The White Lotus barrels toward tragedy in penultimate, Tennyson-referencing “The Lotus-Eaters”
Whenever a guest tells a White Lotus employee they “want to help,” it actually ends up like a curse.
TV Reviews The White Lotus
Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
…
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
—“The Lotos-eaters,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In 1832, Alfred, Lord Tennyson published the poem “The Lotos-eaters.” After the poet visited the Pyrenees mountains, he penned a poem in conversation with Homer’s Odyssey. Historically, different variants of the lotus plant appeared in China, Egypt, and Persia, but our collective idea of the “lotos” or “lotus” is tied up in its appearance in Homer’s work: “whosoever of them ate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no longer any wish to bring back word or to return.” Tennyson expanded the reference to the “lotus” in Odyssey with “The Lotos-eaters,” in which a group of mariners come upon an island where the “lotos” tree grows, and where the island’s inhabitants live in a blissful stupor after eating its fruit. Contemporaneously, you could argue that the fruit as imagined by Homer and Lord Tennyson is a drug, or any kind of addiction, that draws you away from your regular life. But in the context of The White Lotus as a series, there is only one thing the “lotos” or “lotus” can be: money. Oh, excuse me for not quoting Shane and Kitty Patton correctly: “Money, money, money!” Go ahead and imagine my shoulder wiggle; I promise I’m doing it.
Money is the elixir, the ambrosia, the manna upon which the White Lotus guests feast, and yes, this has come up over and over again during Mike White’s preceding four episodes, but it takes on a grimier weight in penultimate episode “The Lotus-Eaters.” What kind of life did Armond lead before coming to work at the White Lotus resort, that he can quote Lord Tennyson at the drop of a hat? And: Who does Armond see himself as in this poem?
Read “The Lotos-eaters,” and it describes the exhaustion, desperation, and malaise of overworked, lost men who collapse at the first offering of rest from island inhabitants who live openly and easily. “Should life all labour be?” the interlopers ask, and so does Armond when quoting. Does Armond consider himself one of the natives from Homer’s and Tennyson’s works, one of the Lotophagoi who selflessly offers leisure and mindlessness to the guests—the “special chosen baby child[ren],” as Armond called them—who come to this place? That isn’t exactly true, is it, since Armond, as a higher-level employee of this resort that stole bequeathed Hawaiian land, is arguably complicit in the imperialist spread affecting the actually indigenous. Or, is Armond one of those mariners looking for a break: a person whose labor has been endless, and who is embracing the opportunity to get lost? And if so, what is his “lotus”? It’s not money. It’s something more like not giving a fuck, like singer Peggy Lee in the classic 1969 song “Is That All There Is?”:
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is
Or like Tyler Durden in Fight Club: “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” Armond is a bird pecking through the last bars of its cage, and while so many others at the White Lotus resort are trapped—Belinda in her potential reliance on Tanya, Tanya in her reliance on men, Rachel in her marriage to Shane, and poor, sweet Paula, whose involvement in the theft of Nicole’s jewelry is immediately guessed at by Olivia—Armond is trying very hard to get free. “Is there any peace/In ever climbing up the climbing wave?” Tennyson asked, and think of those Hawaiians who accept Quinn into their canoeing circle. Every day they paddle outward, and every evening they come back. Armond, though, is the like the men in the boat of The White Lotus’ opening credits: facing a gargantuan wave that threatens to wash him away. That riptide will drag you under, and Armond is on his way down.
“The Lotus-Eaters” is soaked in dread and disappointment from the beginning, which cuts between Armond’s post-rimming, post-walked-in-on panic and Paula’s rejection of Kai’s domestic planning. Funny how Paula’s “I’m just being straight with you” sounds a lot like Mark’s “realness”—on a long-enough timeline, we all become our own villains—but then, unsurprisingly, Nicole’s $75,000 bracelets come up again. What if Paula were to help Kai steal some of the Mossbacher matriarch’s jewelry? That kind of money could help Kai and his brothers hire a lawyer to fight the resort, which is an altruistic, a la Robin Hood reason. But I also think Paula was driven a little bit here by how frankly exhausting the Mossbachers can be, and how consistently their dinner conversations are the absolute worst. Nicole’s insistence that Hawaiian employees dancing for tourists staying in $9,000-a-night rooms is “just a way for them to honor their culture.” Mark’s scoffing “Obviously imperialism was bad … But it’s humanity. Welcome to history. Welcome to America.” Remember when Paula asked the Mossbachers what they stand for? Well, this is it.
Yes, Kai is right that these people aren’t those people who stole from him. And overall, I do not think The White Lotus as a series has yet come down on all the “All rich people should be eaten” side of the ideological divide. But, it does come down on the “Rich people will always be fine” divide after Kai’s thieving of the Mossbachers’ safe is interrupted by Nicole, who bails on the family scuba-diving trip after getting into it with Mark again. Mark’s attempt to defend Nicole ends up bringing the couple back together; the resort comps their entire stay (which they could certainly afford); and Olivia and Quinn now look at their father with respect, which was all Mark ever wanted. Sure, yes, it is admirable that Mark moved so quickly to defend his wife. But The White Lotus is consistent in emphasizing that there are levels of elitism, power, and wealth that, once you pass into their boundaries, will protect you forever. And so the Mossbachers? They’re absolutely fine. But Paula? Olivia has her number. And Kai? He’s on the run, with what I think is the series’ first fade-to-black mid-episode moment. (There are cameras all over the resort, I would assume, and it’s not like Kai’s balaclava and baseball hat hide his height, body type, or employee uniform. I’m worried.)
You can basically rely on the fact that whenever a guest tells a White Lotus employee they “want to help,” it actually ends up like a curse. We have it with Paula and Kai, and we have it with Tanya and Belinda, especially now that the former is diving headfirst into this affair with Greg. If the character were played by anyone but Jennifer Coolidge, I probably wouldn’t have any sympathy at all. Week after week, though, Coolidge finds new emotional notes to hit with this character, and her work in “The Lotus-Eaters” is stellar. She’s phenomenally awkward (“Like, when, you think?” in response to Greg’s “Let’s hang out later”). She’s uncomfortably vulnerable (“The core of the onion, Belinda, is just a straight-up alcoholic lunatic!”). And she’s self-sabotaging in such a dramatic way that she tries to ruin things before they even start (“I’m a very needy person, and I am deeply, deeply insecure … I want you to get out of here and save yourself because I’m like a dead end. This is a trap door, and I want you to get out!”) How amazing, then, when Greg absolutely does not fall into said trap. This man is trying to smash, and kudos to Jon Gries (Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite!) for being utterly nonplussed in the face of Tanya’s mania. “You’re not really cuckoo” isn’t exactly nice, but someone who finally pushes up against Tanya instead of appeasing her? Maybe that’s what she wants—and maybe that’s why Belinda’s business proposal is going nowhere.
Someone on Twitter told me they found Belinda’s storyline “problematic” because they doubt that a Black woman working in such a high-stress environment, who can recite Hindu chants and is so good at her job, would fall for Tanya’s offer of a business partnership. I can certainly understand that argument. But I think the point The White Lotus is trying to make is that these employees, Belinda and Armond both, are beaten down by the day-in, day-out frustrations of dealing with guests who mostly don’t care about them at all. That’s why Armond rises to Shane’s bait, and that’s why Belinda is grasping onto the possibility of Tanya helping her launch a wellness center—and, possibly, why Belinda demonstrating neediness to the already-needy Tanya is actually hurting her cause. She’s recycling the same lines she used on Tanya earlier (“Women from all economic backgrounds could benefit, not just rich women. Not that there’s anything wrong with rich women … you know what I mean”), and she’s still trying to sway Tanya away from Greg and toward herself. And in return, Tanya … buys her dinner. “Charge all this stuff to my room, you can even have more if you want” is such a patronizing line, and the dejection Natasha Rothwell paints all over Belinda’s face was well-done.
