The Resort (Peacock) Review

A married couple (Christine Milioti as Emma, William Jackson Harper as Noah) is experiencing the blahs on a 10-year-anniversary vacation to a tropical Mexican resort. William Jackson Harper has only been known to the world-at-large as the tight-laced hypochondriac ethicist from The Good Place so it’s a little jarring to see him chilling out in the tropics with his hair in an — — sorry I’m not well-versed on African-American hairstyles and not going to try — un-Chidi-like state.

Anywho, Noah and Emma get shaken out of their rut when Emma discovers an old cell phone from 15 years through going down the rabbit hole of a local missing persons case. During one frightful and stormy night (cue the organ music) 15 years ago, a pair of late adolescents (Skyler Gismodo as Sam and Nina Bloomgarden as Violet) disappeared during a hurricane. Careful not to reveal the sequence of events before Emma and Noah (and the audience) learn them, the series deftly cuts between past and present as Noah and Emmy chase after the trail of Sam and Violet.

It’s soon revealed that Sam and Violet had a steamy fling, and the series tries a little hard to posit Sam/Violet (Vam? Siolet?) as younger and hornier doppelgangers to Noah and Emma who not so coincidentally also met for the first time 15 years ago. Although the series acknowledges that Noah and Emma are going through a funk, they still never exhibit much chemistry and are often the least interesting part of the story except as audience surrogates.