Molly - White Lotus Turndown Service
White Lotus Season 3 Check In Special
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Season 3 of The White Lotus has not been as Fun as the first two seasons, but since I hate fun, that means it's shaping up to be my second favorite unless something insane enough to usurp season 2 happens. But I've been getting a lot out of thinking of the current season juxtaposed with the first two. For instance, seasan 3 includes a wealthy family, the Ratliffs, vacationing (sort of) together. We've seen a version of this before with season 1's Mossbacher family. What was most interesting about the latter group is how the "irregular" gender and power dynamics played out. The women are decisive actors while the men mostly pout and fret. Connie Britton's Nicole was the high powered breadwinner, and for much of the season it's obvious that her husband is no longer sexually credible to her. Next to their vicious and sardonic daughter, their neurodivergent, lost-without-his-iPad son is wan and adrift. The men do come into their own. Steve Zahn's Mark Mossbacher rescues his wife from an attempted robbery (sort of - too much to get into), thus redeeming himself in her eyes as a man who can offer her something she can't just provide herself. Little Quinn runs away from the airport at the last second to join local Hawaiians paddle boarding, finally doing something embodied.
The Ratliffs' utter defaultness provide a different canvas. They are a southern family with a corporate patriarch, Timothy, and pampered, judgmental matriarch, Victoria. Saxon, the oldest child, works with his father and is the season's requisite hyperbolically toxic man (after Jake Lacey and Theo James before him). Middle child Piper is the impetus for travelling to Thailand: she is pursuing an interest in Buddhism and wants to inteview a monk at the nearby monastery (sort of). Lochlan, the youngest, is a high school senior torn between Duke (his brother and father's alma mater) and UNC (his mom and sister's). At first he seems Quinn-like in his passivity and meekness, but like many things about season 3, there's a sinister edge. You begin to get the sense that while Saxon's predatory swagger might be a cope to some degree, Lochlan might really have a menacing streak.
At The White Lotus in Thailand, "digital detox" is encouraged, setting off a subplot in which Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs doing an accent based on a Charlestonian lmao) tries to ignore the fact that he is currently being exposed for embezzlement and fraud, poised to lose everything. He tries to focus on the trip, and then he tries to zone out on his wife's benzos. When he takes his phone back and absorbs the reality of what might be waiting for him back home, he steals a gun from the security hut and gets as far as writing his suicide note before being interrupted by his wife. The next episode includes two heartbreaking daydreams of his actually completing the act, one where he takes Victoria with him.
I've never cared about The White Lotus primarily for its "who is the dead body" element, and I've never been good at guessing what will happen. Maybe this is why I like the show so much. I've read so much and watched so much TV that I'm often very quick to predict who will have sex with who and who will die, but The White Lotus usually eludes me. So I was delighted that through Tim's story, I started to actually work on a theory! And that is: Tim will humor Piper's desire to pursue Buddhist meditation and find himself unexpectedly moved and, possibly, freed. He will either be the one, not his daughter, to stay in Thailand at the monastery, or his spiritual enlightment will give him the courage and peace to face the consequences back home.
Jason Isaacs' performance is better every week. From the patronizing benevolence of a man who has truly made it, to some excellent physical comedy in his drugged out state, he has now become the character whose story I'm the most emotionally invested in. His sadness and desperation are palpable. In a scene shortly after he steals the gun, Piper talks to him about Victoria's scandalized reaction to her plans to take a gap year at the monastery. She bemoans not only her close-mindedness, but the idea that despite Victoria's citing "Christian values," they were not "raised super Christian." Tim, still very zooted on lorazepam, mentions that he was an altar boy in his youth and even got to sing a solo in "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming." You can see the little boy come through. At the end of the episode, after his interrupted suicide attempt, Tim begs God to tell him what to do.
I feel like The White Lotus has a reputation for being meaner than it actually is. Oh, Mike White would never actually punish the bad guys! Anyone can have their hopes dashed! But it's not an entirely cynical show. It focuses on extremes of both noble and malicious motivations in people. I've found that characters who do genuinely make themselves vulnerable to change, self-awareness, or both, are not unduly punished. I don't think Tim is going to be the dead body. For one, that's a lot of gun fake out to actually die. Mostly, though, I think Mike White wants to show his prayer get answered, even if that's in an unexpected way. That would be a beautiful way of exploring the first episode's title, "Same Spirits, New Forms."
P.S. Chelsea is my favorite character
P.S.S. I don't think Walton Goggins' Rick is going to be the dead body but I could see it happening if he sacrifices himself, thus actually becoming the "do-gooder" that he has been - surely falsely - convinced his late father was.
P.S.S.S. in between season 1 and 3's familial gender dynamics I think you get something different in season 2, which is multiple examples of men thinking they are much more in control than they are, and what women letting them think that get out of it. Very Italian!