‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Has Turned Out To Be Bad

This article was published on 3/17 and republished on 3/18.

As a huge fan of The White Lotus, and almost every cast member added for season 3, I have been slowly sinking into an unexpected feeling. Season 3 of this show is just not very good. Despite its cast, despite its new location and two excellent seasons before this, something is just not working here, and that is becoming more and more apparent with each new week.

The main issue I have here is that The White Lotus has thrown out almost all pretext of being a comedy. Instead it’s just a 98% pure drama filled with messed up relationships only occasionally dipping into something legitimately funny once an episode, at best. That has always been true to a certain extent, but the ratio is now so heavily skewed it feels like an entirely different show.

Forbes‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 5 Recap And Review: Fear And LoathingBy Erik Kain

We might as well start with the closest thing season 3 has to a “main” group, the Ratliff family. And I will also begin by praising what is the only actually comedic performance in this season, Parker Posey’s Victoria Ratliff, where everything she says in her hammy, North Carolinian accent is great, and she seems to be the only one who knows what kind of show this is supposed to be.

I was genuinely interested in Jason Isaac’s Timothy Ratliff plotline as he remotely deals with his financial and legal downfall. But all that has yielded so far in five episodes is him yelling on the phone or staring into space, newly addicted to lorazepam. This week he almost killed himself with a stolen gun, but I doubt things are going that direction. Rather, it seems pretty clear the end result here will be the Ratliffs moving to Thailand to escape his troubles and likely hide his assets, the way all these other old white guys have done.

Piper is a superfluous character who has done close to nothing and just a vehicle for getting the family there initially (and no doubt she will be thrilled they are staying). She is overshadowed by her brothers who easily have the weirdest, most uncomfortable storyline in series history, an incest plotline where high school senior Lochlan appears to be lusting after his 20 something brother, culminating in a party game makeout session this week. There’s a theory that Saxon may be Piper and Lochlan’s step-brother, but no, regardless, this is all just too weird and gross to feel watchable week to week.

The Mook and Gaitok plotline also has weird vibes, where it feels like the show is trying to paint him as some sort of bumbling underdog, but instead, he’s a weirdo that doesn’t understand his friend is not interested in him. There is dumb, and there is putting a gun on your desk and leaving it dumb.

While the trio of women, Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate produced one genuinely funny moment (realizing their long-time friend was now a conservative Trump supporter), this storyline is just about how they all secretly hate each other and that’s getting old. They are linked to Valentin, who is obviously behind the hotel robbery with his shady friends.

Belinda and Greg have returned from season one, but here in episode five we have learned nothing other than “yeah Greg is shady,” which we already knew. This week we discovered that a lizard has been stalking Belinda inside her room for three episodes. Fun!

Finally, Walton Goggins may be putting forth a solid, understated performance, but now he’s left the hotel entirely to go to Bangkok…kill an old man who may have murdered his father? Again, this feels like a different show. This week he met up with Sam Rockwell who had the show attempt comedy with a long story about him being a sex addict and wanting to be an Asian woman that was just, I don’t even know what that was.

After this week, the show lost my wife’s interest. We have been waiting to watch this together every Sunday since it premiered, as we have the last two seasons, but she’s just out now. I am sticking around because I essentially have to, but I agree, this has been a sharp decline in quality despite what I would classify as inexplicable critic and audience scores that are higher than the last two seasons. Are we watching the same show?

Update (3/18): Well in the past 24 hours I have certainly learned that this is not a popular take. Checking IMDB, and this is actually the highest scored episode of the season. Higher than most of season 2 and all of season 1.

Sigh. But I’m not changing my mind, I’m sorry. This season is not working for me, albeit sure, I will take a break from all my criticism above to talk a bit about what I do like, even if it’s outweighed by the bad in my view.

Parker Posey – I mentioned this one above, but she’s genuinely giving the only fully hilarious performance in the show, which it sorely needs, as every line is a classic.

Carrie Coon – While I may not like the overall storyline between the three women (though yes, it picked up the pace this week), Coon is doing fantastic work in her role and I’ve never actually seen her be bad in anything (The Leftovers, The Gilded Age) and that remains true here.

Aimee Lou Wood – She was a stellar character in Sex Education, and the fact that she’s essentially thes same character here, but older, is a plus, I’d say. In addition to Posey, she has some of the funnier lines in a show devoid of many laughs.

Goggins – Any show is made better by some Goggins.

Thailand – This is a good locale that feels diverse enough from the last two to create a whole new vibe for the series, at least visually, that I think is working well. I even like the new intro song and the way it kicks in during pivotal moments on the show.

My problem is that I just feel like few characters are being developed significantly over time. One exception there would be Goggins’ Rick, who has slowly begun to open up, even if his overall storyline now leading to an entirely different city is very unusual. The Ratliffs, as a whole, do not work for me outside of Posey. I know that everyone is squealing over the incest plotline developing further every week, but not to be a prude, it’s just…pretty gross? At the very last, I don’t find it enjoyable to watch, step-brother or real brother, whatever the case may be.

I realize I’m close to alone on this one. But I feel like I’m going insane where people seem to think this is the best season and last night was one of its best episodes.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.