Warning
Spoilers for Season 3 of The White Lotus Below
This piece requires a bit more of
an introduction then usual. Don't worry, I'll get to who died eventually.
I think Peak TV made a critical
shift in 2013. I don't mean the arrival of Netflix and streaming; I mean in the
kind of shows that we started to consider masterpieces.
So much of the great television
of the first decade of the 21st century was based in the struggles
of the working class as much as it was the antiheroes. All of HBO's successful
dramas of this period – not just The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire but
OZ, Six Feet Under and Big Love – were about working class people
who were dealing with either the death of the American dream or trying to find
a place in society despite it. Shows like The Shield and Breaking Bad
showed the dark side of it, Mad Men showed the falsity of it and
series like The Good Wife and Parenthood dealt with the people
who work in it. Similarly the most successful comedies on both cable and
broadcast also dealt with its flaws whether it was Weeds and so many of
the female led Showtime dramedies it led to, the workplace comedies such as The
Office, 30 Rock and Scrubs, or the family centric comedies like Everybody
Loves Raymond and Modern Family.
Then around 2012 this began to
change, not just with Netflix's House of Cards but comedies like Veep
and dramas like Scandal. Suddenly we went from watching working
class people to the rich and powerful doing horrible things. This was felt
mostly in drama and cable rather than streaming: we saw it in Silicon Valley
and House of Lies on cable; we saw it on shows like Empire and
Scream Queens. There were, of course, many exceptions – Better Call
Saul, The Americans and American Crime remained committed to the
idea of the lie of the American dream and The Good Place argued for a
moral lifestyle even in the afterlife. During this period I should add
streaming was arguing for more of the working class ethos in shows such as Orange
is the New Black and Transparent. But by and large a nastiness and
unpleasantness in so many dramas and comedies emerged and much of it was
centered on the rich and powerful. And to be clear, all of the shows I
mentioned were greenlit before the 2016 election. This was not a case of
art reflecting life.
During the next four years so
much of the most celebrated television doubled down on the unpleasantness of
the rich and powerful. HBO led the way again and not in a good way. Westworld
very quickly became a show about how the wealthy and powerful were
controlling society and willing to use hosts to indulge themselves. The
Righteous Gemstones dealt with a wealthy family of dumb televangelists (in
fairness creator Danny McBride was laughing with them as much as at them) Euphoria
decided to make high school essentially a hotbed for drugs and sex. All of
this before we even get to Succession. Again there were exceptions even
on HBO - Insecure, Big Little
Lies - but before the pandemic the network
was really doubling down on the behavior of rich, powerful, white people doing
bad things.
It is easy to consider Mike
White's The White Lotus more of the same and certainly its first two
seasons were more than willing to emphasize the cruel comedy of it. This was a
show where in its first season one of the guests could accidentally kill the
concierge at the summation of a weeklong feud and not only not go to prison but
go back home with his wife with no consequences. You spent much of the first
two season laughing at these at the very least 'five percent' who came to these
lavish, exotic locations and observed the luxury of Hawaii or Rome as if they
were at a Holiday Inn.
This was, for the record,
incredibly entertaining at times; definitely more so than watching Succession.
But even when it was at its funniest you couldn't escape the possibility of
the same reason many people were enjoying it. The main reason millions seemed
to watch the Roy family season after season was because so many people liked
seeing these Masters of the Universe as miserable and directionless as the rest
of us. I agree there were certain elements of family struggles and
Shakespearean elements but it was also because this was a series that was
originally supposed to be based on the Murdoch family and when it debuted most
of its audience had a grudge against them a mile high. Seeing them being
incompetent and miserable season after season has to have had a certain amount
of schadenfreude for those of us who were living in a post-2016 world. And
White makes it clear that many of the guests voted for Trump, probably more
than once. (This is implied again during Season 3.)
So whatever comedy we enjoyed
during the first two seasons not only had a great nasty streak to it,
particularly as we saw these wealthy people suffer both in their rooms or often
receive a karmic justice. I suspect that was part of the joy that so many viewers
found out of Tanya, who Jennifer Coolidge portrayed brilliantly in the first
two seasons. That said, you had to let this kind of clueless exterior and her
comic delivery set aside the fact that Tanya was basically a narcissist who had
no real respect for the working class (we saw it with Belinda in Season 1 and
her assistant in Season 2) and was so thick about how things worked it took her
until her last moments to realize 'the gays are trying to murder me'. I didn't
mourn her death the same way I mourned Armond's in Season 1. Armond was a
victim of the privileged babies as much as his own foolishness. Tanya was a
victim of her own stupidity, pure and simple.
