"The White Lotus”: “Shit’s About to Get Crazy”?

Man, we really could have used a distractingly seductive streaming series right about now. If indeed our democracy is to be dismantled before our eyes, with only the court system to stem the DOGE tide, couldn’t Mike White have offered us a more enfolding respite with Season 3 of “The White Lotus”?

Mind you, in my case, I’ve only seen four episodes out of the eight that have been unspooling weekly since mid-February, but the response even from critics who have seen more contains some alienated takes. (The headline for the astute and grimacing review based on the first six of eight episodes by the New Yorker’s Inkoo Kang bore the headline, “White Lotus Overstays Its Welcome.”)

 Kang sums up the (lavishly scenic as always) third season as “a promiscuous application of the formula that yields diminishing returns.” Addressing the familiar structure—each iteration of the series has begun with a mysterious dead body and then flashed back a week to the circumstances that ended lethally—she finds staleness where White surely sought enticing familiarity.

 Strong casting continues, though some might have wished Jennifer Coolidge’s  put-upon character Tanya was still around to take the mickey out of—well, all of mankind’s aspirations towards gravitas. What we face is an ensemble of  star thespians, who unfortunately, Slate’s Sam Adams finds, are not at the next level their chops might have provided: “Their pettiness and venality don’t have the weight of tragic flaws, so rather than root for them to escape their natures, we just watch them get knocked down one by one, like targets in a carnival booth.” 

 Beyond the repetitiveness of the formula—true fans could argue that’s half the fun—it’s fairly evident why Season 3 doesn’t fully reanimate the set-up: there’s almost nobody to like. Only Thai actor Thapthimthong as the hotel’s ineffectual, learning-as-he-goes  security operative Gaitok, gains our sympathy with a demonstrative haplessness that stops just short of making him a figure out of some more colonially inclined fare. (Yes, questions of race and class disparity are casually advanced, as White sets up the prototypically, ethnocentrically ignorant hotel guests as typical spoiled rich tourists. Some are even given zinger lines, showing awareness or lack thereof, of various ironies they embody or note. The bulk of the lines sooner make us nod obediently to White’s smart-alecky wit than to any characterization the quips might have deepened.)

 One triggers the opening episodes with fond hopes, because the cast is for the most part highly credentialed. Lest this caviling impede anyone’s enjoyment, beware of mostly mild SPOILERS ahead, especially if you’re less than four episodes in. To briefly survey how much more satisfyingly such skilled actors may have been deployed:

Walton Goggins as Rick:  The guy always holds the screen. Witness how as the dark-minded but somehow vulnerable antagonist to Timothy Olyphant’s sunny, sarcastic hero in the properly beloved “Justified,” he never twirled the mustache for show, but came across as a dangerously edgy, raised-deep-in-the-hollers crime boss. Laugh-out-loud funny in “The Righteous  Gemstones,” convincingly committed as an outlying trans figure  in “Sons of Anarchy,” he always gets my vote since being one of the most thoughtful interviewees I ever met. Rick is conspicuously tormented, written by White as 85% prick, andby episode four he brings his ample skills to the dawning of an I-am-the-danger story component– turning from mystery misery gut to supplier of his own curious back story as motive as the plot grinds for traction.

Chat show interview box to check: Goggins got bit by a non-poisonous snake in a scene and was nonetheless kept working that day:

 Jason Isaacs: Another actor who brings the full thespian kit (though I’m not so sure I wanted to see quite that much of his prosthetic item in a scene seemingly calculated to bring the deep cringe to his family ensemble). He was pestered a bit in the media over his North Carolina accent—and riposted that it was as authentically sourced from Durham, N.C. as he could muster—but having interviewed him as the villainous Brit general in “The Patriot” and the stalwart Captain Mike Steele in “Blackhawk Down,” I’ve seen his devotion to authenticity. (He began most mornings smacking hard baseline tennis strokes back and forth with director Ridley Scott; I would seek him out for lunches on the dusty set where he’d be cordially informative. Called to set early, I questioningly offered the motto, “Rangers lead the way?” and he picked up his helmet quoting another credo:  “We’ll put two in your chest and one in your head.”

Parker Posey: Another longtime improv actors’ actor favorite who’s operated expertly on the indie side, she’s been harried online for her southern accent, as her Victoria is stuck up and pill’ed up. She’s so incautious with her Lorazepam stash that husband clocks her hiding her purse with the meds vial, leaving Isaac to perform the theft in a predictable if hardly believable “Elvis-what-happened?” moment that starts Timothy fully circling the drain. If Victoria runs out of meds even as Rick possibly spirals out of control with a deadly new prop he’s found, this family is in for a messy time.

Patrick Schwarzenegger:  His adolescently horny persona gives frat boys a bad name, and as much as this role might have augured a career boost, the hammy bro `tude is making the performance so hard to watch we may not want to see what’s next for Saxon. “His place is clutch,” he informed his dad upon arrival at the hotel. He closed out episode skeeving on some random babes on a party oat with the vow, “Shit’s about to get crazy.” We can but hope. 

 The Forty-Something Trio: Michelle Monaghan as a medium-wattage acting star,  Leslie Bibb as a  non-lib Texas socialite,  and the usually exemplary Carrie Coon as a covertly morose lawyer add up to a feuding, Karen-adjacent coven that’s almost misogynistically etched into the series’s recurring longueurs. : The New Yorker’s Kang wondered in her review if a writer-director as plugged into the B-list  actors’ network as White is could  serve us up a trio who are “written with a surprising shallowness, especially considering White’s other female creations.”

Overall in the newly labored pace many critics have applauded, we see a whole lot of indicating, as the acting coaches say, in service of  various character arcs. (Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda—an Emmy nominee for season one-- has crossed international datelines from her Maui masseuse incarnation talks to workshop further modes of serving the privileged alongside her Thai counterpart. The baleful Big Acting gaze she directs at Jon Gries’ fervently menace-signaling rich creep seem to be setup some later, violent plot point, and Rick’s companion (if you can call it that) Chelsea mostly features her bosom and her veddy British dentition. 

 Boy, it ain’t the old days of the HBO brand. This week Esquire’s site posted their pick of the “50 Best HBO series” and had an easy lay-up with “The Wire” first and “Sopranos” second. I would slip “Succession” (their number 4)  in at number 3 in place of “The Leftovers,” and then rounding out the leaders is for me a brawl between “True Detective” ‘s best seasons, with  “Band of Brothers” (their 7) and “Game of Thrones (their 9) also items for the ages. We’ll see if “The Last of Us” can move higher with the season kicking off April 13—and, if  “The White Lotus,” at 16, may sink over time.

If Slate’s Adams found that the series as a parable of economic exploitation, with a little postcolonial critique, as a treat,” like the rest of us he’s probably hoping for the continuing perks of watching “schadenfreude doled out in weekly installments.”

Perhaps the main locus of this sometime fan’s hope lies in what Jason Isaac told Entertainment Weekly with reference to the grudging pace of the plot: “You haven’t seen other things that are coming, but I just remember thinking, ‘I better dig deep and produce something here.’ Because there’s a lot of parts you can go through and tell a very dramatic story without your character going through anything extreme. But there’s some big, old acting coming up.”

Bring it on, Mr. Isaac. We’re counting on you to lead the way.

All the way.