The White Lotus season 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ethan’s comment towards Cameron about mimetic desire and indicating he has higher status was BOLD, loved to see it.

Also loved Harpers scenes this last episode, the first scene re discovering what happened and then her comment about her husbands porn habits.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love how the writer so enjoys shining light on uncomfortable hypocrisy!

I mean, what's the difference between Rachel (season 1 - married to Cornell douche) and Daphne, and Lucia? They all take money in exchange for putting up with a man but I almost respect Lucia more!

Lucia was purely transactional with Dom - had sex, got money, respectfully went on their ways with no relationship.
Rachel semi-transactional with husband - got married, got money, forces self to have a relationship with unlikeable husband.
Daphne semi-transactional with husband - got married, got money, enjoys husband and children, forces self to not despise cheating husband.

I really don’t see those three women as being in purely transactional relationships. Obviously Lucia is but Rachel genuinely seemed to have fallen in love with the man she was with only for that initial glow to wear off and decide she doesn’t like him and Daphne does seem to love Cameron, although she wrestles with his many flaws. I know both of the wives are wealthy due to their husband‘s success but I don’t get the impression that’s the only thing keeping them in the relationship or that’s what they married them for initially

Rachel had a top-notch education and was a writer. It was only after she married and saw she was expected to live her life like his mom—a life of leisure and gossip and nothing of substance. She realized she was in over her head and completely unhappy. It’s like the girl that ends the marriage and has it annulled. There was no indication she was going to ride that marriage out. She was done.

Lol no. I just binged this series so it’s fresh in my mind. They make a point of mentioning that Rachel went to a SUNY school (compared to Shane who went to Cornell and the teen girls who presumably go to an expensive SLAC) and was a writer for a lowly online magazine where she was asked to make dumb listicles and puff pieces. Shane is outraged that she’d want to take time out of their honeymoon to do a trash piece like this for $200.

The whole point of her various interactions with Nicole, Shane, her MIL, and Belinda is her coming to the realization she’ll never be the respected journalist she wants to be and realizing she should stay with Shane for the money.

This. Not only does she write “dumb puff pieces” for a Buzzfeed type of place, she’s BAD at writing those pieces. In fact, it’s her conversation with Nicole, in which Nicole tells her she’s a bad, lazy writer who needs to do more research, that gets her feeling down in the dumps about her career in the first place. She comes to realize she’s a no talent hack from an inferior state school with no connections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tanya’s not hurting anybody. She just floats around.

She’s probably overpaying the personal assistant, but nothing terrible is going on there. I’m sure other PAs or Annie’s if billionaires are sometimes treated terribly.

Being told to be on call during a $100k trip to Sicily…BFD. Don’t be a PA if you’re not available once in awhile.

She was exceptionally cruel in season 1 to the masseuse. Casually cruel in a way a wealthy person might not even understand just how cruel they were being.

I don’t think she understood at all. And I’m not even sure I would call it exceptional cruelty. She was toting her dead mother’s ashes around, trying to process her own grief and childhood trauma. Is trauma an excuse for bad behavior only if you’re poor?

Bad behavior is relative to the power of the people involved. It's not about rich/poor, it's about whether the person behaving badly has power for their bad behavior to harm others. In Season One, Tanya's behavior hurts Belinda. Yes, this is partly because Tanya is wealthy and Belinda is not, and part of Tanya's bad behavior is to offer money to Belinda and then withdraw that offer in a pretty immature way. But it's also because Belinda is employed by Tanya, which is more about their relative position than their wealth. But on the other hand, Belinda could be seen as taking advantage of a clearly not-all-there client in order to get access to her money. The reason she isn't is that Tanya initiates every aspect of their relationship, and Belinda is initially very reticent specifically due to the power dynamic. Tanya's betrayal thus feels particularly harmful because she's successfully convinced Belinda to let down her guard. Whatever Tanya's reasons for behaving this way, it doesn't change the fact that Belinda is suffering the consequences.

There are other examples of power differentials on the show that aren't about money and have similarly complex circumstances. For instance, Mia's interactions with Giuseppe, in which the power might lie with Mia (because Giuseppe desires her) or with Giuseppe (because he's older and more established). In the relationship between Lucia and Albie, it is Lucia, not Albie, who has the upper hand because she is savvier and more self-aware, even though Albie has more wealth and privilege. How you perceive the parties as victims or villains in these situations depends on the degree to which one person can be seen to be taking advantage of the other, which depends on who has more power and how that power is wielded.

