'The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 7 Deep Dive and Theories: Bad Con Artists

Speaker 1 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joyna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 Rob, here we are. Second to last episode of White Lotus.
That is what we are here to discuss today.

Speaker 1 Before we get into that, a couple things.

Speaker 1 Programming stuff. I want to say that our White Lotus finale episode,

Speaker 1 I guess we haven't discussed with the Powers of the Bee when it's going up, but we will be recording it Monday morning.

Speaker 1 Usually we don't record till like Tuesday, so you have time to get your takes off, your emails in. We're doing it kind of right away after the finale on Monday morning.

Speaker 1 So if you want to send us an email to, where should they send it, Rob?

Speaker 2 Monkeyshootout at gmail.com in particular this week, or next week, we should say, because the monkeys will be shooting out or getting shot at. The monkeys will be involved.

Speaker 2 I feel very confident about this.

Speaker 1 Even though Michelle Monaghan said on Jimmy Fallon that it was not the monkeys that did it.

Speaker 2 This is my first rodeo, Joe. You can't fool me, Michelle Monaghan.

Speaker 1 Classic Mysterct. Okay, Classic Monaghan Mystirect.
Okay, so listen. That is what is happening with the White Lotus finale.

Speaker 1 As for the pit, we are going to record an episode for each of the last two remaining episodes of the pit this season.

Speaker 1 Rob and and I are doing like a double record this week because I will be out next week. That's why we're recording Monday morning for White Lotus.
That's why we're recording the pit finale early.

Speaker 1 So we will not be able to get your pit finale reactions, I guess, before we record the finale. That's just something to think about.

Speaker 2 Well, all the more reason, again, to get in your emails as quickly as possible.

Speaker 2 An NBA team made a baffling decision recently and one of their stakeholders described it as, urgency is one of our core principles. I have no idea what that means.

Speaker 2 But here on the Prestige TV podcast, urgency is one of our core principles.

Speaker 2 You simply must email us your white lotus theories as quickly after the finale as possible so that we may talk about them on our podcast.

Speaker 2 And of course, get us all your pit thoughts at prestige TV at spotify.com as well.

Speaker 1 I gotta say, the

Speaker 1 Who's Playing Pit Fest emails

Speaker 1 came fast and furious this week. So I'm excited to talk about that with you about the pit later this week.

Speaker 1 Also, in the ether, we haven't fully decided what we're doing in the following weeks after White Lotus is done, after the pit is done.

Speaker 1 In the ether are shows like your friends and neighbors on apple the last of us on hbo which mallie rubin and i will certainly be covering in full on house of our definitely but may get some treatment or another from rob and yours truly on this feed and poker face uh the show a show that started it all for us rob has a season two so these are things i'm sure that justin sales who may or may not be listening to this right now is like why are you talking about what might be when we haven't discussed like discussed what will be but just wanted to let you know we got some emails being like are you covering poker face are you doing this?

Speaker 1 That's sort of what we're considering right now.

Speaker 1 Okay. White Lotus.

Speaker 2 Rob.

Speaker 2 Joey. Mahoney.

Speaker 1 Did you like this episode of television?

Speaker 2 I liked it okay. Okay.
I will say, I don't know what's going on with these shows that we've been covering, Joe, but the penultimate episodes have felt very penultimate lately.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me how.

Speaker 2 I think just a lot of fits and starts of people moving around and then stopping in place and idling there in an emotional position until the rest of the plot threads can sort of catch up to our climactic moments, I would assume, in the finale.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I think what I didn't like about this episode in particular, and there are many great character moments, it's always funny, it's always well acted, it's always well presented.

Speaker 2 It left me with a feeling of, okay, well, the finale really has to hit. And that just means that this episode, to me, didn't really do its job.

Speaker 2 It set the stage for the season, maybe, but as a self-contained episode of television, not my favorite thing.

Speaker 1 Are there any characters in particular for for whom you're feeling that?

Speaker 2 I mean, Tim has been a wet noodle for weeks, just like can't sit in a chair, can't put two sentences together.

Speaker 2 I have no idea what the forward momentum of his plot is supposed to be other than increasingly elaborate suicidal ideation.

Speaker 2 He's kind of been in one place. Guy Talk and Mook have been stationary for a long time.
And in this episode, I have a version of a conversation they basically had like four episodes ago.

Speaker 2 So I don't really know what's going on with them.

Speaker 2 Belinda at at least gets some movement on her plot line. We get the official kind of offer from Greg Garius to what he can give her, which is $100,000.

Speaker 2 I want to get into the negotiation tactics that you and Mallory and Bill talked about on the Sunday pod as far as how much you should be asking for in these circumstances.

Speaker 2 But that's at least some plot movement in what otherwise I would say has been a pretty stale part of the show.

Speaker 1 I would also say, I agree with a lot of, well, I have some mook and guy talk asterisks to your take there, but I will say that

Speaker 1 for me, it's Rick.

Speaker 1 For me, even though this is like supposed to be sort of the big Rick

Speaker 1 climax to the buildup, I feel

Speaker 1 to use white Lotus, like largely unsatisfied by what I have been presented with here.

Speaker 2 Well, that's almost a totally different category because

Speaker 2 this is a Rick episode. I would say this is a Rick episode, and this is a fancies episode, first and foremost.
Those are the sort of two driving plot lines. Rick gets a lot to theoretically do.

Speaker 2 He gets his own sort of big confrontation monologue moment. And I can't say that I am feeling a lot coming out of it.

Speaker 2 I can't say that I'm feeling that sort of resolve and closure that you're describing.

Speaker 1 Okay. And so to your point,

Speaker 1 that you started with, which is they really have to crush in the finale. I'm feeling really unsatisfied with Rick.

Speaker 1 There is a possibility that something happens at the finale where I'm like, wow, this feels great. Right.

Speaker 1 You know, I was wrong to judge it at seven. I should have waited for eight to sort of see where it was all going.
Um, I want to go back to something that you mentioned.

Speaker 1 I mean, let's, let's talk about Belinda. Why not? Um, this was an episode of a lot of transactional conversations, right? We're trading, we're Greg,

Speaker 1 Greg, Gary, Belinda talk about money, we're Alexi and Lori talking about money.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they sure are.

Speaker 1 We're talking about exchange of knowledge if we're Chelsea and Saxon. There's a lot of sort of, and this always happens towards the end of a White Lotus episode: is

Speaker 1 someone asking for money or someone trying to buy something. This is like a very common, this is what it's all about, sort of white lotus thing.

Speaker 1 We got a really interesting email from our listener, Jessica.

Speaker 1 I've said this before, but something that I love about doing this podcast with you, Rob, is the number of like unexpected experts that will weigh in, right?

Speaker 2 It's amazing.

Speaker 1 Jessica is a trained Muay Thai fighter.

Speaker 2 Let's fucking go. First of all, great.
Incredible.

Speaker 1 Fantastic.

Speaker 1 So she wrote, I just heard a different podcast reference the beginning scenes of the Muay Thai fight as a prayer. It's called a Y Kru Rem Muay.
It is usually shortened to Y Crew.

Speaker 1 It serves to pay respect to your teacher slash coach, can be a protecting measure, can be used to intimidate your opponent, and also helps prepare the body for the fight.

Speaker 1 It's usually done after you walk the ring counterclockwise to seal the ring.

Speaker 1 It's interesting to intercut that with the scenes of people squaring up with their own personal opponents because they're doing all those things but paying respect.

Speaker 1 So this idea of sort of these confrontations coming to a head, what do I want from you? What does Greg Gary want from Belinda to pay her off and shut her up? What does he want from Saxon? Yeah.

Speaker 1 A kinky little sex arrangement, you know?

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 2 I don't know how to read that one, admittedly.

Speaker 1 I will say that John Grice on the official podcast says that he does believe that that is Greg Gary's kink.

