The best indicator of how well written this series is is how many different aspects of the show different people are focused on and intrigued by.
Some are preoccupied with the gay sex scene, some with the teen boy's motivations, some with the scheming college girls, some with the reactions of the rich guy, etc. It's a real ensemble with no lead characters or A-storyline, and the characters are complicated enough that each one is intriguing.
To the argument that a "rich dudebro would be freaked out by gay sex," I find that interesting because you're assuming this character would behave more according to a stereotype of a kind of person than according to the individual type who has been clearly established. He has a one-track mind. Everything we have seen on him has been fixated on getting the upper hand and beating down the lowly hotel manager into a submissive and apologetic position, and so it's totally in keeping with his character that he would blackmail or humiliate the guy. He was already trying to get him fired and that attempt was subverted when he was given a wrong phone number for his boss, so this puts him on track for sweet revenge.
I love all these storylines and character interactions.
And it is true that everyone is repugnant and also relatable.
I am still hung up on the ironic (hypocritical?) nature of the story, though. And again, that's a complication that is a pro in the sense of the depth it lends even while it's a con in the sense of the narrative being hypocritical to the theme of the show.
If the series had to be summed up, the characters' plotlines would take a backseat to the theme: a black comedy about wealthy white people creating their own misery in a luxurious Hawaiian resort while local hotel workers struggle to get by.
While there's so much great satire that makes us judge and dislike the rich guests, they are the ones who are most fully human characters and therefore to whom we relate the most. The writers so far have shown us only sketches of most of the hotel workers, who are mere character types and not as fully human, which means that even as the writers are judging the 'white privilege' of the characters, they are privileging the white characters by giving them all the focus and showing the others as mere worker drones.
The only other exceptions are the hotel manager, who is white, and the spa lady, who still is much more of a sketch than any of the main characters: all we know of her is that she works hard, has an inferiority complex and she has a son who we don't see. The pregnant worker was one of the first characters we saw, and yet all she amounted to was a desperate worker who was shuffled offscreen quickly. The luau dancer/waiter is there to be a reference point for Paula; he has had very little screen time.
So the whole sensibility of the series feels like a colonial mindset. It's about 'wokeness,' but it ironically marginalizes the lower class minority people. It's still a good show but that hypocrisy makes me feel a little icky and I would really love for that dynamic to be inverted by the end, building out the characters who've been marginalized and leaving the focus on their lives instead.
