0:00

This message comes from Blue

0:02

Harbor Entertainment with Audrey's

0:04

children, the untold true

0:06

story of Dr. Audrey

0:08

Evans, whose fight for

0:10

change redefined medicine and

0:12

impacted the lives of

0:14

millions, starring Natalie dormer,

0:16

now playing only in theaters.

0:19

The latest season of the White

0:22

Lotus just wrapped up, but

0:24

not before serving up a

0:26

tropical buffet of sex, betrayal,

0:28

violence, revenge, privilege, incest, drugs,

0:30

death, and this at least

0:32

was new, spirituality. Yes, and in

0:34

keeping with White Lotus tradition, we

0:36

finally found out whose dead body

0:38

was floating in the pond way

0:40

back in the season premiere. I'm

0:42

Aisha Harris. And I'm Glenn Weldon. It's

0:44

just the two of us today on

0:46

NPR's pop culture Happy Hour, and we've

0:49

got so much to talk about. So,

0:51

the White Lotus is the creation of

0:53

Mike White. Y'all know this, and each

0:55

season has featured egregiously privileged white folk

0:57

coming into contact with cultures not their

0:59

own. That contact always starts out indirect,

1:01

because the white folk in question are

1:04

staying at luxury hotels. So there's a

1:06

buffer. But before the season is over,

1:08

the walls of privilege inevitably crumble. This

1:10

season was no different. It was set

1:12

in Thailand. And look, we want to

1:14

concentrate on the finale, of course, but there's

1:16

so much to talk about. I think

1:18

the best way to handle this season, Aisha,

1:21

and all the revelations of the finale, is

1:23

to tackle each storyline one by one.

1:25

You up for that? Yep, yep, let's do

1:27

it. So we've got to start with

1:29

Rick and Chelsea, played by Walton Goggins and

1:32

Amy Lou Wood. I think we're going

1:34

to be together forever, don't you? That's

1:36

a plan. Oof, oof, I say. Oof.

1:38

It turns out, of course, that they're

1:40

the ones who end up in the

1:42

pond at the beginning of the season.

1:44

Rick came to Thailand to find the

1:47

men who killed his father in the

1:49

finale, Rick. kills that man, but that

1:51

man actually turned out to be his

1:53

father. It's giving Luke Skywalk. This leads

1:55

to a gun battle in the crossfire.

1:57

Chelsea is killed and as Rick is

2:00

walking away with her body, he is

2:02

shot and killed by the hotel security

2:04

guard Guy Tock. We'll talk more about

2:06

Guy Tock in a bit. Aisha, what

2:08

did you make of how this long

2:10

Rick Chelsea storyline concluded? Yeah, I mean,

2:12

look, this entire series and this

2:15

season especially, there's a lot

2:17

of sign posting that's always

2:19

happening right from the very

2:21

first episode. It wasn't necessarily

2:23

that I thought that the choice was going

2:25

to be that this guy could be his

2:27

father in the first episode or the... the

2:30

first time he actually talks about why he's

2:32

there because I don't I don't think we

2:34

learn until maybe a little bit later

2:36

into the series but like I did

2:38

kind of figure it out by the

2:40

penultimate episode when Rick goes and he's

2:42

like posing as the movie producer and

2:44

he has that confrontation with him

2:46

and I was like this guy's gonna be

2:49

his actual father I know it yeah of

2:51

course yeah I was like oh this is so

2:53

obvious and when that reveal finally happened I threw

2:55

my hands up in the air I was just

2:57

like What are we doing here? Why is

2:59

the show so obvious? And the Chelsea moment

3:01

as well, which you just heard, where she's

3:03

like, we're gonna be together forever. I was

3:06

like, oh, she's gonna die. Or he's gonna

3:08

die. Someone's gonna die. Glenn, I don't know.

