IT'S BEEN A little over two years since we last took a visit to a White Lotus resort. And while that's just about par for the course in the modern television landscape, you only really begin to realize just how much you've been missing writer/director Mike White's razor sharp world and characters once you're back in.

The Mike White touch: When Piper argues to Tim that he and Victoria did not really raise their children to be religious, Tim lapses into a reverie about his days as an altar boy, then softly sings “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming” to himself.