HBO/Ringer illustration
By Claire McNearMarch 31, 2:00 am UTC • 6 min
There were a lot of finallys in this week’s episode. Gaitok and Mook finally had their first date, which featured a questionably romantic Muay Thai excursion. And finally, Greg, a.k.a. Gary, squared with Belinda. Yes, he is who she thinks he is, and yes, his poor, beloved wife, Tanya, met a violent—did you say suspicious?—end in Italy. But him living large in Thailand is what Tanya would have wanted! It’s not hiding out from the authorities, you see: It’s just avoiding, um, “legal shit and lawyers and people making assumptions.” But just in case, in the spirit of Tanya’s posthumous generosity, how would Belinda like $100,000 to just drop it and never speak of it again? (She would not, thanks.)
Also, finally, someone at long last realized that Tim is not doing so hot. Unfortunately for Tim, that someone was his eldest son, Saxon, whose (in)ability to express empathy reads like a clinical explanation of psychopathy. Specifically, Saxon more or less doubles down on Victoria’s statement earlier this season that she simply couldn’t live if she stopped being rich. “Dad, I don’t have anything else but this,” Saxon says of his job at Tim’s doomed firm. “I don’t have any interests, I don’t have any hobbies, OK? If I’m not a success, then I’m nothing. And I can’t handle being nothing.”
Predictably, this didn’t do much to calm Tim down; he lies and tells Saxon that everything is just peachy back at the family office in South Carolina. “Kid, we’re all good,” he slurs through an evening (day? week?) of whiskey and lorazepam.
Screenshots via HBO
In Bangkok, Rick and Frank, Hollywood’s premier fake filmmakers, finally, finally make it to Sritala and Jim Hollinger’s swanky riverside abode to discuss their nonexistent Sritala star vehicle. Frank promptly throws his sobriety out the window while Rick convinces Jim to join him in private. Rick, at long last, gets to confront the man he believes killed his father—only to discover that Jim, played by Scott Glenn (whose Wikipedia page lists his age as somewhere between 83 and 87—sure!), doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. It’s neither a denial nor a confession, and when Rick whips out the gun that Frank procured for him, it seems like he might finally avenge his pops. Instead, though, he satisfies himself by knocking Jim’s chair over and taking off with Frank for a night on the town—and he discards the gun in a trash can unused. Chelsea would be proud.
Piper and Lochlan are still at their monastery sleepover, and Lochlan—fresh from having dug up memories of his nautical hookup with their big brother—announces to Piper that he wants to join the monastery, too. But Piper is far from pleased that the little magician wants to tag along on her year of soul-searching.
Speaking of the little magician: Chloe has leveled with Greg about her night with the Ratliff boys. In response, he proposed a threesome with Saxon. That would be strange—but stranger still is the extended oedipal explanation involving memories of wanting to win his mother from his father while the two had sex. Normal stuff!
Saxon, alas, is not supportive. But Chelsea wholeheartedly endorses the plan:
Let’s start with who’s not—probably—the dead body. T’s and p’s to Jim Hollinger: Rick seems satisfied with their nonfatal encounter and dumped his gun. Presumably, next week we’ll see Rick return, at last, to Koh Samui. (The only wrinkle is that while Rick opted not to shoot Jim, their encounter was hardly friendly, and Jim and Sritala know that he’s staying at the White Lotus. Rick thinks he got the last word, but did he?)
Also probably safe: Tim and the rest of the Ratliff clan. After Tim imagined killing his wife in a murder-suicide last week, he has now extended the fantasy to take out Saxon as well—which would be more troubling if he hadn’t finally realized that the gun he swiped from the security checkpoint was stolen back.
More on ‘The White Lotus’
More on ‘The White Lotus’
Soaring up the impending death power rankings are Vlad and Aleksei, Valentin’s fun-loving pals from Vladivostok. Alas, it turns out that they are also apparently jewelry-loving: While at the Muay Thai match with Mook, Gaitok sees the Russians out with Laurie and realizes that it was Vlad and Aleksei who stormed past him to rob the White Lotus’s jewelry shop while Valentin distracted him. Gaitok is a gentle soul, but he has his gun back and is a precociously good shot. Still more concerning for Vlad, Aleksei, and Valentin is Mook’s insistence that Gaitok needs to embrace violence to move up in the world.
“Pee Lek thinks I’m soft,” Gaitok laments to Mook of his boss. “He says I don’t have a killer instinct.”
“But you can prove him wrong,” Mook says. Gaitok replies that the Buddha condemns violence—only for Mook to more or less bully him.
“It’s good you have strong morals,” she says. “But you have to live in this world.” Come on, babe, shoot somebody to prove your love is true!
Laurie, meanwhile, seems to have made an enemy in the form of Nadja, Aleksei’s girlfriend, who catches them in bed together and blows a gasket. This isn’t the only person Laurie has raging against her: The cold war between her, Jaclyn, and Kate is heating up. Jaclyn in particular—whose marriage could be endangered by the revelation that she hooked up with Valentin—seems ready for violence.
Though it could go both ways. “If you always choose the short stick, is it bad luck?” Jaclyn asks. “Are you life’s victim? Or are you doing it to yourself?”
Kate sides with Jaclyn: “You know, when you know someone long enough, you do start to see certain patterns.”
Belinda, who has been on death watch since about three minutes into the season premiere, is now squarely in Greg’s crosshairs. She tells Zion that she has no intention of taking the hush money, which Greg is sure to see as a direct threat. Still, it’s hard to imagine the show going there.
While I’d like to think that Rick’s closure with Jim in Bangkok means that Rick is now safe, I worry that Mike White has something else in mind. If you squint, you can make out the shape of a Buddhism-inspired metaphor in his journey: the long journey through suffering, the search for peace, and (more on this in a moment) the attainment of inner harmony. I’m not sure that Rick and Frank’s booze- and lady-filled celebratory party is the best possible depiction of nirvana, but for Rick, it might be.
A retroactive plea: Please, oh please, let Rick and Chelsea be the new Tanyas and keep popping up in future seasons. Let our weirdo lovebirds flourish!
Tim is in free fall. Saxon and Lochlan are in turmoil. Laurie, Jaclyn, and Kate are knives out and exceedingly unlikely to ever vacation together—or, perhaps, speak—again. Belinda is spooked.
And then there’s Rick, who didn’t avenge his father because he discovered he didn’t need to. Look at his bliss! If the White Lotus could guarantee a wellness outcome like this for everyone, it could charge double.
While Rick is busy interrogating Jim, Frank and Sritala delve into a trove of her old credits. “It’s the folk music and the rap music,” she explains.
“I mean, it’s like MC Hammer, Peter Pan,” Frank says, patently mystified as he swills his first drink since leaping off the wagon.
Saxon remains obsessed with Chelsea, who only has eyes for Rick and, furthermore, seems to be the only person who can see Saxon for what he is. He tries to make a case for himself: “I’m not just one thing,” he tells her. “I mean, I could be someone else if I wanted.”
Runner-up:
Again—no monkeys. Mysterious!
I leave you with this instead: Per our crack Russian translation team (the translate app on my phone), Aleksei’s tattoo spells out “think in other formats.” Even more mysterious!
Claire covers sports and culture. She has written about Malört, magic, fandom, and seasickness (her own). She lives in Washington, D.C.
