There’s great drama to be found in irony, and “The White Lotus” knows this better than most shows. Sometimes there’s nothing less relaxing than going on vacation, as Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) is starting to realize, and sometimes the most toxic people in our lives can be our closest friends. That contradiction is explored with uncomfortable accuracy in the opening of Season 3, Episode 2, which begins with Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Kate (Leslie Bibb) using Laurie’s (Carrie Coon) early excusal from their late-night drinking sesh to throw thinly-veiled jabs at their friend’s life.
After heaping praise upon her in the “White Lotus” Season 3 premiere, Jaclyn and Kate exchange gossip about Laurie’s career, her daughter and even her divorce. We all look for some kind of validation in our friends. The trick is doing it without tearing them down, which is a balance that neither Kate nor Jaclyn seem interested in striking. Their unspoken knowledge of what they are actually doing is underlined when they react to Laurie interrupting them with the panic of two people caught doing something they shouldn’t be, as well as in the moment just before when Jaclyn responds to Kate’s remark that Laurie “looks so defeated” with a smirk and knowing, “I thought you said she looked great?”
Kate receives a bit of a karmic comeuppance when she gets blanked the next morning by Victoria (Parker Posey) after awkwardly approaching her about a baby shower they met at years ago. “Am I not memorable?” Kate asks when she finally rejoins her friends, while Victoria, whom we later learn is suspicious of strangers for entirely vain reasons, defends her standoffish behavior toward Kate to her children. “What does she want from me? We met at a baby shower 10 years ago, so what?” Victoria remarks. “White Lotus” creator Mike White then gives Posey her first of likely many chances at becoming a meme when she responds to Saxon’s (Patrick Schwarzenegger) note that Jaclyn is a famous TV star by dryly joking, “Should I be impressed? Actresses are all basically prostitutes.” It is not quite “These gays, they’re trying to murder me!” but it will do for now.
The Identity You’ve Created
Posey is not the only “White Lotus” Season 3 star who gets a showcase moment this week. Walton Goggins also shines in a meditation session with Amrita (Shalini Peiris) that Rick is forced to do by Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood). The scene starts with Rick admitting he operates at an 8/10 baseline level of stress, and it only gets darker when Amrita’s attempt to return him to a more childlike joy is cut short by the truth of Rick’s childhood.
“My mother was a drug addict. She OD’d when I was 10,” he bitterly says before revealing that his father was “murdered” before he was born. “Meditation can bring relief to psychic pain. Meditation helps you see that the identity you’ve created brings you suffering,” Amrita offers. “I never had an identity. I don’t need to detach. I’m already nothing,” Rick soberly responds. “If nobody puts gas in the tank, the tank is empty. That’s not an illusion. The car won’t start. Nothing comes from nothing, right?”
White’s writing and Goggins’ performance, which recalls some of his best work on “Justified,” adds a new layer of sadness to Rick’s behavior in the “White Lotus” premiere. He no longer seems like just another rich a—hole. There’s a restlessness within him that is fascinating, and the reveal that his father was murdered may explain why he’s so interested in Sritala’s (Lek Patravadi) husband, Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn). Does Rick blame Jim for his father’s murder? If so, does he plan on exacting some kind of revenge? That’d explain his sudden decision to travel to Thailand, his reaction to learning that Jim is in Bangkok and, given the guns that Jim and Sritala’s bodyguards carry with them, could even explain the hotel shooting teased in the season’s prologue.
Storming the Gates
We do not have to wait for Rick’s eventual meeting with Jim to see some mayhem break out. Just hours after Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) surprises Mook (Lalisa Manobal) with a modest, charming marriage proposal (“I’m not really a genius. But I’m pretty handy,” he tells her), the White Lotus gatekeeper gets pistol-whipped trying to stop a pair of masked, armed robbers.