And finally, there are the Pattons, with the increasingly lost Rachel, who finally realizes why the Pattons accepted her. It’s not because they respect her job, or because they think she’s smart or interesting, or because they even like her company. They tolerate her because she is beautiful, and every time Shane or Kitty says that to her, it hurts a little bit more. Consider all the ways Rachel retreats into herself this episode: her thousand-yard-stare and refusal to make eye contact at breakfast; her pained underbite flexing when Shane leaves her alone with Kitty by the pool; her shellshocked stillness at dinner while Shane and Kitty gossip about people she doesn’t know, speaking endlessly—and solely—about their money. “Be happy, okay. Be happy,” Kitty coos in Rachel’s ear at their parting, and I don’t begrudge anyone who is unsympathetic to the situation in which Rachel finds herself. She’s gorgeous! She’s rich now! She willingly married Shane! What is there to complain about? But think again of that line from “The Lotos-eaters” poem: “What is it that will last?” Maybe Rachel doesn’t find the lotus so sweet. Maybe the Pattons’ marriage doesn’t last. And don’t forget: that box of human remains that Shane was staring at in the premiere episode awaits us in next week’s series finale, “Departures.”
Stray observations
- Connie Britton had that standout scene with Alexandra Daddario earlier in the season, and she gets two this episode with her extended bickering with Steve Zahn. Her line deliveries of “Because I’m still in a lot of pain!” and “Why am I the fucking punching bag?” were wonderfully histrionic, and I think those cracks in her normally calm demeanor really worked.
- “You said a bunch of shit … You owe me,” Dillon says to Armond. A threat, or just a reminder for Armond to hold up his end of their bargain?
- Quinn’s “END HOMELESSNESS” T-shirt continues to pique my interest about this character, who at first seemed so different from Olivia but who I think ultimately shares her general frustration with the status quo. Quinn’s growth over the series, though, and his actual interest in and appreciation for Hawaiian customs now suggest to me that he’s willing to actually do something to change the world in a way his older sister isn’t.
- If you would like to bleed out of your ears—and try to figure out which room of the Four Seasons Resort Maui was used to stand in as the White Lotus’s Pineapple Suite—you can see how many thousands of dollars per night these rooms cost.
- How far from the Big Island to Kauai, the journey the Hawaiian canoers are training for? 300 miles.
- “We could use the dead weight. Makes us strong” is an entire lifestyle in two lines, and if there were a whole show about the Hawaiian rowers, I would watch it.
220 Comments
Fun, tense episode. It says something (I’m not sure what) that as awful as these characters are, I’m kind of rooting for them. Except for Shane of course. And Olivia.One small correction for the review: The correct appositive for Jon Gries is “Lazlo Hollyfeld from Real Genius”.
I’d prefer to go with “King Vidiot” from Joysticks.
When he popped up last week, I remembered him as half of the younger, long-haired, ambitious cops competing with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines in Running Scared (1986).
wow throwbackprops
Having finally seen Get Shorty within this past pandemic year–oh, my god, he’s Ronnie?! I didn’t at all recognize him since here he’s an old man. Time, man.
He will always be Laszlo.
A hundred upvotes for the Lazlo shout-out! I had the exact same thought. “Napoleon Dynamite.” Pssh. Millennials.
One small correction for the review: The correct appositive for Jon Gries is “Lazlo Hollyfeld from Real Genius”.
I couldn’t give you a star for the first paragraph, but the second is exactly right.
I recognized him immediately, but could not recall from where. He was the homeless man who refused to return Kramer’s Tupperware.
Here is a lot more of the empathy I didn’t see in the first couple of episodes, and White has made all his characters, and the show, better for it. I even felt for Nicole on the scuba boat. She probably had no idea that Mark thought she didn’t respect him—I think she was just complacent in her marriage and had gotten used to treating Mark that way without a thought. And I believed her when she said his radical honesty was selfish, reigniting the pain of the affair. Her profane outburst did convey the pressure she’s under. So to that end, I felt glad by episode’s conclusion that the Mossbachers had rekindled their marriage (thought it’s on the back of what could be a tragedy).Just as it was a sweet moment that Greg stayed after Tanya kicked him out. She’s to me a more sympathetic character than what others may think—to the point I worry she’s gonna be the one in the box cause she kills herself. Jennifer Coolidge is amazing in this series: conveying tragedy and hilarity in the very same scenes, so that we’re greatly moved but also we crack up. This woman is in the grip of a deep depression and the other characters should recognize that and help her. Belinda does try to help, but it’s the nature of the bad capitalist system that makes her think more about her business plan to escape her life dealing with the awful rich.Poor Paula became an honorary rich person, finally joined the family in a way, by her selfishness hurting others. White is nicely depicting how inescapable and toxic the system is that drives all these characters to be selfish and hurt others, even when they act for their own survival or feel they have a more righteous motive. The system changes all behavior.Loved the visual joke of Rachel reading My Brilliant Friend (which is about a strong, free spirited woman), while Shane reads Malcolm Gladwell (who’s not well regarded as a social science journalist I hear).
Re: “She probably had no idea that Mark thought she didn’t respect him—I think she was just complacent in her marriage and had gotten used to treating Mark that way without a thought.”You have more empathy than I. I thought she was rolling her eyes at the idea that he (a rich, middle-aged white man) lacks respect, or that he has a yearning to be respected. A need for respect that causes him to act in unloving ways. Then again, in the previous episode she did say “it’s hard for white men right now!” so I think you’re probably right about what she meant.
I think you’re right in that she has been rolling her eyes at his behavior. She said in a previous episode, and accurately, that he wasn’t dealing with his knowledge of his dad’s homosexuality at all well. I read her reaction to his complaint on the scuba boat as surprise, and that it was, to her, another case of him having another strange response to the news of his dad.
He also has been at the very beginning of that book since the show started. Like he hasn’t made any progress. I’m not sure if that was a deliberate choice or not but I find it funny.
I also laughed. It’s been four days and I think he’s moved about three pages. Meanwhile Olivia and Paula are apparently reading feminist tomes once a day.
Weren’t they reading the same books the last time we saw them reading? (Was it Marx and Freud? Am I misremembering? Not exactly feminist, but…)
For some people, the most infamous segment of Blink! is the portion in which a divorce therapist proves that while listening to a single conversation, whether for just a couple of minutes or over an hour, can predict whether that couple’s marriage will end in divorce at or above 90% accuracy.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman#Predictions_of_divorce
Are we assuming Paula isn’t rich? I sort of expect it to be the joke that Paula’s family is more wealthy. I assume that Olivia is going to a pretty good school with the scions of wealthy families.
Like I said above, I think we are meant to assume she isn’t rich and a scholarship student or something (which is why we haven’t had her past filled in)—that’s White’s point, but she actually is at least comfortably well off.
But I like that this is left completely unremarked upon. Is she a scholarship student? A diversity admit? Or every bit as (or more) academically accomplished than Olivia? Wealthy in her own right, yet rails about oppression? Not wealthy, and has experienced it firsthand? Some combination thereof? Not addressing any of those questions makes her much more intriguing and her actions either more understandable or more shallow and hypocritical.
Paula is certainly NOT poor. With all of her prescriptions, diagnoses and neuroses, no way she isn’t from— at least— and upper middle class family. Her behavior reeks of rich girl running away from her privilege. She didn’t act or appear in the least bit grateful to this family for spiriting her away on this expensive trip. A poor person would have more manners, be more humbled/appreciative. Paula was entitled. I never felt for one second that she didn’t fit right in.
The best Nicole moment in this episode was her having been driven back the their room, crying on the bed, and simultaneously folding a shirt, because she just can’t help herself. Brilliant.
The more we see of Shane and his mother, the harder it gets for me to imagine that Rachel could’ve spent all of this time with them and not come to this breaking point long before the honeymoon.
I think it’s likely she felt pressure to marry due to her own financial situation.
I think Mike White is a lot more subtle than that. Having Rachel marry Shane to basically survive would kind of let her off the hook – it puts her more in the role of someone like Kai, who has to cater to rich people to keep a roof over his head. By comparison, Rachel seems like she was getting by OK, and doesn’t have the excuse of marrying Shane out of harsh financial need. Instead she’s doing this to instantly jump from striving to rich, while fooling herself into thinking that wasn’t what she was doing. Now she’s finally realizing what she signed herself up for, but the fact that she’s struggling with it shows that she does still have other choices.
Someone on Twitter suggested that she might had been going through a crisis of confidence when she met Shane. And maybe he gave her some validation at first which swept her off her feet.