Speaker 2 So that is true. I believe that the kink is real.
Okay.

Speaker 2 But the motivations for prompting the kink and the ask to me felt more like, I need to give Chloe something to do so I can take care of this Belinda business and so we can have a pretense for having this party that is not let me cover up a murder.

Speaker 1 Okay. I don't, I don't, I don't mind that.
I do, yeah, I want to get back to that. Okay, let's, let's, let's talk about, um, first of all, anything, any

Speaker 1 thoughts about Jessica, our trade fighter, at her email. And then, secondly, oh, what do you want to say about the Belinda negotiating

Speaker 1 dollar price tag conversation that Bill and Mallory and I had?

Speaker 2 I do love the context of that sort of introduction to the Muay Thai fight, which is an interstitial like through line through at least the first half of the episode.

Speaker 2 And I think is sort of underlining this confrontation we have, not just in terms of all these transactions and people trying to get people on their side, bribe them, enlighten them, et cetera, but this like very human paradox that is at this season of White Lotus and this episode in particular of spirituality and violence and the way that they interact and the way that they coexist, including in the setting the stage for a fight like this.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of characters who are trying to figure out where they stand and what violent acts they're willing to participate in or not, or in some ways enacting their own kinds of violence.

Speaker 2 But I think for where we are right now, I like that sort of stage setting finale-wise. The transactional nature of this episode, I find a little less interesting.

Speaker 2 I find those elements to be a little more, okay, let me give you this bit of exposition so then we we know what's happening in the finale, so that we kind of move the links of the chain of the plot along a little bit.

Speaker 2 And no, no more am I disappointed in that than Zion's arrival on the show, who's a character we open the show with him, right?

Speaker 2 Like this idea of him in peril, him trying to trying to navigate this crazy situation with all this gunfire, crawling through the water. It's like a really evocative thing.

Speaker 2 He shows up on the show, and his main role, it feels like, is to be one, a character that we plausibly believe actually has Belinda's best interests at heart. Okay.

Speaker 2 And then also just to kind of like push back on her paranoias and fears. Like he's basically like a wall that she's arguing with versus an actual character.

Speaker 1 It's not paranoia if it's real, right?

Speaker 2 Less paranoia. But I think she has very well-founded fears.
Yeah. And she's trying to navigate them.
And he's a counterpoint for a lot of that fear.

Speaker 2 and trying to say, actually, let me meet your fear with a certain kind of practicality. Like, if you don't go to this dinner party, he's just going to keep trying to approach you.

Speaker 2 If you don't take this money, he's just going to come after you with violence.

Speaker 2 And say, I understand the need for that kind of theoretical framework, but to get it from a character we don't know and don't have any relationship to and have barely seen on screen and took like five episodes to show up, that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Speaker 1 Anything you want to say about Belinda negotiating?

Speaker 2 Mallory's ambitious.

Speaker 1 What did she say? Cool Mill?

Speaker 2 I think her opening was: don't settle for anything less than a million dollars, which sounds to me in this situation.

Speaker 2 And look, I would not prop myself up as a successful negotiator. That sounds like a good way to get killed, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 What do you think about what Bill? I think Bill and I were saying like 500, 500,000.

Speaker 2 See, this is where I'm especially not a good negotiator.

Speaker 2 I'd try to wiggle up from 100 a little bit, but I don't even know if I'd make it to five, if I'm being honest with you. Okay.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 on the on the official podcast they made the great point where they're like why not just take that money however much is offering and then turn him over anyway like

Speaker 1 how the money he's then he's just going to say that he gave you the money and then you are accessory to murder uh i guess it depends how the money is traced to you i suppose that's true um fair enough okay you need it we need a duffel bag we do our an offshore account or something

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Speaker 1 In addition to this transactional stuff, wrapped up in the transactional, confrontational penultimate episode, there's like a there's a lot of tests for characters.

Speaker 1 Rick is tested on whether or not he's going to do a murder. Frank is tested on his sobriety.

Speaker 1 Chelsea is tested on whether or not she's going to fuck a Schwarzenegger. Like, there's just a lot of tests being put forward.

Speaker 1 And Piper is tested about whether or not she can spend the night, one single solitary night, in the monastery.

Speaker 2 With a leaky faucet, can you imagine? A drip?

Speaker 1 Rob, you were the one who was worried about a sort of

Speaker 1 sibling sexual assignation at the monastery. How did you feel when Piper sat down on Lachlan's bed

Speaker 1 in her 90s?

Speaker 2 I was very scared. Shirtless Lachlan is an intimidating thing at this point in the season.
Very relieved that the story did not exactly turn that way.

Speaker 2 And I think it did turn turn in a way that I do find interesting.

Speaker 2 This idea of Piper as a figure who thought she wanted one thing and is forced to confront the fact that if she actually wanted to go to the monastery for the purposes of self-improvement,

Speaker 2 she would probably have no reason to object to Lachlan also wanting to do the same thing.

Speaker 2 And in fact, might even be supportive of it because it would be on the same grounds that are leading her there. The fact that she pushes back and has such like a strong,

Speaker 2 like visceral reaction to the idea of her brother stealing her thing, I think tells us a a lot. I think we'll see if it tells Piper a lot about herself.
That's the big question mark for me.

Speaker 1 I think it's interesting on this sort of like, I think that's a great take. I think what you're saying and what Mallory is saying makes a lot of sense to me.

Speaker 1 I was like confused and I was watching it, but now I think I'm much clearer on it. And I think that

Speaker 1 on the transactional front,

Speaker 1 have you clicked into

Speaker 1 max.com, HBO Max.com, whatever the URL is for?

Speaker 2 I've been involved.

Speaker 1 Have you gotten the white lotus pop-up that they're currently serving?

Speaker 2 No. What are they serving?

Speaker 1 Okay, welcome to Zaz Loves America,

Speaker 1 where, you know, of course, we here on the Prestige

Speaker 1 are supporting White Lotus brand as a coffee mate. And also, there's a pop-up ad

Speaker 1 that says, The White Lotus, who will be forever changed, it's a pop-up poll. The White Lotus will be forever changed by their unhinged Thailand trip.

Speaker 1 Your prediction will inspire your next watch, and don't miss a season finale, blah, blah, blah. So you can pick the Rat Lifts,

Speaker 1 Rick and Chelsea,

Speaker 1 Jack, Lori, and Kate, or Belinda and Zion. You've got four picks here, right? Four groups.

Speaker 2 Can I add a fifth one to the poll? Sure.

Speaker 2 Jason Isaacs himself, who in interviews has been talking about how the experience of making the show was a harrowing interpersonal experience in which there was apparently much drama.

Speaker 2 And I would love to hear about it, but I suspect we will not.

Speaker 1 There really was, I mean, I've heard that from a lot of people, that there was like a ton of conflict and drama.

Speaker 1 And then yet also they're all posting these very like chummy photos on their Instagram from behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 So his posting style of as an actual dad of these people is just delightful. That's just

Speaker 2 I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 Being the Jason Isaacs, like see, I haven't been up on this.

Speaker 2 I haven't been up on his social media presentation.

Speaker 1 He and Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy, like call each other dad and son and have done since they made Harry Potter.

Speaker 1 And they're just like constantly on each other's Instagram, just being fucking adorable.

Speaker 2 It's just so sweet for a bunch of murderous fascists.

Speaker 1 Isn't it nice? Okay, so to go back to this pop-up, if you click on any of these options, Max will then tell you what you should watch based on what you clicked, what you should watch next. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 I like this.

Speaker 1 Based on what you clicked. Yeah.
So if you click on Rick and Chelsea, which is, of course, my first click,

Speaker 1 they're like, we hear you like Walton Goggins. Have you tried Righteous Gemstones? Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You click on the Rat Lifts, they're like, Patrick Schwarzenegger, family, rich family Carolinian murder, the staircase. We think you'll enjoy it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 Belinda and Zion.

