The White Lotus: Season 3 - Review

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

THE third season of The White Lotus drew a lot of criticism - most of it undeserved.

Critics took issue with the show’s repetitive format, its blunter satirical edge and argued that much if its concluding story arcs felt mid-judged and poorly handled.

Yet for my money, the show continued to deliver top tier television that asked relevant questions of both its characters and its viewers, while feeling somehow more spiritual given its Thailand setting and proximity to Buddhist ideology.

Besides, criticising The White Lotus for repeating its format - rich people suffering while on holiday at luxury resorts while the staff attempt to cater for their needs while juggling their own problems - is like having a go at 24 for operating within a constrained time period or ER for being too hospital-based.

Here, once again, we had a deliciously hideous bunch of 1%-ers riding for a fall, while deliberating over their place in the world.

Primarily, there’s the Ratliff family - led by wealthy businessman Timothy (Jason Isaacs), who finds himself under Federal investigation for shady business deals and facing a prison sentence within moments of arriving at their hotel. He’s joined by uptight, judgemental wife Victoria (Parker Posey) and their three children: alpha male Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), struggling to fit in/people pleasing Lochlan (Sam Nivola), and idealistic Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), who is writing a thesis about eastern religion (the reason for which they are visiting).

Then there’s three old friends reuniting for some quality time together after a few years apart… egotistical actress Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), high flying and even more highly strung lawyer Laurie (Carrie Coon), still recovering from a recent divorce, and stay-at-home mum Kate (Leslie Bibb), who loves a good gossip.

Somewhat more mysteriously (and ultimately sympathetically) is odd couple Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend Chelsea (played by Aimee Lou Wood), the former of whom has a hidden reason for being there - and wants an audience with the resort owner.

On the hotel side, there’s a possible romance blossoming between hotel security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and ‘health guru’ Mook (Lalisa Manoban), and possibly another between returning character Belinda (Natasha Rothwell, reprising her role from season 1) - albeit one threatened by the presence of another returning character Greg (Jon Gries), whose possible connection to the death of Jennifer Coolidge’s character at the end of season 2 puts Belinda on edge.

As ever, the series starts with the discovery of a body and flashes back to the events leading up to it - although this time around, the fatality (or more) is the result of a shooting spree. So, how many get it - and why?

Mike White, as ever, has fun teasing the answer and keeps his cards close to his chest throughout.

But while there’s always great enjoyment to be had in trying to guess the crime bit, the biggest joy in watching each White Lotus season unfold is in the way that White allows each character to unravel, while taking aim at society’s ills in the process.

In the case of the three female friends, White takes aim at toxic relationships and deconstructs feminism and friendship, with each of the three vying for position: Monaghan’s successful actress clearly enjoying her status as the recognisable one, yet prone to stealing men while being insecure in her own relationship and with her own image (the spectre of age on a career in the spotlight).

Coon’s lawyer, meanwhile, feels very much like a woman on the verge of a breakdown - something that the back-stabbing nature of events brings her closer to. While Bibb’s pro-Trump housewife (the revelation of which draws audible gasps from her friends) is a manipulator who exists best in the shadow of others.

In dissecting the Ratliff’s, White has plenty to tuck into - whether observing sickeningly rich corporate dynasties and how they accrued their empires, or confronting the toxic masculinity that is incumbent within that world. Isaac’s plays the put upon dad extremely well - even eliciting our sympathy at times.

But he’s a man on the very edge, displaying suicidal ideation as well as drug induced self-delusion. His alpha son, played brilliantly by Schwarzenegger, is in many ways a repugnant male, possibly influenced by the misogyny of Andrew Tate, who treats women as objects - there to be taken.

Once White’s script has finished with him, he has been put through the wringer - a once shatter-proof ego reduced to pieces amid incestuous and homosexual dalliances, female rejection, professional uncertainty and unexpected soul searching.

But then his family is very much at the centre of the spiritual nature of the series as a whole - their corporate, capitalist and moneyed lifestyle at odds with the stripped back Buddhist ideology that their daughter seeks to explore. Will she be able to embrace it once she really experiences it in the flesh?

White’s script makes both piercing and profound observations on modern life - it’s greed, it’s avarice, it’s sexuality and it’s hedonism as seen through the prism of the elite and the wealthy.

But it also confronts psychology - the effects of trauma, of grief, of guilt and of desire.

This is particularly applicable to the Goggins storyline, which arguably makes for the most compelling and ultimately tragic (White has stated he drew from Greek tragedy). It positions Goggins and Lou Wood as polar opposites (one young, the other old… one a sceptic, the other an optimist), whose competing ideologies somehow make them the most root-worthy characters in spite of the potential for violence that Goggins, in particular, certainly carries.

Their story also allows for the inclusion of guest star Sam Rockwell, as an old acquaintance of Goggins’, roped into the revenge plot he has in mind for the resort owner. But it also gives rise to one of this season’s standout moments: a jaw-dropping speech from Rockwell that confronts sexuality, identity, self-deception and acceptance. It’s the White Lotus at its most outrageous and perceptive.

If the supporting characters who make up the hotel staff carry less eight this time around than in previous seasons, that’s perhaps a valid criticism.

Thapthimthong’s security guard drew a lot of criticism for appearing too weak - although perhaps that said more about the values of those watching, given he exuded kindness and was very much anti-violence. But Manoban’s Mook was certainly under-used and fairly vacuous when she did make an appearance.

But White, in general across all three seasons, has tended to view niceness as a weakness, ripe for exploitation by the 1%-ers who frequent the resort. He even doubles down on that idea in this season’s finale, which sees Thapthimthong resorting to the violence he abhors in order to get ahead; and Rothwell’s Belinda take the money she’s offered - and probably owed - and run (rather than using it to start her business, or partner with one of her admirers at the hotel, another of this season’s ‘nice’ guys to finish empty-handed).

When Belinda states: “Can’t I just be rich for five fucking minutes?!” she is, perhaps, speaking for us all (or most of us, barring the monks).

We all chase wealth because we live in societies that encourage it. So, if we can’t attain it, then why not indulge in wealth porn? Especially if those on view are suffering?

It’s another White Lotus trait that redemption and happiness are concepts that frequently seem out of reach. The elites on shoe are doomed to live in perpetual misery. Sure, they can afford luxuries - but at what cost to their souls?

This is certainly true of Isaac’s family patriarch, who enjoys fleeting epiphanies about losing it all and surviving - only to be reminded (by his excruciating wife) that death would be better than poverty.

And it’s also true for Goggins’ broken Rick, whose own redemption and ‘release’ from the turmoil his life has been since the death of his father, is similarly short-lived - and with far-reaching, tragic consequences.

Perhaps The White Lotus’ greatest strength is its ability to provoke controversy and debate; to toy with perceptions of characters and to dissect the actual cost of wealth. Season 3 remained, for my money, as sharp, provocative and perceptive as ever.