That’s kind of what I think. We know they’ve been together less than a year, and considering Shane seems like a narcissist, I imagine he love-bombed her for the first few months. She wasn’t thinking she was marrying rich, she was thinking she was marrying someone who loved her. It’s only now that Shane “has her” (in a legal sense) that he’s letting his true colors show. We also know from her talk with Paula and Olivia in the first episode that they weren’t living together before marriage and they hadn’t even discussed things like changing names (so I doubt they’ve discussed anything even more complex, like kids or eventual health concerns or whatever else), so for me it doesn’t seem too unbelievable that she was seeing a very different side of Shane before they got married.
Right–their courtship was quick. And from all we’ve heard the run up to the wedding was intense with the mother planning it within an inch–I could see how in the whirlwind, even a rational person could just get so wrapped up and go for the ride. On the honeymoon that pressure now is gone, and she finally gets a chance to see, without all the tension, the guy and situation she’s stuck with.
I expect her courtship with him was like an extended version of The Bachelor – nothing real about their daily lives whatsoever, just a long line of Hamptons summer homes, great restaurants and big parties. Then they’re engaged and planning a wedding.
There’s also the incredible pressure women can face to “marry well,” even today. And Shane is certainly conventionally good looking. Makes it easy for someone to talk herself into thinking she is “in love” and to ignore obvious red flags. Plus in one of the “behind the scenes” videos Daddario said the backstory was that Rachel had not known Shane for all that long, definitely less than a year.
While Jake Lacy has never played a jerk quite like this–at least that I’ve seen–he seems to be pigeonholed a bit into that role. In Carol he played the “conventionally good looking” guy that Therese should have married if she wasn’t in love with Carol. On Girls he was the one sane (and I guess safe) boyfriend Hannah had (where I really felt sorry for the guy)…
I don’t think Rachel is only just realizing the Pattons are assholes, what she’s realizing is that she is is nothing but a decoration to make Shane look good and for him to fuck.What is dawning on her is that she is nothing but a trophy wife in this relationship. And Rachel is not the type to want to be that. We know this because any woman so inclined who looked like Alexandra effing Daddario could’ve done a whole of a lot better than Shane, in terms of money and social standing.
Eh, if you’ve ever read about women who marry billionaires (think people like Wendi Deng) it’s not so much about looks beyond a certain threshhold, but rather how much they want it and what they’re willing to do to get it. There are way more gorgeous 20 and 30 somethings out there than super rich guys who are up for (or vulnerable to) getting married, and if you don’t have the killer instinct needed to elbow out a rival or the willingness to have sex with a 70-year old, you can only aim but so high!
That’s what I meant by “any woman so inclined”.
Yes, this is the big thing the show asks you to suspend your disbelief on—that how in the world did Rachel fall in love with Shane. I did it a few episodes back and am greatly enjoying that story. Alexandra Daddario is a fantastic actor.
My guess: he reads books, and she thinks that makes him a kindred spirit.
But she’s a writer, I doubt it’s rare for her to stumble across a fellow reader.
Having him read Gladwell was a particularly on brand flourish.
I wonder how much Daddario relates to Rachel. How often is she cast in a role where it’s like “Your character is beautiful and guys love her, and that’s it. Have fun! Oh, though your character might be dead, at some time but she’s definitely a love interest, and who cares about her backstory or needs because well, you make that guy very happy.” I feel this is one of the few times I’ve seen her given something really meaty with layers and she’s just knocking it out of the park. I hope she gets more roles like this because she’s been the breakout in this show.
I got that sense reading the episode descriptions, that the role feels like an allegory for her career up to this point.
Did you see her on Women who Kill (as a crazy bisexual woman no less?) While watching I could never tell if she was great in the role or terrible (interestingly they’ve cast her brother, who if you squint and only look at from the neck up looks *so much* like her, in the “dumb gigolo” role this season).
I felt like a lot of the acting from all of the actors on Why Women Kill was weird because of the tone the show runner was going for. It was the same show runner as Desperate Housewives. This show is clearly giving her more organic acting work.
Yah, that’s Marc Cherry and Why Women Kill (not Women who Kill as I always seem to call it–I think that’s some pseudo doc show) definitely takes his camp style and ups it. So it is hard to tell acting talent in a way (and I thought Daddario wasn’t as suited to the style as some of the other actors, but she was also stuck with the worst storyline…)
I think it was a mixture of her character and the show’s overall tone that didn’t quite work for her. Trying to mix a seductress type with a campy tone was awkward. I think if Marc Cherry took the premise and made an erotic thriller show instead of a soap, it might have been different for her. I’m personally hoping that if The Girlfriend Experience gets renewed for a Season 4, she’ll be the lead after making a thankless cameo role in Season 3.And yeah, that storyline was lame. For a show called “Why Women Kill”, that one spent too much time focusing on the husband.
she has been putting in work in a bunch of smaller indie-style features for a couple of years now (in addition to huge crap like San Andreas). I haven’t caught all of them but she definitely seems seasoned and prepared for bigger things now. We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a bit of a letdown (and Sebastian Stan was disappointing) but she and Taisa Farmiga were both excellent. I heard she was good in We Summon the Darkness also. She has 60 imdb credits, so a lot of it is just good broad ranging experience.
ALways Lived in the Castle was a let down, but it’s one of my fave novels and almost impossible to film I think — still it was weird how it barely got a release (apparently it was on and then pulled from Netflix?)
Stoker was a better adaptation (slash nonadaptation) and Matthew Goode was a thousand times better as the Charles character
I like Seb Stan, but he was a bad fit—and Goode would have been ideal. Funny you say that about Stoker—I said that to my boyfriend when Castle came out as well. The film isn’t really very good, but I still think it deserved to be easier said than it ended up being (if only to get more people to read the novel.)
I’ll go out on a limb and guess that San Andreas and Baywatch were by far the biggest paydays of her career, and can’t blame her for taking those roles.
I mean, she does say she’s never not worried about money before, and honestly, worrying about money can take up a lot of brain space that could be used to worry about other things, like what it would really feel like to spend the rest of your life married to a rich asshole. Being broke, it’s easy to get into the mindset that enough money will fix all your problems, because you don’t really believe you’ll ever have it. The only explanation I can really understand for Rachel getting married to Shane in the first is that she told herself she could figure out all these problems once she had access to all that money and privilege, and now she has that and she’s realizing she doesn’t actually have any plan to handle the problem of being married to Shane Patton. Either that or she’s just like the most passive, spineless person ever.
Right, Shane is so awful and Rachel would have seen it from day 1 so it is her fault for marrying him. I don’t have sympathy for her. She shouldn’t have married him. Also, it is not Shane’s fault that she has no career. She isn’t good at her job; she wrote the article about Nicole by using facts from some other article that she didn’t even verify. Whether or not Rachel wants to stay married to Shane, if she wants to have a career, then she needs to do the work. She needs to go back to school, figure out what she is good at. Or work at one of those charities with a real role. I have no sympathy for that character and that storyline is the only one I don’t like. It doesn’t fit in with the theme of the show.
The one storyline we have trouble swallowing at home is that Rachel is only NOW realizing how utterly horrible Shane & family are.
This kind of thing happens. She may have had friends that warned her of his true colors. But they haven’t known each other very long, I agree with who said he probably love-bombed her. I think some of it’s a self-esteem thing, women get married to worse people in shorter amounts of time: under 2 years can still be puppy-love stuff. He’s definitely someone that can turn up and down the charm. I honestly just feel very sad for her.
I keep saying it’s like she met him on the flight to Hawaii and they got married on a layover.Shane seems to be pretty upfront with who he is and I don’t see him being a different person before they got married.Rachel having doubts (however justified or not) is more about her than it is Shane.
And Kai? He’s on the run, with what I think is the series’ first fade-to-black mid-episode moment. (There are cameras all over the resort, I would assume, and it’s not like Kai’s balaclava and baseball hat hide his height, body type, or employee uniform. I’m worried.)More than that, if he’d stopped to think for a second he would’ve realized that it was impossible for him to get any significant amount of money for the bracelets. He is not a career criminal, so he won’t know where to find a fence. And if he tries going to a pawnshop, any honest pawnbroker will call the cops on him the second they see the bracelets… and any crooked one would give him mere cents on the dollar for them.