I agree what Tanya did to Belinda was not exceptionally cruel, and is mitigated by the fact that Tanya is so divorced from her own feelings and awareness due to whatever happened to her in childhood. But I also don't think you can just write it off as no big deal because Tanya is a sympathetic character -- she still has a lot of power and thus has much more opportunity to hurt others than someone with less power. And she's accountable for that no matter what.

Eh, Belinda should have known better. Tanya was obviously off her rocker from the jump, often wandering around drunk or high, and Belinda was only nice to her because she smelled money. Talk about a purely transactional relationship! You can’t tell me Belinda actually cared about her, she was using her, as her son explicitly encouraged her to do. So she’s not some saint. And Tanya did give her a thick stack of cash for her trouble. It could have been 5-10k maybe more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tanya’s not hurting anybody. She just floats around.

She’s probably overpaying the personal assistant, but nothing terrible is going on there. I’m sure other PAs or Annie’s if billionaires are sometimes treated terribly.

Being told to be on call during a $100k trip to Sicily…BFD. Don’t be a PA if you’re not available once in awhile.

She was exceptionally cruel in season 1 to the masseuse. Casually cruel in a way a wealthy person might not even understand just how cruel they were being.

Disagree. She was careless/thoughtless/self involved but the massage therapist was a grown woman-I thought it was weird and jarring how she was played as someone who genuinely thought a blatant loon was going to fund a scrambled together business proposition after 48 hrs acquaintance.

[Anonymous]

I’m LOLing at the idea that some of you have that Daphne or Lucia have more power than the men. Open your eyes. Cameron is not a saver. He makes a lot but clearly spends a lot too. He’s dodging paying Lucia the money he owes her probably because he knows he doesn’t have enough to cover it. If he and Daphne get divorced, she’ll be the typical cliche. A formerly pretty, now middle aged, housewife on the prowl for husband #2 before her alimony runs out. If she can’t find one, she’ll have to become a realtor or secretary or cashier. something desperate like that.

And Albie is leaving Italy within the week to go back to his bright future as a Stanford grad with rich parents. Lucia has no power over him. She’ll stay in Sicily, getting older and older, losing her looks, trying to make money through sex.

Cynical? Yeah but this is what real life is like. At the end of the day, wealth and gender finger power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tanya’s not hurting anybody. She just floats around.

She’s probably overpaying the personal assistant, but nothing terrible is going on there. I’m sure other PAs or Annie’s if billionaires are sometimes treated terribly.

Being told to be on call during a $100k trip to Sicily…BFD. Don’t be a PA if you’re not available once in awhile.

She was exceptionally cruel in season 1 to the masseuse. Casually cruel in a way a wealthy person might not even understand just how cruel they were being.

I don’t think she understood at all. And I’m not even sure I would call it exceptional cruelty. She was toting her dead mother’s ashes around, trying to process her own grief and childhood trauma. Is trauma an excuse for bad behavior only if you’re poor?

Bad behavior is relative to the power of the people involved. It's not about rich/poor, it's about whether the person behaving badly has power for their bad behavior to harm others. In Season One, Tanya's behavior hurts Belinda. Yes, this is partly because Tanya is wealthy and Belinda is not, and part of Tanya's bad behavior is to offer money to Belinda and then withdraw that offer in a pretty immature way. But it's also because Belinda is employed by Tanya, which is more about their relative position than their wealth. But on the other hand, Belinda could be seen as taking advantage of a clearly not-all-there client in order to get access to her money. The reason she isn't is that Tanya initiates every aspect of their relationship, and Belinda is initially very reticent specifically due to the power dynamic. Tanya's betrayal thus feels particularly harmful because she's successfully convinced Belinda to let down her guard. Whatever Tanya's reasons for behaving this way, it doesn't change the fact that Belinda is suffering the consequences.

There are other examples of power differentials on the show that aren't about money and have similarly complex circumstances. For instance, Mia's interactions with Giuseppe, in which the power might lie with Mia (because Giuseppe desires her) or with Giuseppe (because he's older and more established). In the relationship between Lucia and Albie, it is Lucia, not Albie, who has the upper hand because she is savvier and more self-aware, even though Albie has more wealth and privilege. How you perceive the parties as victims or villains in these situations depends on the degree to which one person can be seen to be taking advantage of the other, which depends on who has more power and how that power is wielded.

