Review: You have to see 'The White Lotus' season 3
It had to happen. After Emmy and audience worship for its first two smash seasons, "The White Lotus" was fated for a dip in season 3.
And dip it does in the early, strangely static, frustratingly repetitive chapters (critics were provided with six of the eight episodes).
But hold off on the antidepressants -- series creator Mike White, a writer and director of bizarro brilliance, doesn't stay down for long.
And by the time he's back up and gunning for the entitled one-percenters who use luxury vacations to show their superiority and hide their moral rot, the game is on for White's brand of ferociously funny social satire. And he's coming in hot.
After taking us to the White Lotus hotels in Hawaii and Sicily, White invites us to the resort in Thailand, where guests are offered lessons in eastern religion, notably Buddhism, and physical and spiritual wellness. Most decline in favor of sex, drugs, nightlife and hedonism.
In the very first scene, shots ring out. Again with murder? Yup, just like the first two seasons that flashed back to the roots of a crime. That's hardly a limitation. You might as well complain about how Hitchcock uses suspense, Monet paints water lilies or Kendrick Lamar mobilizes rap. It's the fullness of the variations on a theme that indicates an artist is at work.
And White, using western characters as strangers in a strange land, is building a portrait of America that illuminates even as it stings. Despite slip-ups and a slight slackening of control, his artful intentions shine through with piercing clarity.
As ever, White gathers just the right actors to compliment his vision. I won't pretend that the absence of Jennifer Coolidge doesn't hurt. After two shining seasons, her character, Tanya, was killed off. "The gays are trying to murder me," she memorably screamed about the sinister doings at the behest of her fortune-hunting new husband, Greg (Jon Gries).
So it's great fun to have indie darling Parker Posey around to take up the comedic slack as Victoria, the drug-addled, culturally clueless North Carolina wife of powerbroker-in-crisis Tim Ratliff (the great Brit actor Jason Isaacs struggling manfully with a Southern drawl).
The Ratliffs have been pressured by their student daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) who wants to study with a local Thai monk. Her younger sibling Lochlan (Sam Nivola) offers support, but she feels a chill of disdain from older brother Saxon, played to hottie, slimeball perfection by Patrick Schwarzenegger, the son of California's former governor and Maria Shriver.
Joining this dysfunctional family unit -- there's one at every White Lotus -- is a trio of gal pals. Michelle Monaghan plays Jaclyn, the TV star who's financed the getaway for married Kate (Leslie Bibb) and single Laurie (the ever-fabulous Carrie Coon). The three are soon at each other's throats and eager to escape a resort crammed with aging, balding fatcats.
Among that group are "Fallout" favorite Walton Goggins, superb in everything and especially here as Rick Hatchett, who is less interested in young girlfriend Chelsea (a livewire Aimee Lou Wood) than in a revenge plot he's cooking up in the Thai capital of Bangkok.
HBO, protective about spoilers, wants reviewers to stay mum about the Oscar-winning guest star who shows up midway to steal every scene not nailed down. OK, but if anyone deserves an Emmy for season 3, it's this icon, who spouts a monologue that will blow your head off.
White doesn't disappoint in tackling taboos. Everything from incest to group sex finds its way into the fireworks at White Lotus Thailand. There's even an attempt to involve the locals with a romance between security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and hotel staffer Mook, played with hidden strength by the lovely Lalisa Manobal, better known as pop star Lisa of Blackpink.
Insects, lizards, chattering monkeys and a climate cataclysm are portents of doom, as is the opening spray of bullets that involved the return from season 1 of the tender, terrific Natasha Rothwell as Belinda, a massage therapist from the Hawaii resort who was betrayed by Tanya.
White stirs the pot with wicked glee and we love him for it. Forget the rehashes and missteps. Season 3 of "The White Lotus" comes out blazing with White's incendiary creative fire.
I can't imagine any TV addict who won't turn to friends and say, "This you have to see."
