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Andy ranks The White Lotus characters

#jeah

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#jeah

#jeah

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24. Quentin (Season 2)

 

The White Lotus Season 2 Tom Hollander Blazer

 

Portrayed by Tom Hollander

 

Likability/Rootability - 0/10

Humor/Entertainment Value - 5/10

Character Complexity - 6/10

Acting Performance - 8/10

 

TOTAL SCORE: 20/40

 

Favorite moment or quote:

Quentin: "Well, we have all day. Tell me everything. From the beginning."

Tanya: "Well....I was born in San Francisco..."

Quentin: "Oh, from the VERY beginning."

 

Another character that I really don't have any love for. The White Lotus is very good at creating multi-dimensional, complex characters with just as many redeeming or rootable qualities as problematic ones. Quentin.......doesn't really have anything going for him. There's an aura of playfulness to his character (and the fellow gays that he parties with) the first few times that we see him. He's the nice, rich old gay who rescues Tanya from her lonely vacation and invites her to have the time of her life with him and his cohort. He also offers his nephew Jack up as a playmate to Portia to make her vacation more enjoyable. So at the beginning, Quentin seems like a nice, fun presence on the show. He's snappy and witty and has entertaining conversations with Tanya.

 

But as the season progresses we realize that something sinister is lurking beneath Quentin's surface. The first real snapshot of this is when we see Jack literally f*cking Quentin, through the eyes of Tanya. So either Quentin is straight up lying and Jack isn't really his nephew or....he enjoys an incestuous moment every now and again. By the end of the season, it's revealed that Quentin has been recruited by Greg to have Tanya killed so that they can all share her inheritance. 

 

My favorite moments with Quentin are really only because of Tanya, like the above quote. The other great moment of course is when Tanya goes on her killing spree and stands over his dying body asking, "IS GREG HAVING AN AFFAIR?" All Quentin can do is cough up blood as he breathes his last. It's both a hilarious and satisfying moment to end Quentin's story arc as a deceiving, conniving villain who doesn't get the last laugh after all.

 

So Quentin is clearly designed to be hated by the end of the season and it worked for me. He had some clever quips but like Greg, we didn't really get to delve into his character too much. He was a bit more of a two-dimensional villain with zero sympathetic traits built into his character. There was absolutely zero sympathy that follows his death. Tom Hollander does a really good job and I'm impressed with his performance as Quentin. Having said that, he is an easy bottom-tier character for me.

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23. Dominic Di Grasso (Season 2)

 

Will Laura Dern Be in The White Lotus Season 2? | POPSUGAR Entertainment

 

Portrayed by Michael Imperioli

 

Likability/Rootability - 3/10

Humor/Entertainment Value - 5/10

Character Complexity - 9/10

Acting Performance - 8/10

 

TOTAL SCORE: 25/40

 

Favorite moment or quote: N/A

 

I definitely think that Dominic is a really important character to what happens within the second season, and there's a lot of complexity to his character. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the humor that his father provides or any remote likability to boot (that Albie has, although in limited quantities but I'll get to that later). As you can see above, there was no real standout scene or quote from him that made me laugh or think either. So, Dom is a character that I really don't enjoy at all even though I appreciated the complexity that his character brought to the narrative.

 

Mike White does a good job of leaving out all of the details of the falling apart of Dom's marriage. We don't even get to see his wife at all (besides a picture, and that woman looks suspiciously unlike Laura Dern....). But it doesn't really even matter what Dom did to make his marriage on thin ice. We see enough evidence of his uncontrolled sex addiction while he is away in Sicily. He arranged to have Lucia meet him there and be his escort for the entire week. The first night he spends with her, and the second he invites Mia along for the fun. Dom thinks he does a really good job of compartmentalizing that side of his life away from his family life. But, as Bert says, the reality is that everyone f*cking knows what he is doing. Is he that naive to think he's hiding his promiscuity when he's literally sharing a wall with his father, who can hear every giggle and squeal from the girls? 

 

I also appreciate the conversation between Dom and Albie in the last episode where Albie asks him for 50,000 euros so he can "rescue" Lucia from her plight. Dom is seen as a smart man here, seeing right through Lucia's sh*t but leveraging the situation with Albie to get a chance at reconciliation from his wife. It's obvious that he does this only to get a chance to get back with his wife, even though Albie paints it as a "karmic" payment for all of the terrible things he's done to his family over the years.

