In the Flesh: The White Lotus Season 3

“No one in the history of the world has lived better than we have,” drawls Victoria Ratliff (Parker Posey) with the particular flavor of self-satisfied tranquility only upper-class pill addicts can conjure. “Not even the old kings and queens. The least we can do is enjoy it. If we don’t, it’s offensive. It’s an offense to all the billions of people who dream they can live like we do.” It’s a perverse justification for hoarding wealth, the kind of thing capitalist parasites not only need to believe, but need to have constantly affirmed by those around them. The pleasure and relief on Victoria's face when her daughter, Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), breaks down in tears over not being able to hack the monastic lifestyle she crossed half the world to pursue, is one of the season’s most grotesque illustrations of the self-created prison of wealth. It isn’t that Victoria fears losing her daughter, it’s that she fears having to confront the repulsive, reptilian nature of her own complacent existence. The idea of someone breaking out of that life is an existential threat to her peace of mind.

Where Piper allows herself to slump back into the anesthetized tranquility of her family’s worldview, though, resort security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) finds himself forced to wrestle with his beliefs by the unexpected amorality of dancer Mook (Lalisa Manobal of BLACKPINK), who prods him repeatedly to abandon his Buddhist beliefs and use violence to defend the hotel’s monetary interests. Are gift shop tchotchkes really worth spilling blood over? Is the loss of the Ratliff family fortune really sufficient reason for family patriarch Tim (Jason Isaacs) to turn family annihilator, as he repeatedly fantasizes about before abortively attempting? Again and again The White Lotus asks what wealth means, what its absence means, what actions are permissible in pursuit of it. When Gaitok obeys the shrieking, hysterical Sritala (Lek Patravadi) and shoots Rick (Walton Goggins) to death, greed has clawed a victory for itself out of a pretty decent guy. It stays busy all season.

From the murderous rise to power of Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn) to the calculated blackmail Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and her son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) employ to wring blood money out of Gary (Jon Gries), who is strongly implied to have murdered his wife for her fortune, the show is replete with people finding (and crossing) their moral lines in the sand as they relate to money. It’s a much smarter angle than those explored in previous seasons of the show, which leaned heavily on comedy conventions and lacked the bite necessary for good satire. The White Lotus’s third season is funny, sure, but it’s funny in the manner of great dramas. The absurd antics and venal stupidity of the gangsters on The Sopranos, the biting wit and strange character foibles of Mad Men. The character comes first, the comedy proceeds naturally from them. Victoria’s horrified exclamation of, “You want to live in Taiwan?” when her daughter mentions moving to Thailand, Chelsea’s (Aimee Lou Wood) pleasantly matter-of-fact New Age statements about star charts and soulmates — it all comes naturally. 

The excesses of wealth, too, are beautifully deployed here, emphasized by deep, rich reds and golds as wealthy siblings jerk each other off and rich men hollowed out by their own fortunes drink themselves into dull-eyed stupors, wandering from room to room in a haze of constant discontent. There's a little Fitzgerald to it, a little Poe, and some of the most thoughtful positioning of Buddhist thought as it relates to modern capitalism I've seen. The void is all over this season, from the harrowing video of a lone figure annihilated by the world-smashing force of a tsunami to the calm explanation of death as the joyful return of the rain drop to the sea given by Luang Por Teera (Suthichai Yoon) to a dissociating Tim. That Ratliff actually appears to internalize and understand what the elderly monk is telling him, even if it takes staring death in the face to bring him to home plate, feels like a minor miracle. Sometimes the abyss gazing back is enough to dissuade us from gazing in the first place.

Visually, series creator, writer, and director Mike White has stepped up his game in a big way. His beloved interstitials, mood-setting shots of water, vegetation, wild animals, bodies in motion, are given more room to breathe here than in previous seasons, and their length allows the moods they set to fully saturate each episode. You start to feel almost like there’s something hidden in these silent images, something waiting in the water, something hiding in the trees among the wizened faces and dark, unknowable eyes of monkeys. For a series that began its life cycle as a toothless wealth comedy about various kinds of shitty people wisecracking their way through assorted hijinks to make this kind of quantum leap in quality is the best kind of surprise, and for the first time I can honestly say I’m looking forward to whatever comes next.