3:10

It felt clunky, but. You know, how did

3:12

that play for you? Were you into this

3:14

storyline at all? Not the, you killed my

3:17

father's storyline at all, but into the rich

3:19

health relationship a little bit. Although I will

3:21

say, the biggest critique about the season I'm

3:23

seeing online is how sluggish and bloated it

3:25

felt, which makes sense because the show keeps

3:28

getting longer. Season 1 was six episodes. Season

3:30

2 was 7, the season was eight. And

3:32

if you had that critique going into this

3:34

season, going into this finale, certainly fed into

3:37

that because it's a lot of

3:39

build-up, a lot of fakeouts, and

3:41

then the last 15 minutes, everything

3:43

happens. You say signpost, I say

3:45

setup. Early in the season, Chelsea

3:47

says bad things, happen in threes,

3:49

and first she has a brush

3:51

with violence during the robbery, then

3:53

she gets bitten by a snake,

3:55

and then she dies because he

3:57

can't keep his revenge in his

3:59

pants, right? Chelsea saying at one point

4:01

that her relationship with Rick is a

4:04

yin yang one. Skype run this yin

4:06

and yang battle and I'm hope and

4:08

Rick is pain and eventually one of

4:10

us all win. Right there. See that

4:13

was the moment I knew she was

4:15

doomed because that is a very smart

4:17

way of illustrating how our culture co-ops

4:19

other cultures by turning something like balance

4:22

the concept of balance itself into a

4:24

zero-sum game and I just didn't get

4:26

this relationship for most of the season

4:28

for reasons like that because they don't

4:31

make sense together. Right. Mike needs to

4:33

show us Rick as someone who is

4:35

distracted and consumed by revenge, but he

4:37

also has to show us a Chelsea

4:40

who is in every other part of

4:42

her life a deeply emotionally intelligent person.

4:44

She can read people. And I kept

4:46

wondering why she didn't see how poorly

4:49

he was treating her, how he never

4:51

made eye contact with her, how he

4:53

dismissed her. And then I remember all

4:55

the people I know in my life

4:58

who give great relationship advice, but are

5:00

in lousy relationships themselves. And it's like,

5:02

okay. And that moment we just had

5:04

in the finale. She says, we'll be

5:07

together forever forever. And then he says

5:09

that's a plan. Giving her nothing. And

5:11

what you couldn't see in that clip

5:13

was her reaction, which like he just

5:15

made the biggest grandest romantic gesture in

5:18

the world. That's when she goes from

5:20

being just doomed to a tragic figure.

5:22

Look, I do find it a little

5:24

hard to understand that relationship, but I

5:27

also have seen... those types of relationships

5:29

play out. Usually there's a money component

5:31

to it oftentimes. And there's a money

5:33

component here, sure. There is too, but

5:36

they really kind of downplayed and she

5:38

is, you know, unlike some of the

5:40

other women on this show who are

5:42

clearly in relationships because of money. Mike

5:45

White goes out of his way to

5:47

make sure that like we understand that

5:49

Chelsea sees something in him. When it

5:51

comes down to it, I think most

5:54

of us don't actually care who dies

5:56

at the end of it. Like it.

5:58

enlightening here. And as much as I

6:00

love Walton Goggins and Amy Lewwood... in

6:03

these roles. It just felt sort of

6:05

perfunctory to me, but whatever. I get

6:07

that. So Guy Talk is the guy

6:09

who actually killed Rick. Guy Talk and

6:12

Moog are another couple. They work at

6:14

the hotel. They are played by Tam

6:16

Tap Tim Tong and Lisa, whom listeners

6:18

might recognize from the K-pop group Black

6:21

Pink. Guy Talk's whole character is he

6:23

wants to be harder, MOOC's whole character

6:25

is she wants him to be harder

6:27

too. That's the entirety of her character.

6:30

Things turn out pretty well for Guy

6:32

Talk on this plane of existence anyway,

6:34

but he's a spiritual guy, and although

6:36

killing Rick earns him respect and a

6:38

new position as the bodyguard for the

6:41

hotel's honor, and it also earns him

6:43

the love of MOOC, because of course

6:45

it does. It all happens at the

6:47

cost of his beliefs, how'd that hit

6:50

you? I think my biggest issue with

6:52

White Lotus as a series is the

6:54

fact that the people who work at

6:56

these hotels, especially if they are people

6:59

of color, tend to be very flattened,

7:01

very one-dimensional. I think Belinda, the Natasha

7:03

Rothwell character who we'll talk about later,

7:05

her character in the first season was

7:08

like an exception to that. But here

7:10

it just felt as though there was

7:12

nothing really going on here. My biggest

7:14

critique is that I would have liked

7:17

to see far less of all the

7:19

white people at this resort and more

7:21

of the dynamics of everyone who was

7:23

working at this resort. Look. Guy Talk

7:26

and MOOC on paper, they look like

7:28

a beautiful couple, but this just felt

7:30

like a storyline from like 50, 60

7:32

years ago. It's like, it's not even

7:35

just about wanting Guy Talk to be

7:37

harder. It's like she wants him to

7:39

advance in his role at the hotel

7:41

to the point where like he's making

7:44

money and he has more power. Like

7:46

it's about that too. It's about this

7:48

very, again, capitalism rules everything, but there

7:50

was just not a lot to do.

