One of the most exquisitely cynical lines in 20th century literature comes in the Italian novel The Leopard. A young aristocrat is telling his uncle, the Prince, why he's joined up with Garibaldi's revolutionaries. "If we want things to stay as they are," he explains, "things will have to change."
This is precisely the thinking behind successful TV franchises, which try to change things just enough to seem fresh while still serving up what the audience loved the first time. Except for maybe Fargo, no show tackles this challenge more honorably than The White Lotus, the Emmy-grabbing HBO series in which rich, entitled white folks cause trouble at enviably gorgeous beachfront resorts. Written and directed by Mike White, The White Lotus doesn't merely introduce new characters and locales every season — the latest one is set in Thailand — but also shifts its tone and preoccupations.
Still, it follows a template. Like its predecessors, Season 3 begins with an unidentified dead body and then flashes back to show us who's dead and why. We watch the guests arrive at the White Lotus, a wellness-centered resort on the island of Koh Samui. These include the well-heeled Ratliff family from North Carolina — the parents are played by Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey. There are three 40-something girlfriends led by Jaclyn, a TV star played by Michelle Monaghan. There's gloomy Rick — that's Walton Goggins — a scruffy dude who's here with his much younger girlfriend, Chelsea. And as always in paradise, there's a serpent.
It would take an hour to tell you the plot. Suffice it to say that, after a low-key start, the show becomes a cocktail of financial secrets, dark family histories, drug abuse, kinky hijinks, poisonous snakes, scary gunfire and oddball comedy. White loves to shove his characters — and audiences — out of their comfort zone. We often can't be sure whether something is supposed to be funny or serious or both. We don't know which characters are actually nice, are deeper than they first seem, or are blithely headed toward bad things.
In truth, Season 3 is less effervescent than 1 or 2. Yet the show's still superbly acted by its stars, and White stuffs his scenes with pleasures. I love the comedy of the Ratliffs alpha male son — played by Arnold Schwarzenegger's son Patrick — driving everyone crazy by obsessively making protein shakes in a deafening blender. I love the increasingly fraught dynamics of Jaclyn and her friends — the others are played by Carrie Coon and Leslie Bibb, by the way. Whenever two of them get together, they grow catty about the one who's not there. I was especially knocked out by the scene in which Rick meets an old friend who launches into a monologue about his sexcapades in Bangkok. It is, I promise you, the most surprising thing you're going to hear on TV this year.
The White Lotus takes it as given that its privileged characters have no interest in the culture they're visiting, be it Hawaii or Sicily or now Thailand. They treat it as a theme park or a stage on which they can act out. White clearly hopes to avoid doing that himself. Although he does glamorize Thailand — conspicuous luxury is one of the show's selling-points, after all — he treats Buddhism respectfully and he makes a point of trying to incorporate Thai characters. The two best are a hotel owner, a silver-haired diva played by Lek Patravadi, and a sympathetic security guard played by Tayme Thapthimthong whose fecklessness makes us constantly worry for him.
Over the course of the six episodes available to screen — there are eight in all — White repeatedly shows us two very different things: monkeys and Buddhas. This motif is fitting, for White's theme here is the tension between our animal nature and our yearning for a deeper, more spiritual existence, one free from the values and egotisms that imprison us.
Pushing its characters toward questions of life's meaning, this is the most soul-conscious of the three seasons. No matter how safe and comfortable things might seem, White suggests, there comes a time of reckoning when we have to face how alone we really are.
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