A fate made in Thailand
It’s been one week since the Season Three finale of The White Lotus and in that time I’ve filled as many group chats as I can with waxy lyrics, small gripes and obsessive analyses. Since it’s now Sunday - and I need to reset my brain for tomorrow’s Season Two premiere of The Last of Us - I’m chucking all my thoughts on this season of Mike White’s black dramedy into an obnoxiously loud blender and seeing what toxic concoction results.
The tried and true recipe for The White Lotus is ‘add salt and watch the rich eat themselves’ but with some curious Thai produce, this season was the chewiest, most polarising course of them all. A season of tragedy, spiritualism (pretend and legitimate) and getting the monkeys off your back before they kill you, Season Three started as a necessary slow burn before ramping up with themes of incest and identity, suicidal ideation and dinner table discussions both batshit and heartfelt.
Despite people’s complaints about the pace (it’s not the show that’s slow, it’s you) there is a lot to get through. Rather than recap every episode chronologically, I think it makes the most sense to isolate each character group and discuss the arcs within them, starting with Duke University’s most embarrassing export, the Ratliffs.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS
The Ratliffs occupy the ‘family’ category previously occupied by the Di Grasso boys last season and the Mossbachers of Season One. Headed by patriarch businessman Tim (Jason Isaacs), they are wealthy North Carolinians accompanying daughter and middle child Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) for a week in Thailand to interview a local Buddhist monk for her “thesis”. SAHM Victoria (Parker Posey in full Christopher Guest character mode) likes lorazepam, being rich and saying “Boooddhism”. Eldest boy Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) likes protein shakes, sex and being a nepo baby. Youngest boy Lochy (Sam Nivola) doesn’t really know what he likes, so he dabbles in the interests of his siblings.
When Tim starts receiving alarming calls from the Washington Post about the dodgy dealings of his former business partner Kenny Nguyen (voiced by Ke Huy Quan), he takes advantage of The White Lotus’ optional No Phones policy. It’s better to catastrophise off grid, after all. As the week progresses things get dark and weird for the Ratliffs, before ultimately (and surprisingly) providing the exact learning experience each of them needs.
One of my favourite aspects of Season Three was watching what Thailand does to each of the Ratliffs, in particular the full frontal unravelling of Tim Ratliff. During his stay he goes through the full spectrum of feelings associated with the inevitable insolvency and criminal investigation into his business.
He avoids the ugly truth.
He steals his wife’s prescription meds to self medicate.
He steals a gun from a security guard and plans his suicide.
He faffs and his chosen method disappears, forcing him to sit longer in his situation.
He asks a Buddhist monk for advice, and actually seems to connect with the answer.
He starts analysing the hollowness of his choices in life.
(And the dependency it’s created in his family.)
He tests the waters on whether they could live poor. Only one says yes.
And finally, once he’s picked the fruit from the suicide tree and served it up to his family, he has a last minute “the coconut milk is bad” change of heart.
That Lochy (the only Ratliff Tim didn’t want to kill in his murder-suicide plan gone awry) drinks from the poisoned blender is absolute perfection. That he doesn’t die turns the storyline from tragedy to delicious cautionary tale. After surviving the week, Tim - and presumably Saxon and Lochy - accept their fate. I only wish the scene went on for a beat longer so we got to see the fallout of the confession.
What I find particularly poetic about Tim’s salvation in Thailand is the fact that, had he found out the bad news in North Carolina a day or two before, he would most certainly be dead. The immediacy of a bullet and the accessibility of guns in that country would prevent him from having sat in his discomfort for a week weighing up his options. As it turns out, there are worse things in life than going bankrupt, facing criminal chrages and having to tell your family, and accidentally poisoning your least materialistic child is one of them.
I also loved the exploration of identity through the Ratliff kids. Saxon, who starts out a protein shakin’ himbo with “no soul” discovers the perils of idolising and being idolised. Watching his Sunday scaries as he tries to remember if his little brother did indeed jerk him off was a season highlight and oddly, one of the catalysts for turning him into a human. The other was Chelsea and her positive influence, and it’s comforting to know that even though it didn’t work on Rick, her goodness rubbed off on someone who needed it.
Equally satisfying was Piper’s teary admission that her on-paper quest to live a Buddhist life for a year was indeed entirely bullshit and that, despite her self disgust, she is a spoiled princess who can only survive on the bank of Mum and Dad and organic produce.
