no mud, no lotus

Redemption in Mike's White Lotus - part 2 of 2.

Jason Issacs’ millionaire dad, Tim Ratliff, has stumbled through Season 3 in a Lorazepam fog, exposing the melodramatic penis¹ to his family at breakfast. Wanted by the FBI for illegal financial dealings and despite stealing a gun; fantasizing about murder-suicide; making a poisonous Jim Jones cocktail for the family to drink; and almost accidentally killing his one good son; Tim has the greatest redemption arc. He is going home to face his ruin, believing the strength of his family unit will prevail over all adversity.

His pivotal role is deceptively simple, perhaps because actors often bring their karmic pasts with them. I can never unsee Issacs as Dr Hunter Aloysius Percy² a.k.a. Hap in the iconic series The OA³ (which despite a seriously dedicated fan base was, like Mike White’s Enlightenment, cancelled after two seasons.) It’s as if pill-popping anesthetist Hap, obsessed with studying near-death and life-after-death experiences has been cooking this character for years. Hap’s reflection on the morality of repeatedly drowning his abducted subjects, portends his current predicament: There's no such thing as good and evil, black and white. There's only gray. There's only what a man can stand.

And what can men stand? While exposing male genitalia for shock value and objectifying the male body is seen by writer White as trying to even out the injustice of the Male Gaze, the use of prosthetics make it sort of redundant. USA, UK and Australian television are so prudishly straight-laced in comparison to the European treatment a naked body as a naked body. Sometimes its functional, some time its funny, sometimes its sexual - it’s contextual. Genitals and sex are a normal part of life and European families and friends sauna naked together, nothing perrvy here. Perhaps attitudes will evolve if Season 4 settles in Norway.

White seems to have a complex closeted catholic sexuality vibing through all seasons of TWL. Commenting on S2’s glimpse of the murderous evil gays shagging, there’s a pleasure to me as a guy who is gay-ish to make gay sex transgressive again, and I just think transgressive sex is sexier. I guess I’m old school.⁴ Hey being naughty and dirty may be fun if you are a comfortable Californian needing a viagric prod to arouse a flaccid middle-aged libido, but for anyone struggling with their non-hetero sexuality or gender identity in a morally repressive society (especially the wider USA), it’s a regressive cultural statement.

TWL undeniably has real world a/effect - we drool over the seductive lure of lux travel and buy a White Lotus pillowcase, while the Guardian reports that Thai takeaway orders surge by 25% when the show drops on Mondays in the UK. But by far the most absurd press this season has been when USA Today⁵ opinioned that Leslie Bibbs’ fickle Texan socialite Kate, swathed in Valentino by the pool⁶ and her absent husband, prove Trump’s effect on the cultural zeitgeist. Apparently she portrays the millions of real-world church going American folks with strong traditional values — not the progressively-labeled weird stereotypes — who voted for him.

The neat resolution for Kate and her also-cliched blonde buddies, actress Jaclyn in vintage Chanel chiffon and Carrie Coons’ New York lawyer Laurie wearing Zimmerman kimonos and toting Loewe, was a pitiful outcome. A one line apology from Jaclyn (who I was hoping would be shot by (Lithuanian actor and producer Arnas Fedaravičius’) Valentin’s angry Russian girlfriend fed up with his rent-boy ways) made a week of gossip and betrayal all OK. That we value chums we have known most of our lives because, well, who else ultimately accepts us for who we are, warts and all, is the bland story line of every Friends episode.

Laurie surprisingly emerged as honest and solid — unafraid to have facial movement, telling it like it is, jumping out of windows and walking home bare foot to contemplate being asked to pay $10,000 by Pay Pal or Zelle after having sex with one of the season’s gun-toting thieving Russian bad guys. I’m not sure if White’s cutting of Laurie’s scene where she is fumbling to explain the correct pronouns for her either nonbinary or transgender daughter,⁷ was a political move for the new USA family values era of TWL, or a realisation that it may have been too cringy and offensive? Maybe we will see a Director’s cut one day.