I really liked this episode but I really, really hated this narrative choice. Between the amount of visual security I’d imagine being installed at a resort like this and the level of discomfort Kai displayed while Paula was laying out her plan for him, it was pretty disappointing that the next time we see him he’s just going for it. It didn’t feel earned, but more importantly it didn’t seem to respect its characters or its setting at all.I had the same thought you did – if somebody handed me something and told me I could sell it for $75,000, I don’t think I could get any more creative than creating a StockX account and making a poston Craigslist?
The show highlights his criminal inexperience by showing a stack of money right next to the bracelets, which he ignored for said bracelets.
I thought she was going to tell him to take the cash!!!
That’s what I really didn’t get… It speaks volumes to me that Paula, a smart college student, would just assume Kai not only could pull it off but… would have or be able to find connections to fence the bracelets? Wha?
I mean, I think that’s exactly it though: Paula is a wealthy-ish insulated college student. She assumes all working-class struggling people are basically okay with criminality and have easy criminal connections when needed. Like “Of course you’d steal! That’s what you people do!” Of course she never considered the actual practicality of the plan. And remember, this heist is more about a “fuck you” to the Mossbachers for her than it is about any real concern for Kai’s financial wellbeing. As for why he went through with it – I think he really is in stupid love with her and wants to prove his bravery and loyalty by accepting her “gift”. She Lady Macbeth’d him.
Oh I completely agree with all of that. I wish the reviewer had caught, or mentioned the fact that it spoke volumes about Paula’s own privilege that she just assumed this guy who is in a lower class than she is would be able to sort out all the criminal details.
Lady MacBeth, with a hint of Steinbeck’s The Pearl.
I also think she shamed him into is, as if not going through with the plan would be a betrayal to his people.I do hope he tells the cops that Paula gave him the code once he realizes she’s flown the island.
But I think the point The White Lotus is trying to make is that these employees, Belinda and Armond both, are beaten down by the day-in, day-out frustrations of dealing with guests who mostly don’t care about them at all. That’s why Armond rises to Shane’s baitArmond is the one who initiated this whole conflict with Shane and repeatedly escalated it.Paula ironically shows in this episode why she really does belong amongst the Mossbachers, having made a complete mess of a guy’s life through clueless meddling.
I’ve nominated Paula as the biggest villain in this tropical drama.
Yah, we agree on your second point—the review has WAY WAY too much sympathy for Paula. How on Earth did she ever think this plan was a good one? And it really shows her own blindness that she assumes Kai will naturally be able to pull it off (and I guess find a way to easily off load the stolen goods, etc, etc).
Took “left him holding the bag” to a whole new level.
I’m not clear on why she didn’t immediately grab her phone and warn him. She not have her phone? Did she just freeze? Or maybe does she just suck as a human being?I don’t get all the sympathy for Paula. She’s like the bad girl in a film noir, except she’s just stupid and selfish instead of being cold and calculating. I also have a feeling we’re going to find out she’s not poor. She’s just not as rich is Olivia. The way she told Kai she’s leaving had a feeling of, “Um yeah I’m not staying. This was fun but you’re poor and I can’t live like that.”
Oh I’ve been pretty certain from the start that she’s fairly well off, and not just someone who got a full scholarship or whatever and met this rich girl. (For one thing I suspect if she truly had zero money it somehow would have been mentioned by now.)
I think she did genuinely freeze (or sorta freeze) and that’s why she failed to do anything. I mean, I was actually thinking how in her shoes I would have even done something as obvious as made an excuse during the fight to get upset and run back to the hotel first to warn Kai, or at least try.
I really hate to say this but I wonder if people like our reviewer here who have much more sympathy for Paula than she deserves are playing right into White’s hands. She’s a POC, who is on this holiday with an insufferable family, so of course our natural tendency is to see her concern with social wrongs as coming from a more legit place than they do with Olivia, and to relate it to what we perceive as probably being her own experience. When nothing we’ve actually been shown or told on screen confirms that take on her life.
While actor interpretation isn’t Bible, looks like O’Grady doesn’t think she’s that well-off. https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/brittany-ogrady-white-lotus-paula
The first thought that came to my mind was how there was absolutely no way that Kai would be able to fence the bracelets for the full retail value.
And then hire a lawyer for $75k (or whatever the total haul was worth on the black market – definitely nothing like retail) who is going to take down a resort company and give the land back to the native Hawaiians? It’s not just being outraged on his behalf, it’s idiotic and naive.
Exactly – Paula gets to live out her freshman dorm “eat the rich” fantasy while still naively enjoying a rich-person vacation and suffering none of the consequences that Kai will. She’ll permanently ruin his life and then happily go home, looking back on this trip fondly as a “learning moment” for her.
When she could’ve achieved the same goal by just handing Kai the bracelet. But when you’re not willing to risk anything…
She couldn’t even be bothered to jump off the boat and stop him once she thought someone was going to be in the room.
That’s if she isn’t the one who dies.
Paula’s not the biggest villain, but she’s perhaps the most self-delusional. She is not one of the “good guys.” She’s hate watching her own vacation while still enjoying all the fruits of her host family’s white supremacy. Like Rachel, she maybe wants to be a good person or, perhaps, at least be seen as one.
See, Alfie actually made a good ol’ typo, and he meant “Lotto-eaters”.
“…poor, sweet Paula”Uh, that’s an interesting take.
she’s neither.
Also, even if she hadn’t done all this, she’s been a drip from the start.
Between the Odyssey and Tennyson, I might be interested in this thing. Throw in the Fists and I’m sold.
I was a little confused about why Kai made the choice he did to mask up and go after Nicole like that. When he masked up I assumed he’d just run and brush past her. I guess no time to think?Ah, the well-intentioned guests. Paula really effed that one up, her very poorly thought-out plan to rid herself of any of her own guilt. Poor Belinda. She really did not want to buy into any of this and was basically backed into letting herself believe it. Tanya’s so heartbreaking and engaging, but now I’m just picturing all the similar damage she’s already done elsewhere.
I still don’t get why Kai didn’t just exit the bedroom door onto the patio, where Nicole would never have seen him and where he could just hop over the patio gate and then walk to the beach. The Mossbachers’ suite is on the first floor, I’m 90% sure. The windows looking out are a sliding door.
I guess we’re meant to just write it all off to panic. Or maybe he knows there are external cameras but not hallways cameras?
He also had work gloves. Could have put the items back in the safe and pretended to be there repairing something. Britton was by the front door bawling, he had time. Panicked.
I don’t think Paula’s being framed as poor or sweet – convincing a vacay fling to commit grand theft for ???. She doesn’t even know why she’s doing it, outside of sticking it to the Mossbachers.
Goddamn, been a while since I’ve been this genuinely nervous for an episode of television… I thought the coffin bit in the premier wasn’t going to work, but this really is a masterpiece of built tension. Can’t wait for the finale!
We have a bunch of flawed, awful human beings vying for the top villain spot. Shane and Armond would seem to be the most obvious, but I’m going with Paula. What she did was so utterly stoopid and mean spirited and never considered the logistics of dealing with stolen jewelry. Kai got conned, big time. Granted he should have never listened to her in the first place, misplaced trust can cause one to do Stoopid stuff.
The worst part of Paula is her passing off the crime to Kai, assuming he’s the one to do it (and willing to do it). That says a lot about her character, how she views others and her own privileges.
I still give top villain spot to Shane. Even if he hasn’t done anything actually villainous, he’s still the #1 asshole, and that’s good enough for me.
Being humans, they (and we) are all flawed. I don’t think they are necessarily awful human beings though. We’re seeing their worst traits, for sure, but that’s merely the focus of the director for the sake of the story.
None are terribly sympathetic but I guess I feel most for Mark, Nicole, and Belinda (who has my personal vote). They seem to be fairly normal people processing bad news. I see your Armond and Paula leading the pack and raise you Olivia. Shane can be a jerk but doesn’t rise to my level of villain.
He’s a drug addicted, subordinate-seducing thief who resents the job he’s in (and doesn’t seem to be particularly good at it right now).
Paula is your snotty know-it-all college kid who is blinded by idealism she probably picked up in school and yet resents the people who have invited her to their family vacation. She has upped her insolence with being an accomplice to a felony -from her benefactors now less- perpetrated by the one person who seems to care about her and whose people she outwardly supports.
Olivia seems to be a worse version of Paula (outside the criminality of course) who has no respect for her parents, disdains her brother, toys with her so-called friend, and even looks down her nose at the other guests.