Speaker 1 I don't,

Speaker 1 the connection is very loose, but they're basically like, hey, Mike White made another show for us. It's called Enlightened.
We think you might like it. So that's the Belinda and Zion option.

Speaker 2 You know what that makes me think is that maybe Belinda will not take the money.

Speaker 2 Like Enlightened a show, among other things, about like a kind of whistleblowing and a kind of like pursuit of a sort of justice within the context of also channeling your own self-improvement.

Speaker 2 Maybe that is the Belinda story.

Speaker 1 I love this. Rob is finding spoilers inside of

Speaker 1 Con Con inside of Adrian Max. Last but not least, and this just really cracked me up.

Speaker 1 Jacqueline, Lori, and Kate, the fancies. If you click on that,

Speaker 1 the pop-up says, we hear you like older fashionable women. Would you like to watch and just like that, the Sex in the City?

Speaker 2 Sequel series.

Speaker 2 You couldn't even point them to the original.

Speaker 2 It's got to be the new content.

Speaker 1 I mean, the ladies are just not old enough in the original, I guess. Anyway, so that is, that is, sorry, I guess I'm doing

Speaker 1 HBO's advertising work for them, but I just thought that was really funny. Okay.

Speaker 1 Yesterday, our pal, our colleague Jomi filled me in on the Duke shirt controversy. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Rob, do you want to let listeners at home who were as sheltered as I was from this know what the Duke shirt controversy is around White Lotus?

Speaker 2 Let's just say an institution as Pearl Klutchy as Duke does not appreciate when you put someone on screen holding a gun to their head, wearing a very prominently featured Duke t-shirt, and have issued a sternly worded statement how they condemn the images on the show, how they are so serious about the prevention of self-harm in the world that their brain could not possibly be associated with such a thing.

Speaker 2 It's just a preposterous situation all around, Joe, for a guy wearing a t-shirt of his alma mater.

Speaker 1 And they're also, I mean,

Speaker 1 you know, they're admonishing the show, but also engaging directly in what we were talking about earlier in terms of like this being a March Madness meme. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 They're like, we understand that March Madness can get competitive, but come on, guys, don't use this meme. Okay.

Speaker 1 So I bring that up because we had an email from our listener, Robert, who said, And then I had to go back and rewatch the scene.

Speaker 1 Do you think they edited the Duke shirt out of the dream sequence in episode seven? I noticed Tim had a white shirt and not his Duke shirt on like in episode six.

Speaker 1 So if you go back to the end of episode seven,

Speaker 1 when Tim is once more in his family annihilator era,

Speaker 1 he's wearing the Duke shirt as he's thinking about it.

Speaker 1 But when we get to the part where he actually has the gun, he is wearing this sort of like white, almost like pinkish, like a white washed with some reds, pinkish white undershirt.

Speaker 1 And I was looking at, I was like, could they have gone in and sort of digitally altered? And I'm like, easily they could have. We've never seen this t-shirt on him as far as I can tell.

Speaker 1 So just something to think about in

Speaker 1 our creepy little CGI AI era,

Speaker 1 what you can change with a click of a mouse.

Speaker 2 They can take that scene from us, Joe, but they can't take the memes. No.
They'll have to rip them out of our cold, dead keyboarding hands.

Speaker 1 And they shall not have it. Okay.
Last but not least, sort of before we get into the main, just one last sort of email roundup thing. I want to say that our listener, Morgan.

Speaker 1 which is my sister's name, but no relation,

Speaker 1 wrote in an interesting sort of Emmy chicken, which I know is not necessarily why people listen to this podcast, but we have been talking about it a lot throughout the season of sort of the Emmy likelihood of various actors.

Speaker 1 And I think we've sort of just been using it as a way of to say whose performance are we enjoying? What character do we think is being given the most centralized treatment?

Speaker 2 I think also, too, not enjoying, but enjoying for sure. But in addition to that, whose performance is going to kind of stand the test of time as far as what we remember from the season?

Speaker 2 Who feels like a signature feature of season three of White Lotus?

Speaker 1 And I think it's interesting to think about because, like, given that I just went through this sort of like HBO Max pop-up ad thing, the way that White Lotus hits those double quadrants of like sort of shamelessly merchandised this season and also

Speaker 1 clear Emmy fodder is one of its geniuses. I don't think there's another show out there that hits those two beats as well as it does.

Speaker 1 But Morgan pointed out that actually in the past, we were talking about lead versus supporting.

Speaker 1 Morgan pointed out that White Lotus actors all go into the supporting category since this is an ensemble cast. So in the past,

Speaker 1 you know, Jennifer Coolidge won both of her Emmys in the supporting category. Maury Bartlett won his in the supporting category.

Speaker 1 Nobody won for season two in the male supporting category because Matthew McFadden won for succession, et cetera. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And White Lotus does usually apply as a drama, correct?

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a drama.

Speaker 1 You could see it, and that makes it maybe harder for the Parker posies of this cast to really filter through, who are i would say mostly a comedic performance i mean you would think that but jennifer coolidge is like that's awesome that's a great point you know on uncut comedy so i think that and then the other element is we've been talking about whether or not sam rockwell belongs in the guest category of the supporting category and i was sort of making those he should be a guest guest actor based on the fact that i did not think that frank was gonna

Speaker 1 linger as long as he has, I guess, but he, if he shows up even for a second in the finale, he will be over the threshold for guest actor and would have to show up in the supporting category.

Speaker 1 So this is, if you're in 50% of the episodes of the season, you have to, you don't qualify for guest actor.

Speaker 1 So Morgan says, based on this, my predictions for nominations would be Isaacs, Goggins, Rockwell, and possibly Schwarzenegger and male supporting.

Speaker 1 Posey, Wood, Rothwell, and potentially all three of the fancies in supporting female. And White Lotus has run the board on this before, so, you know, it wouldn't be the first time.

Speaker 1 And she said, as good as Rockwell has been, it seems a little unfair if he won any over any of the core cast members. So I guess of all of those options, if you were, if you, Rob Mahoney,

Speaker 1 without having seen the benefit of seeing the finale, were playing the role of the TV Academy.

Speaker 2 Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 Who do you give the Emmy to?

Speaker 1 I feel supporting.

Speaker 2 I feel most compelled by the fancies. Okay.
I think those are great performances. I think they're...

Speaker 2 Pretty well-realized and sometimes infuriating characters.

Speaker 2 The trick with that might be how do you separate them?

Speaker 2 And do they sort of split the vote, not only to kind of get on the ballot in the first place, but say if two of the three are on as finalists for supporting actress, like who do you actually pick between them?

Speaker 2 I think that would be excruciatingly hard and maybe would prevent them from actually winning. But if I were to pick one sort of standout part of the show, to me, it's still that.

Speaker 1 Excellent.

Speaker 2 How are you feeling about it though, Joe? Like, who would you say is would you put forward to the Academy?

Speaker 1 I've been saying Isaacs all season, but to your point, I think I've finally reached my threshold: he's been idling in the same gear for too many episodes.

Speaker 1 Like, I almost wonder if it would have been worth having Tim Ratliff in King of the Castle mode for two, three episodes of the, you know, like, you know, so that we then, in this descent, we're not lingering as long in this one sort of descent mode.

Speaker 1 If we and we also have a better sense of what we lost of him as, though we understand, because he's an archetype, we understand who that person is.

Speaker 1 So I'm tempted to go Schwarzenegger, which like I just never thought I would be here, but and I really want it to be someone like Goggins, but this is just not, he's not Gogginsing as hard as he can unless he does so in the finale.

Speaker 1 On the you saying you're most

Speaker 1 sort of enchanted by the three fancies, by

Speaker 1 the complicated nature of those characters. Yes.
I wanted to pose a question that we got from our listener, Joanna, no relation to me.