The gunmen storm the White Lotus’ jewelry store, hold Chelsea up at gunpoint and make off with most of the shop’s inventory, all without meeting much resistance outside of Gaitok’s unsuccessful attempt to stop them. It is a shocking burst of violence — one that introduces a constant threat of danger to the season and another potential explanation for its opening shooting.
Theory-Crafting Corner: The episode’s robbers are only able to get into the White Lotus unimpeded in the first place because Gaitok is distracted talking to Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius), the Russian health mentor Jaclyn and Kate are intent on getting Laurie to sleep with. Is that just an unfortunate coincidence? Or is Valentin working with the robbers? For now, viewers may want to keep their eyes on Valentin — and not in the same way Laurie and her friends are.
Dinner and a Show
Sritala headlines the resort’s evening festivities with a performance designed to impress Jaclyn, but the night’s biggest moments all unfold at the nearby dinner tables and elsewhere.
Rick and a still-rattled Chelsea eat dinner with Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) and her boyfriend, Jon Gries’ Greg (now going by Gary). Throughout the dinner, he proves to be even cagier than Rick, telling the other man only that he’s “retired” and that he used to do “this and that” for work. (He does not mention that “this and that” included orchestrating his wife’s murder.) A few tables away, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) spots Greg. She doesn’t say anything to the man, but it is clear from her look that she recognizes him — even if she cannot remember why right now. Their inevitable confrontation can’t come soon enough.
The Ratliffs’ table, meanwhile, is disrupted by more bickering between Saxon and Piper, the latter of whom is understandably disturbed and pissed off by the revelation that her older brother has been talking about her sex life and how “hot” she is behind her back to Lochlan (Sam Nivola). Things only go from bad to worse for the family, however, when Tim leaves to take his long-awaited call from Kenneth Nguyen (a surprise Ke Huy Quan), who tells him via a burner phone that the FBI have just raided his office because a “whistleblower b—h” ratted him out to the feds, exposing what Tim describes as a “money laundering bribery situation” involving the government of Brunei.
“They have everything, Tim! My accounts, my emails,” Kenny says. “Am I implicated?” Tim asks. “Yes. For sure, Tim,” Kenny responds. “You need to get a good lawyer. Like, yesterday.” Seething with anger, Tim tells his friend that he helped him set up their Sho-Kel fund as a “favor” and that he only made “$10 million” from Kenny’s “scheme.” It is a world-changing development for Tim — one that brings potentially life-destroying consequences. There is a certain irony to the whole situation, though, considering it follows a dinnertime speech from Victoria to her kids about protecting themselves. “Most people don’t have good values. They’re scammers,” she says.” You have to be hyper vigilant, OK? You have to be on your guard.”
She has no idea when she says this that the biggest threat to her family now is not other people, but her own husband.
Tsunami Warning
When they get back to their room, Laurie and Kate seize upon Jaclyn’s absence to start dissing their friend behind her back in a manner mirroring how Jaclyn and Kate talked about Laurie at the start of the episode. Laurie remarks that Jaclyn is still “so competitive,” adding, “You’d think with her success she’d have mellowed out a bit. Narcissist.” Taking her own shot, Kate says, “And the vanity! I know she has to maintain it, it’s her career… Did she sandblast her face or something?” In her room, Kate’s face briefly stills as her gaze wanders toward the muffled sounds of her friends’ conversation. She listens for a moment before smiling and walking away. It is, notably, left unclear whether she does so in the belief that her friends would never negatively gossip about her, or because she doesn’t care that they are.
“The White Lotus” then concludes its second episode in a row with Tim. Sitting on the edge of his family’s hotel patio, he wraps up a phone call with the assistant of a lawyer he knows and turns around just in time to see his wife and kids returning from dinner. In the distance, Tim hears his youngest telling a story about a girl who predicted the coming of a tsunami but was ignored. Lochlan does not know in this moment, of course, that tsunamis have already begun to form on the horizon with the power to tear his and his family’s lives apart. For the time being, it doesn’t seem like Tim intends to tell them to run for safety, either.
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.
