrestrained, uncharged, as if nothing had happened, meanwhile Paula’s fling, Kai, who only stole jewelry was disappeared from the show after being tracked by the police, where it seemed justice was all of a sudden such a matter of expedience.
I also did want to talk about the scene where he walks in on Armando and Dillon and how that little piece of blackmail pleased him so, how he hinted at it and sat on it just waiting for the right moment to unleash it. I do wish we could have gotten more information on the origin story of Shane and why he was catty like that, but it was a mini-series and its understandable, its lack of inclusion. I guess now I just have to let my imagination run wild and though it had a sprinkling of vanilla homophobia, it just seemed like something more was going on there that I can’t quite point out.
Quinn, Paula and Olivia. The disingenuous dynamic between the girls is very transparent which is somewhat halted when Paula meets the ‘very real’ Kai and her demeanour changes radically. Olivia just like her mother, pretends to want to do better but she too is a product of her environment and her sinister nature cannot help but simply pour out of her when she realizes Kai and Paula’s fling. Even as she and Paula reconcile towards the end, and she opts to keeps her secret of the heist, I just know Paula will pay for that later on.
I think it’s’ also worthwhile to interrogate the actions of people like Paula, because her befriending Olivia and her family to the point of going on vacation together is so suspect. Because, why? It certainly isn’t the same as Kai having to work at the White Lotus to earn a living, she seems to have more of a choice. However, we don’t really know too much of her story but judging from her indignation towards the ‘rich white people who are all the same’ according to her she does seem to be from a lower economic class or struggling more somehow. Even the bit about the pills which didn’t seem completely recreational for her and how genuinely distraught she felt when she lost her bag I seem to feel is more of a clue to her. That being said, I like the way she was hidden in a way, her story before the vacation, gives us a lot of room to speculate on and create.
Quinn, on the other hand after being shunned out of sleeping in the living room with her very abusive sister, is actually the one who ends up having the best vacation of them all, interacting with the locals who are so welcoming and kind, and truly enjoying the majesty of the environment and the entire experience. I do question his motives for sticking around though, and what they really point to, his true appreciation of the Islanders or just the temporal wearing of their culture for his own perverse gratification. Its subtle cliffhangers like this that whet my appetite for a Season 2, which I doubt will happen, but a girl can dream.
His story is a bit like Tanya’s and Greg’s, who unexpectedly find each other and have a great time. The only hitch in the story is having to see Belinda enticed with the idea of a business only to be let down just as she has committed to the plan. The bit about BLM turning out to be the Bureau of Lands Commission was hands down one of the funniest moments. How Tanya was all of a sudden committed to ‘black people’ until she wasn’t.
Mark, also brings forth a wonderful story arc especially with his reaction to finding out about his father’s AIDS-Induced death and his double life, which ironically is not different from his having an affair but the extra layer of homosexuality confounds him so much that he himself has a minor existential crisis and inadvertently comes on to Armando. He is the typical white man that feels cheated by the system that he is entitled to rule over, since his wife earns more and other than that role competence he feels he has no other value. He is a man who desperately wants respect handed to him after doing absolutely nothing to earn it and I don’t mean being the breadwinner. And like clockwork when he ‘saves’ his wife from a conveniently timed robbery, using all his masculine bravado, and I use the term ‘save’ very lightly and is showered with praise from his otherwise apathetic children and sex from his over-achiever wife, alas, suddenly the man is restored. Laughable, but I don’t know why I suspect it’s completely realistic in its portrayal.
The bangles fiasco also, kept me happy, I just don’t want to imagine that Nicole after basically paying for his husband’s mistress, when they were sneaking around and all, also had to buy herself an apology gift via him. This show loves misery too much.
It is also revelatory that despite him being the cheater, he still feels he has the right to control the unfurling process of the tragedy. What was even worse for me, is that she lets him. It was hard to watch but after his whole ‘I’m not giving away my privilege’ spiel I found it hard to sympathize and instead just basked in the brilliant Schadenfreude.
Numbness
I do love how the theme of numbness is used throughout the show. How Paula behaves like a clone of Olivia to avoid grappling with what is actually going on, until her chance encounter with Kai re-awakens her. The books bit was fantastic to watch, very well executed. Armando as well, seems high long before he gets back on drugs because of people like Shane and sometimes I couldn’t even blame him.
Quinn too was somewhat sedated by his phone, pornography and his family but just like Paula once he ventured out into the real world, he too seemed to re-awaken from it all.
The worst bit had to do with the local Hawaiians working at ‘The White Lotus’ who even though we don’t hear much about them, seem also muted in a sense, as they work for their robbers because as Kai says it, they need to make a living, the indignities of living in a White Capitalist world that you must participate in.
The End is the Beginning
Everything ends as it started, Rachel still embarking on her new life with Shane, Paula restored to her numb state, and even the welcome party for the next group being exactly the same, despite the notable absence of Armando and Lina who were always inconsequential to the hotel, and Belinda continuing to waste away in the spa even farther from achieving her business idea.
There are changes certainly, for Tanya and Greg, even Mark and Nicole rekindling their love but the tragedies of Kai, Lina, Paula, Armando and Belinda remain trivial and fade into the background. I guess it’s’ as they say, some things never change.