Shane is completely unaware of how vapid and condescending he is, even to his brand new wife. His tussle with Armond is overblown. He is guilty of simply not letting it go.
Tanya is simply a mess.
Quinn is a typical socially awkward teenage boy who is discovering there’s life outside of his phone and video games.
Olivia and Paula both need to be in that box. I simply don’t see any redeeming qualities in either of them. Shane, to your point, is a product of his upbringing with just an extra splash of mean streak.He reminds me of Bradley Cooper in Wedding Crashers, used to having every single thing in his life exactly the way he wants it and lashing out when they aren’t.
Roxana Hadid, I just want to say you did a really great job breaking down this episode, most especially fleshing out Tennyson’s poem and extrapolating some of its themes to this episode. You keyed on the “gray areas” of just who are those at the hotel consumed by exhaustion, desperation, and malaise from overwork. Because clearly it exists in both guests and hotel staff and is not black and white which would be a far too simplified take.Also, as you pointed out: “We could use the dead weight. Makes us strong” is a remarkable macro observation of this show. Mike White had to be grinning ear to ear when he typed that, I know I was.
And not only is the hotel staff consumed by physical exhaustion, but (as we see in Armond and Belinda especially) the emotional labour of constantly having to suppress their real feelings in deference to the paying customers whose feelings are the only ones with value here. That shit is truly exhausting.
I’m going to wager the body in the coffin is Greg’s. The way he has those coughing fits and keeps grabbing his arm, I think they’re pretty strongly foreshadowing that he is going to have a heart attack. Probably during or after sex with Tanya, which makes me giddy with anticipation for what Jennifer Coolidge will do with the scene when he does…
That’s kind of what I’m envisioning as well. Though that nosy couple at the airport said they heard of a ‘murder’ at the resort, I think it could have been easily mistaken as someone might have ‘joked’ that she ‘killed him’ during sex or something crass like that.
I’m pretty sure what the airport couple says exactly is “we heard someone was killed” – take that as you will.
Regarding Belindas storyline…. She’s also a women of color who would be living and working on a remote Hawaiian island (her chants on the funerary cruise are Hawaiian). This is an entirely different culture from the mainland US. We can also assume she’s been doing spiritual work in the context of the islands. You can see in Belindas interactions that she’s fully aware her capital is waining in the situation. Their is an innocence that comes with prolonged existence outside of the mainland. Hawaii forces you to be open & kind comparatively. I experienced this myself after moving back to Philadelphia after a 6 year stint in the islands. I actually ended up in some fairly dangerous situations during the transition because I’d quite literally lost my street smarts…. I completely understand the root of the criticism concerning Belinda. “Someone on Twitter told me they found Belinda’s storyline “problematic” because they doubt that a Black woman working in such a high-stress environment, who can recite Hindu chants and is so good at her job, would fall for Tanya’s offer”This criticism also comes from a lack of understanding as to what assimilation to local Hawaiian culture entails and what isolation from some of the United States cultural ills can do to a persons psyche.
I’d say her behavior also speaks to someone who knows she should be doing more but doesn’t have the means to make it happen. Thus the willingness to go along with Tanya’s obviously flaky offer.
“What kind of life did Armond lead before coming to work at the White
Lotus resort, that he can quote Lord Tennyson at the drop of a hat? And:
Who does Armond see himself as in this poem?”
I appreciated all the ways he possibly could mean the poem to be about. Frankly, I just assumed the most simple take—that the guests are the lotus eaters, happily oblivious due to their wealth…
That said, I hate when someone in fiction does something like, say, quotes a famous poem and it causes people to wonder what that implies about his previous life. We studied that poem in grade 9 and had to memorize parts of it and I went to a regular public school. Maybe that was what happened to Armond and he was just particularly taken with it. Or maybe he just likes poetry. *shrug* I know I’m overreacting to the comment but it always seems a bit snobby to ask something like that—I have a friend who grew up in a trailer park and her family was obsessed with poetry. My point being the fact he could quote one of the most famous lines of a relatively famous poem at an apt moment doesn’t really say much one way or the other about his past 😛
(However, I’m completely with you about Belinda’s actions)
LOL, I always reel a bit at that take as well. I currently work at a restaurant with a dishwasher who will regularly quote entire poems, particularly from Old World literature. What was his life like before he was a dishwasher at our restaurant? He was a dishwasher at other restaurants, enjoying audio recordings of poetry and long games of Civilization V in his spare time, same as he is now.
Great example! It makes me want to ask the reviewer “Well what kind of life did you use to lead that you recognized where the poem was from?” (Though I assume they at least had to look it up and weren’t quoting from memory 😛 ).
I’m an English grad student, so I’m allowed to say that it’s a very English grad student mentality. And maybe Armond was an English major too? Who knows.
Growing up my grandma had a caretaker who was a recent immigrant from the Philippines. She spoke broken English, but understood it perfectly and was studying in a summer class modern poetry, which she would quote. I think some people just assume it would be impossible for someone, for example, to somehow discover and love a Tennyson poem unless they were thoroughly well educated or else came from a well off family… People are complex. But something like this (if the show is well written and not lazy) isn’t automatically an indicator of some complex past…
I am a scientist and science teacher that grew up very poor and there are some old poems I have parts memorized. It is not that unusual. Also this is fiction so a bit of suspension of disbelief is ok. at least it is not a teen vampire love story.
There’s definitely some clever puns going on with the resort/show title. White Lotus / Lotus-Eaters / White Privilege / Mike White
(I should also point out that in the books of Tales of the City, and I think the series as well, Anna Madrigal quotes from poem several times. I’m not just making an arbitrary mental connection because Armond’s actor was in the last Netflix iteration of the franchise, but Armond would be *very* familiar with those books, I’m sure. He strikes me as the kind of gay guy who would be relatively well read 😛 )
He was also on HBO’s “Looking” series and movie as a gay character.
Yeah—I’ve followed his career since—when I was a soap watcher—he was on Guiding Light (just missing the period of Guiding Light when another gay actor, Matt Bomer, was on). Since Guiding Light I’ve mostly seen him in gay roles, like on Looking, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen him use his native Australian accent.
Great point about Armond’s quoting of the poem. I did think it showed a new side of his character that intrigued me. Not in a “who were you?” kind of way, but I like that he was the kind of person who’d think to recall a poem potentially from high school.
Oh definitely agreed–and I appreciate that. I like such details that make a character feel more lived in (Oh, he likes poetry–or at least likes that poem enough to know it well, etc). And maybe that’s what this reviewer meant and I overreacted, but the implication I read was totally “How can this guy who works in the service industry quote Tennyson?? What hidden past do we not know about?!” 😉
To answer the reviewer’s question, Armond is the reader of the poem, not a character within it. He is the one forced to contemplate its meaning.
As someone trying to blend with wealthy patrons, he could also have trained himself in some classics so he doesn’t come off as ignorant in conversation with them.
i guess ill need to rewatch the first few mins of the first episode but i thought it was pretty clear it was alexandra daddarios body in the crate.
There was no indication who was I the box
It’s implied within that very first scene (his wife is gone, he’s upset, and there’s a coffin) but then it becomes a clear possibility that his wife left him and that’s why he’s upset.
To me, Shane seemed more “annoyed and embarrassed” upset than “heartbroken and shellshocked that I drove my young wife to suicide yesterday” upset. He was the one who explained “yep, the body is on our plane” to the nosy airport couple, whereas I’d think a recent widower (even an asshole like Shane) wouldn’t be talking about it so glibly.
This is why I think it’s Armond. I think he dies before Shane can exact any revenge on him and that leaves Shane, the horrible bastard he is, as incredibly frustrated as he didn’t get any closure.
Here’s a guess at the box mystery: Rachel isn’t there at the airport because she’s in jail for murdering Shane’s mother who had decided to return to the White Lotus one more time.
He doesn’t look sad or wrung-out the way you’d expect if it was his new bride.
It could be read as implied (in that Shane was the one staring at it), but that could’ve been a misdirect.
As I’ve said before, Shane was okay to talk about the dead body but not his wife’s whereabouts, suggesting they are two separate things.
