The White Lotus
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Just the idea of Hawaii is sexy to me burnt sunsets, warm sand, hot nights.
Maybe its the Hollywood gaze.
Can Ann Marie score a perfect barrel rideandan NFL hunk before he flies home?
Will Lancaster rescue Kerr from her ugly marriage before she sails to the mainland?
Even Gigdet had a love triangle to untangle before she bid Waikiki aloha.
The Pattons are tiffing again, this time because Shane wants to have sex.
Honestly, this horndog discourse is hard for me to buy.
The newlyweds have so far ended each evening with a bang, but otherwise its pretty chaste between them.
In Mysterious Monkeys, they also have morning sex, which appears mutually satisfying if perhaps perfunctory.
Rachel is looking for a fight, desperate to find cracks in the relationship to justify her second thoughts.
At least the Pattons are doing it on vacation.
The Mossbachers are nowhere close.
But radical honesty is Marks new watchword.
He doesnt even flinch when his teenage son overhears.
The girls are predictably merciless.
Maybe he was just too embarrassed to ask grandma to use a dildo on him?
suggests Olivia, who ismaaaybetrying to help?
But theres an unmissable twinkle in her eye when she informs her parents that grandad was probably a bottom.
Thats how you mostly get it receiving.
Mark has Bloody Marys for breakfast until its time for day one of scuba school.
Which brings us to poor, suffering Quinn.
It was magical until the tide washed away his many, many devices.
Hes a 20-minute Uber from Target give the kid a credit card.
Its fascinating to see how quickly Mark bends the new information about his dad into a self-serving narrative.
He hid the monkey and that screwed me up.
Armonds sinking fast since busting bring up the dispensary of Paulas lost bag.
Belinda finds him asleep in his car.
(Armie likes his top knot.)
An Armond with a stash and a vendetta is a dangerous thing.
Honeymoons will be scorched.
She had an oppressive, collapsed relationship with her cruel mother that even the womans death cant end.
Her mourning is hysterical in every sense of the word.
I wish I had a man here, she says, watching Rachel and Shane over dinner.
Belinda, whom Tanyas compelled to leave work early to join her, agrees.
In a shrewd metaphor, Tanya cant even get the urn open herself.
On the boat, she breaks down crying and screaming before the ashes can be emptied.
Shell probably carry them with her forever.
Hes fuming at Armond.
People have been coming for me my whole life, he tells Rachel, somehow with a straight face.
Im just playing the hand I was dealt.
Like, yeah, its a great hand, and thats not my fault.
Rachel promptly initiates what I can only imagine is c’mon-stop-talking sex.
Eventually, Mark drunkenly stumbles home to his family, chattering like a monkey and thumping his bare chest.
Youre taking this really hard, she says with total remove.
The only people having enviable sex onThe White Lotusare Paula and the nameless waiter.
Olivia is the one doing the envying.
The next night, Olivia follows her into the night to confirm what she already knows.
Is Olivia jealous of Paula?
Jealous of the waiter who gets to be with her?
Speaking of, its time for another round of bookwatch.
What point is Mike White making with their vacation syllabus?
That a liberal arts education is largely performative?
That it breeds cynicism?
Rachel, horrified and embarrassed and maybe even jealous, has to flee the scene.
Nothing seems headed in a murder-y direction.
With each successive week, it conjures something darker and nervier for me.
Every character is fraying in some sense, but in ways that make them less intimidating.
Tanya cant do a murder; she cant even open a box.
Mark would have to ask Nicoles permission.
And yet this cant all end with a tragic ridge-hike-selfie death, can it?
