Looking for a recap of season 3, episode 6? Check in here.
I have something mildly frustrating to share. Esquire sent a writer to Four Seasons Koh Samui, which provided the luxurious backdrop of The White Lotus season 3, and that journalist wasn’t me. It was the great Garrett Munce, who is a delightful person in any other context. (Add this to the list of things to take up with my editor.) He had a damn good time though—and so did Parker Posey, apparently. You can read about it here.
This week, my thankless work of recapping The White Lotus continues in episode 6—which, thank Boooooodaaaaaaa (still love you, Victoria), builds on Mike White’s promising thematic work from last week. It’s a shame that we’re finally going deep on spirituality, violence, expectations, fear, loathing, and much more in Thailand just as this season is about to end. A couple weeks ago, I criticized season 3 for spinning its wheels a hair too long; I felt like The White Lotus‘s usually exceptional slow burn of character introductions and ceaseless foreshadowing should not have lasted five episodes. Now, I feel like the HBO series is finally following through with the terms of engagement from a White Lotus season set at a wellness resort in Thailand. Meaning: We’re on the receiving end of some deep fucking questions.
With that, let’s dig into this week’s episode. Just to let you know, I’ll be the entertainment tonight. I do hope you enjoy.
TYUUUUUUUMMM, NOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!!
“You Have PayPal? Or Zelle?”
Hell yes. After six episodes of watching Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate passive-aggressively jab at each other in a sandbox far away from the rest of the season, The White Lotus is finally unleashing their fascinating power dynamics. The crew enjoys another sad dinner at the hotel restaurant, where it takes one bottle of rosé to bring out a punch like this from Jaclyn: “If you’re not happy with your life Laurie, I don’t know. Fucking change it.” And somehow even more savage is this barb, from Kate: “When you know someone long enough you see patterns.” This is where I would’ve loved to have been with this crew midseason: We’re finally seeing decades of these three chugging booze through their problems finally come to a head.
Wouldn’t you know it, the falling out of this crew actually sends a ripple effect throughout the Lotus-verse that makes for compelling television. Laurie decides to go to that Muay Thai fight after all, with equally thrilling and terrifying results. She watches the fight with Valentin’s buddy, Alexei—all the sweat and violence of the fight makes them horny, apparently—so they fuck afterward. Alexei’s pillow talk? He needs 10,000 “U.S. dollars” to help his sick mother. Oldest trick in the book! Laurie senses the scheme immediately, but Alexei’s girlfriend busts into the room and Laurie escapes through the window before Alexei Venmo-requests her.
Considering that she sees the stolen jewelry from earlier in the season, here’s one more thing from the fight: As we speculated in last week’s recap, Gaitok realizes that the Russian bros were indeed the burglars from episode 2. Revenge for Gaitok? More on that at the end.
Gary-Greg-Uncle-Rico Is Feeling Freaky Today
Damn, I took Greg as a freak everywhere but the sheets. Oh yes, we’re addressing this first: At Greg’s party, Chloe invites Saxon to another devil’s threesome; it’s still incesty but with a mom-and-pop spin. Chloe tells a long, rambling story about how Greg’s parents had loud sex all of the time with the door open, so the future vacation murderer would watch. He felt disgusted, jealous, and because this is The White Lotus, excitement. As a teenager, it led to paranoid delusions that his girlfriend was cheating on him. As an aging man, he wants to watch his girlfriend cheat on him. “His worst nightmare was actually his erotic fantasy,” she concludes. This all leads to Chloe asking Saxon if he’d participate in said reenactment, and because he’s only freaky when he’s on MDMA, it’s a hell no.
Well, I’m glad that Greg has moved on to bedroom-based concerns, because it must mean that he must feel less like he wants to kill Belinda. He pulls her aside and delivers a half-true, watered-down version of his White Lotus arc so far: “So, you know who I am. And I’m sure you know something very tragic happened to my wife, Tanya. I had nothing to do with it, just to make that clear. But it was getting very complicated back home and I just didn’t want to spend the rest of my life dealing with legal shit and lawyers and people making assumptions. I love Thailand. I love the people. I bought this house. I’m happy.“
He’s so happy that he wants to pay Belinda one hundred grand to shut up about it. She’s leaning no. Her son, Zion, really wants her to take the damn cash. My money says that this beef won’t resolve in season 3—we’ll have our first true White Lotus cliff-hanger, with Belinda somehow meeting up with Greg in the next location (Norway, maybe?) to take him down once and for all. But yeah, I felt it in my bones when Belinda said, “Can I get one fucking break in this fucking lifetime?”