It was implied, but given that their primary theme is her coming dissatisfaction with her role in their relationship, the looming death of someone is itself less mystery and more of the thematic feeling of doom. It’s a show full of red herrings of who will die and how, further defined that the one character that we probably hate the most (Shane) is the only one we know for certain is alive.Will Rachel or Tanya succumb to their depression?
Will Armond OD having come off of sobriety to hard core drug use?
This episode even ramped up the anxiety with the interaction between Kai and the elder Mossbachers, and with Quinn disappearing to go on the ocean with people he just recently met.But I mean this is essential, metanarrative, dramatic irony that’s actually having us care about the minutiae of each characterization. It’s great.
Greg did the whole soap opera “cough” fit right? He’s actually staying on at the hotel and living for every moment because he’s about to die? And it’s him in the box?
Exactly!!! I thought the cough was a little too obvious. He’s in the box.
The couple at the beginning said someone was “killed”, though. That’s not how I would describe someone who naturally succombed to lung cancer or something.
You’re right. So I’m going with Greg being sick (which will cause a sort of epiphany with Tanya perhaps, at least when it comes to her relationships with men and the fear they’ll leave her because of who she is). But not in the box.
Although, Shane could have heard that as a rumor that got out of control. Like someone saying that ‘That crazy woman probably killed that guy during sex!” I could definitely see that happening.We’ll see next week!
Once provided to the link of the cost of these suites, it’s hard to believe Greg could afford this place on BLM government salary. This is like, I’ll cash in my entire 401K for a week in Hawaii, kind of move. Of course, there are likely many opportunities to be on the take working for Bureau of Land Management, also. I feel like putting Greg in the box would be an unsatisfying conclusion. The story puts all these awful people in front of us, with the pretense one will die, then kill off the C character in the story? Since Shane shows indifference to seeing the coffin, I can only feel Armond is the one to die. He’s been spiraling from episode one, and Shane seems intent on destroying him.
I’m wondering if it’s Tanya – she suffers some Greg-related heartbreak and dies of an alcohol+meds incident.
Why I don’t think it’s Tanya is as outlandishly cuckoo she gets, by the end of the scene, she always seems to ground herself again. Like a Tourettes episode of crazy. Her self awareness saves her, so I feel she’s a red herring.
That’s true – this episode showed she’s way more self-aware than she lets on. Almost TOO self-aware, in that it causes her crippling self-doubt about all of her perceived shortcomings. I’m tentatively hoping for a happy ending for Tanya – although her relationship with Belinda does remind of that Gatsby quote: “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
She’s half in the bag most of the time, so it may take a few minutes to arrive at the point of her thoughts.
Yeah–I was only half serious. I still think Greg is genuinely sick, but as you say, having him be the body would feel like a lazy cheat.
I stayed at the Four Seasons a few years ago. I am by no means rich (though I did have a good-ish year that year.) And it’s a lovely spot.But we didn’t stay in any of the large suites and we booked all travel and hotel on expedia. We got all of that for basically the price of one night at one of the medium-level suites as listed on the website.
The link above had suites in the $3K to $20K per night range. If I was paying for the Pineapple suite, I’d likely be as pissed as Shane for not getting what his mother paid for. After a few days, they could be overpaying thousands.Tanya’s suite didn’t appear like a basic room, so I wouldn’t imagine Greg’s, next door, wasn’t either. It’s likely they are pulling the Hollywood version of the poor and broke NYC loft apartment that even a lawyer couldn’t afford.
I only clicked on the first few suites, where the price was in the 5K range.I’m sure they’re fudging the numbers.But Armand also assured Shane they were only paying for the room they were in, so…..
If he’s been living frugally off a pension and has some savings, he might have just said “fuck it” and spend half his money on one trip if he’s near death.
Yeah and his excuse of “oh it’s the cigars” definitely seemed like a quick cover-up. However he seemed like a pretty strong and confident swimmer for someone on death’s door!
I assumed the cough was so that he didn’t have to spend the night, but then I’m a cynic.
I think it might be Mike White being a clever writer: the cough IS just a sincere/innocuous coughing fit that old dudes get all the time, but Tanya’s insecurities made her think he’s faking it to avoid her, and we the viewers up to this point have seen Tanya’s world through the filter of her insecurities – which made the reveal at the end that he doesn’t think she’s crazy (or accepts her crazy) all the more impactful.
To be clear, my initial post is not meant to be perfectly serious—obvious if it’s Greg in the coffin that would be… disappointing (a character we barely know, introduced in the back half of the series?)
And I also have to admit to sorta “cheating”. In the end credits preview they had another brief clip of Greg coughing, which is why at least I assume it’s not just an escape mechanism.
Tanya brought death with her to the island.
Wait you thought the cough was real? I 100% thought it was fake. Once he’s off camera and walking towards the hotel room door…no more coughing. I thought he was trying to find a passive way to get out the door after a one night stand.
While I was being partly facetious–I don’t think he’s the body–I think it was legit. But, like I said above, I’m cheating as during the preview for next week they showed another clip of him coughing which makes me think it’s legit.
The woman at the airport used the phrase “was killed.” That doesn’t sound like a death from illness or other natural causes. It sounds like at best an accident and at worst murder. Maybe suicide, but then I’d expect her to say “killed themselves” instead. Her information is at least thirdhand, so it’s possible she got the details wrong, but as far as setting up the suspense narratively, that would seem like a pretty big cheat if it’s not one of the main characters suffering some kind of unexpected death.
I sure hope that’s a red herring. Seems cheap to introduce a new character so late in a show to have him be the dead one. Also, Shane hasn’t even met Greg, at least not yet, and didn’t he watch the box get loaded on the airplane, as if there was someone he knew in there? I still don’t think it’s Rachel in there either, though, that’s just too easy.
The hacking cough on the wall in Act 1 is the terminal lymphoma in Act 3?
“Is she allergic to fire?” was an amazing line, and I’m surprised it didn’t get a mention, but maybe the reviewer didn’t like that it made fun of Paula, Patron Saint of the White Lotus.
I kind of love how over it Nicole is about Paula. And I don’t even think it’s about Paula’s attitude but just how, like, preciously she has to be handled. Paula is that friend of your kid’s who has an allergy to everything in the world and they can’t eat anything at your house but their parents send them over for a sleepover with no snacks.
But is she really that fragile? Or is it just Olivia assigning those allergies, etc to her?
I could totally buy Olivia as that friend who insists you have an allergy or celiac every time you don’t like a thing or have a stomach ache.
Yeah, I noticed it’s only Olivia who brings it up.
True; it could very well be Olivia making this up. But as far as Nicole knows, Paula is allergic to fruit (Paula herself backed that one up), has 13 different necessary medications to function and is forever having to leave situations because of medical concerns. (Again, I don’t think that’s actually the case, but Nicole doesn’t know that.)
Fake allergies = all the drugs Paula had as excuse.
Didn’t she bring it up with the excuse that the drugs in her bag were for allergies?
I’d actually like that fade out on Kai to be the end of that storyline. Because there’s no good way for it to end that isn’t totally nihilistic. He gets away and cashes out the bracelets? Unlikely. He gets caught and we have to be hit in the face with a frying pan with the whole “fighting the system isn’t as easy as you think it is” theme. This show’s too subtle for that (I hope).
I don’t know if there is a middle ground beyond Paula’s guilt and recognition that she’s not the bad-ass activist she thinks she is. That seems the right place to leave this story.I don’t find Belinda’s storyline to be problematic in the least. If we want to stretch to say a POC depending on a white person of means is problematic, fine. But it’s a secondary piece of realism under the universal story of someone with a great idea trying to seize on a flash of lightning, followed by the realization that flighty people are, well, flighty.Still think Quinn’s the goner, but the red herring of introducing a cancerous coughing fit from Uncle Rico (& Lazlo… which I was today years old when I made that shockingly missed connection thanks to the comments) is enough to make me think that the body itself was a red herring.
I really hope they just leave Kai alone in the finale as well. There’s no way to resolve that storyline that fits within either the humor or the drama of the show, I think, unless this finale is going to be (I don’t watch Next Week On segments, so…!) far darker than the rest of the show implies.About the ONLY thing I’m prepared for at this point is Paula seeing him led back to the resort in handcuffs as they’re boarding the boat back to the airport, but even then that just seems like a different show in my imagination.
You know what’s going to happen to him. No need to show it, and it would be more realistic for it all to happen out of sight of the guests anyway.