Speaker 2 See, you keep saying that. It just makes me more and more suspicious.
The nepotism allegations and now the self-question submitting allegations are going to come in stronger than ever.

Speaker 1 It's not me, but

Speaker 1 I'm just going to sum up Joanna's email when she basically said, Can Chelsea and Mook beat the Manic Pixie Dream Girl allegations? Yeah. This is how I'm summing this up.
Okay, so.

Speaker 2 See, this is a question from Joanna to Joanna because we need to talk about Chelsea and Rick and we need to have an honest dialogue about the nature of their relationship.

Speaker 1 I really understand this.

Speaker 1 I had a conversation with a friend of mine this morning because, obviously, like Mallory and I were disagreeing about this on Sunday, and I read this email where Joanna laid out the ways in which both Chelsea and Mook,

Speaker 1 I would say in this episode, Mook less so, because Mook has like ambitions and desires that are

Speaker 1 she might be looking for a dude to sort of like help her on her way there. Yes.

Speaker 1 But it's not about, she's not there

Speaker 1 to make Guy Talk's life. No.
Guy Talk, in fact, might be bending himself or breaking his own personal beliefs to, you know, service her ambition, to service her wants and desires.

Speaker 2 I think that's an underdeveloped character in Wook, but I also think Guy Talk is a pretty underdeveloped character overall.

Speaker 2 It's just that she doesn't have a lot going for her other than, as you say, expressing what she wants, which is not personality-wise, Guy Talk.

Speaker 1 She wants, in a sort of little mermaid sense more right like sort of thing bits and bobs

Speaker 1 who's this and what's it galore who's this and what's it thank you who's this what's it's galore you know i'm sorry my apologies to ariel down there okay she accepts your apology so chelsea however this is the allegation from the joeta who is not me which is that every conversation we've had with chelsea almost every conversation has been about rick

Speaker 1 who's like her child, who she just wants to help,

Speaker 2 who she just wants to fix. It's not what you want to hear.

Speaker 1 All this sort of stuff. And Mallory and Sonny was like, what the fuck are we doing here, essentially?

Speaker 1 And I was trying to talk to someone about this morning about this is, this is so, this is something I would so usually agree with Mallory, agree with this listener, Joanna, about who is not me, all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, why am I rooting for Rick and Chelsea? And my, my friend, her summation was,

Speaker 1 you're just Goggins. Like, you, you, you can't help but root for Walton Goggins.
You are conditioned to do so.

Speaker 1 This comes, goes back to me rooting for like Boyd and Ava, even though I shouldn't be. You know, like I just, I, it's in my bones to root for Walton Goggins.

Speaker 1 And so I'm rooting for Rick and Chelsea, even though, yeah, I mean, this idea that Chelsea has no backstory, Mook and Chelsea have no backstory. That is largely true.

Speaker 1 Chelsea says stuff like, Horrible things have happened to me. You don't see me complaining about it.
I think she said that in episode five. I would like to know what those things are.

Speaker 1 What is Chelsea's story? Like, she talks about meeting Rick and getting his whole life story, but what's the deal with Chelsea? Why is she the way she is?

Speaker 1 I do like that the point that our listener was making inside of this email, this Manny Pixie Dream Girl email, was just sort of like, if Rick's story goes away, Chelsea goes away.

Speaker 1 That's not true because she's also... in Saxon's story, but she's in Saxon's story.
Sure is.

Speaker 2 Who would be there to pan back and forth between Chloe and Saxon as they talk about this elaborate sexual encounter that they're trying to arrange.

Speaker 1 If you are not watching this on video, you really miss Rob's excellent Amy Lou Wood impression of her sort of like wide eyes.

Speaker 1 But Chelsea, I would argue, is even more in the Mandy Pixie Dream Girl role with Saxon, where she's like, here's some, here are some books. Yeah.
You know, like, educate yourself, be free.

Speaker 2 Do you want to listen to the shins here? Take my headphones. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Do you want to talk all night and then drive and meet each other and watch the sunrise? Like,

Speaker 1 so,

Speaker 1 Rob, what do you got to say about Chelsea, Mook, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, any of this?

Speaker 2 I would say, for one, everything that we're saying about why Rick is a character and his place in the relationship with Chelsea doesn't work for us, except for Walton Goggins, may be an argument for what we were just talking about in terms of Goggins selling this thing above and beyond what's on the page.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't think Rick is a particularly well-realized character to this point of the story, and we're going to get into more of kind of the culmination, at least what feels like the culmination of his story to this point.

Speaker 2 But Goggins does sell it, and he is likable, and he is someone who we want to see and kind of want to spend time with, even when he's a bit of a sour puss as far as this character goes.

Speaker 2 We have to give that to him as far as that piece of this puzzle. I also, I want to push back a little bit on the idea of the backstory element with characters like Chelsea and Mook, because I agree.

Speaker 2 Like, look, I would love to know what Chelsea's life is like. I think that would be a great bit of dialogue.
I think that would be some great scenes, whatever you want to do with it.

Speaker 2 But this idea that you need backstory to build character, I just don't agree with

Speaker 2 And so this, like, I think you can very easily separate the lore of who we know these people to be with what makes them interesting and evocative on screen and kind of like the personality and the agency that they show in their actions.

Speaker 2 And Chelsea, to me, her problem is less that we don't know her backstory and more that she's literally waiting for Rick to show up and calling him at every opportunity and is like is heartbroken by overall the fact that he won't return her messages and that he won't kind of meet her halfway and that her acknowledging this sort of like pain and hope dynamic between them but not acknowledging that that's a problem makes me really feel for that character but it doesn't give that character a ton to do in the meantime

Speaker 1 i would love even an even stronger pushback from chloe being like what are we doing here chelsea why are you doing this like um

Speaker 1 yeah that's a great point i you don't need to have a monologue about you know your origins and stuff like that to be a compelling character who wants more

Speaker 1 i would just love to hear what,

Speaker 1 you know, Chelsea talks about

Speaker 1 astrology, but in the context of Rick, or Chelsea talks about this, that, and traveling, but in the context of Rick. So, like,

Speaker 1 what is Chelsea outside of that context would have been a really fun thing to explore, but we only have one more episode.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, as far as this season dealing with identity, though, that is a salient point, right? The fact that Chelsea only really identifies herself through Rick and who she is to him.

Speaker 2 And that's, I understand, from a screenwriting, like, 10,000-foot, like, this is a female character on television perspective problem. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But also, I think, is showing what that character thinks of herself. And apparently it's quite little as far as her as a self-determined individual person.

Speaker 1 I hope that's true. I hope that that's something that, but like, it doesn't seem to me like the show is looking at Chelsea like

Speaker 1 through the lens of critique, the way it's looking at someone like Saxon who says to his dad, I'm nothing if I'm not like your son. Everything I am is wrapped up in you.

Speaker 1 Like the show is clearly showing us that being like, ugh, don't do that. Yeah.
With Chelsea, like, I don't know that the show is seeing this as

Speaker 1 a toxic dynamic in any sort of way. But I mean, we'll see what happens in the finale.

Speaker 2 What gives me hope on that is the stuff like her calling Rick her child. And I think overall her talking about like, he's just so sad and I need to make him better.

Speaker 2 Like that, that feels self-aware to a point where I really do hope that we get some follow-up on that.

Speaker 1 We shall see. I have not seen the finale, so I I don't know.

Speaker 1 We'll all be watching it together live on Sunday. But

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Speaker 1 Jim Hollinger.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about the goggins goggins of it all. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So we meet Scott Glenn as Jim Hollinger, Scott Glenn, an actor we love, who's been in a million things, the leftovers, Urban Cowboy, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Jim Hollinger is old and frail.

Speaker 1 That's part of this. And there is a compelling story to be told of this sort of like boogeyman you've built up in your head.
And you meet him and he's just like an old, frail dude.