 

Dominic definitely disgusts me, but I appreciate the dialogue regarding generational curses being passed down. We see a portrait of three generations within a family, grandfather and father and son. The grandfather obviously has womanizing tendencies, as we see in his lewd comments throughout the series along with explicit references to his sneaking around while Dom was growing up. I love hearing Dom talk about how his father's selfishness inspired the same within himself as an adult. There's definitely a fine line between acknowledging the bad habits that a parent passes down to you, and putting all the blame of your own bad habits onto your parents. With some self reflection, I can definitely relate with Dom in that aspect. There are aspects of both of my parents that I hate that I can also see in myself. You can blame generational curses all you want, but curses can be broken with enough self-awareness and effort (and therapy helps lmao).

 

Anyways I'm kind of rambling now. Point being: Dominic was a pretty disgusting character, whose complexity makes his presence on the season very important. 

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I'm glad Quentin's not high. Honestly I think the scenes with Quentin and Tanya were the lowlight of the show until the finale. I just kept wanting to get back to whatever the foursome or Valentina was doing and less of him whenever they were on screen.

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46 minutes ago, Alex95 said:

I'm glad Quentin's not high. Honestly I think the scenes with Quentin and Tanya were the lowlight of the show until the finale. I just kept wanting to get back to whatever the foursome or Valentina was doing and less of him whenever they were on screen.

Yeah I agree for the most part...and like I said, most of the enjoyable moments in their scenes were just because of Tanya really. :haha: 

 

23 minutes ago, 1234567890 said:

Greg being last. :wub:

She Deserves It Season 8 GIF by THE NEXT STEP

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22. Bert Di Grasso (Season 2)

 

The White Lotus GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY

 

Portrayed by F. Murray Abraham

 

Likability/Rootability - 4/10

Humor/Entertainment Value - 10/10

Character Complexity - 6/10

Acting Performance - 9/10

 

TOTAL SCORE: 29/40

 

Favorite moment or quote: "Our Achilles heel is our Achilles cock."

 

Oh, Bert. From a pure entertainment standpoint, he's awesome. Like line for line he is one of the funniest written characters of all of them. An increasingly senile, but still incredibly horny, clumsy, loud-mouthed old grandpa makes for a very welcome inclusion within season 2. Having said that, he's still pretty disgusting. Him hitting on every single woman that he comes into contact with is just gross lmao. He's not really someone you root for, when it's pretty obvious early on that he's a womanizer who to this day still hasn't learned his lesson. Albie just kind of seems to have accepted the fact that his grandfather is disgusting. It's kind of interesting seeing how Albie tries really hard to separate himself from the womanizing tendencies of his father and grandfather, but that's something I can talk about more in depth with Albie's write-up.

 

As for Bert, I don't have too much to say about him. He himself didn't add a ton of complexity or deep narrative to the story. There is obviously lots of resentment and daddy issues that Dom projects onto his father, and we explore that in a conversation between the two of them in the last episode (or second to last? I can't remember). Bert falling and hitting his head during the first episode was another mildly interesting subplot, I thought that maybe he wouldn't make it through the night due to his concussion but I think it was just kind of used as a tool to show how Dom went to great lengths to hide his sleeping with Mia (forcing Albie to watch over Bert for the night). I also thought it was really random that Mia went up to him during the last episode to celebrate her new job, complete with a very warm hug that Bert enjoyed a little too much. I don't remember them interacting earlier in the season??? But it provided more cringey comic relief with Bert talking about how much hugging her turned him on.

 

Bert definitely had a few clever quips throughout the season. I think a lot of what he said was just proving the fact that many men are always horny and never sexually satisfied. He and his son talked about all the affairs that Bert had: "They weren't affairs, they were peccadilloes" also made me laugh. Yeah he's just another point to be made in the whole narrative within the second season of The White Lotus that goes like this: sex is powerful and can be used to get people where they want to be in life. Sex can blind people, break apart families, and bring them back together at the end of the day when used properly. So Bert is definitely one of the more minor characters across the two seasons but I really appreciated his character and F. Murray Abraham did a stellar job portraying him.

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1 hour ago, QueenKalie said:

While Bert is not a top tier character I would have ranked him higher than this for his humor. 

I would agree with you in theory, I think his character didn’t drive the plot enough forward for me to rank him high. If I’m basing on pure entertainment value he’s definitely top 10.

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QueenKalie

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3 minutes ago, #jeah said:

I would agree with you in theory, I think his character didn’t drive the plot enough forward for me to rank him high. If I’m basing on pure entertainment value he’s definitely top 10.

Ahh yeah my rankings would be based off entertainment value / how much I liked them.

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