I will fully admit that I am on a bandwagon here, but the second season of this show is remarkable. But within an overall excellent show, the depiction of the two couples on vacation together demonstrates the most interesting psychology. These four adults are attractive and wealthy, and thus free to dedicate all their energy to figuring out how to meet their personal, interpersonal and sexual needs, and each brings to this problem different core beliefs, defenses, mentalizing abilities, and levels of self-esteem. The character Daphne is now a real-life social media icon for her approach to navigating the needs of herself and her husband that extend outside the boundaries of their relationship, but is also notably polarizing and described as being 'in denial' by sanctimonious relationship experts that can't get past the idea that people might continue to want other things after they get married. Harper initially seems to occupy a moral high ground as she viciously judges the happiness of the other couple, correctly predicting that it occurs in the context of an arrangement that involves many compromises, but it later becomes apparent that she is no less interested in these compromises herself, and her and Ethan both suspecting each other of infidelity seems to provide renewed mutual interest. Cameron is the least interesting as he seems to mostly be an archetype, but his willingness to follow his whims and desires provides the necessary impetus for the other characters to react to his behavior and the ultimately all decide to tolerate him, perhaps owing to his behavior normalizing things they to some extent want for themselves as well. I thought the show was tremendously interesting in its depiction of these dynamics.
The White Lotus
- Thread starter SmallBird
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2010
- Messages
- 6,101
- Reaction score
- 3,090
Thank goodness that is on HBO and I don't have it. I'm trying to get thru breaking bad
