“The White Lotus” is a new satirical HBO series about a vacation in Hawaii that turns into hell…or purgatory.

This summer, HBO didn’t release many notable projects, but the mini-series “The White Lotus” with a scattering of stars of varying magnitudes (from Connie Britton to Sydney Sweeney from “Euphoria”) is exactly the case where attention is sufficient and deserved.

The story about wealthy white people vacationing in Hawaii skillfully balances between blatant satire and subtle psychological sketches of the lives of broken individuals. And watching this play in several acts is damn fascinating.

Act I: Murder and an Introduction to Morals

Like a traditional resort mystery, “The White Lotus” begins with a murder. Or rather, with a report that a corpse was brought on the plane returning from Hawaii along with the bohemians who vacationed there. Then we are taken back to the beginning of this story and introduced to the characters, one of whom will not survive this ill-fated vacation.

But the series needs the formal detective intrigue only to lure the viewer and make them watch the development of events and characters more closely. After all, humans are curious creatures, and such hooks work almost always. In reality, “The White Lotus” is not a detective story at all; it is rather a tragicomedy with a whole array of different morals and conflicts (mostly internal).

Among the characters:

• the capricious mama’s boy Shane (Jake Lacy), who gets into a quarrel with the hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) as soon as he sets foot on Hawaiian soil. The reason is a room not as luxurious as his mother booked for him. And he’s on his honeymoon with the bombshell Rachel (Alexandra Daddario);
• the perpetually tipsy millionairess Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), who came to the island to scatter her mother’s ashes over the ocean;
• the Mossbacher family: Nicole (Connie Britton), who never takes a break from work; her husband Mark (Steve Zahn), who suspects he has testicular cancer; their children — the geek and nerd Quinn (Fred Hechinger) and the pseudo-activist and Putin fan Olivia (Sydney Sweeney), who brought her friend along on the trip.

Act II: Confronting Personal Demons and Class Inequality

The main theme of the series’ plot is class inequality. The characters are conventionally divided into the rich and those who serve them (in addition to the eccentric manager Armond, an important role in the story is played by Belinda, the head of the SPA salon). If desired, the show can even be viewed as an interesting essay on colonialism (it is no coincidence that there are no black guests — the Mossbachers’ friend doesn’t count, and the setting is the once-free island of Hawaii).

In such conditions, the central storyline seems to be the development of the relationship between Rachel and Shane. He is that very bohemian and elite (read: colonizer), by whose whim everything should happen at the snap of a finger. She, by pure chance, ends up in the world of luxury and acts as a kind of servant and something owed.

Against the backdrop of Rachel gradually recognizing Shane as an emotional tyrant with an Oedipus complex, while he tries to tame her, the other characters rather confront their own demons. After all, when else to do this if not on vacation, a period of time spent alone with oneself. For example, the youngest Mossbacher tries to find meaning in life beyond Nintendo and iPhone, and Tanya tries to get rid of grief by meeting new people.

The showrunner of the project “The White Lotus” Mike White (who wrote the script and personally directed all 6 episodes) is not only known as a screenwriter for several films with Jack Black, but also as one of the creators of the cult series “Freaks and Geeks” and “Dawson’s Creek.” Therefore, he is excellent at handling a large number of characters on screen and distributing time among them in the right proportions. This allows you to get to know each character better and feel sympathy, hatred, or empathy for them. It all depends on your outlook on life.

Act III: Purification by Vacation

If from the previous paragraphs you got the impression that the new HBO series only discusses how bad the rich are and how they can go crazy in different ways, then that’s not quite the case. Or rather, not at all. White pays much more attention to showing the rebirth of his characters, their overcoming of purgatory, which is represented by the luxurious hotel “The White Lotus.” After all, the rich are people too. They can cry and be vulnerable.

After this vacation, almost all the characters change: someone will reconsider their life priorities, another will discover a world full of adventure, a third will stop taking everything for granted. And in these revelations, perhaps, lies the main advantage of the series “The White Lotus.” Watching it, you can also think about going on vacation to a luxurious hotel in Hawaii reassessing your values and looking at yourself and the surrounding reality differently.

Trailer:

P.S. at the beginning of the article it is stated that “The White Lotus” is a mini-series, but HBO bosses decided to turn it into an anthology, i.e., in the next season there will be other characters with different problems.