I agree what Tanya did to Belinda was not exceptionally cruel, and is mitigated by the fact that Tanya is so divorced from her own feelings and awareness due to whatever happened to her in childhood. But I also don't think you can just write it off as no big deal because Tanya is a sympathetic character -- she still has a lot of power and thus has much more opportunity to hurt others than someone with less power. And she's accountable for that no matter what.

Eh, Belinda should have known better. Tanya was obviously off her rocker from the jump, often wandering around drunk or high, and Belinda was only nice to her because she smelled money. Talk about a purely transactional relationship! You can’t tell me Belinda actually cared about her, she was using her, as her son explicitly encouraged her to do. So she’s not some saint. And Tanya did give her a thick stack of cash for her trouble. It could have been 5-10k maybe more.

The show has no characters that are simply 100% good or 100% evil but to act like Tanya is innocent IMO exposes your own biases PP. She uses people like things for entertainment, she doesn't care about anything or anyone as individuals who exist in their own lives. Everyone she encounters she frames as what they are there to do for her. And by doing so she is cruel to those she discards. Maybe some of those people deserve it (I personally do not think Belinda did and like PP said the cruelty came from her insistence despite Belinda pushing back that she was serious) but it doesn't matter really if the people she discards are good and bad. The reality is that she uses and discards them and that is in fact bad and cruel.

[Anonymous]

Not surprising that on DCUM the sympathy tilts toward the rich white woman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope the relationship between Quentin and Tonya just ends up being good friends who both enjoy beauty and company.

I think the show asks you to question why you root for someone like Tanya. She is not a good or kind person. She is a broken person though. I think the show likes drawing these very multidimensional characters to force you to question why you have soft spots/root for some. How Cameron can be so terrible but the fact that he's so incredibly handsome can really make you forget for brief moments. How a pp on a different page can feel so deeply for Daphne when she is admittedly both not a victim and devious herself (in addition to being vapid in the same ways Cam is with the not voting no global awareness).

Why you feel so deeply for Tanya after watching her build up and dash a woman's dreams and ticket from poverty to marry the same man who is now likely plotting against her.

I think the point is that we all have bad inside us, and when we see bad in others that we recognize in ourselves or could see ourselves replicating we minimize it. So someone who could see herself cheating and plotting to deal with tolerating their cheating husband is sympathetic to Daphne. People who may have experienced childhood trauma or abusive parenting have a hard time holding Tanya accountable for her behavior etc. It is why Ethan tells Harper she should be happy about the rager story. He sees it as a moral victory, overlooking the bad to focus on the good. We all do it, but the show highlights the bad just enough to make you very uncomfortable about these sympathetic feelings you have.

I enjoyed this whole post

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tanya’s not hurting anybody. She just floats around.

She’s probably overpaying the personal assistant, but nothing terrible is going on there. I’m sure other PAs or Annie’s if billionaires are sometimes treated terribly.

Being told to be on call during a $100k trip to Sicily…BFD. Don’t be a PA if you’re not available once in awhile.

She was exceptionally cruel in season 1 to the masseuse. Casually cruel in a way a wealthy person might not even understand just how cruel they were being.

I don’t think she understood at all. And I’m not even sure I would call it exceptional cruelty. She was toting her dead mother’s ashes around, trying to process her own grief and childhood trauma. Is trauma an excuse for bad behavior only if you’re poor?

Bad behavior is relative to the power of the people involved. It's not about rich/poor, it's about whether the person behaving badly has power for their bad behavior to harm others. In Season One, Tanya's behavior hurts Belinda. Yes, this is partly because Tanya is wealthy and Belinda is not, and part of Tanya's bad behavior is to offer money to Belinda and then withdraw that offer in a pretty immature way. But it's also because Belinda is employed by Tanya, which is more about their relative position than their wealth. But on the other hand, Belinda could be seen as taking advantage of a clearly not-all-there client in order to get access to her money. The reason she isn't is that Tanya initiates every aspect of their relationship, and Belinda is initially very reticent specifically due to the power dynamic. Tanya's betrayal thus feels particularly harmful because she's successfully convinced Belinda to let down her guard. Whatever Tanya's reasons for behaving this way, it doesn't change the fact that Belinda is suffering the consequences.

