"The White Lotus," Year Three

The response to the third season of "The White Lotus" has been much more negative than I expected, which puts me in the odd position of wanting to defend the show more than I might have otherwise.  If you've seen the first and second installments of "The White Lotus," you already know the gist here.  We follow various groups of rich, terrible guests of the White Lotus hotel, with someone guaranteed to be dead by the end of the last episode.  This time the setting is Thailand, in a White Lotus dedicated to health and wellness.  The themes of the season are spiritual rot, mortality, and some really screwed up family relationships.

There's a great set of characters this year.  Timothy and Victoria Ratliff (Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey) have built a family vacation around their daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) wanting to visit and interview the leader (Suthichai Yoon) of a nearby meditation center.  Their sons Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lachlan (Sam Nivola) are also in tow.  Frenemy girlfriends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon), and Kate (Leslie Bibb) are on a reunion trip.  There's depressed Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who end up trying to track down the man who killed Rick's father.   Of course we have the White Lotus staff, led by manager Fabian (Christian Friedel), and hotel owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), though more attention goes to aspiring security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his co-worker crush, Mook (Lalisa Manoban).  Finally, you may remember Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from the Hawaii edition of "TheWhite Lotus," who is on a work exchange trip, and becomes close to her local host, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul).  Scott Glenn and Sam Rockwell show up eventually in roles I will not spoil the specifics of, along with another familiar face from a previous season.

For the most part I really enjoyed this season of "The White Lotus," about on par with season two.   The show's creator, Mike White, reportedly patterned several of the stories on Greek tragedies, so the threat of bloodshed and highly inappropriate relationships are everywhere.  However, I like that there's a nice mix of more typical, down to earth situations, like the frenemy reunion with its fairly realistic exploration of female resentments and jealousies, and the more absurdist stories involving murder plots and blackmail.  Sometimes there are strange tonal inconsistencies - Belinda's storyline gets increasingly wild as the season goes on - but the various plots and characters balance against each other well.  I never felt, as I sometimes did with the second season, that certain characters or actors were being wasted.  Not all the stories played out the way I wanted them to - the Ratliffs' in particular - but I thought they worked on their own terms.  It's never been more obvious, however, that the foreshadowings of death are only there to keep the audience around for the character drama, and Mike White has no interest in actually constructing a whodunnit or howdunnit.     

I think this year suffered a little from not having a larger-than-life performance at its center on the level of Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya or Murray Bartlett's Armand, though Walton Goggins certainly put in some effort as a man embarking on the worst revenge plot ever hatched.  Jason Isaacs got me to sympathize with Timothy, as he stands on the precipice of financial ruin, and gradually realizes how hopelessly unprepared his family is for bad news.  Piper Perabo is the most delightfully awful rich lady caricature I've seen in some time, with Patrick Schwarzenegger also doing great things as a walking masculinity crisis.   Aimee Lou Wood might be the season's breakout star, as self-deluding but ever-hopeful Chelsea.  All the frenemies are great, but Carrie Coon with a monologue is always a force to be reckoned with.  However, the monologue of the season is definitely Sam Rockwell's - again, I refrain from spoilers.

  

I do feel that the picturesque Thailand setting wasn't used to its full potential.  Most of the appearances of Eastern spirituality are really just window dressing, and it feels like the bulk of the season could have taken place anywhere else.  Of the Asian performers, the only one I felt got much of a chance to do anything was Tayme Thapthimthong as Gaitok, and frankly he gets about the most perfunctory and least interesting narrative out of anyone in the cast.  I could have used more of  Sritala, who at least has hints of hidden depths.  

All in all, this season of "The White Lotus" was on par with the previous seasons, but there was room for improvement.  I'd urge Mike White to let things percolate a little longer before the inevitable fourth season.  

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