Elsewhere, in the Ratliff-verse, Saxon moonlights as a human man interested in self-improvement, but it’s really a play to finally woo Chelsea. Thankfully, it doesn’t work. Tim is too damn stoned to do much of anything this episode. He orders his twenty-seventh “large whiskey with a little ice” of the season and has another vision of killing his family. Rounding us out is Parker Posey with another delicious Victoria line-read: Ohhhh, Gawd. The Boooohhht Peopalh.
HBO
I’m done with your antics, Gary-Greg.
Time For the Obligatory Banger in Bangok
My heart aches for the ever-faithful Chelsea, but damn, is Rick’s failed blood quest fun to watch this episode. Especially the pairing of this season’s two lovable buffoons in Director Sam Rockwell and Sritala. White even allows Director Rockwell to wade into meta territory: “You know what? It’s a fun caper,” he says of the movie that doesn’t exist. “Like a thriller. It’s got… everything. Killings, double-crossings, action, all the stuff that people like.” Sound familiar?
As soon as it’s clear that Rick did zero (?!) preparation for this event, he manages to whisk the man who killed his father away to his den. They have a very White Lotus-y conversation about the perils of taking land and treating its native population like shit, until Rick tires of it and blurts, “I have fantasized about this moment a thousand times… Gloria Hatchett. Name ring a bell?”
It does not, in fact, ring a bell.
The guy just looks at Rick with a dumb look on his face—Mr. Hatchett was clearly one of many sad individuals who had the misfortune of getting in the way of his quest to conquer Thailand. Rick pulls a gun. Says, “You ruined my fucking life.” Flips his chair over. Leaves. The name never rings a bell, actually.
So Rick leaves with his buddy and they decide to go on a bender in Bangkok. As Rick grows more inebriated, he seems to enjoy some sort of catharsis, remarking aloud how much he built up the man who killed his father. “But he’s a pathetic, frail old man, and I couldn’t even hit him,” he says. I’m curious what White has planned for Rick’s final note—something tells me a happily-ever-after with Chelsea is too easy.
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Luang Por Teera Delivers Season 3’s Thesis
Early in episode 6, we’re treated to a genuinely resonant speech from the monk at Piper’s (hopeful) temple, by way of White’s pen. I’ll drop it here, because it puts the entire season into clear view. Before we get there… what the hell is going on with Lochlan? After almost hurling during his dinner at the Temple, he pivots to wanting to take a gap year with Piper. “I don’t want to give into my dark shit,” he says. “I don’t want to make things worse.” Is there something we don’t know about him that Piper does? Or is referring to his compulsion to do things like jack off his own brother?
On that note, here’s the speech: “Remember this: Every one of us has the capacity to kill. Buddhist scripture condemns violence in every form. Violence, aggression, anger, stem from same source. Fear. The only good faith response is to sit with your feelings. Violence does spiritual harm to victim and to perpetrator. Buddhists believe always nonviolence.”
It may seem obvious in a way, but the monk, Luang Por Teera, is spelling out the spiritual effects of violence in this world. One important distinction: You do not have to be the perpetrator to have your soul crushed by it. White is saying that the mere presence of brutality can—and often does—wreck us all.
We can go character by character and draw a throughline—look at Rick, whose fantasy of killing his father’s murderer tore him apart—but Gaitok is really the avatar for this idea. Gaitok, as much as I bag on him, didn’t really do anything wrong the day of the robbery. The burglars just tricked him. Gaitok could’ve continued his peaceful, sweet life, but one violent act begets another. Pee Lek not only buys a gun, but takes him to a shooting range. Tim steals the gun, forcing Gaitok to risk his safety by taking it back. Now, even Mook basically just told the poor guy that if he doesn’t nut up, he’s not worth a damn thing to her. “I thought you were more ambitious and wanted a better job,” she tells him.
In my last recap, I predicted that Gaitok will play the hero and defend the resort from its next threat—he’s shooting the gun we heard in the premiere. Let me amend that: Gaitok will shoot his firearm, yes. We’ll see the killer instinct. But he won’t be a hero. He’ll be a cautionary tale.
