‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 2 Recap – Mike White’s Show Seems to be Taking A Slightly Different Approach

With the introductions out of the way, “Special Treatments” is another quintessential episode of The White Lotus. We’re in the “getting to know you” phase of our relationship with Season 3. Less-obvious eccentricities are coming to the fore, bigger questions are being asked, and suspects are starting to emerge. It’s only Episode 2, so there’s no way of knowing, but it really does seem – perhaps even more so than usual – that anyone could be a killer, up to and including the local monkeys.

What’s with the monkeys? I’m only being half-serious when I suggest a simian twist is in our future, but Mike White seems perversely fascinated with them this season. Can a monkey carry out what might be a mass shooting? Probably. It’d be worth it for novelty value if nothing else.

But it’s unlikely, I’ll grant you. There are more intriguing possibilities to consider in the meantime, so I reckon we should do that, in a very loose order of reverse likelihood, starting with…

The Girls’ Trip

If Laurie, Kate, and Jaclyn are going to kill each other, it’s probably going to be venomous verbal barbs rather than a gun. But just like none of them seems to like the other two as much as they claim, I find it hard to believe they dislike them enough to kill them. It’s essentially just a steady status quo of mean-spirited bitching. Hardly grounds for murder.

But you never know. Laurie seems to be in the firing line particularly, having apparently gone through a very bitter divorce that led to her paying him alimony and numbing the embarrassment with alcohol, seemingly forgetting to parent her apparently quite violent kid in the meantime (this should all be graded on the Mean Girls curve, I think, which means Laurie’s “alcoholism” probably translates to liking the occasional drink, and her Aileen Wuornos-sounding kid probably got into a fight at school or something.)

But it’s obviously Jaclyn who’s the real problem. She’s the one with the money and the unseen but too-hot-by-half boyfriend and the exceptional hydration levels. She’s Michelle Monaghan. And whatever problems Kate and Laurie might have, they’re still more similar to each other than they are to Jaclyn. This doesn’t go unnoticed in The White Lotus Season 3, Episode 2, by the audience or, indeed, by Jaclyn herself. So, it’s something to keep an eye on.

Something is Going on With Rick

The character I’m undeniably most intrigued by is Rick, in part because he’s played by Walton Goggins in not-quite-full Goggins mode, which suggests there’s more to come from him on a pure gonzo level, but also because there’s clearly more to the character than first appearances suggest.

For one thing, Rick has a pretty tragic past which he reveals during a stress management meditation session that he’s forced into, with highlights including a murdered father and a drug addict mother who died of an overdose when he was ten. He’s making the point that he has never really lived a stress-free life, even in childhood, but he ranks his current stress level as an 8 out of 10, which makes you wonder what’s troubling him currently.

It might be Chelsea, who is undeniably a lot. But while her youthful exuberance is obviously a bit draining for an older guy who just wants to chill out and be left alone, “Special Treatments” goes out of its way to suggest that Rick and Chelsea are closer than we thought, not the opposite. His frustration doesn’t seem to be with her specifically but with life in general, and he seems to show a fair amount of genuine support when Chelsea ends up being a bystander in a robbery after a day out with Chloe.

While we’re on the subject…

Michelle Monaghan in The White Lotus Season 3 | Image via HBO

The Robbery

What should be made of the jewelry store robbery? At this point, I’m undecided about whether we’re supposed to make anything of it, but various possibilities abound, including the fact that someone we know might have committed it.

It’s also interesting to note that Chloe just so happened to be out of the room when it took place. Since we know Greg is a criminal and he later spars with Rick over having made his money doing “this and that”, both of them lightly implying that they’re into some kind of illegal shenanigans, the robbery could be connected to him. Rick also deduces – probably correctly – that Chloe is a hooker. Her “relationship” with Greg could easily be one of convenience as part of a criminal double-act.

Or it could be nothing, I suppose. You can never quite tell with this show.

Is The White Lotus Growing Up?

If there’s an underlying theme in The White Lotus Season 3, Episode 2, beyond the obvious ones, it’s a sense of the whole thing being a little more reflective and a lot less surface-level in how it approaches its characters. Really, it’s only the Ratliffs – and even then, primarily Saxon – who embody the classic archetype of irredeemably awful rich people who are innately monsters. Everyone else seems a little more complex and thoughtful.

Sure, Tim is awful, and has no doubt earned whatever money laundering scandal is coming his way via The Wall Street Journal, but Jason Isaacs is giving the performance of a man in way over his head suddenly having to reckon with the idea of losing the people he genuinely loves. And that’s fair enough – who wouldn’t want to spend more time with Parker Posey in this form? That accent never gets boring.

But I’m making a point here. Historically, circumstances in the White Lotus have conspired to reveal to the hotel’s guests precisely who they are, and the joke is usually that they’re exactly who they appeared to be at the start. I don’t think we’re heading in that direction this time, though. Here, we’re only just scratching the surface of who these people might be, and who they might become seems like a mystery even to them.