Welcome to the start of the week in which everyone you know will be talking about incest.
Brotherly love took on a different meaning during Sunday night’s episode of The White Lotus, which revealed what happened on the yacht between the Ratliff Brothers, Lochlan (Sam Nivola) and Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and her model friend Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon).
In a switch from earlier this season, it’s Saxon who wakes up in the morning to the sight of his brother’s bare bottom, a vision that sobers him up quickly and forces him to flash back to the night of debauchery before. It turns out that while Lochlan and Chloe were having sex on the bed next to him, he pleasured himself.
Every detail that rushes back to him makes Saxon nauseated, to the point that when Lochlan comes to say good morning, he has to run away to throw up. His horror and disgust grows later that afternoon when Chloe fills in the blanks on details that he didn’t remember. Apparently, Lochlan actually reached over and j---ed off Saxon while he was hooking up with Chloe.
Chloe and Chelsea lightly tease Saxon over sibling sex being his “thing,” causing him to protest “It’s not a thing!” and storm off, distraught.
Gary/Greg knows that Chloe hooked up with one of the brothers, and assumes it’s Saxon. He asks to meet with him for dinner, a menacing invitation that immediately will make every conspiracy viewer assume it’s Gary/Greg who is this season’s killer and Saxon is his target. I don’t think it’s that simple. Or maybe it is, which will be a fun twist. We’ll have to wait and see.
There will be a (cue Parker Posey’s Southern accent) tsunami of discourse about the sex scene, which plays out over the course of the entire episode in flashbacks. Is it incest? Is it disturbing? Heck, is it actually hot? (These are actors remember, not real brothers.) We can thank Mike White and HBO for forcing us all to form nuanced opinions about incest.
Sunday night’s episode was dramatic in its own right, even before flashes of Sam Nivola’s thrusting butt and Patrick Schwarzengger rubbing one out started. The beginning of the episode dramatized a quite upsetting death by suicide of Timothy (Jason Isaacs), who shoots himself in the villa and is discovered bleeding out by his wife and daughter. It turns out to be a red herring; Timothy was just fantasizing about the scenario, which is so disturbing he opts not to actually kill himself—for now.
Victoria (Parker Posey) thinks Timothy’s strange behavior is because of distress over their daughter Piper’s (Sarah Catherine Hook) desire to move to the Thai meditation camp. “If that strange man is going to have my baby, he better be the best Buddhist in China,” Victoria says, continuing last week’s streak of not knowing where in the world she actually is.
She insists that she and Timothy meet with the guru to suss out the situation. It turns out that a spiraling, suicidal Boomer facing certain personal and professional ruin is the perfect parental figure to meet with a guru. Timothy is visibly moved by his conversation with the guru, and endorses Piper’s decision to stay in Thailand. Victoria says she’ll agree to all of this only if Piper stays at the retreat for the night and still wants to do it after.
My three favorite people on TV—the rich white ladies—find their ménage à trois of s--t-talking each other growing more complicated now that Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) has slept with their hot butler Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius).
Kate (Lesle Bibb) sees Valentin leaving Jaclyn’s room in the morning. She thinks spilling the beans to Laurie (Carrie Coon), who Jaclyn had been encouraging to sleep with Valentin, would be another of their fun, dishy and b---hy gossip sessions. But Laurie is instantly irritated. “So psycho,” she says. “It’s sad. She’s an aging actress…She practically lives off male attention. Which is one thing when you’re 25, but now you’re 45 and guess what? It’s pathetic.”
“I didn’t think you were going to care so much,” Kate says, feeling awkward. “I just thought you were going to laugh about it.” When they’re all at the pool together, Laurie decides to confront Jaclyn about it, because it would feel “fake” not to. “One person’s fake is another person’s manners,” Kate replies, a line that increases my complete and total obsession with her.
Jaclyn denies it happened at first and becomes irritated that Laurie is needling her so much about it. “We’re still the same people we were in the 10th grade,” Laurie says. Brutal. Vegas bookies should run odds on whether these women will still be speaking to each other when this vacation ends.
Elsewhere, Belinda’s son arrives while she’s still in bed with Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul). Her son is remarkably chill about it, which is either very sweet and healthy or extremely weird. I haven’t landed one way or another on it yet. Later, Ponrchai offers to help Belinda open the spa of her dreams, which is just about the most adorable thing ever. (I instinctively let out an audible “awww!” when he said it.) Belinda, you deserve happiness! Stay clear of Gary/Greg!
My week-long nightmare and source of anxiety that was threatening to lead me to my own Lorazepam habit is finally over: My beloved Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) finally got his gun back without his bosses knowing it went missing, meaning his job is safe. If anything happens to dear, sweet Gaitok I will be staging a protest outside Mike White’s house where I stand there and boo for six hours a day for the next year. Thankfully, there isn’t a reason for that—at least not yet—especially since Mook (Lalisa Manobal) agreed to finally go on a date with him.
He has to go to the gun range first to learn how to use the gun. The fact that he’s so good at it made a thought cross my mind that he could be the shooter, but I banished it immediately because I refuse to think such things about my cherished Gaitok.
Finally, Rick (Walton Goggins) meets with Sritala (Patravadi Mejudohn) about the fake movie for him to star in, convincing her to have him and Frank (Sam Rockwell) over to her house. It puts into motion Rick’s rendezvous with her husband, who he says killed his father. That’s where we leave the episode—with a very uneasy feeling.
