Childlike Eccentricity Is What Makes The Resort So Fun and Magical

Andy Siara’s kooky comedy series on Peacock has been airing for nearly a month now, and most people are still sleeping on it. They don’t know what they’re missing. It’s so rare for a show to combine a Lost-like time-bending mystery with a delightfully deranged sense of humor in a way that works so well. The Resort aims to evoke our inner child—the one who throws away everything after finding a treasure map that might (or might not) lead to a hidden, unsolved secret. I mean, who could say no to a journey that makes you feel like a kid again?

The treasure map here is an old flip phone that belonged to a college student 15 years ago. Sam (Skyler Gisondo) disappeared while he was on vacation with his parents and girlfriend in the Mayan Riviera. His cell is found accidentally in the present day by Emma (Cristin Milioti), a vacationer on a getaway with her husband Noah (William Jackson Harper), celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary. She becomes obsessed with Sam’s disappearance and decides to investigate the case, dragging along her reluctant husband, too.

The duo is meant to represent the common, everyday tourist that you or I might be. They’re the closest thing we have to call protagonists—clearly essential for us to identify with—but not the ones who make the story feel extraordinary and limitless. The characters that slowly become the pillars of this epic and complex mystery are the heir of a Mexican fashion dynasty, a man with a memory leakage, and an obscure author with a ruined reputation.

When Emma and Noah first meet Baltasar Frias (Luis Gerardo Mendez), we already know a bunch about his family’s fashion empire of tailors and designers. As rumors say, he’s part of a bloodline nobody in Mexico should “fuck with.” He’s also hiding and using a fake last name, which adds to the intrigue. As the couple gains more info on him, it seems like he’ll be our villain. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The series does an excellent job of mystifying characters early on, constructing them from urban legends and hearsay, to create a satisfying, twisty, and often humorous reveal.

It’s not until Episode 4 that we learn about Baltasar’s true self as he recounts his past to Emma and Noah as the head of security of the Oceana Vista hotel where Sam disappeared from. The flashback takes us back 15 years to witness how the retreat and its quirky staff came to be. This is where The Resort truly comes alive and reaches its full potential. We find out that Baltasar is nothing like his family, in fact, he’s a man with a good heart. He ran away from home because he felt he didn’t belong, and because he was driven by an unfulfilled fantasy to become someone that does the right thing for the greater good. As a little boy, he always dreamed of being a detective. So when he met Alex (Ben Sinclair), the founder of Oceana Vista, he finally had a shot at attaining that dream. They became fast friends and created a home for a weird group of outcasts (including themselves).

Oceana Vista was a safe haven for lost souls who didn’t seem to find their place in the world. It had an enchanting atmosphere, warm vibe, and receptiveness to open its arms to anyone regardless of who they were or where they came from. Baltasar and Alex understood what it meant to feel ostracized even if they were both privileged in their own ways. What brought them (and every employee they hired) together was a childlike eccentricity that made them different from everyone else. Their hotel didn’t only create wonderful holiday memories for its guests but gave the staff the best time of their lives. But just as with anything too good, it didn’t last.

As Baltasar recalls, no one really knew where Alex came from—some said he wandered out of the jungle one day, while others claimed he was born in a family of hedge fund managers, stole a yacht, and ended up in Mexico. He was an enigma (and a funny one at that) obsessed with making joyful memories—the very reason he opened the spot—mostly because he barely had any. At least, he couldn’t remember them.

It turns out that Alex didn’t do funny (skateboarding dressed as Santa Claus) and bonkers (beheading iguanas) things because he was trying to be profound—he did it because he was kind of insane. As his condition worsened, he told Baltasar that he suffered from memory leakage (something called “Tempus Exhaurire” that nobody has heard of). Baltasar didn’t understand what he was talking about, but did his best to keep his friend’s erratic behavior under control as he spiraled downward until the day he disappeared. But now, 15 years later, forced to remember by two nosy tourists, Baltasar realized that Alex might not have been crazy at all. That all the mumbo jumbo he talked about (which usually made zero sense) could be the key to solving the case of the missing students he also investigated at the time.

This all comes to a head in Episode 6, where Baltasar (along with his re-emerging inner detective), Emma, and Noah pay a visit to an author, Illan Iberra (Luis Guzman), whose books reveal a secret connection between the two (or more?) timelines. And the very fact that Guzman plays this character is in itself a punchline—his delivery as a bitter, angry, and hate-to-be-bothered writer is hilarious. But more importantly, in his own twisted and self-centred way, he gives us possible answers to fill in a few holes in the time-bending mystery.

Iberra’s brief appearance once again highlights how these often childlike, obsessive, eccentric, yet ridiculously entertaining characters are what give The Resort such an amusing and ultimately warm quality. They aren’t only essential to the Big Puzzle, but in maintaining that magical escapism the show beautifully captures in every single episode. The couples in the past and present might ground the story in reality (especially Emma and Noah, who must face deep emotional scars from their past) as they try to rationalize the unbelievable and inexplicable occurrences while also understanding their place in it all. But it’s the peculiar, endearing weirdos along the way who we keep coming back for. And that’s why The Resort feels like nothing else on television right now.

New episodes of The Resort air Thursdays on Peacock.

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