It's also why I reject the
theories going through the first two seasons that there were 'winners' or 'losers'.
With the critical exception of Tanya, none of the guest lost anything they
didn't have in the first place. They were selfish and narrowminded when they
came there; they were that way when they left. There's hope for the younger
guests each season that the experience might have changed them but none of the
others. And the idea that the sex workers triumphed because they managed to
extort them for as much money as possible in Season 2, it would be harder to
take candy from babies. They had everything they came when they left.
And it is for that very reason
that I think the third season of The White Lotus demonstrates the
evolution of Mike White's vision. Because for the first time we're not only
seeing that wealth can't paper over so many of the bigger problems characters
have, we're also seeing the characters facing consequences that are going to
resonate when they come back home.
This is best represented with the
Ratliff family. During the season patriarch Timothy (Jason Isaacs) learns that
his company is being raided by the FBI, that his fortune is being seized and
that when he comes home, he will be headed to prison. He spends the entire
season unable to come to grips with that reality, medicating himself with his
wife's Lorazepam, drinking himself into a stupor, and increasingly considering
more violent ends, first a suicide and then when he learns his family can't
picture life without money, killing them off and then himself.
We see each of the Ratliff's laid
bare in this same way. Victoria makes it clear with each day, not only her own
personal prejudices – which she extends to her own family – but that she can't
imagine a life without money. Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) starts out the
series as an alpha male but when it becomes clear to the women he's trying to
impress how completely shallow he is, he realizing he has nothing but his
career. Lochlan spends the entire series following around his family with no
clear path forward. Piper has misled the family as to why they've come her – she
wants to join a Buddhist monastery – but after one day she gives up on it. (It
is implied Lochlan's desire to follow her there is an influence on it.) None of
them can imagine a life other than the one they have which fills Timothy with
increasing despair.
It is this which leads him to
make an attempt to have his family die in a mass suicide, save for Lochlan who
claims he can live without money. At the last moment Tim chickens out and
decides to face the music. Despite the fact that Lochlan nearly dies as a
result of his carelessness he still decides to tell his family the truth with
the confidence that they're strong enough to move forward. It's not clear if
this faith is warranted, given their behavior throughout the series – Victoria's
comments to Piper when she says she can't give things up makes it very clear
she might end up given her family smoothies after all this – but even the idea
of a patriarch believing in his family is unheard of in three seasons of this
show. (And considering Rick's story it's very telling in that sense.)
The saga of Rick plays in a
different method. Rick has come to Thailand for one reason only: to find Rick
Hollinger, the owner. He believes this man had his father killed and ruined his
life. It seems that everything he has done ever since then and whatever success
he has enjoyed has been negated by this despair.
Played extraordinarily by Walton
Goggins, Rick is the first character we've seen on this show where wealth has
brought him nothing. He feels fundamentally broken and can't find a way to
function and have human relationships. All he wants is to confront Hollinger –
and when he does, rather than kill him, he just pushes him over and runs away
like a child. At the end of that episode, watching him party we see the first
genuine smile cross his face in the entire series.
Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) is also
a new kind of character to The White Lotus. She's the first guest who
means what she says and has no guile. This clearly annoys Rick during the first
half of the series but in a show where even family relationships are always
dysfunctional, it's striking to see someone so devoted to Rick to the point
that while she's willing to go on a party with a female friend she just met,
she won't cheat on him. And she has the ability to say what she thinks honestly
during the series: she doesn't judge anyone for their sexual behavior and when
she tells Saxon exactly the kind of man he is, it is the final straw that
breaks him in a way the night of debauchery (which viewers know about but I
won't reveal the twisted nature of it) had just started. Chelsea is the first
purely good person we've met on The White Lotus since we met Belinda in
the first season. (I'll get to her arc below.) And that of course makes
everything in the season finale all the more tragic.
It’s harder to figure out the
saga of the three blondes through much of the season. Jacklyn (Michelle
Monaghan) has been paying for her two friends Harper (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie
(Carrie Coon) to come on what she describes as a 'victory tour'. Early on Laurie
claims that Jacklyn is a narcissist and while we initially think its
back-biting, it becomes clearer with each day that there's something behind.
This is true at the night of their partying when Jacklyn spend the night trying
to force Valentine on Laurie and when the night ends, invites him into her bed
and denies it when she is called on it. Jacklyn clearly does need the spotlight
to be on her at all times and she can't stand being called on it by anybody.
