Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Resort’ On Peacock, A Dark Comedy Where A Vacationing Couple Get Involved In A 15-Year-Old Murder Mystery

The creative pairing of Andy Siara, who wrote the time-busting film Palm Springs, and Sam Esmail (of Mr. Robot fame) is certainly a big drawing point of Peacock‘s new dark comedy The Resort. But so are its stars: Cristin Milioti, who was so good in the aforementioned Palm Springs, and William Jackson Harper of the equally twisty The Good Place. It certainly seems like a dream setup for fans of twisty, mysterious, but funny stories. But does the combination of producers and stars click?

THE RESORT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An overhead shot of a jet ski speeding towards a tropical resort. A young woman falls off the back right after she tells her SO to “slow the fuck down!”

The Gist: Emma (Cristin Milioti) and Noah (William Jackson Harper) show up at the Bahia del Paraiso resort on the Mayan Riviera to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. When the concierge Luna (Gabriela Cartol) asks them if they want anything, Emma jokes if she can get them heroin.

It’s pretty obvious that there are some strains in Noah and Emma’s marriage, mostly from Emma’s side. He seems to be content, but she’s so miserable that she does quizzes on how you know it’s time to get a divorce. On the second day of the trip, while fighting a killer hangover, she crashes an ATV and lands in the woods. As she’s lying in the leaves, she sees a beat up old Razor cell phone and pockets it.

She finds a working Razor phone at a pawn shop and transfers the SIM card from the mystery phone, where she sees pictures taken by a guy named Sam Knowlston (Skyler Gisondo) and texts that date back to just after Christmas in 2007. When she sees a picture of the Oceana Vista Resort, she goes to the location, only to find it closed. She does some research: Sam and another, seemingly unrelated woman, Violet Thompson (Nina Bloomgarden) disappeared from the resort just before a massive hurricane destroyed it. Then a body washed up near the resort that was badly decomposed, but neither missing person.

When we see a flashback to just before Christmas in 2007, we see Sam traveling with his girlfriend Hannah (Debby Ryan) and his parents, Carl and Jan (Dylan Baker, Becky Ann Baker). He looks on Hannah’s phone for something and sees more than enough evidence that she’s cheating on him, including a dick pic. At the resort, we also see Violet and her dad Murray (Nick Offerman).

Back in 2022, Emma talks to Noah about how things have changed between them, and then reveals what she found out about this mysterious 15-year-old case, including the fact that Violet and Sam weren’t complete strangers to each other, despite the news accounts.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Resort has shades of both The White Lotus and Big Little Lies, but filtered through a more comedic perspective.

Our Take: Created by Andy Siara (Palm Springs), The Resort also boasts Sam Esmail among its executive producers, and both of their ability to work with murky mysteries is evident here. The 2007 story that catches Emma’s interest, from the destroyed resort to the two missing people and the mysterious body, has more then enough layers to keep viewers’ interest for the season. In other words, they have the “dark” part of “dark comedy” down pretty well. What we’re not 100 percent sure of is how this mystery will play out for Emma and Noah.

That’s something that’s tough for us to say, since Harper and Milioti are among our favorites, especially in settings that are equally funny and dramatic. For fans of both of them, seeing them play off each other is exciting, even if we’ve seen Milioti as a depressed wife before (Made For Love) and Harper as a near-clueless but nice guy when it comes to women (Love Life).

But their fate as a couple seems to be less important to the enjoyment of the story as solving the mystery is. Right now, the two of them seem like your standard couple that’s grown apart, even if the dissatisfaction in the relationship is one-sided. As fine as the performances of Milioti and Harper are, we can’t escape the feeling that as the mystery deepens, and especially as we see the flashbacks that involve Sam and Violet, that we’re going to care less about Emma and Noah.

Maybe we’ll be wrong; the scenes where Emma is on her own, using some resourcefulness to investigate the mystery show what kind of charged-up persona Milioti can bring to the story. But even by the end of the first episode, we found ourselves caring a lot less about her and Noah than we thought we would.

Sex and Skin: The dick pic is about it during the first episode.

Parting Shot: As Sam skateboards through the resort, he accidentally runs into Violet and falls off his board; when she goes to see how he is, they lock eyes.

Sleeper Star: This is certainly a three-way tie between Nick Offerman, Dylan Baker and Becky Ann Baker. What a supporting cast, right? An additional note: We’re not sure if we’ve seen Dylan and Becky Ann Baker, who are of course married in real life, play a married couple on screen. It’s certainly a fun surprise.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Noah tells Emma that he thinks he has jet lag, she says, “You don’t have jet lag; it’s a three-hour time difference.” You can’t get jet lagged from a three-hour time difference? That’s a surprise. Maybe they were coming from the West.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re certainly intrigued by the mystery that’s at the center of The Resort. But we also hope that Milioti and Harper get more of their own story to dig into, as opposed to being just a typically bored married couple who come together under extreme circumstances.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.