Of course Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea had to die - her thin veneer of pop spirituality and free-range teeth were an offense to the cult of ophthalmic perfection and class identity. And Rick, Rick, Rick… there was never going to be any redemption for Walton Goggins’ doom and desolation. Caught in his self-centered vortex of revenge, Chelsea was bitten by a deadly snake and abandoned while he led his newly sober and celibate best friend Frank into a sex and drug fueled relapse. I recoiled each time he entered a scene, from the palpable toxicity seeping from his skin. Yet, as the weight of Rick’s karmic load submerges Chelsea deeper into the muddy Lotus pond, his gaze is clear. Rick is freed from his torment.

The oddest gaze in S3, is the triple triangle of voyeurism - other witnessing two adults having sex.⁸ First up, Frank’s sexual penetration being witnessed by anonymous female Asian sex workers (which I spoke about in part 1 of this essay which you should read first if you haven’t already⁹); Saxon writhing in pleasure witnessing his younger brother Lochlan loose his virginity to Charlotte Le Bonn’s Chloe (while Lochlan simultaneously jerks Saxon off because hes a people pleaser in a family of narcissists) ; to anti-villian Jon Gries’ Greg/Gary’s admission that he used to watch his parents have sex as a child and it turns him on - asking his girlfriend Chloe to procure a younger man to reenact it. Is there redemption? Some sex workers being well paid for doing nothing - always a win; Saxon‘s uber-confidant bubble bursting - another tick; and Greg and Chloe getting to live out a mutually beneficial kink - alright - three stars.

White delivers what we wanted all along, resolving the betrayal of returning White Lotus employee Belinda. Opportunistic greed is blind and Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda and her negotiator son Zion, waved goodbye to the island with a $5 million haul. The victim becomes the perpetrator as Belinda discards fellow staff-member Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul), who had given her the attention, love and safety that she provided to Jennifer Coolidge’s hungry ghost Tanya in S1. I was hoping their speed boat would blow up, but it didn’t. Just like with Guy Ritchie, someone has to grab the money and run.

Dabbling in self-help books, organising indigo dying experiences for actors, and having a hotel blessed by a monk, do not equal engaging with the tenets of Buddhism. But I keep forgetting that, as luscious as TWL is, Mike White is writing entertaining TV, not probing identity and desire. As real-world Buddhist, zen master Thich Nhat Hanh gently explains in No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering¹⁰ unless we show up to face our muddy trauma, torment, greed, envy and heartbreak, the lotus of contentment and happiness will continue to elude us.

Tim Ratliff may be content doing time in white-collar prison, but his hapless family (excluding Lochlan who saw God during his near-death experience) didn’t choose to face their fears. Belinda has the money but will always be looking over her shoulder. The gal pals twitter and selfie off into obscurity. Gaitock gets the girl and a killer promotion he doesn’t want. Frank is chanting - until the next binge. Perhaps the biggest redemption would be if Rick and Chelsea are reincarnated to try to love again.

Who knows — nothing is implausible in White’s intensely tangled Lotus.

1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20250319-why-on-screen-male-nudity-is-still-rare-and-taboo

2. https://www.bustle.com/articles/200415-who-is-hap-in-the-oa-his-motives-are-left-unclear

3. The OA, Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij, 2019. https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80044950

4. https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/the-white-lotus-gay-sex-mike-white-tom-hollander-leo-woodall-nude-1235439490/

5. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/white-lotus-reflects-new-reality-we-voted-for-trump-and-were-not-weird-opinion/ar-AA1B0Uza

6. Matteo Azzolini, Lessons from The White Lotus.

Lessons from The White Lotus

7. https://www.out.com/gay-tv-shows/white-lotus-carrie-coon-laurie-trans-nonbinary-child-edited-out-details#rebelltitem2

8. Darian Leader, McShrunk, The White Lotus Speech. ………………………………………

The White Lotus Speech

9.

10. https://plumvillage.org/books/no-mud-no-lotus