And then we get to Lochlan. It only took a very near death experience to get there but it finally seems he’s on the right path to finding an identity that he can own. With the favour of his father, a leg up on his faux spiritualist sister and a disturbing sort of leverage over his older brother, he emerges the least (mentally) damaged Ratliff. Victoria is probably the most, but hopefully she can just refill her lorazepam script.
THE FRENEMIES
When three smiling white women (all played by recognisable actresses) showed up on the boat in the first episode I was giddy with anticipation for the tea (pent-up historical grievances) that would be spilled during their stay. Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), the alpha of the group, has a financial and celebrity edge over her seemingly sycophantic friends. She’s unlikely to be the instigator of the spill but will no doubt have things to say.
Kate (Leslie Bibb) is a similarly surface level person at the beginning, a yes woman to Jaclyn and comfortable in her own right thanks to relocating to Texas and becoming a country club wife. Despite living in a gun-positive state, she’s the least likely to instigate the firing of shots.
Then there’s Laurie (Carrie Coon, the MVP of the season), the clear outcast and resident normal person on the girls’ trip. She’s a lawyer from New York who recently got divorced and has a problem child. We have found the instigator.
Traumatic finale events excepted, these three have a reasonably tame adventure. Most of their tension comes from within as the trio splinters off into two at different times, with the left out party watching from the outside and spiralling in paranoia about what might be being said. As hotel health mentor Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) and his Russian buddies court the three women, sexual competition threatens the harmony between Jaclyn and Laurie. It all comes to a head in episode 7, after which Laurie leaves to go to a Muay Thai fight with not-Valentin. She ends up sleeping with him, but the tryst turns to shit when he asks her for $10,000, his angry Russian girlfriend shows up and discovers them and Laurie has to flee through the window.
Grievances now aired and egos put through the ringer, the girls have dinner on their final night. Then Carrie Coon delivers the monologue that made me a) cry and b) thankful for my decades long female friendships.
“I’m glad you have a beautiful face, and I’m glad you have a beautiful life, and I’m just happy to be at the table,” she concludes after admitting her own failures, and her lack of belief system, and musing that the one constant thing that gives her life meaning is time, represented physically by the two infuriating, beguiling besties to her left and right.
It’s the most honest we’ve seen any of these women be to each other and each facade gloriously collapses, leaving all three weeping happy, grateful tears. Soft, chiming music breaks up Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s common score of dread and mystery. It’s proper spiritualism without the bells and whistles. And yeah, sometimes sharing a Chardy with people you haven’t seen in awhile but who’ve known every iteration of you is “fucking meaningful.”
TRAGEDY LOVES COMPANY
I should’ve learned by now that it’s always a big beloved character (or in this case, two) that Mike White chooses for death. And if there are two main characters who were more main than the rest, it’s Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) and his Eurydice-coded younger lover Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).
From day dot Chelsea was spelling out her own demise, saying “bad things happen in threes” and citing the robbery and the snake bite as thing one and two. Her first mistake was thinking she could change a man like Rick, who’s got so many monkeys on his back that he’s more animal than man.
But for a second there, it kinda looked like she would succeed. Rick confronts Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), the man who he believes killed his father, and leaves Bangkok somewhat lighter. The confrontation is suspiciously anticlimactic but yay, he’s coming home.
Their wholesome reunion on the beach suggests a new path for Rick and we see him actually smile and say some kind and encouraging words to Chelsea. And then she says “my fate is linked to yours” in that horoscopey way we’ve come to love, and the seeds of worry are planted.
A fan favourite for her unshakable optimism and refreshingly unique beauty, Chelsea represents the first death of a true innocent on this show. Where Murray Bartlett’s Armond followed his vices all the way into a knife, and Jennifer Coolidge’s beloved Tanya Madame Butterflew herself off the side of a yacht after killing her would-be murderers, Chelsea never wronged anyone nor acted selfishly in any instance, instead offering compliments to staff, friendship to strangers and even mentorship to someone who actively annoys her.
On the other hand, we love Rick precisely because he’s a selfish, grumpy arsehole. Deep down, we see what Chelsea sees; a wounded boy who just needs love, and whose arc when he gets it is a joy to witness. His relapse into revenge is realistic storytelling and I do think it’s the right path for the character; I just wish it was given a little more time to breathe.