Speaker 1 And you're like, oh no, I let this

Speaker 1 figure in my head dictate my actions for so long. And he's just an old dude, like you're nothing, you're nobody.

Speaker 2 What the fuck?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 so that's could be satisfying. There's just some sort of miss for me in this confrontation.
Like,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 in terms of again, they were talking about this in the official podcast. I thought this was an interesting take.

Speaker 1 If this is a test for Rick, if this is a, can you find the path inside of yourself that does not involve you pulling the trigger on this guy?

Speaker 1 Can you free yourself from your identity of

Speaker 1 a wronged son who needs vengeance? Yes. Can you choose a life of peace and whatever and Chelsea, et cetera, et cetera? Can you do that?

Speaker 1 Then wouldn't it be more compelling if Jim Hollinger were

Speaker 1 actually a juicier foe inside of that scene? If there were more of a temptation, you know, whereas just sort of like Jim Hollinger, it's like, go on.

Speaker 2 How much of a foe? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Give us nothing, which is what, again, and that's not a Scott Glenn critique because that's a great actor actor who we've liked in everything throughout Bad Monkey and Beyond, but like

Speaker 1 it's given nothing.

Speaker 2 It's giving plus one is what it's giving.

Speaker 2 Like he shows up, he sits there, he has the drink, he, I guess, you know, cordons off with Rick here to have this conversation to ostensibly clear off her Citala to continue talking to a very fraudulent director who's...

Speaker 2 I would say work in this scene is questionable to say the least. But yeah, he doesn't have a lot to do.
He doesn't have a lot to offer.

Speaker 2 And again, it's like, I understand from a storytelling perspective, the merits of exactly what you laid out, Joe, like the inherent way that we build up things that let us down in terms of the importance that they play in our life.

Speaker 2 And it makes sense that Rick would fall into that mold. But when you put it on screen,

Speaker 2 that is going to feel like anticlimax because it is anticlimax. And so you have to find some other way to make it meaningful or some other way to make it resonant.

Speaker 2 And that's where I felt like this fell short.

Speaker 2 If we got the confrontation between Rick and Hollinger in the office and it goes exactly the way it does, but the follow-up on it was a little bit different and some of the subsequent conversations between, you know, like Rockwell and Goggins, for example, play out a little differently, I think I could be sold on it.

Speaker 2 I think there's room there to kind of flesh out what that means other than sort of like, shrug, I guess I got closure. Let's go to the strip club.
Yeah. And maybe like an ambiguous smile.

Speaker 2 Like, I just, I needed a little more than that.

Speaker 1 Again, this is why I'm waiting for the finale. Like, it's possible that there's something in the finale that will make it all feel like a resolution that makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 What do you make of Mallory's question of whether or not this is going to follow Rick back to the White Lotus?

Speaker 1 Like, if he goes back to the White Lotus to meet up with Chelsea, are the Hollinger bodyguards going to follow him there? You know,

Speaker 1 what's the consequences? Or are we done with that storyline? He did it. He's done.

Speaker 1 You know, they left the house. They didn't really like hurt him.
They tipped over his chair. He's fine.
Like, you know,

Speaker 1 I mean, he's frail. He just got out of the hospital.

Speaker 2 So maybe he's not like sure but like but it was a very like juvenile response of like i don't even know what to do in this situation i'm just gonna push over your chair yeah do you think we see more of this in the in the finale i'm not usually this kind of person but i think we kind of have to yeah like it the the logical jump of you just had this whole like con executed against you for purposes that you don't fully understand and this guy showed up and held a gun to your head and you're just not gonna follow up on that at all and i say that not just in terms of following Rick back to the White Lotus and getting Chelsea involved and all those things, but they're just hanging out on the town in Bangkok

Speaker 2 after like speeding away by boat as quickly as they possibly could. I think you got to get out of town.

Speaker 1 I think you got to call Chelsea, say, pack the bags.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're out. Meet me in Bangkok.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, yeah, bring her to Bangkok. That works too, but you got to get out of the White Lotus.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go out the resort where you've like had a confrontation with the owner. I'm like, really? Okay.
So this goes back to another main issue I have.

Speaker 1 And I did like a lot of this episode, but here's my main disappointment. As you know, I love a con.

Speaker 1 I love a heist and I love a con.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Those are the two things.

Speaker 2 Whenever someone asks me about you, Joe, I say heists and cons. That's her area.

Speaker 1 It could be a blend of the two, whatever you prefer.

Speaker 1 But the promise of

Speaker 1 Walton Goggins and Sam Rockwell as con artists in a white guy con artist in Bangkok

Speaker 1 is so delicious to me to watch this con be executed so shoddily

Speaker 1 was genuinely crushing to me. Is it funny to a certain degree? But I actually think there's a better chance for comedy in a

Speaker 1 more

Speaker 1 competently done con than than what we saw. So something that I texted you about this morning earlier was like, hey, can you be ready to talk talk about sort of your favorite con movies?

Speaker 1 Are you a con movie aficionado?

Speaker 1 What do you enjoy about them, et cetera? So what do you want, where do you want to start, Rob Honey, and talking about con stories on film that you've enjoyed in the past?

Speaker 2 I'm going to start obvious. And we're just going to get it out of the way.
Yeah. Vertigo.
Amazing con story. Great one.
Has to be represented.

Speaker 2 I would say a non-traditional con story overall in that you may not even see it coming. And it's so good, I am a little reluctant to spoil a 70-year-old movie.

Speaker 2 That's how good Vertigo is.

Speaker 2 Not just one of the best con movies, but I think does something that con movies rarely do, which is give you the, okay, so what happens next?

Speaker 2 Like after the big reveal, what happens to the core characters? What psychological state does it leave them in?

Speaker 2 It's not just a little coda where you see kind of the next six months of their lives or a little flash forward.

Speaker 2 I would say the meat and ultimately what's so twisted and fucked up about Vertigo is so much of what happens next, and that's a part of that kind of story that I love seeing on screen.

Speaker 1 It's an excellent, truly excellent pick. And I think that, like, one of the joys of a con movie is

Speaker 1 when the con artist is conning themselves, like when they are fooling themselves about something,

Speaker 1 and when we, the audience, are being conned

Speaker 1 by what we're watching, when we are

Speaker 2 disclaimers sometimes.

Speaker 1 The sting. Yeah.
Newman and Redford. Classic.

Speaker 2 But that's the sort of like CAD dynamic that I think we're hoping for from something like this white lotus pairing and just did not did not quite get there.

Speaker 1 We love a CAD.

Speaker 1 The thing about like Newman and Redford, like the thing about Rockwell and Goggins is like, yeah, this is a pairing that I would happily see across many different properties.

Speaker 1 They have just that kind of vibe that works so well together. They're actual lifelong friends.

Speaker 1 So, the same way in which we would happily see Newman and Redford in a number of stories together, I would happily see Goggins and Rockwell.

Speaker 1 I just need them to be more competent at their next criminal enterprise.

Speaker 2 Not only are they lifelong friends, Joe, someone emailed us earlier this season with a screenshot from the wonderful Walton Goggins architectural digest video where he takes you through his carefully constructed home.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I guess not carefully constructed because it's like a vintage property,

Speaker 2 including like a little like speakeasy room, basically,

Speaker 2 in which he asks all his friends to sign it. And there's a screenshot of Sam Rockwell's signature in the speakeasy room.
So, I mean, clearly old pals.

Speaker 2 Clearly, not, this is not the first time that they've been drinking buddies together.

Speaker 1 What do you want to say next? Which other con movie?

Speaker 2 This is low-hanging fruit, but catch me if you can, I think has to be represented in this conversation. I have seen it more times than I could actually count.

Speaker 2 It is among my most like YouTube revisited movies.

Speaker 2 In particular, the scene in which Leo dupes his way out of a room with Tom Hanks by like throwing his wallet, you know, caught in the act red-handed and finds a way out of the room back to the car, manipulating a blind man in the process, but who's counting?

Speaker 2 I just think Leo is a perfect con man in many different movies, many different roles. Hanks, though, is just a perfect mark.

Speaker 2 And in particular, in that movie, the idea that he's, I would say, like more relentless than he is clever. He just like wants to keep running into the wall over and over.

Speaker 2 And every time he does, he's a little bit smarter and a little bit more plugged in on what's happening.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, you need someone who's not so smart, they're going to solve the mystery in 30 minutes, but is so believable.

Speaker 2 And I think ultimately so likable that you, you want to see them ultimately get through it. And so I, I just love that pairing.

Speaker 1 Cash if you can is one of my favorite movies of all time. I think it might be my.
It's like my second favorite Spielberg movie, but it's like right up there.

Speaker 2 So that, that's amazing. I mean, it's an incredible movie.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think what I love most about the con aspect of that is like how much Frank Abagnell Jr.

Speaker 1 is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, how much his own personal psychology, emotional damage, like all that sort of stuff is wrapped in. Like, why does the con artist con is like a is a chief

Speaker 1 idea there. Tom Hanks is Frank Henry, who is this like America's dad figure sort of like chasing down this wayward boy.
One of my favorite moments, I mean, you were forging documents where

Speaker 1 getting girls to play Pan Am, you know, flood attendants to sort of make our way through.

Speaker 2 Incredible.

Speaker 1 My favorite, though, is the revelation when Han Ratty's at the diner and his waiter's like,

Speaker 1 oh, those are the names of the Flash. That's

Speaker 1 Barry Allen. That's the Flash.
And he's like, ah, he's giving me comic book names. What the hell?

Speaker 1 So, yeah, great one. I will say, that was on my list.
I will say also early 2000s, great time for constant movies. Sam Rockwell, Nicholas Cage, Allison Lohman,

Speaker 1 Matchstick Men.

Speaker 1 Magstick Men, a movie about con artists in which the con artists are, you know, again, I don't want to like ruin all the twists and turns of con artist movies, but are being conned, where once again, the emotional vulnerability of a con artist is wrapped up in why he and the audience are sucked into a story that they're being sold inside of that movie.

Speaker 1 I love that movie, Magstick Men.

Speaker 2 Magic Men is wonderful. And yeah, I think, again, what's so painful about the Rockwell-Goggins pairing is we've seen Rockwell do it.
We've seen Goggins do it.

Speaker 2 We know the juice that they have in these exact sorts of scenarios. And these dudes can't even IMDb a single thing.

Speaker 2 They're just bumbling their way, not even leading the meeting, not even guiding the conversation, just sort of like along for the ride.

Speaker 1 One pre-conversation about what the plan was. Not a single one.

Speaker 2 This guy doesn't even know what movies he directed. That is a problem.

Speaker 1 That was the only part that, like, but

Speaker 1 the fake movie titles that he came up with were delightful.

Speaker 2 Oh, they're great.

Speaker 1 That was great, but the rest is just a mess.

Speaker 2 The jump from the executor to the notary, I just want to say, is a truly inspired bit of wordplay, and I appreciate it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The executor, the executor, and the notary. Okay.
Any other con movies you want to shout out?

Speaker 2 One that we have a mutual admiration for, Joe. And that's 2008 The Brothers Bloom.

Speaker 1 It's my number one.

Speaker 2 My number one as well. I think straight up just one of my favorite movies of the 2000s as a decade.
Correct.

Speaker 2 Gorgeous, charming movie. It does two things that we've already kind of circled around one of them that I really love about con movies.

Speaker 2 One is you got to create the spiral of cons that is so dense and so expansive that we have no idea where the con ends and where the truth begins.

Speaker 2 And the way you do that is with what you were talking about in Matchstick Man, where it's like you're pitting con man against con man.

Speaker 2 And in this case, brother against brother.

Speaker 2 It's like, who would possibly know better to see through all the bullshit than the person who knows you maybe most intimately in the world, knows all your tricks.

Speaker 2 And I think paying it off as emotionally as the Brothers Bloom does is really where it shines and really what makes that movie better than the sum of its parts.

Speaker 2 Like, it is not just a con movie, but it is a fucking great con movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ryan Johnson, this is Adrian Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weiss, and Rinka Kikuchi, and a criminally underwatched movie. Yes.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it starts with,

Speaker 1 like Mark Rufflow says a couple times: The Day I Con You is The Day I Die is like one of my favorite lines from that movie. But also,

Speaker 1 it starts with this opening monologue,

Speaker 1 a rhyming opening

Speaker 2 prologue. Look, it was 2008, all right? This is a movie that came out of 2008.
There are a lot of vests involved. Yes.

Speaker 2 It does,

Speaker 2 it can get quite twee at times.

Speaker 1 It is not untwee. It is not untwee.

Speaker 2 Certainly not.

Speaker 1 But Ricky J's

Speaker 1 great opening rhyming monologue that he gives where he says, as far as conman stories go, I think I've heard them all of grifters, ropers, pharaoh fixers, tales drawn long and tall.

Speaker 1 But if one bears a bookmark in the confidence man's tome, it would be that of Penelope and the brothers

Speaker 1 Bloom, which doesn't rhyme with tome, but that's okay. Bloom.

Speaker 1 Grifters, ropers, pharaoh fixers.

Speaker 1 We also, I just want to quickly shout out, and this has gone a a long longer than I should have let it, but this is just like genuinely one of my favorite things to talk about.

Speaker 2 Disagree. Let's do another 40 on the Brothers Blue.
We haven't even talked about Rachel Weiss yet. Come on.

Speaker 1 She's skateboards, guys. She makes pinhole cameras.
She's wonderful.

Speaker 1 The Grifters, obviously, a classic.

Speaker 1 And then the thing that started my love story with con movies, one of my favorite movies from my childhood, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Michael Caine, Steve Martin, Glenn Headley. Just great shit.

Speaker 1 And again, there's just like always a turn inside of con movie where there's just like another con waiting for you around the corner. I know this is not a con show.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying the opportunity was there and they just whiffed on it.

Speaker 2 Well, what if the ultimate conjo is the con we perform on ourselves? Okay,

Speaker 2 the way in which we trick ourselves into believing we are something other than what we are.

Speaker 1 It's true.

Speaker 1 A question a pal of mine asked me this morning is if I thought

Speaker 1 Frank's easy tumble from sobriety after this long monologue that we got in a previous episode. The

Speaker 1 fucking his way through Thailand and then turning to Buddhism and sobriety and what that brought to him.

Speaker 1 She was asking me if I thought that was a commentary on the fragility of white Buddhism, like tourist Buddhism, like the fact that Frank was like just so easily ready, like at the first sight of trouble, just ready to throw that out the window.

Speaker 2 And then I'm a little nervous in one meeting and now I need a whiskey.

Speaker 1 And then it's just like an orgiastic sort of descent descent into madness.

Speaker 1 Any, you know, I talked a little bit on Sunday's episode about

Speaker 1 this quote from Alan Watts

Speaker 1 that Rick gives to Jim when he talks about, you know, knowing when to stop.

Speaker 1 And Alan Watts is this icon of white Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the world of white Buddhism in general.

Speaker 1 Any thoughts about like Frank in that vein or anything that they're trying to say about this idea of

Speaker 1 in contrast to this monk who gives us, drops even more sort of wisdom on us in this episode, Piper as sort of a white tourist, a Buddhist, like any, any of that inside of this season or this episode.

Speaker 2 I will first say, invoking knowing when to stop in a show that has maybe gone on an episode or two, too long is a little rich.

Speaker 2 That said, yeah, I do think it is a direct call out of that sort of like tourist spirituality.

Speaker 2 And I would would say even more broadly than that, even take out, you know, the white or the American or the tourist element of that.

Speaker 2 Just sort of the fragility of this path to enlightenment overall, which is even if you enter into it with the best or most desperate of intentions, you are actually motivated by self-improvement.

Speaker 2 You are actually trying to get into, you know, connection with a higher power, connection with a broader humanity, connection with whatever it is that is binding us all. Sometimes it is that fragile.

Speaker 2 And I think as we're kind of charting the courses of who is making dramatic progress in character over the course of like four days at a luxury resort,

Speaker 2 like Saxon case in point, this is a long, long, long road, my friend. And a couple of books is a good starting point.
A little flirtatious meditation, you do you.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, like this is a hard, hard path to walk and one that requires an incredible amount of like monastic responsibility and dedication.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, like, I think anyone could fall off of that path. Anyone could fall out of that, that particular rhythm of life.

Speaker 2 But as we're trying to figure out who makes it out of this season of White Lotus in any way improved, I think the answer is any of them could fall off at any conceivable moment.

Speaker 1 What do you make of Rick's smile at the end of this episode? What's your read on it?

Speaker 2 I don't know. And I'm more confused after reading what Walton Goggins thought of it.

Speaker 1 Tell me.

Speaker 2 So he did an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

Speaker 2 We were talking about that scene and kind of the arc overall for Rick this season in a way that frankly makes me think that we have seen the bulk of what Rick is going to go through, the fact that this interview is coming out.

Speaker 2 This is his quote. It took me six months and seven hours of this experience to smile, to really smile.
It's not joy, but there's contentment or peace for a moment.

Speaker 2 I get that he's talking about like the production of the show, right? And this is a character who has been quite dour.

Speaker 1 He talked about how hard it was for him as an actor. He would just like separate himself from the cast and go just like brood and smoke and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Like, well, actually, I don't know if he smokes. I think he does.
Anyway, brood and just sort sort of stare off in the distance and not talk to anyone. So, yeah.

Speaker 2 This is a man as an actor who is the life of the party and has the biggest, toothiest grin in the world. And to deprive us of that is a crime in and of itself.

Speaker 2 But to deprive Goggins himself of that sort of

Speaker 2 joviality that is such a key part of his performance, I think is a great challenge for him as an actor.

Speaker 2 And I get why he wanted to try that and why he's playing the part that way and ultimately why Rick is kind of constructed around it out the way he is.

Speaker 2 But to say that this is a man who found like a level of contentment or peace,

Speaker 2 I wouldn't say that was my read on the scene overall. I think there was a relief in

Speaker 2 I've done the thing I wanted to do, which is confront Jim Hollinger.

Speaker 2 It didn't go the way I thought, but ultimately, I think what Rick needed, whether he was aware of it or not, was not to shoot Jim Hollinger, not to threaten him, not to hold a gun to his head, not to exact some kind of like revenge in a very traditional sense.

Speaker 2 But like, this is a dude who needed to be heard and needed this guy, needed to leave a mark on this man in the way that he thinks he left one on him.

Speaker 2 So there's a relief in that. But to say that Rick in this moment has found like contentment or peace, I just don't see the arc that is leading us there.

Speaker 1 I agree with Goggins, but I have a caveat.

Speaker 1 To me, Rick did look at peace in that scene. It was just sort of like there's this party going on around him, and he's like, I don't need an.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's had, and I talked to Bill and Mallory about this.

Speaker 1 They kind of disagree with me, but like, he's had some drinks, but he's not like smoking meth or whatever it is that, you know, and like the girls are offering him hard drugs.

Speaker 2 Is that a meth party? That doesn't look like a meth party.

Speaker 1 What was the pipe that Frank was smoking from?

Speaker 2 I have no idea what they were smoking.

Speaker 1 I think it wasn't a cookie party, but like he was smoking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Meth seems like a different vibe than what they're trying to cultivate.

Speaker 1 Crack, I mean, I don't know what it was, but it wasn't, it wasn't a standard,

Speaker 1 I don't know what a standard drug tip is.

Speaker 2 Come to the Prestige TV podcast for all of your recreational drug tips. We've got you.

Speaker 1 We've got you covered for sure.

Speaker 1 But I think I think he was just like, I don't need any of this. This is not something I need or want.

Speaker 1 I am content i've put that to bed and i'm content to just go back to chelsea and live happily ever after now again that might be me projecting a happy ending yeah and the thing that i'm worried about can you read what he said about peace for a moment what did he say he said it's not joy but there's contentment or peace for a moment for a moment makes me worried about rick and the finale yep i hadn't i hadn't seen that quote that makes me worried okay cool cool cool all right in terms of worry for the finale

Speaker 1 let's talk about guy talk for a second and this is something that we've been

Speaker 1 wondering about all season which is is guy talk who has been

Speaker 1 urged by mook from the beginning of the season to sort of man up be be a bigger bolder you uh the gun was introduced we not even be a bigger bolder you be someone else Yeah, don't be you.

Speaker 1 You is not who I want. I want something else.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Straight up.

Speaker 1 Our listener who signed their email, GCH, said, Don't forget Gaitak was an unbelievable shooter when they were in the went to the range with his boss. He even complimented him.

Speaker 1 And Abby says, Poor Guy Talk is just a gentle soul who can't stomach violence of any kind. And Mook, for some reason, is trying to turn him into someone he isn't.

Speaker 1 There's a scene where he expresses aversion to violence. She said, I thought you were more ambitious than that.
It was frankly disturbing and manipulative. And I'm worried for him.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So I don't know about manipulative, but definitely disturbing. And definitely,

Speaker 1 I just wanted to get your take on this.

Speaker 1 This to me feels like a real flip on your early season read where you were like, Poor Mook is being pursued by this quote, capital N, capital G, nice guy, and she just wants to be left alone.

Speaker 1 And I understood where you were coming from because that is definitely an archetype that I always like us to be on the lookout for.

Speaker 1 But the end of the season, here we are, and we're like, Poor guy talk,

Speaker 1 don't like, like, let Mook go. Like, love and respect to her.
Let her want what she wants. That's fine.
What she wants isn't you. Yes.
Don't change who you are inherently.

Speaker 1 A friend of mine was texting me

Speaker 1 after this week's episode and she was like, I love Guy Talk as this sort of

Speaker 1 counter depiction of masculinity, that masculinity becoming all kinds of different things. And for Guy Talk, it's this pacifist, gentle sort of thing.

Speaker 1 And she's like, I like that in the context of all the archetypes that we're talking about here. And I was like, yeah, but I'm worried.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Then the finale, he's going to betray that for in pursuit of this thing that he wants, which is the beautiful, lovely, beguiling mook. Like, who can blame him? But that's crushing.

Speaker 1 If he is involved in the shootout at the end of the season, it will be a massive betrayal of his

Speaker 1 most closely held core principle. And so

Speaker 1 do you want, and we talked about this a little bit on Sunday, but like, do you want a finale where Guy Talk

Speaker 1 does shoot? does do the thing that Mook thinks that he should do, that is natural to do?

Speaker 1 Do you you want a finale where Guy Talk opts out of the shootout and chooses his own core principles over Mook's expectations of him?

Speaker 1 What seems most interesting to you?

Speaker 2 I would prefer for that character for him not to shoot. Yeah.
That said, he is going to shoot. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 2 it is going to be one of the tension points of the finale. I would say in part because Guy Talk and Mook's story can't go anywhere else.

Speaker 2 This is the only direction that their relationship has been going and that their scenes and dialogue together have been going.

Speaker 2 And so this character who is constitutionally opposed to violence and spiritually opposed to violence, it's not him and it's not the person he wants to be in the context of a broader world, is going to participate in something that by experience earlier in this season, he has been taught he's quite good at.

Speaker 2 And that makes me incredibly nervous.

