Despite my issues about it being
classified as a drama back in 2023 I fully enjoyed both season of Mike White's
whirlwind satire The White Lotus. And once I heard who just some of the
actors were going to be in Season 3 I had every intention of watching it the
moment it debuted this past February.
However I was the victim of that
cursed thing that still occasionally plagues me: scheduling. The third season
of The White Lotus debuted the exact same Sunday as the two episode
premiere of season 3 of Yellowjackets which I had been waiting to return
with even more anticipation. I did DVR the season premiere but then I learned
that while I had to watch those two shows the third season of Dark Winds was
going to be debuting while The White Lotus was still airing. So I
decided to watch Yellowjackets and Dark Winds more or less live
and wait until the summer to catch up to Season 3 of The White Lotus.
Now after the fact somewhere
between 5 and 6 million people chose to watch Season 3 of The White Lotus this
past February and March. However somewhere between 3 to 4 million people chose
to watch the third season of Yellowjackets and according to AMC roughly
4.5 million people chose to watch Dark Winds. So I know I was in good
company there. And I knew that it was an inevitability that the third season of
The White Lotus would be on the short list of contenders for Best Drama
this summer and would likely dominate the supporting actor and actress awards
as it did in Season 2 – basically to the expense of almost every other show
that wasn't Succession in 2023. (I won't lie about still being bitter
about that, but I'm willing to move on.) Early indications are that this is the
case if the Astra TV nominations illustrate. So this weekend I finally got
around to it. And while I know a bit about what happened this season already
(mainly who died this time) I'm going to review it the same way I always do:
based on the first two episodes alone.
It's almost a bit on the nose for
Mike White to title the season premiere of Season 3 'Same Spirits, New Form';
you almost wonder if this is his way at winking at the audience. The opening
minutes are more or less the same as the last two seasons: we meet a guest at a
White Lotus hotel in a glamorous setting (this time, Thailand) talking about
being at the place with a stranger. Then we start hearing sounds of violence,
this time gunshots are heard and we hear them over and over. Then after the
guest comes across yet another dead body: we flashback to 'One Week Earlier'
and another group of guests sailing out to the same resort.
But almost from the start it
seems as if White is acknowledging the patterns the show has and that the
viewer might be losing patience with them. And so right from the start we see
that most of the guests cheerful demeanor and behavior is a front that almost
from the start is fraying. This is particularly clear with Rick and his yoga
instruction girlfriend Chelsea, played by Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood. Rick
doesn't even bother to look like he's happy to be here: indeed it looks like
he'd rather be anywhere else and with anyone else. Chelsea does everything to
chatter cheerfully as if she's having the time of her life, Rick is clearly
pissed at the world and he clearly has an agenda that we don't bother with.
Then there's the Ratliff family
and from the moment we meet them you get the creepiest vibes imaginable. Saxon
(Patrick Schwarzenegger) has an alpha male vibe and has the kind of raw
sexuality that you'd be uncomfortable with in Season 2. He has no problem
coming on to everybody in sight, and not even bothering to close the door when
he chooses to pleasure himself in the room he shares with his brother. Piper
(Sarah Catherine Hook) apparently came her to see a monk and study Buddhism but
she stops short of the monastery. Lochlan (Sam Nivola) seems to just follow
people around blindly. There's a clear incestuous vibe between all three
characters that their parents either don't notice or don't care about.
Timothy (Jason Isaacs) is the
corporate CEO who seems to be proud of everything but doesn't want to give up
his phone as part of the digital detox. Victoria (the wondrous Parker Posey)
chatters admirably one moment and passes out at the dinner table the next.
Then there are three blondes:
Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan, Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) on a
girls trip. Jaclyn is a reality star and influencer so significant the owner of
the hotel goes out of the way to hit her up for a plug. The three of them claim
to be best friends and on a girl's trip but from the start of it you can tell
this has never been the three Musketeers but rather one being a third wheel.
And every time you watch Coon as Laurie, you know who the third wheel thinks
she is. It's a burden that from the start of the series neither Kate nor Jaclyn
do anything to lift.
After everything that happened in
Season 1, you'd honestly think Belinda wouldn't want to go to another White
Lotus resort voluntarily. And yet here is Natasha Rothwell, clearly
there as much to learn something and getting her wellness resort of the ground.
We know by watching the teaser her son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) is going to
show up and we know he's got every reason to worry about his mother.
