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It takes me less than 24 hours into a vacation to feel like I’ve been there for ages. The suitcase is open, the clothes are scattered, the toiletries displayed on the bathroom counter like I live there. I quickly forget about work (sorry to my editors) and other life stressors and the outside world in general. Whether it’s a wedding, a family visit, or a pure rest vacation, I’m locked in.
The same can’t be said of everyone in “The White Lotus” Season 3, though many have tried and succeeded at letting go during their Thailand retreat.
On the relaxed side, there’s Victoria (Parker Posey) and her kids (“I slept like a corpse”), plus Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) exploring physical therapies; somewhere in the middle there’s the trio of Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon), doing their best to unwind but also actively stressing each other out with every second they spend together; and then there’s the perpetually high-strung Rick (Walton Goggins) and Timothy (Jason Isaacs), plus Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) — whose personal safety undergoes a rollercoaster in Episode 2, “Special Treatments.”
Last week I wrote about the positives in Rick and Chelsea’s relationship, which Goggins himself described to IndieWire as “a great love story.” “I think it’s the first love story in the history of ‘The White Lotus, to be quite honest with you,” he said. “She’s seen him not in this position, but she also is able to absorb it.”
Episode 2 digs into cracks — not necessarily in the relationship itself, but in the baggage that comes with being so close to another person. Chelsea knows Rick well enough to know that he’s tightly wound and “a victim of [his] own decisions,” but so far, Rick remains reticent to share more with Chelsea.
But it takes less than a minute for him to share things with therapist Amrita (Shalini Peiris) that he has maybe never shared with his girlfriend, or at least not unpacked. It’s often easier to open up to a stranger — one of the main tenets of professional therapy — and Rick’s session not only establishes key details about his character, but contextualizes them with who he is now. He’s an orphan, but the trauma of his mother’s overdose and father’s murder still live in him, and not far from the surface. He is, in his own words, “nothing.”
This scene is maybe two minutes, and a brilliant display of Mike White’s economy as a storyteller. Yes, Rick explains his backstory in basic facts — in a way that characters usually don’t or can’t without it being lazy — but he uses that same tone to say highly subjective and immensely dark things about himself. Ever the pro, Goggins carries Rick’s darkness through every scene, and from this point forward viewers know the driving force behind it.
“I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve been given some great opportunities in my life, but this person is as close to me on a number of levels,” Goggins told IndieWire. “I understood his pain from the first time he began speaking on the page. For me, someone who is loquacious, to be given an opportunity to simmer in this resentment and to be consumed by this negativity — the way in which he expresses his pain when he’s given the opportunity to do it — is something that resonated very deeply with me, and I hope it will with the audience.”
Aimee Lou Wood in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3Fabio Lovino/HBOThe tone starts to shift this episode, with a masked gunman entering the resort, robbing a shop, and knocking Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) down when he tries to apprehend them. It’s hardly an action or fight sequence, but the kind of unexpected event that rattles people more as they process than may even register in the moment. Chloe and Chelsea immediately diverge in their analysis, as the violence prompts Rick and Mook (Lisa Manobal) to cherish Chelsea and Gaitok, respectively.
If “The White Lotus” has taught us one thing, it’s that life is precious, and can be snuffed out in sudden (and often unserious) ways.
Superlatives
- Least likely to die: Chelsea, since she just had a close call.
- Most in need of a Dr. Amrita session: Timothy, who is possibly on the lam after being chewed out over the phone by what sure sounds like Ke Hay Quan…
- Horniest: A strong showing by last week’s winner, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), but other key contenders emerging; Belinda during her treatment, Jaclyn describing her young husband, Chelsea and Rick because even though their communication sucks, their physical chemistry does not!
- Most Sus: Greg (Jon Gries), who is apparently going by the name Gary now. Was he always really Gary? Is Greg the lie?? Sir, who the hell are you? (Honorary mention: Kate, having separate convos with each of her besties about the other but also being outrageously nice to Victoria.)
- Most likely to die: Gaitok, who also had a close call but demonstrated a heroic streak that could put him in danger.
Grade: A-
New episodes of “The White Lotus” air Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
English (US) ·