white lotus episode 7: cash app?

like a little boy's dream...

are you feeling as conflicted as I am? I can’t wait for Sunday night at 9pm but I’m completely dreading Sunday night at 10:30pm. do we form a support group?

this week I was joined by two of my fave Bravo recappers Sarah Galli and Gibson Johns, who I asked to recap with me long before Mike White and Leslie Bibb let us know that Southern Charm and RHOBH were literally their muses. what a time to be alive.

I’m recapping the finale episode with MSNBC’s 11th Hour host Stephanie Ruhle (and I’ll be on her show this Friday at 11pm!)

Listen on Spotify:

Listen on Apple Podcasts:

and as usual, there were a few things we didn’t have time to go into during the episode:

• on the podcast we discussed the red and blue motif from the Muay Thai fight clips that were cut between scenes, but we didn’t get into the characters’ wardrobes. the costume choices are meticulous and now I’m following the show’s costume designer Alex Bovaird on IG @alexbovairdsprouse.

  

• I require more details on Jaclyn being all over Dave at Laurie’s wedding. I get that it’s not at all necessary to tell us more from a TV storytelling standpoint, because the message has been received (i.e., Jaclyn has always done this; Laurie is pissed about a deeper pattern; Kate prefers to live in denial). but this is one of those instances where I feel desperate to know more about something that didn’t happen because the characters aren’t real (!!!)

imagine if there were a digital spinoff about these 3 during the off-season?

• for those who think Belinda should *of course* take the money, it seems like some people think she deserves even more. I’ll admit that I assumed he would start his offer at $1 million, but maybe he’s cheaper than I thought (when it comes to other people, not his own house or yacht). or did he envision this as a starting bid? do you think $100,000 is enough, or would more have seemed suspicious? the pretext of the spa investment is convenient. do you think it would be risky for Belinda to ask for more, or would it make Greg think he underestimated her? these feel like questions they would debate in the Talmud.

• I suspect we’re going to keep learning that Piper is more like Victoria than Piper wishes were true. the thing Victoria and Piper have in common is their need to live a comfortable life, which Victoria obtains through Lorazepam and Piper is pursuing through spiritual comfort, an escape from her family, and finding a new guru to lay a clear path for her. here’s another brilliant use of costumes to make this point. props to Remy Kassimir for catching this:

@remykassimirWhite Lotus scene analysis #piperno #whitelotus #mikewhite #greenscreen

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• not that the monastery’s sparse conditions are the dealbreaker for Piper, but the whole idea becomes ~unappealing~ once Lochlan says he wants to come. his strange but transparent motivations aside, once he brought it up, her own mixed motivations became clear to her. it could be any monastery in China, Piper’s goal is just to get as far away from her family’s “bullshit” as physically possible. and can anyone blame her for wanting “a completely new set of values” when the current set includes (poorly executed) financial crimes, brotherly incest, and benzo dependence?

  

• I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that Lochlan might legitimately be attracted to his siblings, in the full-on incest way. my reasoning is simple pattern recognition: the common/normal reaction is to be deeply repulsed by even the thought of these (non-sibling) actors…engaging in sexual contact (it actually feels gross to type). Lochlan seems rather unbothered by the sex part of the situation and more wounded by Saxon’s emotional rejection. I’m merely an unlicensed unregistered therapist, but I imagine that emotional rejection is coming from a deep sense of repulsion over what happened… a sense of repulsion that Lochlan doesn’t seem to be experiencing.

• how could Rick and Frank Steve not have prepped better for their little scheme? perhaps by doing one single google search?

• I noticed there hasn’t been any B-roll of monkeys since the episode before the Full Moon Party, which I have to assume is purposeful — when they disappeared from the episodes I took it to mean that the guests had come to embody animals themselves. since the midpoint of the season was also the full moon, are there any astronomers/astrologers out there with a read on the symbolism of a waxing and waning moon cycle, or am I starting to sound like a character from The Number 23?

• on another obsessive note, last night I started playing a game with myself based on Kill Fuck Marry except it’s Sister-in-Law/Sister/Best Friend From High School, and your options are Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie. put yours in the comments, but I would pick:

  • Sister in Law: Laurie

  • Sister: Kate

  • Best Friend From High School: Jaclyn

as the show is ending, so is its delightful press tour. the loss of the side content is nearly as devastating as the loss of the main content.

• Jon Gries was on the Official White Lotus Podcast and his comments about how he and Mike White crafted the GregGary role are extremely illuminating. one word stands out: diabolical. his interview starts at 31:00 and let me just say to Belinda… you in danger girl.

• Maria Shriver wants you to know that her son Patrick Schwarzenegger is nothing like Saxon, tyvm

• a fun interview in the LA Times with JLK about how they cultivated an imagined friendship history via group chat

• Carrie Coon said that Laurie’s kid was supposed to be nonbinary but they cut that detail from the script (and the attendant convo with JKL attempting to use they/them pronouns) after Trump was elected. read his reasoning before judging the decision please!

• if you’re looking for any of the outfits worn by the cast, this account @great_dayn is tracking them down

• the video that Sritala showed Frank is a real video that the actress, Lek Patravadi, made in 1992. notably, the actress was 44 years old, not 25 at the time.

• there’s some extra White Lotus convo towards the beginning of my appearance

  Kate Kennedy
  ’s Be There In Five podcast last week, plus handbag analysis (yes, analysis is the accurate word) and a review of Adolescence

see you next week for our last one of these!