Clearpost.online It's your post, so post it!

It’s fight night on The White Lotus! And that’s in both a literal sense (yes, there’s a Muay Thai fight happening) and a figurative one (there are so many confrontations taking place in the hotel and beyond). Of course, Mike White doesn’t want you to think of one without the other. It’s why, for much of the episode, he intercuts slo-mo shots of the Muay Thai fight with the decidedly less physical (though perhaps no less violent) matchups he’s staged. (We also get a very explicit call toward nonviolence as Piper [Sarah Catherine Hook] and Lochlan [Sam Nivola] get schooled on Buddhism at the monastery.) Let’s get into each bout. 

Rick vs. Jim:

The most obvious standoff in the episode is the one between Rick (Walton Goggins, stoic but boiling over inside) and Sritala’s husband, Jim (Scott Glenn, stoic but utterly unfazed on the outside). Rick, of course, has carefully orchestrated a meeting at Sritala’s house on the pretense of being a Hollywood movie producer who’s working with a “filmmaker” (that’d be Sam Rockwell’s Frank) who’s eager to cast the famed former actress and singer. It’s all as awkward and absurd as you’d imagine, White creating a Thai-set farce that begins to go off-kilter once Frank decides he’s going to throw sobriety out the window and treat himself to a whiskey. 

And so while Sritala and Frank end up chatting about her former years as a star (even watching old footage of said stardom), Rick convinces Jim to join him in conversation elsewhere. It’s a tense and terse encounter where wary Jim keeps trying to figure out what this suspicious-looking man wants from him—especially once Rick pulls out his gun and threatens his life. The scene is a study in restraint, all in Goggins and Glenn’s eyes. And so, even when Rick namechecks his mother and accuses Jim of killing his father (a casualty in his colonial/capitalist drive to make a life for himself in Thailand, clearly), Jim is unsure how to respond. He’s not given much room to do so. He’s quieted at every turn.

But Rick can’t bring himself to kill him. Not even to harm him. All he does is push his chair back…and then runs out with Frank in tow, the two escaping a ludicrous scenario where perhaps some closure was achieved. Which turns out to be an excuse to go buck wild together in Bangkok with drinks, drugs, and strippers galore. 

Greg vs. Belinda:

It was only a matter of time until we got a Greg (Jon Gries) and Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) standoff. And while Belinda had first opted to refuse Greg’s invite to join him at the fancy dinner he and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) are throwing at their home, Belinda’s son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) insists they go and at least hear him out.

Which they do. And, as ever, the tête-à-tête is troubling and all around intriguing—especially because it’s hard to tell how honest the conversation really is (or can be). Greg, taking Belinda aside, confesses he had changed his name and had wanted to ward off any attention for Tanya’s death. He insists he had nothing to do with it but would rather keep himself living his peaceful life here in Thailand. (Isn’t that what his late wife would’ve wanted?) Oh, and might Belinda not agree with that…especially if he offers her the money Tanya had originally pledged to help her start her own business? $100,000 would go a long way for that, no? 

Belinda is stunned. How could she possibly take that money? And, as Zion later tells her, how could she possibly refuse it? And, more to her point: What might happen if and when she politely declines that quite obvious hush money?

Laurie vs. Jaclyn (and Kate): 

It was only a matter of time until the tenuous civility that’s characterized this trio of BFFs came crashing down. But boy was I not ready to see the gloves co*e off between Laurie (Carrie Coon) and Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan). Last episode they may have relished and perfected the passive-aggressive jab but that is nothing co*pared to the all-out aggression we see tonight once they sit down to dinner and it’s clear they’re all done being nice to one another.

Armed with a bottle of Rosé, it’s Laurie who can’t bring herself to let Jaclyn’s mind games go unremarked. None of them have changed. Jaclyn is still seeking attention and not caring who she hurts in the process. Not that Laurie is any better: “If you always choose the short stick, is it always bad luck?” Jaclyn fires back at her. She’s just upset because Laurie cannot bring herself to make choices she can live with that would alter the way she lives her life. As Kate puts it, no matter what’s happening, she’s always disappointed. Shouldn’t she look within? The reaction shots in that dinner are delicious, especially once Laurie goes off on both her friends and then decides she will go to that Muay Thai fight after all.

