Mike White just can’t leave it alone, can he? Not contented with serving us up an inter-brother kiss in the closing moments in the closing moments of episode five, we start things back on the boat with an even grimmer revelation.
Yes, there was a threesome (with Charlotte Le Bon’s Chloe). Yes, Saxon wakes up with a roaring headache and then spends most of the morning throwing up in horror at what he’s just done. Yes, Greg finds out and goes on the warpath.
To make matters even worse, Lochlan seems oddly unfazed by it all. Why? Is he actually, secretly, a predator? “God, I don't think there's a drug in the world that would make me get off with my brother,” Chelsea tells an appalled Saxon. “Hey I don't judge, okay?” Maybe not, but we do.
Looking away from Saxon and Lochlan (hard to do, I know, but bear with), things are heating up in other parts of the hotel, too. Our favourite CEO-in-crisis, Tim Ratliff, starts the episode contemplating suicide – in fact, we get treated to a very graphic recreation of what that might look like, complete with Piper and Victoria shrieking in horror. And it is, in fact, horrific.
Fortunately, that’s all in his mind, though he does find the time to visit the monastery that Piper has declared she wants to do her gap year in and ask the monk some questions. Questions like, “What happens when you die?”
Subtle as a brick, but the monk’s reply is reassuring. Ish. “You cannot outrun pain,” he’s told. Then: “death is a happy return. Like coming home.” Meanwhile, Victoria is rushing around the monastery spouting one-liners that a wind-up toy.
“You want her to shave her head and start banging a bongo in times square?” she cries to her husband at one point. That’s just before declaring that she’d rather be actually dead than poor, because she couldn’t cope with not having money. Tim watches her with bleary eyes; you can see the cogs turning. Uh-oh. Just as well Gaitok finally manages to nab the gun back while they’re out.
Things aren’t going smoothly for Jaclyn et al, either. Namely because Kate sees Valentin coming out of her room late at night – and Laurie takes the news about as well as you’d expect for somebody who’s spent the last few days being told he’s into her instead.
“She has not changed at all. She's so psycho,” she says at breakfast. “It's sad, she's an ageing actress. You saw her yesterday, she literally lives off male attention.” Jaclyn, for her part, denies it all, and the atmosphere is frostier than the Arctic Circle. Are these girls ever going to talk to each other again after this holiday?
There are only two more episodes left of this season, and while the tension is certainly coming to a boil, it remains to be seen how exactly it’ll explode out into the open. For now, the only happy people here are Belinda (whose son Zion walks in on her in bed with her hot masseuse friend) and the ever-cheerful Mok (Lisa, who so far has been given almost nothing to do).
And how about that closer in the final minutes of the episode, which reveal that Rick has finally managed to clinch that meeting with his long-time nemesis. Or that Lochlan and Saxon maybe had an even more intimate experience than either of them remembered while they were drunk and/or high.
In terms of taste -- well, it’s bad. In terms of drama, on the other hand, it’s very juicy. Has it gone too far? I suspect it might have, but there’s no denying people will be talking about this… which I imagine is what White had in mind all along.
The White Lotus is streaming now on Sky Atlantic and NOW