7:53

And MOOC, we were talking about this

7:55

before we started recording. Really really like

7:57

not a lot of screen crime and

7:59

I'm sure people black pink fans were

8:02

probably like what's going on here? Where

8:04

is she? I mean she comes off

8:06

like the woman in the ad for

8:08

Charles Atlas bodybuilding who dismissed This is

8:10

the skinny guy when he gets sand

8:13

kicked in his face, but when he

8:15

comes back and he's jacked, she's all

8:17

over him. Yeah. Which is a very,

8:19

to your point, a very aggressive depiction

8:22

of women, you know, there's a possibility

8:24

that I might buy it if she

8:26

was given any specificity, any characterization, anything

8:28

that made her distinct. And I don't

8:31

know if it's in Mike White's Wheelhouse

8:33

to kind of do that for some

8:35

of these characters that he's portraying as

8:37

being objectified and victimized and victimized and

8:40

victimized by the white folk. That sucks.

8:42

Yeah, I do wonder what it would

8:44

be like if he did actually try

8:46

to write these non-white characters in more

8:49

interesting ways, but then I'm like, do

8:51

I want to find that out? I

8:53

don't know. Yeah, see that's the thing.

8:55

He is in his willhouse with the

8:58

Ratliffs. Let's talk about the Ratliffs. They

9:00

are an obscenely rich North Carolina couple

9:02

with three kids. And throughout the season

9:04

we see that the father, Tim knows

9:07

that the feds are onto his shady

9:09

business deals. He doesn't tell his family

9:11

that prison is waiting for him when

9:13

he returns home, or that the family

9:16

has lost everything, basically. And in the

9:18

finale, Tim finally surrenders to the despair

9:20

he's been spiraling into all season long

9:22

as he attempts to poison everyone but

9:25

his youngest son, Loughlin, only to come

9:27

to his senses at the last minute.

9:29

But then the next morning, it's Lachlin

9:31

who polishes off a poison smoothie, and

9:33

we get a very cheap fakeout death

9:36

that the kid seems to bounce back

9:38

from awfully quickly. Lachlin is played by

9:40

Sam Novola. The other two kids, Piper,

9:42

Piper, no, and Saxon are played by

9:45

Sarah Catherine Cook at Patrick Schwarzenegger, and

9:47

their mother Victoria is played by Parker

9:49

Posey. Yes. I just don't think at

9:51

this age. meant to live an uncomfortable

9:54

life. I don't have the will. What

9:56

was your big rat lift takeaway here?

9:58

Okay, so I am in the bag

10:00

for anything Parker Posey has ever done.

10:03

when it's something as bloated and messy

10:05

and mostly not interesting as the season

10:07

of whitelowners. This is why we get

10:09

along, Aisha, because you are a gay

10:12

man at heart. I really am. I

10:14

thought the scene in this final episode

10:16

where Piper finally admits that she is

10:18

only meant to live the soft life,

10:21

she can't actually commit to, you know,

10:23

full-on Buddhism or any sort of spirituality.

10:25

Like the food. I mean, it was

10:27

vegetarian, but it... I don't know, you

10:30

could tell it like, wasn't organic. And

10:32

it was just kind of bland and...

10:34

I don't know, it was kind of

10:36

like, could I like really eat this

10:39

for a hold here? The look on

10:41

Victoria's face of like, yes, yes, finally,

10:43

finally, we won. was like a really

10:45

great moment like I was laughing the

10:48

whole time and the whole family dynamic

10:50

here it did overall feel a little

10:52

bit like a retread of season one

10:54

with the family that's led by Connie

10:56

Britton as a matriarch not obviously not

10:59

a one-to-one but like it felt like

11:01

it was exploring the same thing especially

11:03

the Sydney Sweeney character versus Piper and

11:05

this like quest for feeling enlightened in

11:08

a way But like this was the

11:10

second twist slash fakeout that I saw

11:12

coming from a mile away because of

11:14

course the poisonous fruit was kind of

11:17

like it was made the Chekhov's gun

11:19

in the first episode like you they

11:21

they were checkups punk punk yes and

11:23

you know the hotel worker is telling

11:26

them they're poisonous they will kill you

11:28

and then when she reiterates it again

11:30

in this final. episode, they call it

11:32

a suicide tree. I was like, okay,

11:35

they're harping on this a little too

11:37

much. And as soon as Lachlin, being

11:39

a young adult kid who clearly would

11:41

never watch a dish in his life,

11:44

has never done it, and the idea

11:46

of him being felled by the fact

11:48

that he was too lazy to clean

11:50

out the... The blender before using it

11:53

is like, he's not going to die.