There, she meets up with Valentin and his friends—later opting to go home with Aleksei (Julian Kostov). Finally, she’s uninhibited, living out her life. Only, of course, the studly Russian is soon asking her for money with a sad-sack story about his mom back home which is…well, a kind of vibe killer (as is Aleksei’s jealous girlfriend arriving soon after). In true farce form, Laurie has to run away while barely clothed lest she gets the ire of a scorned girl.

The Ratliff men vs. reality: 

Timothy and Saxon are clearly not having a great holiday. The former continues to overmedicate himself while the latter keeps striking out and finding himself ever more adrift (Chelsea calling him soulless clearly struck a nerve last outing.) As they arrive at Greg and Chloe’s soirée (with a drunken Victoria in tow), dad and son are loathe to face what’s been happening to them while abroad.

And while dad is eventually confronted by Saxon about what’s going on (nothing, Timothy insists, even as it dawns on him that Saxon, like Victoria, may not be able to weather the storm to co*e), it is the young Ratliff who’s presented with the most outlandish proposition of an already bonkers trip: Wouldn’t he agree to stay on and play out one of Greg’s se*ual fantasies (finding Chloe with another man, an echo and a reenactment of how he used to watch his parents have se* while he was a little kid)? Uh. No, thank you. It’s amazing how White has made se*ual taboos just normal aspects of this season—and this one in particular, perhaps, the least surprising bit about this entire episode. 

Saxon, of course, would rather just bed Chelsea and as he rebuffs Chloe, he and the Rick-obsessed girl walk back to the hotel. He insists he could be someone else for her, which feels as much a co*e-on line as anything else. But when he nakedly says he’s up for meditating and opening up his spiritual self to prove her wrong, she does take him up on the offer. By the time they meditate together in her room (notice the opening credits backdrop behind her?), she gets skittish—there may be something there that wasn’t there before!—and asks him to leave.

The episode feels like it was all table-setting for a (let’s hope!) explosive finale that has, perhaps, too many subplots to tidy up before we check out of the White Lotus this time around. And so, with Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) making a case for nonviolence as he goes out on a date with Mook (Lisa)—a key tenet of Buddhism that permeates all we’ve seen this season—we’re now headed to a finale that will no doubt end in anything but. (Mook’s line that it is human to fight feels like the show’s thesis in miniature.) 

For bullets are about to greet us once more next week and it may well have everything to do with Valentin’s friends, whom Gaitok recognizes at the Muay Thai fight as being the folks responsible for the jewelry heist at the hotel—something we get confirmation on when Laurie escapes Aleksei’s home in a hurry. (That snake choker is unmistakable.) And it is a vision of violence White leaves us with. Once more, we get Timothy fantasizing about killing his family and then himself. But…there’s no gun there anymore. Which makes me wonder if the Ratliffs have been the season’s red herring all along.  

Stray observations

• • Meanwhile, across town at the monastery, Piper and Lochlan are struggling to make it through the night. (Watching Sam Nivola take a bite out of the food there was a treat.) But more importantly: This stay apparently encourages Lochlan to want to join his sister there for a year, which is not met with enthusiasm. (She clearly wants to remake herself away from the prying eyes of even her most supportive family member. Why would she want to have her little brother there? And is he really so eager to run away from his family? Actually, don’t answer that. That seems obvious.) 


• • Re-upping my theory: Gaitok is responsible for those gunshots. What better motivation could he have to beco*e trigger happy than, uh, trying to impress Mook, right? (Might he confront Valentin?)


• • Question: Do we think Laurie took the stolen jewelry? Will that robbery truly be the thing that ties all of our storylines together?


• • Other unsubstantiated theory: Is Sritala’s husband Rick’s father? (I half expected a Star Wars moment to cut through the absurdity of their encounter.)


• • We need a new Parker Posey remix called “The Boat People!”


• • Rockwell’s “director” rightly describes that video as MC Hammer meets Peter Pan meets Pippin (basically, folk music and rap).


• • Favorite GIF-able moment: Laurie’s shocked face upon being called out by Jaclyn or Chelsea’s endless nodding while encouraging Saxon to join in Chloe’s cuck fantasy?


• • Do we think The Enforcer, The Executor, and The Notary trilogy is more of a Jason Statham, Liam Neeson, or Gerard Butler project?