I wasn’t massively satisfied with the tying up of Rick and Chelsea’s story and it’s not to do with the outcome but rather, the timing. Rick gets an outlaw’s death, and rightly so; it just feels like there needed to be one more episode or a couple more scenes to properly flesh out his link to Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn) aka “your father”. Instead, Sritala throws away the line in the heat of the moment, and before we even get time to process what’s happening, Rick is carrying a gutshot Chelsea into the metaphorical sunset before being shot himself by Gaitok. Despite the rushedness, it is the perfect bittersweet ending for doomed lovers, especially where one is a being of pure light and the other struggles with impulse control.
Rick’s is also the storyline that gave us Sam Rockwell’s absolutely bonkers monologue about realising his sex addiction was actually his desire to be an Asian woman getting fucked, and Walton Goggins’ reactionary face at its conclusion has been stored as my go-to expression for shocking news.
I’M DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, BELINDA AND GAITOK
Oh Belinda, you were doing so well until your MBA touting son arrived.
On work exchange from her position in the Hawaii White Lotus, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell, reprising her role from the first season) arguably gets the most tangible reward out of Thailand. She forms a short-lived romance with the beautiful and wholesome Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul), whose training follows through to a happy ending in her hotel room and some extra lizard removal for good measure. She makes the mistake of identifying “Gary” (actually Tanya’s widower Greg, played by a returning John Gries) and instead of having her offed, Greg offers to pay her 100k in hush money. And to top it off, her cocky son’s ploy to strongarm Greg for more money actually works, leaving her with a cool $5 million in what she had previously called “blood money”. Everyone has a price, it seems.
Unfortunately, money corrupts, and a fuck tonne of money makes history repeat itself. Belinda does unto sweet Pornchai what Tanya did unto her in Season One; she comes into a bunch of cash and lets down an innocent dreamer after planting the seed in their hopeful little head of starting a business together.
While I’m disappointed in Belinda and her lack of self awareness and complete hypocrisy, I do think it’s brilliant writing and very reflective of human behaviour when circumstances randomly change for the better. What she’ll soon realise, as she and her son disappear into the horizon to Billy Preston’s ‘Nothing From Nothing’ is that, like Chelsea, her fate is now linked to a scary man forever. Say what you want about Rick, but at least he had more morals than Greg.
And speaking of sellouts, we can’t end the White Lotus discussion without talking about the surprise survival of Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his departure from Buddhist non-violence towards classic capitalist gun-for-hiredom. Not only does he not narc on Valentin and his not so merry men for their illegal exploits, he panders to the whims of his toxic love interest Mook (Lisa) and the demands of his future employer Sritala and shoots to kill, thus solidifying his journey in the exact opposite direction of Tim’s.
COME BACK, CRISTOBAL!
Many people complained about the opening theme change for Season Three. I’m happy to say I’m not an idiot and therefore was not one of them. On the contrary, I think Cristobal’s mysterious, club-inspired theme ‘Enlightenment’ does a fantastic job of priming you for the intrigue and the dread, beautifully complementing the richer colour palette of the opening credit visuals.
As far as I’m concerned, the entire score for this season slaps. I love the foreboding woo woos and the instrumental renditions of animal sounds and the ghostly voices set to piano. And I love the Thai songs and Thai covers; music supervisor Gabe Hilfer worked on Season Two and returned for Three, crate-digging for Thai rock, pop and disco songs for interesting additions that could add to the world building. I’ve never noticed the music quite as much as I did this season, which is why it’s such a gut punch that composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer has exited the series after fighting with Mike White. The show quite literally would not be the same without its main title themes, so I hope the two can work out their differences over a bottle of Chardy before Season Four.
Now, after almost 2500 words, I’ve just about gotten everything I wanted to say about this season of The White Lotus out of my system. I’m sure I’ll wake up after a tsunami nightmare and realise I forgot to touch on Sritala’s past as a B-grade actress, or theorise about Chloe Le Bon’s Charlotte and how she’s managed to find equilibrium in her relationship with “Gary”/Greg. Instead, I’ll spend what energy remains hoping that the next season takes place in the Kimberley and that Greg gets devoured by a big salty.
Verdict
☆☆☆☆½
I love this season — time will tell if I love it more than Season Two.
