Why is “The White Lotus” THE series not to be missed this summer?

While the doors of the White Lotus, Hawaii’s paradise hotel for wealthy clients, closed this Tuesday in France on OCS, HBO has already announced the renewal of its new nugget. Waiting for season 2 of The White Lotus, here’s why we absolutely must catch up with Season 1, available to stream on OCS and Amazon Prime Video, of this almost perfect tragicomedy.

A superb creation by Mike White

Almost ten years after the unforgettable Enlightened, a series created with Laura Dern, Mike White takes the viewer into a luxury hotel in Hawaii. Mike White signs a jubilant satirical comedy. A perfect cocktail for the summer combining grinding humor, mystery and change of scenery.

The careful design offers a breathtaking view of the Hawaiian beauty. A heavenly setting that contrasts with the darkness of the characters and situations.

A bit of mystery

The series opens with Shane (Jake Lacy, seen in particular in The Office and Girls), a newlywed who answers a couple’s questions about their vacation in the airport departure lounge as they bitterly gaze at the cargo labeled “human remains” loaded onto their flight.

Returned a week earlier, when he arrived on the island for his honeymoon aboard a boat with his wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario, seen in True Detective, New Girl Where American Horror Story), a family and a single woman. On the coast, the employees of the complex, on their 31, are lined up to welcome these wealthy visitors.

Of course, the viewer wonders which of these customers or staff will end up between four boards, but one cannot reduce The White Lotus to a simple murder story …

A five-star cast

In The White Lotus season 1, comedian Steve Zahn plays Mark Mossbacher, one of the wealthy vacationers, Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) Nicole Mossbacher, the scabrous wife of Mark, a workalcoholic who is much more successful than him financially, Fred Hechinger, Quinn, their awkward teenage son, Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria), Olivia, their arrogant daughter, and Brittany O’Grady, Paula, Olivia’s best friend.

Jennifer Coolidge (seen in the “American Pie” saga) brilliantly embodies Tanya McQuoid, a wealthy and completely neurotic woman facing the sorrow of the loss of her mother. Murray Bartlett, in top form, (seen in Sex and the City) plays the role of Armond, the manager of the palace while Natasha Rothwell plays Belinda, the compassionate manager of the spa.

The series also stars Molly Shannon as Kitty, the mother of the newlywed Shane, Kekoa Kekumano as Kai and Lukas Gage as Dillion.

A gallery of ambivalent characters

All the characters in the series are ambivalent: neither completely hateful, nor really lovable. Alcoholic and self-proclaimed “crazy” Tanya, for example, is quite touching: she has never received true affection and suffers from it. It is nonetheless dangerous because it is perfectly oblivious to its own egoism. This rich, white woman has a sincere admiration for the healing skills of the less wealthy black woman Belinda. When she offers to finance a health center, it evokes the “Magical Negro” trope, or “magical negro”. An offer that Belinda cannot neglect, while Tanya can do without this project.

A powerful satire on human nature

Inequalities and inequities accumulate with each episode and the air gets heavier and heavier. And each character brings its share of tensions.

Mike White focuses as much on the history of the poor as on the rich. He is interested in inequalities, corruption and all the forms of suffering and cruelty (major and minor, insidious and flagrant) that they entail. Over the episodes, the plots become more and more intense.

Under its delicious varnish of comedy, soap and mystery, The White Lotus manages to question the fundamental structures of domination of our society and to defeat contemporary hypocrisies. In short, a biting series, punctuated by moments of intense grace and sublimated by the intoxicating and anxiety-provoking music of Cristobal Tapia de Veer (who will never come out of the mind of anyone who has seen the series).