When I read that someone thought Belinda’s storyline was “problematic” I was just like, holy shit people, log off….
Quinn as the goner would make sense and track in an unfortunate way with the “disabled=pure” trope the show is nearing towards. (Although I guess we don’t actualy know if he’s autistic, but he reads that way and Nicole would be exactly the type of parent to deny it.)
I don’t think he’s autistic. That’s just the actor. He’s the same way in “Woman in the Window” where I thought he was playing autistic. He’s just that kind of dude, I think.
I don’t know if it would’ve crossed my mind but Olivia (not that she’s reliable) said “Asperger’s” and while she could just be being shitty, I’m not convinced by Nicole’s immediate refusal that it’s not true. He honestly reminds me a lot of my older brother who’s on the specturm.
Have you ever met a teenage boy? They all act “autistic”, if by that you mean awkward, sullen, and withdrawn.
Good point about Tanya’s offer to Belinda – someone who will make an offer so quickly and with little information is likely to just as easily lose interest.
One of the great things about this series is how the characters are both very broad, but EXTREMELY grounded. I’ve dealt with more than a few Tanyas in my career with both positive and negative outcomes. 🙂
Love this show. Olivia is the goddamned worst.
Why so much sympathy for Paula? She is clearly a hypocritical asshole. Classic mean girl, happy mooching off her friends’ riches while being an asshole to everyone around her, specially to her benefactors. And, yeah I am not surprised of her thinking that fucking an employee would somehow set her apart, make herself some kind of insider on the pains of the indigenous population, what I am surprised is that the reviewer is falling for that BS and seeing her as some kind of a victim here. She got a paid Hawaiian vacation, she is a bitch to everyone in the family who is paying for her vacation, she fucked an employee and manipulated him into criminal activity… how is she poor or sweet?
I think the reviewer is playing right into Mike White’s hand. Because of how vaguely Paula is written, and because of how she is cast, a lot of assumptions get made about her (like all of the people in the comments who automatically seem to have assumed she must come from *no* money). Including the assumption that she somehow relates to Kai’s background (the exploitation of his people) personally with her own experience. When, I agree with you, I think it’s already pretty clear none of that is true. Sure, she automatically has less privilege than the family she’s with–due to race, due to (I assume) not being insanely wealthy, but otherwise it’s like she’s conducting a social experiment in slumming it (including the assumption that Kai already has criminal connections or however he would pull off the sale of the bracelets).
one billion percent:
I think the reviewer is playing right into Mike White’s hand
Why so much sympathy for Paula?This is gonna sound super cynical, but oh well: Paula’s a “woke” brown woman who spouts Twitter-ready platitudes about structural oppression, etc. Despite the fact that she’s been a shit-heel from the start, a lot of people will have sympathy for her just for that.
I’m not convinced Paula is a POC. She could be just a white woman who tans well, maybe Italian or of Mexican descent (had a gf in my 20s who fit that description).
She’s a POS in this episode though.
Nailed it.
I honestly thought Roxana was being sarcastic by calling her “poor, sweet Paula”.
I wasn’t sure, but after re-reading, I’m pretty convinced she wasn’t and thinks Paula’s intentions were 100% pure/altruistic.
Perhaps Paula and Kai are two halves of the same character, much like Lenny and George in Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, wherein those two characters represent the conflict of id and superego within all of us. When Mark was drunkconfessing to Quinn, he alluded as much to this theme when he said there’s a monkey in all of us and we struggle to control it.
Armand’s my favorite character on the show just because he’s just gone around the bend and doesn’t give a fuck anymore, but Paula’s the BEST character. She captures so many conflicting themes in one person and subverts so many assumptions that it’s amazing.
Well said. The review is a prime example of how so many opinions (especially on the AV Club, Twitter, et al) are now formed based on the ethnicity and/or sexual preferences of a character above their actions. Actions define a character but here we learn that Paula is surely sympathetic and the good guy of sorts because she isn’t an Evil Rich White Person. The reviewer is also worried about Kai because he was too simple-minded to resist the temptation trap set by Saint Paula and now might get in trouble for abusing his employers trust, stealing tens of thousands of dollars of other people’s property and assaulting two of the guests. This reviewer needs to step foot into the real world where white people aren’t inherently evil and POC aren’t inherently good. Believe me, I know.
Thanks for the link to the Four Seasons Maui. This shows that the Mossbachers sleeping arrangements are even more baffling. They’re in a suite that’s large enough for a kitchenette, looks similar to the Oceanfront Prime suite at $13K/night. Why not spend $16k/night and get a two-bedroom so the girls have privacy and Quinn has the sleeper-sofa? I assume if they can drop 90K for a week at this resort, it’s no it’s no big deal to drop $110. Or is this supposed to illustrate how the super-rich can be weirdly cheap?
The super rich ARE very cheap, typically, so that part rings true to me.
Yeah, for some reason it doesn’t seem odd to me at all that Nicole would think that all the kids should just share the other room. That feels exactly in her line of thinking, on several levels. Put another way, if it had been her honeymoon, she wouldn’t have bothered to upgrade to the pineapple suite.
I imagine that Shane’s dad and Nicole would be kindred spirits with Olivia and Quinn prepping to be their own Shanes: the obscenity of wealth is there, but not as baked in as it will be for their children or accepted as with Kitty (Mark, though, chaffs with white guy priv). So for breadwinner Nicole – you’re sharing a room in fucking paradise. STFU.
The Mossbachers are still in the wealth accumulating stage and so still have some normal perspective on life. Shane’s family’s is generational.
You don’t get rich giving your money away!
I thought that was weird, too. Maybe the two bedroom wasn’t available. Would have been nice if they threw in some dialogue. Nicole could have said “Olivia, by the time you and your friend decided to come on the trip with us, the other rooms were booked.” Or something.
When the score broke out that variation on Erik Satie, I was like yeepp this isn’t going to end well
1. Greg’s definitely dying, right? That cough was very Season 1 Breaking Bad.2. I would love to see Molly Shannon as the next Bond villain. She’s fucking great at being evil. That smile, that whisper. Wonderfully horrible. 3. Shane is a rare bro character that’s actually fun to watch.4. Re Belinda and whether it’s realistic that she would bite at Tanya’s dangled offer: smart people, under duress, do dumb things. 5. Paula really pulled a Tanya this week. I mean, Kai was living his life and she just couldn’t resist dangling something she knew he’d have trouble rejecting. What a meddler.
Yeah, I thought of the Paula/Tanya parallels too. They’re certainly not the worst people at the resort, but they’re naive, distractible, overestimate their altruism and could use a hell of a lot more self-awareness.
Belinda definitely knows this is becoming a long shot as Tanya gets increasingly distracted, but is playing it out just in case.
This was a spectacular episode. Alexandra Daddario is to thousand-yard stares what Claire Foy is to pursed lips.
As an incorrigible eavesdropper myself, it was infuriating that the loud score covered over Greg’s phone call that Tanya was trying to hear through the door, though I suppose that was intentional. Did anyone catch what Greg was saying?Paula was clearly the villain of this episode. She thinks she’s Robin Hood, helping the oppressed, when in fact all she’s doing is manipulating a genuinely honest person into a criminal act with no preparation or forethought. Seriously, I’m kind of a goody-two-shoes and even my first thought was, “how are they going to turn these bracelets into money?” Paula’s a sheltered child, acting impulsively to spite her “friend,” even though it means coercing her reluctant paramour into criminality. Kai, for his part, should have known better.And apropos Paula’s demand of the Mossbachers about “what do they stand for,” it is a little frustrating that they never quite stick the landing on their speeches. Like, they get so close to making a cogent argument and then veer off the road. There’s a valid point to be made in pointing out Paula’s hypocrisy in refusing to watch the Hawaiian dancers but enjoying being waited on hand and foot, but instead of making that point, Mark just slides into hand-waving away imperialism.
What I heard of the phone call was completely innocuous—talking to I think one of his business buddies. I played it back several times and there were no alarming, or red-herring-like phrases or words.
(I agree with all your other points 😉 )
I don’t know that someone trying to redistribute wealth is THE villain, I think it’s the case (as you partly say) of some delusion and naivete.
Was she trying to “redistribute wealth,” or was she trying to say “screw you” to the Mossbachers and engage in some Robin Hood savior fantasy at the same time? To me, the entire plan was about Paula—not about helping Kai, but Paula trying to make herself feel better.
