Hotels are liminal spaces. If you’re a guest at one, that’s obviously not a place you remain. It’s a place you pass through. It’s transitional. It exists both outside of your everyday life and yet never quite in a realm of its own. The possibilities it offers you are rooted precisely in it being transitory. What better place to rekindle old friendships or rally around as a family, advance one’s career, or try to will away your day-to-day stress?
It’s fitting that Mike White has landed on such a fruitful space to create these baroque whodunnit melodramas: A hotel offers endless possibilities for reinvention—and also, because this is The White Lotus, plenty of chances for heightened drama and even death. But I’ve always found the show at its best when it zeroes in on the minutiae of resort cohabitation. Like when Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Kate (Leslie Bibb) begin praising how good Laurie (Carrie Coon), who’s just gone to her own room, looks (“She looks great”) only to egg each other on to be more frank. (“Sounds like that divorce ended kind of gnarly.” “She looks defeated.”) That we’ll see that scene play out almost identically later but between Kate and Laurie just makes it all the more delicious.
This is what happens when you’re on vacation. You try to be a better person than you are, perhaps, but end up only showing your true colors along the way. Which is what made Laurie’s jumpscare at the glass doors as her friends were talking about her all the more hilarious—and a reminder that White may well keep us on our toes this entire season.
For now, we start a new day. Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) wakes as only she can (“Where the fuck am I?”) while Lochlan (Sam Nivola) cannot escape his brother Saxon’s nakedness. (Patrick Schwazenegger is clearly all too happy to show us his ass this season.)
In essence, all White Lotus guests are to start their first full day of wellness care. Saxon gets a massage and complains it didn’t have a happy ending (“Aren’t they all supposed to be speshy speshy?” he bemoans) while his mother Victoria (Parker Posey) pops a pill before her own massage-therapy session. Lochlan enjoys a nice peaceful floating session while the trio of girlfriends are all assessed by the gorgeous Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius), who tells Laurie (and maybe also Jaclyn?) that she has great biometric numbers all around.
Even Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) is set on having a good day. She even sends her boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins) begrudgingly to have a stress-therapy session. It’s there that our shiftiest White Lotus guest reveals he’s never known a stress-free day in his life, what with his mother ODing and his father getting murdered at a young age. No wonder he’s always grumpy (and clearly here only with ulterior motives regarding the owners of the hotel).
Not that it’s going to stop Chelsea from trying to get him to relax, even if it means getting him to go out to dinner later with her new BFF Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) and her bald boyfriend (or husband or john or whatever) Greg (Jon Gries)—yes, that Greg.
But that comes later. Before that, we’re treated to several awkward interactions:
Victoria pretends to not really remember Kate from some baby-shower weekend years and years ago. Was she being outright rude or intentionally obtuse for, uh, more mysterious reasons?
Saxon decides to talk about his sister Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and her prudish ways with Lochlan. Is she really a virgin and why would her douche brother really care about such things?
Belinda spends some time with her co-worker Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) exchanging massages and she (rightfully so!) is left speechless when seeing him in just black boxer briefs. Might a romance be about to bloom?
Mook (Lalisa Manobal, a.k.a. Lisa) firmly sets Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) in the friendzone after the adorable guard tries to ask her out during their midday lunch break together. But might she find a way to warm up to him after all?
That’s all table setting for the real shocking events of the episode: An armed robbery!
Usually The White Lotus uses its violent episodes as bookends, so the fact that we get to see how a vehicle bypasses Gaitok’s gate (while he’s chatting with Valentin, of all people) and a masked man in a hoodie comes out guns ablaze at the hotel’s store where Chelsea (looking at a nice snake choker) and Chloe (trying on clothes in the fitting room) find themselves. It’s all quite traumatic and leaves Gaitok, who tries to apprehend the guys as they leave, shaken.
But he’s not as shaken as Chelsea, who later will keep repeating “I almost died” to herself, which I hope isn’t some kind of foreshadowing. I know it’s foolish to have faves in a murder-mystery show, but Wood has been doing such great work lately (especially with these wide-eyed young women who see the world through rose-colored glasses) that I worry she’ll get offed and we’ll be deprived of a chance to see more of her Chelsea. Except I know that’s far off.
Back to this day and the many ways these White Lotus guests are slowly unraveling before our eyes. They all gather, as they’re wont to do, at the hotel’s outdoor restaurant where they’re treated to performances by the staff, including owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), who really delivers—and brings out the drunkest of our three blonde Americans. But we do learn Sritala is about to head to Bangkok, where her husband is (a detail that Rick is keen on picking up).
And so, between the robbery, the money-laundering scheme Timothy (Jason Isaacs) now finds himself embroiled in, Rick’s interest in the Thai hoteliers, and the Greg of it all, we’re starting to see many possible ways in which things are bound to come crashing down soon. That is, you know, on top of the interpersonal clashes that are sure to keep simmering the longer we stay in this lush paradise that Piper nevertheless accurately describes as “a Disneyland for rich bohemians from Malibu in their lululemon yoga pants.” She’s not wrong. Resorts like these skirt the line between exoticism and authenticity, just as White’s own camera threads that same one, coming at it from a decidedly cynical view of these characters and what they hope to find here.
Stray observations
- • “Once a performer, always a performer.” I know Sritala was talking about her own past as a singer but given how important performance and put-on masks are to White, the line also feels like it’s about who these characters are playing (and what they’re playing at).
- • Best costuming choice in this week’s episode: Lochlan’s Pringles boxer briefs or Jaclyn’s Valentino sequin dress?
- • Piper really is quite a wallflower of a character. What’s her deal?
- • Parker Posey ordering Thai food over the phone? Perfection. Her delivery of “Actresses are all basically prostitutes. If they’re lucky, amirite?” Iconic. She truly is delivering everything we hoped she would with this outlandish All-American wife and mother who gets claustrophobic even when getting a massage outdoors.
- • Do we really think Chloe is, as Rick suggests, a hooker? Is that why Greg had no idea she was French-Canadian rather than French as they all dined together?
- • Speaking of Rick…what’s the backstory between him and Chelsea? She’s so sweet that I keep wondering how the two found each other.
- • Um. Was that who I think it was on the phone? Last season we got Laura Dern as a phone cameo and this time around it seems we got another recent Oscar winner on the horn as the colleague who got Timothy in trouble with the Feds with an ill-conceived money-laundering scheme—and only for a $10-million cashout! Imagine that!
- • Does anyone really say “The bigger the front, the bigger the back”? Bless Leslie Bibb for making such a ridiculous line sing while capturing the catty, clueless way her Kate is dancing around the seemingly competing friendships she’s catering to on this trip. But maybe Jaclyn is exaggerating how well she’s doing with her much younger beau?