11:55

Even when he was swimming in the

11:57

water, it was like, he's not going

11:59

to die. That's just too much. Glenn,

12:02

were you on board with me? Did

12:04

you also kind of have that sense

12:06

that it was possible that they weren't

12:08

actually going to die? I knew that

12:11

the family wasn't going to die. I

12:13

did think that Lucklin was going to

12:15

die. I was faked out. the gun

12:17

stuff and that the body was something

12:20

to do something else. That's what I

12:22

probably would have done, but that's, you

12:24

know, that's me. The Lachlan and Saxon

12:26

stuff in the storyline. I just want

12:28

to say to folks, I'm seeing a

12:31

lot about this online. If you were

12:33

grossed out by the Brother on Brother

12:35

stuff in Game of Thrones in stride,

12:37

you are telling on yourself and you

12:40

shouldn't work on that. Indeed. But I

12:42

do like that storyline because it's there

12:44

for like, like, for people to kind

12:46

of, post memes about it is there

12:49

to point up what happens when you

12:51

live in a bubble like these characters

12:53

live in and are constantly told that

12:55

you are good people you are quality

12:58

people and the people outside the bubble

13:00

are beneath you when you're told that

13:02

often enough by the Victoria's in your

13:04

life you're gonna believe it. So that's

13:07

what gives you Lachlan you know entering

13:09

his flowers in the attic era and

13:11

it also gives you not for nothing

13:13

a few hundred years of British and

13:16

European aristocracy right a few hundred years

13:18

of history is where this goes but

13:20

to the Parker Posey of it all

13:22

I'm going to join you this is

13:25

a synergy of actor and role because

13:27

Victoria on paper is kind of a

13:29

cartoon and my gal Parker is known

13:31

to go big as you say it

13:34

is dangerous but when in that finale

13:36

Victoria says yes we are lucky No

13:38

one in the history of the world

13:40

has lived better than we have. Even

13:43

the old kings and queens. The least

13:45

we can do is enjoy it. If

13:47

we don't, it's offensive. That is such

13:49

great writing because it's close to the

13:51

line of brush. satire. That is entitlement

13:54

distilled to its essence. The thing we

13:56

owe to others is to keep to

13:58

ourselves and never think about them. That

14:00

is the prosperity gospel, that is God

14:03

wants me to be wealthy, it is

14:05

a cancer and it is embedded in

14:07

American life of people like the Radcliffes

14:09

and they seem broadly satiric at the

14:12

beginning of this show and then they

14:14

became less and less so as the

14:16

season progressed. They are matched to this

14:18

time. in a very strange way. Yes,

14:21

I agree. I guess I just like,

14:23

after three seasons of this, I'm just

14:25

like, what more can we explore? And

14:27

while it felt very on brand and

14:30

on point, it was also just like

14:32

in service of what? At this point,

14:34

we've seen this not just in this

14:36

show, but in plenty of other series

14:39

about rich people. Again, I guess I'm

14:41

just a little kind of tapped out

14:43

on. this stating the obvious and when

14:45

I read something like an article in

14:48

the Atlantic where they're calling this the

14:50

first great post-woke piece of art I'm

14:52

just like what are what are we

14:54

doing here like how are we how

14:57

are we talking about this show and

14:59

how is the show actually playing out

15:01

that's just not being able to read

15:03

satire yes look we've got a lot

15:06

more to unpack here we're gonna talk

15:08

about the great caricoon the great and

15:10

good Natasha Roth will in a bit

15:12

we'll be back after a quick break

15:16

Support for NPR and the following

15:18

message come from from Betterment, Investing

15:20

and Savings app. CEO app. CEO

15:23

shares how Betterment utilizes tech

15:25

tools powered by human advice.

15:27

by human advice. is here

15:29

to help customers build wealth

15:31

their way. way. And we And we

15:33

provide powerful technology and complete

15:36

human support where technology can

15:38

deliver ease of use and

15:40

affordability and the the people behind

15:42

that technology can provide advice

15:44

and guidance. and guidance. This

16:51

message comes from Schwab. At Schwab,

16:53

how you invest is your choice,

16:56

not theirs. That's why when it

16:58

comes to managing your wealth, Schwab

17:00

gives you more choices. You can

17:03

invest and trade on your own.

17:05

Plus, get advice and more comprehensive

17:07

wealth solutions to help meet your

17:10

unique needs. With award-winning service, low

17:12

costs and transparent advice, you can

17:14

manage your wealth your way at

17:16

Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more. This

17:19

message comes from Carvana. Support

26:13

for NPR and the following message

26:15

come from IXL Learning. IXL Learning

26:17

uses advanced algorithms to give the

26:19

right help to each kid no

26:21

matter the age or personality. Get

26:23

an exclusive 20% off IXL membership

26:26

when you sign up today at

26:28

ixl.com slash NPR. This message comes from

26:30

homes.com. The right agent can make

26:32

or break your home search. That's why

26:34

homes.com provides an agent directory that details

26:37

each agent's experience, so you can find

26:39

the right one and ultimately the right

26:41

home. homes.com. We've done your home. homework.