‘The White Lotus’ Season 2 Proves Everyone Is Hornier in Italy

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There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.

We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.

See: The White Lotus

The White Lotus is back and still in top form. Take a trip to the coast of Sicily where an almost entirely new cast is running on a lethal mix of fragility and Aperol. Not selling it for you? OK, OK: plenty of swinging dicks, too.

Here’s Kevin Fallon’s take:

“A second season of The White Lotus shouldn’t work, mostly because I don’t think a lot of people still understand what the first White Lotus was. Was it a drama? A comedy? A satire? A Jennifer Coolidge star vehicle? The answer is yes. All of those things, and more. Why is The White Lotus the surprise best show on TV? The many Emmys can attest to that.

If you watched the first season of The White Lotus, you know how dark and uncomfortable it became, excavating the deepest, most unsettling realities of the things we thought were mundane. You think you know your spouse? Your child? Your job? There’s someone else who can fuck that up, out of your control. But, because of the nature of how we live, something that seismic is extremely casual. And we’re meant to accept that. The White Lotus Season 2 is about that. What does anyone accept? A reservation, a meet-up, a sexual encounter? More than that, though, is this new season’s big question: ‘Want to have fun?’”

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See: My Policeman

My Policeman is two parts sappy and one part slappy (there’s a lot of cheeky ass-slapping). But despite being saccharine, it’s also a sweet, realistic love story led by a surprisingly convincing Harry Styles.

Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:

“Typically, gay sex scenes that actually depict gay characters “going at it” are reserved for queer cinema made by and for queer people—which is to say these are often very small independent films that don’t reach a wide audience. And even in those films, it’s hard to single out a scene of salaciousness that isn’t also paired with one of affectionate passion somewhere else within the movie’s runtime. I’d quite simply like to see Styles state his sources in a comprehensive list. Much to my surprise, that first scene—along with each sex scene that follows it—is performed with appropriate tenderness and realistic lust, creating a palpable, undeniable sensuality that left me hot under the collar. By god, Harry Styles was right.

Ron Nyswaner’s script takes so much pride in being willing to depict these things that it forgets it has to do more to be memorable. Our stories aren’t so rare anymore, and we deserve more than good sex scenes. But for all its audience’s misgivings, My Policeman succeeds in making its most controversial elements genuinely beautiful. For someone, somewhere, that’s going to be very important.”

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Skip: The Good Nurse

The Good Nurse lets its capable leads do as much as they can with stilted material, but ultimately flatlines under its own weighty true crime. A sad day, indeed, for the redhead community.

Here’s Nick Schager’s take:

“Charles Cullen was sentenced to 18 consecutive life sentences for the deaths of 29 people and, over the course of his 16-year nursing career, he may have been responsible for as many as 400 murders. Given his prolific awfulness, then, it’s too bad that The Good Nurse, Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s adaptation of Charles Graeber’s 2013 book about his capture, is so muted and listless. Handsomely mounted and featuring gripping performances from Academy Award winners Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain, it’s a thriller that—for better and, too often, for worse—plays like a stifled scream.

The Good Nurse is the story of a bad man and the noble woman who—upon learning of his evil—attempted to stop him, although nestled within that narrative is a more intriguing portrait of institutional villainy. Krysty Wilson-Cairns’ script paints hospitals as akin to the Catholic Church, shuffling off its wrongdoers to new facilities (rather than alerting the authorities) as a means of avoiding liability. It’s a fundamentally corrupt system that places profit above all else, as similarly evidenced by the fact that ailing Amy stays on the job (regardless of the hazards to her health) in order to qualify for insurance. Unfortunately, though, the film doesn’t elaborate on that thread, choosing to merely point a damning finger before turning its attention back to Charles and Amy’s dynamic, which is complicated by Amy’s recognition that her buddy is a monster (who’s injecting unnecessary narcotics into IV bags) and her ensuing collaboration with Baldwin and Braun to coax a confession out of him.”

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See: Big Mouth

Big Mouth is still as foul and controversial as ever, now with more Mamma Mia! tributes! But please, no one try to explain to Cher what Big Mouth is. We’ve lost too many legends this year.

Here’s Barry Levitt’s take:

“Big Mouth, one of Netflix’s best shows, is back for Season 6—and bold as ever. Each season, the animated comedy dives into the nitty gritty of puberty and growing up in excruciating, explicit, and often hilarious detail. It’s a show that has learned to expertly balance being downright disgusting and completely heartwarming expertly over its run. But six seasons in, it’s clear that the magic of the show lies not in its comedy, but in its wonderfully diverse group of middle schoolers and their personified, monstrous hormones—a genius invention that functions as the kids’ guides through the ins and outs of sex and sexuality.

But Season 6 marks an evolution for the show, as “Dadda Dia!” forces Lola, the show’s best character, to reckon with an obvious truth. Rodney has always been there for her, like the father she always wanted would be. She almost casts him out, but in a huge moment for Lola — ‘Absorbing, deciding, completing emotional arc’ she says of this climax, in line with the show’s wonderfully meta nature— and instead, she asks Rodney to be her chosen father figure. It’s beautiful and sweet, but it’s also funny; it’s everything the show does best.”

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