• This week in The PRIOR Wire, we unpack the ways in which The White Lotus, Mike White's hilarious hotel satire for HBO, lifts the curtain on the travel industry.
• Against a backdrop of a majestic Italian resort and a constellation of camera-ready villas in Sicily, the dark comedy offers an operatic glimpse into the host-guest relationship and how the unspoken contract between the manager and the managed is being rewritten in real time.
• This makes sense for a series shot during the pandemic, when tourism was upended and hospitality businesses experienced a collective existential crisis. The first season was filmed at Four Seasons Resort Maui. The current, second season taking place at Sicily's San Domenico Palace concludes next week.
• While the show explores larger themes around how a traveler's destiny is tied to their travel destination, the constant assurances and hand-holding required of White Lotus V.I.P.s is a masterclass on how not to behave as a modern vacationer. (And, yes, the Pineapple Suite is unavailable.)
• As Tanya, Jennifer Coolidge, one of the only characters from the first season to return, may be the audience's pick for best in show. But for PRIOR — and, one assumes, many in the travel industry — it is Murray Bartlett, whose portrayal of a General Manager in Hawaii, by turns ingratiating and irritated, was spoiler alert "the shit" (to reference a hard-to-stomach scene from last season).
• And spare a thought for this season’s scene staler: Valentina, a angsty and anxious GM harnessing her concierge might as a way to rage against the patriarchy (and everyone else, it seems). The highly-decorated Italian actor Sabrina Impacciatore is perfetto.
PRIOR REPORT
Our Taste in Sicily
When it comes taste at the White Lotus hotel, or TWL for short, it is as important to notice what the guests do as much as what the guests do not.