There are other examples of power differentials on the show that aren't about money and have similarly complex circumstances. For instance, Mia's interactions with Giuseppe, in which the power might lie with Mia (because Giuseppe desires her) or with Giuseppe (because he's older and more established). In the relationship between Lucia and Albie, it is Lucia, not Albie, who has the upper hand because she is savvier and more self-aware, even though Albie has more wealth and privilege. How you perceive the parties as victims or villains in these situations depends on the degree to which one person can be seen to be taking advantage of the other, which depends on who has more power and how that power is wielded.

I agree what Tanya did to Belinda was not exceptionally cruel, and is mitigated by the fact that Tanya is so divorced from her own feelings and awareness due to whatever happened to her in childhood. But I also don't think you can just write it off as no big deal because Tanya is a sympathetic character -- she still has a lot of power and thus has much more opportunity to hurt others than someone with less power. And she's accountable for that no matter what.

Eh, Belinda should have known better. Tanya was obviously off her rocker from the jump, often wandering around drunk or high, and Belinda was only nice to her because she smelled money. Talk about a purely transactional relationship! You can’t tell me Belinda actually cared about her, she was using her, as her son explicitly encouraged her to do. So she’s not some saint. And Tanya did give her a thick stack of cash for her trouble. It could have been 5-10k maybe more.

The show has no characters that are simply 100% good or 100% evil but to act like Tanya is innocent IMO exposes your own biases PP. She uses people like things for entertainment, she doesn't care about anything or anyone as individuals who exist in their own lives. Everyone she encounters she frames as what they are there to do for her. And by doing so she is cruel to those she discards. Maybe some of those people deserve it (I personally do not think Belinda did and like PP said the cruelty came from her insistence despite Belinda pushing back that she was serious) but it doesn't matter really if the people she discards are good and bad. The reality is that she uses and discards them and that is in fact bad and cruel.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m LOLing at the idea that some of you have that Daphne or Lucia have more power than the men. Open your eyes. Cameron is not a saver. He makes a lot but clearly spends a lot too. He’s dodging paying Lucia the money he owes her probably because he knows he doesn’t have enough to cover it. If he and Daphne get divorced, she’ll be the typical cliche. A formerly pretty, now middle aged, housewife on the prowl for husband #2 before her alimony runs out. If she can’t find one, she’ll have to become a realtor or secretary or cashier. something desperate like that.

And Albie is leaving Italy within the week to go back to his bright future as a Stanford grad with rich parents. Lucia has no power over him. She’ll stay in Sicily, getting older and older, losing her looks, trying to make money through sex.

Cynical? Yeah but this is what real life is like. At the end of the day, wealth and gender finger power.

I said that Lucia has fragile power that is tied to this specific moment in time. She has power in that Albie likes her and he is powerful and she has some control over his power in this moment. But this is fleeting power and could be used to help her or destroy her depending on how she wields it.

Daphne has tremendous power and if you can't see that then you are blinded by the men. She holds the power in that relationship. I would honestly like you to give an example where she doesn't. He pulls one move she's annoyed with and she punishes him by staying away for the night (although its interesting we didn't get to see that conversation) and then freezes him out so he's making it up to her the next day. He is afraid of losing her and has said it out loud twice in the series (once to Lucia, once when recounting her emergency birth). She has not said anything like that about him. She isn't afraid of losing him at all.

[Anonymous]

If you watched season 1 and throughly Tanya was going to find that spa, I have a bridge to sell ya. Come on.

Belinda should have known better. Hope for the best, expect the worst. If she’s working at the Four Seasons/White Lotus in a customer service job, I’d have to assume she’d come into contact with people much more demanding and abusive than Tanya.

The storyline was funny but not realistic at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not surprising that on DCUM the sympathy tilts toward the rich white woman.

Yawn. Your comment isn’t surprising, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m LOLing at the idea that some of you have that Daphne or Lucia have more power than the men. Open your eyes. Cameron is not a saver. He makes a lot but clearly spends a lot too. He’s dodging paying Lucia the money he owes her probably because he knows he doesn’t have enough to cover it. If he and Daphne get divorced, she’ll be the typical cliche. A formerly pretty, now middle aged, housewife on the prowl for husband #2 before her alimony runs out. If she can’t find one, she’ll have to become a realtor or secretary or cashier. something desperate like that.

And Albie is leaving Italy within the week to go back to his bright future as a Stanford grad with rich parents. Lucia has no power over him. She’ll stay in Sicily, getting older and older, losing her looks, trying to make money through sex.