Watching the first two episodes I
feel far more comfortable with the show being listed as a drama this year than
I did back in Season 2. Perhaps it's because Jennifer Coolidge is no longer
present. As long as she was a guest at any resort it was impossible to take the
show seriously even when Coolidge was at the peril of death. (The fact that Emmy
voters heard Coolidge's delivery of 'The Gays are trying to murder me" and
was comfortable nominating the show as a drama made me question their
sanity.) Furthermore it the first two seasons the show was always closer to
farce in its satirical tone.
There's none of that in the first
two episodes. It helps immensely that this time around White has stocked his
cast with actors who are just as comfortable doing comedy or drama (Goggins, Posey,
Bibb and Isaacs have always been comfortable in either) and the remainder are
so good at their jobs they can sell you on anything. And the majority show a
world-weariness that was generally lacking from all of the actors in the first
two seasons.
Goggins in particular is magnificent in his
portrayal as Rick and as someone who's admired him ever since he played Shane
on The Shield, I'm particularly impressed by his work here. He's been
one of the greatest actors in television for nearly two decades usually playing
characters who are vibrant with dynamism and energy, whether it is Boyd Crowder
on Justified or anything he's done with Danny McBride right up until the
final season of The Righteous Gemstones. By comparison his Rick goes
through the first two episodes as if he has lost the possibility to find the
joy in any aspect of life. He doesn't even seem to have the energy to engage the
pleasures of having sex with a woman half his age. The contrast between him and
Baby Billy (the final season of Righteous Gemstones aired at the same
time as this season) was quite a contrast, particularly as the much older man
has infinitely more energy than Rick seems too.
There's a darkness and edge to
even the comedy that is going on this season. Victoria seems to alternate between
being ridiculously cheerful, maudlin and nearly collapsing when it comes to
dealing with her family, which she can clearly see is always sniping at each
other. Whenever two of the blondes are alone together, they turn on the absent
third. Even the cluelessness of Chelsea in the face of Rick's utter contempt
for everything around her seems less amusing and more willfully blind. Even the
relationships between the staff seem to have a hollowness to them as a security
guard tries to date a therapist who makes it very clear she doesn't think of him
that way.
And violence is more present from
the start in Season 3 then in previous seasons. It's not just that the death that takes place involves a hail of
gunfire this time, there's an armed robbery in the jewelry store that Chelsea's
in and one of the security guards is injured when he tries to stop the guard
from getting away. What humor comes is less the kind of satire that we've
gotten used to from White over the years and more the kind of edgy brutality
that we are accustomed to from the works of Armando Iannucci. For that matter,
it's very difficult not to look at the Ratliff family and not see a version of
the Roy clan in the making – only its clear by the end of the second episode
that not only are they not Masters of the Universe but that they may not be
able to escape the consequences of their actions.
I don't object to any of this, by
the way. It appears that a darker and more dramatic version of The White Lotus
is, in its own way, just as great a pleasure as the more comic versions of
the first two seasons. According to White, the overriding theme of Season 3 is
karma, and how eventually your actions come back to haunt you. I know enough
about what happens to some of the characters later on to know there's a deeper
truth to that.
That actually brings me to one
more theory. At this point everybody knows about the one character who links
all three seasons of the show together at this point. (For the benefit of those
who have not yet seen the series I'll stop short of naming them.) We know what
this character is responsible for in each of the first two seasons and we learn
what they have done in the year since the end of Season 2. This character has
benefited the most from their actions but they seem no more cheerful then when
we met them back in the first season. Indeed, the person ostensibly closest to
him says to Chelsea they're just an 'LBH' – Loser Back Home.
For all the idea that The
White Lotus is supposed to be a sanctuary for its guests during their stay
there, what we see of this character for the first time is the suggestion that
it may instead be something closer to purgatory: where the rich and successful
have achieved everything they ever wanted but are just as miserable as they
were when they started out. That may be another reason for the immense
popularity of the show during this particular time in America.
I'll end this rave with an
exchange between Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Fitzgerald once said: "The rich
are different than you and I." Hemingway's response: "Yes. They have
more money." The third
season of The White Lotus reminds us of that very fact as well as the
main reason why we should never have an eat the rich mentality. They're as
miserable as we are; they just have more of a way to distract themselves from
that fact.
My score: 4.75 stars.
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