‘The White Lotus’ Season 2, Episode 3 Review: The Guests Descend Into The Muck Of Conflict, Deceit & Absurdity

Picking up where the audience left off from Episode 2, the White Lotus guests have officially been thrust into a muck of conflict, deceit and absurdity.

Harper (Aubrey Plaza) has decided to play a nicer, “lovelier” version of herself in an attempt to both please her husband, Ethan (Will Sharpe) and troll the Sullivans (Meghann Fahy and Theo James). Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) hires and consults a tarot card reader to determine if her marriage with her husband is going to last.

Dominic (Michael Imperioli) stops seeing the prostitutes to maintain a positive image for his son, so they decide to “have some fun” with Cameron and Ethan. Daphne gets high with her “new best friend,” Harper, at Noto all while revealing that she is aware that Cameron, cheats on her, and even insinuates that he is involved in some shady criminal activity.

So much happens in this entire episode, and yet not once does it feel out-of-place or unwarranted because the first 2 episodes did a great job planting these seeds of absurdism. Up until this point, The White Lotus presented both their characters and their respective plots in a pretty straightforward manner, but as those seeds of absurdism that the series creator Mike White planted in the beginning start to sprout, the characters start descending to insanity, making for a viewing experience that feels both much more entertaining and engaging.

The most obvious example involves the character of Tanya, a character who admittedly I did not like at first, but as the show goes on, she starts becoming a much more pathetic, bizarre and ultimately interesting character. She wails around her hotel room and constantly cries about the fact that her marriage might fall apart and that she’s willing to get rid of the prenup to keep her husband from leaving.

She consults a tarot card reader about her whether her husband still loves her, and then starts freaking out when she doesn’t get the answer she hoped. She starts treating her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) as a human doll, dragging her around and telling her to go wherever she needs to without any regard for her convenience.

Tanya becomes this incredibly insane, yet engaging character that I couldn’t stop watching anything that she does, a stark contrast from how I felt about her at the beginning of the series. However, the main highlight of this episode was any scene involving the Sullivans and the Spillers as any moment with them is richly layered with elements of deceit and fakeness.

Harper plays a persona right from the beginning: she pretends to be a “lovely” and “nice” wife that Daphne supposedly is in an attempt to mock their “friends.” But it turns out that the only people who are playing “characters” are Cameron and Daphne. When Daphne goes off to Noto with Harper and Cameron stays at the hotel to party with Ethan, they unmask themselves and reveal who they truly are.

Cameron, under the influence of MDMA, tries to get Ethan, a new member of the upper class, to invest in his company and cheats on his wife by hooking up with Lucia (Simona Tabasco), the prostitute who previously slept with Dominic. Daphne, under the influence of marijuana, admits to Harper that she knows about his infidelity but chooses to not see herself as the victim, and even insinuates that she knows that Cameron’s business partners are engaged in criminal activity.

These character revelations paint a very interesting portrait of Cameron and Daphne: not only are they not as kind and wholesome as the audience thought they were, but they are in a way the type of people that Ethan and Harper might become if they are not careful and if they continue to walk down this path they so desperately wanted to be on. This is by far the most interesting plot point in the entire series, and I can’t wait to see where this goes next.

Unfortunately, not all the characters in this series have grabbed my attention as much as Tanya, the Spillers, and the Sullivans. As I mentioned in my last review, I am still not entirely invested in the characters of Dominic and his father (F. Murray Abraham), nor am I invested in the prostitutes that Dominic sleeps with as they seem to be undergoing this rags-to-riches story that has been told hundreds of times. Albie (Adam DiMarco) and Portia are not particularly interesting characters either, and in fact, are my least favorite characters in the show.

In my opinion, they by far have the weakest dialogue out of any of these characters as a lot of the words that came out of these characters’ mouths were incredibly obnoxious and cringe at times. A great example of this was during the scene where the two characters have breakfast and Portia talks about how phones and the internet have ruined the wonder of experiencing the magic of reality, and I was just so unconvinced during that entire scene. Whether or not the way these characters are written is an intentional choice, it still doesn’t excuse how irritating any scenes involving them were.

However, overall, despite some issues I had, this was still a well-made episode that kept my interest from beginning to end. I can’t wait to see where the next episode goes next as many of the characters are in murky, complicated positions, and to see how they handle these predicaments will be a delight to see.