Cynical? Yeah but this is what real life is like. At the end of the day, wealth and gender finger power.

I said that Lucia has fragile power that is tied to this specific moment in time. She has power in that Albie likes her and he is powerful and she has some control over his power in this moment. But this is fleeting power and could be used to help her or destroy her depending on how she wields it.

Daphne has tremendous power and if you can't see that then you are blinded by the men. She holds the power in that relationship. I would honestly like you to give an example where she doesn't. He pulls one move she's annoyed with and she punishes him by staying away for the night (although its interesting we didn't get to see that conversation) and then freezes him out so he's making it up to her the next day. He is afraid of losing her and has said it out loud twice in the series (once to Lucia, once when recounting her emergency birth). She has not said anything like that about him. She isn't afraid of losing him at all.

Lol it’s clear that she doesn’t want Cam cheating but she can’t get him to stop. She only sleeps with the trainer because it makes her feel less internally humiliated. Cam doesn’t even know about it. We’re supposed to realize she’s lying to herself and Harper when she says things like “I’m not a victim.” She’d much rather have a faithful husband and perfect marriage. If you think that’s power, and a healthy happy relationship, I feel really sorry for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m LOLing at the idea that some of you have that Daphne or Lucia have more power than the men. Open your eyes. Cameron is not a saver. He makes a lot but clearly spends a lot too. He’s dodging paying Lucia the money he owes her probably because he knows he doesn’t have enough to cover it. If he and Daphne get divorced, she’ll be the typical cliche. A formerly pretty, now middle aged, housewife on the prowl for husband #2 before her alimony runs out. If she can’t find one, she’ll have to become a realtor or secretary or cashier. something desperate like that.

And Albie is leaving Italy within the week to go back to his bright future as a Stanford grad with rich parents. Lucia has no power over him. She’ll stay in Sicily, getting older and older, losing her looks, trying to make money through sex.

Cynical? Yeah but this is what real life is like. At the end of the day, wealth and gender finger power.

I disagree it's that straightforward. Sure, maybe that will be Daphne... but what will happen to Cameron in that situation? If he's not a saver and he's broke, then if he divorces Daphne he will truly have nothing at all -- no gorgeous wife, no kids, no money. And if he doesn't have money, how does he get the rest back? If his power lies in his money, and he's broke, and he didn't save for a rainy day... Cameron is screwed. Daphne has a very winning personality and I think it's more likely she lands on her feet, likely with help from her parents.

And while I agree in general that Albie is likely to make it out of this situation unscathed, I do think Lucia has real power because she is reading Dom pretty well. I absolutely think she has plans to gently blackmail him for cash to bankroll her own dreams. Whether this backfires or not is up in the air -- blackmail is dangerous. But Lucia is using her position of transactional intimacy in order to collect information and access, and she is at least attempting to play it to her advantage. I do think she has some power, the question is whether it will be enough to overcome the power Dom has. Dom is rich but has a fatal flaw, which is his weakness for sex and women. He is vulnerable.

Similarly, Mia is using her charm and attractiveness to wheedle job opportunities. And she has real talent. Is this massive power? No, but she's going to work it for all she's got.

I think one point of this season is that there are more kinds of power than just money or being a man. Women DO have power. Smart, insightful people DO have power. It takes more work and creativity to wield it than just being a rich white guy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m LOLing at the idea that some of you have that Daphne or Lucia have more power than the men. Open your eyes. Cameron is not a saver. He makes a lot but clearly spends a lot too. He’s dodging paying Lucia the money he owes her probably because he knows he doesn’t have enough to cover it. If he and Daphne get divorced, she’ll be the typical cliche. A formerly pretty, now middle aged, housewife on the prowl for husband #2 before her alimony runs out. If she can’t find one, she’ll have to become a realtor or secretary or cashier. something desperate like that.

And Albie is leaving Italy within the week to go back to his bright future as a Stanford grad with rich parents. Lucia has no power over him. She’ll stay in Sicily, getting older and older, losing her looks, trying to make money through sex.

Cynical? Yeah but this is what real life is like. At the end of the day, wealth and gender finger power.

I really like Lucia, but I think if she tries to manipulate Dom and Albie, one of them might snap. Dom seems capable of it (hello Christopher). Maybe grandpa will turn out to be the baddie, despite being portrayed as a mild-mannered dinosaur.