But in their final dinner
together Laurie does something we've really never seen to this point on The
White Lotus and that’s pour her heart out to people she cares about. In a
sad and searing monologue Laurie makes it clear just how unhappy much of her
life to this point has been and that while her friends clearly have a support
system to rely on, Harper and Jaclyn are hers. It's the kind of
emotional statement that has been unheard of and would otherwise seem out of
place but Coon's talent as an actress completely sells it and makes us believe
that when this is over the three of them have survived their stay at the resort
not just physically but emotionally which is far harder.
What makes this season a masterpiece
is the final act of Rick and Chelsea. In a way Rick's fate is as much a
consequence of his actions as Armond's was in Season 1 and Tanya's in Season 2,
but the difference is how White tells it this time. We see a Rick in the final
episode ready to move on and change in a way we just haven't seen the entire
series. He wants to walk away when Hollinger confront him at the resort and he
really tries – he goes to see the meditation woman who believed in him before
and when she tells him to wait he really does make an effort to control
himself. But ultimately the sight of Hollinger cavorting with the three blondes
and his wife is too much for him to overcome. He walks up to him and impulsive
shoots him – and as a result plays a far more horrible price.
Chelsea's death is the first
purely tragic death in the entire series history because of her innate goodness
and her belief in the better part of Rick's nature. She believed in him even
when he didn't believe in himself, she went to help try and save him from
himself and as a result death finally catches up with her. When Rick stands
over the body of Chelsea we see a portrayal of grief that rivals almost
everything Goggins has done as an actor over the year's – I was reminded of how
Shane stood over the body of Lem after he killed him in utter grief in the
fifth season of The Shield, the first moment he demonstrated he was one of
the great actors on that show. And much like that character, he met his end
after losing his family – the father he never knew he had, the woman always
loved him.
Now I must come to the two
recurring characters from past seasons: Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Greg (Jon
Gries). In a sense they represent the extremes of what money does to you when
you get it. It's telling for me that at the end of Season 3 Greg looks pretty
much the way he did when we first met him back in Season 1, utterly miserable.
He now has all the money in the world, a woman who will grant his every desire,
safety from the law – but he seems just as unhappy as before. My original
theory that for some character the resort is purgatory would apply to Greg and
in a sense this is his karma.
Some might consider that Belinda's
attitude in the final episode when she not only gets Tanya's money as she hoped
she would in the first season but actually echoes her exact words to someone
she made a promise to when she was betrayed would show the corrupting power
of wealth. There are, however, two distinct differences. First unlike all the
other characters she has spent her life as a working class woman and knows how
to appreciate it better and second she has a far more caring relationship with
her son then all the other parent child relationships we've seen to this point.
I find it hard to believe wealth will ruin that (particularly given how Zion
acted when he thought she was dead in the season premiere).
Some might object to the idea of The
White Lotus changing from a frothy drama mixed with farce to pretty hard on
the drama side this season. But there's only so long White could go to that
well without it starting to grow stale. This is a sign that White is willing to
adapt to make a better show. It may not be as much fun as watching Jake Lacy
and Murray Bartlet go to war over a hotel suite or Jennifer Coolidge mince cluelessly
about the world but there are some benefits.
Besides it's not like there was no
humor in Season 3. Any show that can have Sam Rockwell show up, say he has gone
from an alcoholic and sexual deviant to a Buddhist monk, convert back
after ten minutes being drawn into Rick's drama, then be seen at the end of the
series praying, is definitely fun. (By the way Mike, next season can we have
him be our recurring character – or maybe a spinoff) Parker Posey was
hysterical all the way through as Victoria as someone who plays every cliché of
the ugly American and then dials it up to eleven. (By the way, she would have raised
money for everyone of Trump's run for President but never voted herself – its just
not a woman's place.) And Natasha Rothwell was particularly hysterical in the second
half of the season as she realized who Greg was, what he had done, and what
that might mean for her – clearly she felt she was a black character in an 80s
horror film and she knew what happened to them. (Why else would she want to get
the hell out of Thailand?)
I approve of The White Lotus changing
in this fashion not just because its putting its place in the firmament of great
television but because it may signal a shift in how dramas are changing during
this new era of TV. We've seen the shift move more towards gentler, friendlier
comedies over the decade; we may be seeing that shift in drama too, although
there hasn't been a consistent pattern to be noted. Whatever the reason I do
celebrate the change for one big reason: at least in some parts of the world,
the guests just can't get away with murder. That's progress.
My score: 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment