‘The White Lotus’ Recap, S3 Ep. 2: What’s Greg Doing Here? – Vulture

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.For more on The White Lotus, sign up for The White Lotus Club, our subscriber-exclusive newsletter obsessing, dissecting, and debating everything about season three.Yesterday was lost to a haze of jet lag and tiki drinks. Our guests stepped off their planes and onto a verdant island that seemed to appear from nowhere, fully formed, exclusively for them. God created these holidaymakers from dust and breathed into their nostrils the (Ujjayi) breath of life. As He did for Adam and Eve, He planted a garden for them in the East and filled it with trees that were pleasing and good for food. (Except for the lethal seeds of the pong-pong, Pam warns us — don’t eat that one.)But in “Special Treatments,” Mike White offers us a glimpse into the effort of remaking paradise every morning. The man who paddleboards out to the bollards to hang the over-the-water hammocks. The breakfast tables being laid. Health mentors and security guards who arrive to work before the sun has fully risen lest any guests suspect that the staff did not watch over them while they slept between the hotel’s ethical bamboo sheets. A lone beach boy rakes the sand, sweeping away the footprints, maintaining the illusion that this Eden was made just for them. That’s how much God loves their money. “It’s like a Disneyland for rich bohemians from Malibu in their Lululemon yoga pants,” Piper Ratliff sneers at her parents over continental breakfast. In a few hours, we’ll catch up with her in a hammock.“I am a traveller, you are a tourist, he is a tripper,” as the British writer Keith Waterhouse put it — a quote that haunts every vacation I ever take. Piper is participating in one of travel’s guilty pleasures: convincing yourself that you are less of a tourist than the other tourists because you are not staying in the Marais or because you would never buy wooden clogs in Holland or go to a luau. Piper’s nothing like these people because she’s here to see temples and to avail herself of the wisdom of the monks. As if religious pilgrimage isn’t the oldest (not to mention the most plundering) form of mass tourism.If it seems like I’m picking on the Ratliffs in these recaps, which I am, it’s because they’ve arrived on Koh Samui more fully realized than some of the other sets of guests. They remind me of the Mossbachers from The White Lotus season one and even, to a lesser extent, the Di Grassos from season two. The Ratliffs aren’t people in their own rights; it’s as if Mike White wrote the family as a whole, with each member typifying something about the clan. Tim is the family’s preoccupation with wealth. Saxon, with status. Victoria, for her part, distrusts the external world. When Kate drops by her breakfast table to remind Victoria that they once met at a baby shower, for example, Victoria declines to acknowledge her. (Though at the rate she’s popping benzos, it’s also possible Victoria genuinely can’t remember meeting her.)And Piper? Piper is that nagging sensation that all the Ratliffs have buried somewhere in their souls that tells them they are not special. They don’t deserve what they have just because they already have it. It’s all a moment from collapsing, and when it does, it will be as though they were never here at all. Footprints in the sand, swept out of existence.After breakfast, the castaways set off for their first wellness appointments. Victoria is having a massage, which makes her anxious, so, yeah, she’ll need to pop another tranq for that. Saxon, who struggles with sex obsession, seems genuinely surprised to learn that his sports massage doesn’t come with a happy ending. (Though given he’s self-medicating with XR Adderalls, he should perhaps be more concerned about whether he’d be able to achieve an orgasm in the first place.) At his sister’s encouragement, Lochlan tries to pray in the deprivation tank but can only muster the feeling of talking to himself, though to me, that sounds like a good start. An LBH leers at Piper during group yoga. Tim hits the gym and then spends the time left over attempting to tidy up after his financial crimes.Except it’s already too late for that. By the time Tim wakes up in Thailand, the Washington Post has the story, too. By the time he gets his old business associate Kenny on the line, Kenny’s office has been raided by the Feds. The details of what happened are foggy — some kind of foreign bribery or money-laundering scheme. If this were the real world, Tim wouldn’t even have to be afraid because whatever he did likely isn’t even illegal anymore. Tim threatens to kill Kenny, which I mention because we know someone on The White Lotus will die, but it seems like a bluster. In reality, Tim chooses a safer path: He lawyers up.This is our Sliding Doors story line. How could this week have been different if Tim had been willing to sacrifice his phone to Pam’s digital-detox bag? Keeping it hasn’t allowed him to get ahead of this maelstrom. It’s hitting him in the face and pulling him under. But what if Tim could have had one last week in paradise with his family? What have our devices given us, and what do they steal? In Buddhism, there is no creation story, but there are forces of evil. Greed. Desire. Attachment.Unlike the Ratliffs, the gaggle of childhood friends opts for biomarker testing with Valentin, which is perfect for them because it gives them fertile ground for competition and talking shit about each other. Laurie and Jaclyn are told they have “the numbers” of women half their age, but Kate’s stats are only average. Laurie has the same body-fat content as Jaclyn, but how is that possible when Jaclyn is a gorgeous Hollywood star who everyone wants to be and Laurie is a New York City divorcée who can’t even make partner at her law firm?Jaclyn, on the other hand, says she doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of her younger husband’s body, which is a slightly bizarre thing to say in any situation but absolutely bizarre to say to your freshly divorced friend. Not to mention the fact that Kate is still mourning her numbers. How can this be happening when Kate eats chicken! And beans! Jaclyn might be gorgeous, but she seems lonely to Kate, which she confides to Laurie in a tone of faux concern. And her face looks like wax, adds Laurie, the only gal pal whose forehead moves when she emotes. These ladies may be on vacation in their 40s, but they’re also 14-year-old girls at a sleepover, waiting for someone to fall asleep so that they’ll finally have something to talk about.I’d say Chelsea and Rick are the guests I feel the most confused by at this point. She seems to genuinely care about this old misanthrope. She signs him up for an expensive stress-management session with the hotel’s Dr. Amrita, and though he’s dismissive, he still shows up for it. He tells Amrita things about himself that I can’t imagine he’s confided in Chelsea. Like how, when he’s not medicating with weed, his baseline stress level is an eight. His mother ODed when he was 10 years old. His father was murdered before he was born. Maybe he’s not an asshole. Maybe some people are just eights.Amrita tells Rick that “meditation can bring relief to psychic pain.” But Rick isn’t in pain, he insists. He’s nothing. He’s empty. He’s a half-buttoned shirt. The other guests have checked into the White Lotus with specific, if misguided, ideas of what they wanted to get out of this vacation, but Rick has no expectations at all. There are no limits to what he’ll say because he never imagined saying anything. He signs up for another session.Despite his surliness, there are signs that Rick cares for Chelsea, too. They sleep tangled up together. He agrees to go to dinner with Chloe and Greg even as Chelsea softly pokes at him for being old and balding. He even tries at dinner, asking Greg what he does for work (“this and that”) and how the couple met. When Chloe says a “matchmaking service,” only sweet Chelsea doesn’t hear the word “escort” swimming between the lines. If anything, the dinner is bonding for Chelsea and Rick. Vacation is feeling like you’re not the most dysfunctional couple at the resort, even if your boyfriend just told you he’s heading to Bangkok for a few days and you can’t come and you can’t know why.Most telling, I think, of Rick’s affection for Chelsea is how he runs to embrace her after … drumroll, please … the season’s first gun crime! Chelsea and Chloe are gossiping about their boyfriends and trying on clothes at the hotel boutique when an armed robber comes in for a little smash-and-grab. No one inside the shop is hurt, though Chelsea will insist she nearly died. Gaitok is distracted talking to Valentin when the thief enters the resort — is Valentin the decoy? — but he heroically attempts to stop his getaway. Poor Gaitok gets pistol-whipped for his troubles.I’m concerned Gaitok will lose his job over this, which would make sense as it does represent a complete dereliction of his duties as security personnel, but I really hope he doesn’t. Earlier in the episode, he attempts to woo Mook. He fixes her bike and brings her lunch that, admittedly, his mother cooked. Gaitok even comes up with a (meager) list of reasons why she should like him: They’re from the same town, her brothers like him, he’s handy. Mook basically dares Gaitok into asking her on a date and then tells him, “Don’t be weird,” when he does. It’s a subtle no from Mook, but after the robbery, she adds her own entry to the “pro” column: Gaitok is brave. So I’m pretty sure it’s on. (Speaking of on, things are getting borderline inappropriate between Belinda and Pornchai as they trade signature spa treatments. I would like to know how many women have been on this work exchange before and if Pornchai has a 100 percent conversion rate.)This season is less funny than previous seasons of The White Lotus, and that’s natural. A lot of the humor came not from the series’ outlandishness but its directness, which is less hilarious now that we expect it. But this season is also darker. Its characters have come to the White Lotus not just with personal baggage weighing them down, but secrets. Tim is a crook. Piper hasn’t even set up the meeting her family was told was critical to her senior thesis. Rick won’t tell Chelsea he’s heading to Bangkok to track down Jim Hollinger, who is convalescing at his home in the city following a recent stroke. Fabian can’t even muster the courage to tell Khun Sritala that he’d like to sing at the White Lotus talent show.And then there’s Greg, who has rebuilt himself as Gary far from where he started. At dinner, Belinda spots him sipping whiskey neat at a table with Chloe, Rick, and Chelsea. She recognizes, but I’m not sure she can place him. What happens to him and his life of secrets when she does? Or darker yet, what happens to her?Already a subscriber? 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