If the Mossbachers can afford an $100k+ vacation, they’re almost certainly in the realm of needing to make significant charitable contributions for tax reasons. Pitching the idea of helping the Hawaiians (and playing off white guilt) to Nicole should’ve been Paula’s first try before jumping straight to grand larceny.
I’m willing to cut Paula a tiny bit of slack because she’s, what, twenty? Her lack of maturity leads her to think in black and white terms, turning the Mossbachers into human monsters and trying to right the injustices of the world through Kai, un-self-aware enough to realize that she’s only setting up the robbery in order to make herself feel better. It’s an idiotic and selfish move for sure, but I’d be more inclined to call her a villain if she were ten years older and still did the same shit.
This is fair and I tend to lean rosy admittedly. I DEFINITELY think there was the savior fantasy so I was worreid she was going to take it without his consent which would be super presumptious. Kai probably would’ve refused the offer from the Mossbachers though, no?
…combined with wanting to see the Mossbachers take one on the chin despite them paying to take her to Hawaii.
I am not sure I agree that Nicole’s line about still being in pain quite reaches the level of histrionic (a word historically used to diminish women’s real life concerns). She is in pain, and she’s ashamed, and she’s upset that Mark told their son something *about her* that she didn’t want the kids to know. Sure, it was Mark’s fuckup. But I’m not sure there’s a person in the world who gets cheated on who doesn’t then wonder what they did wrong. And since she didn’t leave him, she either chose to stay with him because she genuinely loves him or because of the kids (and maybe both). Telling Quinn about the affair is shaking the very foundation of the reason she elected to try to get over it and she should be mad and upset.And I was glad to see her scream at her family, frankly. Nicole’s not perfect (i agree – no matter what happens to the Mossbachers or Shane and Rachel, etc, they will always bounce back.) but goddamn, she works her ass off – even on vacation – to pay for her seemingly whatever her kids and Mark want, and none of them respect it for her. Maybe I’m just in my angsty mom feels but I’m glad she finally said her piece. And then, of course, Mark gets all the love and affection and respect for throwing himself on Kai. Even from Nicole, which kind of bothered me, but I’m hoping is just a trauma response.Kai, Kai, Kai. Oh, buddy. You made the wrong choice, but even worse than that, you got rid of your disguise as you were exiting the hotel room! At least make it to a stairwell and then come out another floor or something! I could have kissed Rachel for acting so meh about finally getting into the stupid Pineapple Suite. Poor Belinda. Like, she definitely knows better than to get her hopes up, but she did anyway (because honestly, who wouldn’t?) and now Tanya is like a butterfly with ADHD.
Since the dead body is still in question . . . The couple in the airport say they heard “someone was killed” at the White Lotus. To me, that rules out any sort of natural death (heart attack, cancer, even a drug overdose, etc) because unless the death happened super publicly, I don’t see why guests at another resort would have heard about it. Also “kill” is an active verb – I wouldn’t say that my grandfather was killed – I would say he died from cancer.
So whoever was killed – it had to be a shocking death and I think it had to be a death that was caused by some external force. I’m not sure a suicide would count, because I don’t think we often say “someone was killed” when what we mean is “someone died from suicide.” And even if we did, we would say “someone killed themselves” rather than “someone was killed.”So that limits my list of coffin suspects to:Armand (but would his body be shipped back to the mainland? How long has he been living in Hawaii? And if he were going back to Australia, I would think that would take some time to manage.)RachelA Mossbacher or Paula
Watch Paula have a severe allergic reaction
Chekov’s EpiPen.
She needs that ketamine in case of a bee sting! Lots of bees flying around those tropical flowers, have to be careful.
Hmm perhaps Bellhop Twink tries to blackmail Armand over the sexual harassment and the faked manager’s business card (which, remember, the Twink helped him make), which devolves into a drunken tussle and Armand dies of the ol’ whack-his-head-on-the-corner-of-a-table/bannister/chair accident that you often see in TV/movies..
What about the fact that Paula is a mixed race person whose ancestors were either forcefully removed from their lands or were sold to slavery? And the fact that Armond is a descendant of people who colonized another island and wreaked havoc on its indigenous population?
whose ancestors were either forcefully removed from their lands or were sold to slaveryWeird that you saw a brown woman and immediately assumed this. Plenty of POC people have immigrated here (the US) from other places by choice.
Anway, what about it even if that is true? She’s still a terrible person.
Not a fact, just a supposition. And even if true, that means the other part of her mix did the forcible removing and slave trading, if one buys your premise, of course.
Her skin tone and features suggest any number of possible ethnic origins for Paula, many not including enslaved west Africans. That ambiguity makes the selection of Brittany O’Grady great casting.
The Britton-Zahn scenes/dialog stuff is just hitting way to close to home. There will be some quiet awkwardness when I rewatch it with my wife when she watches it for the first time.
Yes, my husband & I experienced some strained, awkward laughter during the scene when Zahn’s character drunkenly tells hopeful newlywed, Rachel, “Nah! There’s no intimacy!” waving it off as a trivial fact of life. Cringe.
I am glad we are not watching it with our 20 year old college kid daughter. I could totally see her telling her mother the “ you sex shame dad” line so so glad she was not watching with us 🤣
The things mother and father Mossbacher allow their daughter (and her friend!) to say to them are absurd. I have teenagers and no fucking WAY am I taking that kind of shit about my personal life, in the highly unlikely event one of them were to even consider saying such things.
Sorry dude, that sucks.
What surprised me was when they discussed the Lual. Are luals racist? i feel bad about seeing one in Maui now.
Paula is also a bad guy in this show lol. In fact, Paula is probably responsible for the worst thing done to a native islander/employee of the hotel/innocent person yet.
Right she completely destroyed the heart and life of some guy she was using as a distraction/toy.
I love how this is kind of starting to feel like a farce, which is not something I was expecting. The energy and caricatures are ramping up and the music and editing kind of support that approach. On the other hand, the nuances of each character keep coming out, which is the opposite of a farce. In any event, the last two episodes have been way better than the first three.Also, I don’t think Paula or Olivia honestly mean a goddamn thing they say out loud to anyone except themselves. They are rich girls parroting slogans and “woke” platitudes (which I hate using “woke” as an insult or pejorative, but I don’t think they honestly hold the things they are saying) just to irritate their parents or to shut other people up. I am sure they are more open to LGBT issues than their parents, but that’s more of a generational thing. I don’t think there’s an activist bone in their body (except when getting boned by an activist).
The Kai situation wouldn’t have happened. Why didn’t Paula have her phone on her on the boat, so she could warn Kai off when the parents headed back? Paula’s friend had her phone so it wasn’t like it was forbidden.
I would think even a novice thief would turn off his phone or leave it at home while doing a heist. But yeah, she never even made a move to try to warn him.
Maybe I saw a different show.
Too much emphasis and analysis of a few lines of poetry.
Hoping you’re being sarcastic about poor, sweet Paula. She’s leading the pack right now for villain of the week. She heard some push back to naive woke BS and, like a woman scorned, decides she’s going to steal from her supposed friend’s family? So sweet.
She’s not a sympathetic individual to me. She was invited along to a family vacation at an exclusive resort and all she can do is resent the people she’s with, including her friend (who is no less sinister and youthfully idealistic). And I’m not convinced she’s a POC. Could be simply a white gal who tans well.
Ah, man the rich bashing and white privilege never ceases, by the reviewer and many of the commenters. Yes, these people are rich and as Dave Chappelle reminded us, that gives you options. To the degree the are “awful” is due to their character, not their money. Yes, Shane is shallow, Mark is ineffectual (until this week), Tanya is an emotional wreck, and Olivia snotty. But to date, they haven’t stolen from anyone or killed anyone (yet)
Likewise, having less money is no virtue. Paula is a malcontent, Belinda is sweet but seems resentful of “rich women” or “white people” at times, Armond is a thief and abuses his power as a manger, and Kai is now a thief.
Armond is “the reader” in Tennyson’s The Lotos-Eaters, not one of the characters.
Really like this show. Two points: (1) Steve Zahn is the Man; and (2) Molly Shannon is, in the words of Pete Townshend, Queen of the Fucking Universe. That is all.