Speaker 2 I think the foreboding part and the sort of like the lead in of Gaita going to the gun range and being exceptionally accurate his first time out is not that he's going to shoot someone correctly in the finale.

Speaker 2 It's that he's going to go in with the confidence of someone who shot really well at the gun range in a live non-target practice situation in which monkeys may be involved.

Speaker 2 And from there, who knows what could happen. Like, I do think Guy Talk is a person pulling the trigger.
Are there more guns involved? Are there more victims involved? I don't exactly know.

Speaker 2 But I think shots are going to be fired, and Guy Talk is going to be pulling the trigger.

Speaker 1 Our listener Joe asked, any chance the gunshots are a red herring?

Speaker 1 Meaning, yes, there there will be a shootout, but any chance that the body that's floating in the water has nothing to do with the bullets flying at the end of the season?

Speaker 2 What if they're just watching the notary really, really loud? Someone just, someone cranked up the subwoofer. And, you know, they're just watching some great action set pieces.

Speaker 2 You know, Stathie went off in that thing.

Speaker 1 It sounded more like the executor to me than it did

Speaker 1 in the notary, just by listening, but sure. That's really funny.

Speaker 1 Okay. I have one more sort of question I want to ask you.
Before I do that, I realized that I didn't have on my list to talk to you about anything to do with Lori.

Speaker 1 This is a huge Lori episode, a huge Carrie Kuhn episode talking about con men. Alexi,

Speaker 1 I think, did a little bit of a better job actually than Frank and Rick, but just like really fumbled it at the end, did not do his due diligent research on Lori to know whether or not she was the fancy that he should be pursuing.

Speaker 2 If he had this dollar amount in mine, he was told like straight up at the pool that she's this hotshot lawyer, that she's playing paying palamoni, right? Like, she's got some money. Yeah.

Speaker 2 In fact, probably enough if she needed to to move around exactly ten thousand dollars in U.S. cash.

Speaker 1 If she wanted to, she probably could.

Speaker 2 For this guy she just met and had sex with one time and his poor, poor,

Speaker 2 probably fictional mother, at least for her probably fictional problems. Yeah.
Yeah, you shouldn't do that, clearly.

Speaker 1 Right, of course. Uh, anything else you want to say about Lori

Speaker 1 or

Speaker 1 her escape, or the as expected pile of jewelry from the boutique smash and grab, or anything else.

Speaker 2 I share Mallory's opinion that we didn't need the flashbacks regarding Guy Talk or Lori and the robbery. And I feel often just kind of insulted when we do get those things.

Speaker 2 So trust us, it's only been a couple episodes. We can remember it.
It's fine.

Speaker 2 Overall, with Lori's story, I think the stuff with her at the fight, while fun and lively and overall her relationship with Alexia, like I enjoyed those scenes.

Speaker 2 To me, it's so much more about still her with Jacqueline and Kate and their twisting dynamic at dinner together,

Speaker 2 a couple of bottles of rose in, who knows how many at that time. Like they're pouring them fast.
It's just a wonder to me that these three people,

Speaker 2 despite how much they had in common growing up, as far as like

Speaker 2 geographically, demographically, coming from such similar places, have so, so, so little in common as far as like who they are as people.

Speaker 1 Do you think there's a possibility for Jacqueline and Lori Lori

Speaker 1 to bond over sexual mistakes they've made with a Russian on this trip?

Speaker 2 You know what? After I was just saying they don't have a lot in common, they certainly do have a lot in common. If Valentin asks for exactly $10,000 in U.S.

Speaker 2 cash, then they have something to come together.

Speaker 1 If Lori's like, Jacqueline, I'm sorry I judge you so harshly. I mean, she should judge Jacqueline for plenty of things.
I'm not defending Jacqueline. Jacqueline sucks.
But if she's like, you know,

Speaker 1 I made a big fucking mistake with Alexi, you made a big fucking mistake with Valentin. Like, let's just call it a day and move on from here.
Do you think that's a possibility for them?

Speaker 2 I think the difference is like, who is the mistake at the expense of? Sure. And look, Jaclyn's mistake,

Speaker 2 she's a married woman. Doesn't seem like that was exactly in the rules and the term agreement as far as like her sleeping with random Russians on vacation.
She keeps it a secret for a reason, right?

Speaker 2 Like she is embarrassed of this idea and does not want to tell the other women about it. And the fact that she is hiding it tells you that she knows on some level that what she did is messed up.

Speaker 2 Lori is trying to have a good time, and I think has a good time in a largely

Speaker 2 college debaucherist kind of way. Gets involved with a man she probably should not have gotten involved in.

Speaker 1 Who is she really hurting except for his girlfriend, I guess?

Speaker 2 But well, I would say she gets more hurt than the girlfriend does. If we're talking about characters who chose violence in this episode, Alexi's girlfriend, just wailing on people.

Speaker 1 I support it. I support it.
Yeah, I don't,

Speaker 1 yeah, absolutely true. It's not, it's, it's not the same.
What they've done is not the same.

Speaker 1 And Jaclyn certainly, I really, if, if there's going to be any kind of reconciliation, I need Jacqueline to acknowledge what she did at Lori's expense. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And White Lotus is not a show that necessarily has characters like this have any kind of self-awareness. So, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm holding my breath for it.

Speaker 2 The only reason I might be a little bit is that as of now, episode seven, Jacqueline is so unlikable in this episode, and they have loved to do the revolving door, or I guess more of a conveyor belt in terms of who is kind of front and center, who is putting getting put on blast between these three women, who is sort of the target of the other two.

Speaker 2 And we haven't really seen anyone be the sustained source of ire.

Speaker 2 And I think Jacqueline will have some moment in the finale that endears us to her a little bit more. Maybe it's a reconciliation, maybe it's something else.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, there's this like fundamental tension between her and Lori that I don't think a lot of conversation can fix, which is Lori is, even by her friend's diagnosis, which I think is largely correct, a like go-with-the-flow type.

Speaker 2 I don't think she's playing the victim or like has an endemic kind of worry as a result of that.

Speaker 2 I think maybe they're a little bit harsh in their characterization of Lori's life, but it's clear that she has not seized the reins and the control of everything in her life to a degree that she could have.

Speaker 1 I might agree with you, except I think what's interesting in an interview that Carrie Kuhn gave to Vanity Fair, she was sort of talking about this as maybe an eye-opening experience for Lori of like, hey, maybe I do make self-destructive decisions.

Speaker 1 Do you know?

Speaker 2 But see, that's the thing. I don't think they're self-destructive decisions.
I think they're like non-decisions that end up in damage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, it's not that she is going down the wrong road. It's that someone says, hey, do you want to go down this way? And she just kind of shrugs and goes along with it.

Speaker 2 And then now 15 years later, she's divorced.

Speaker 1 Something I like about this podcast, Rob, is that we listen and we don't judge.

Speaker 1 We support people

Speaker 2 and all their neighbors. Except Jacqueline sometimes.
Like it's, again, hard not to judge Jacqueline in this episode. I would say, especially because

Speaker 2 I don't know whether this is a me thing or a show thing, but I do feel a little more sympathetic to Lori's perspective.

Speaker 2 I do feel I do feel more sympathetic, not just to what has happened to her at the White Lotus, but kind of who that person is and the decisions that they make. Of course.

Speaker 2 Whereas Jacqueline is the kind of person who sees, like, she's so assertive in a way that probably was key to her becoming a successful actress in the first place.

Speaker 2 But also leads her to see like every

Speaker 2 bit of empty space as an opportunity, including getting in with Valentin when the time serves.

Speaker 1 I think the thing that's true of us as, and we're not, you and I are not a monolith, we see things differently, but like as TV viewers or as consumers of story, it's most interesting to us when characters show some sort of vulnerability.

Speaker 1 So when did Saxon become an interesting character to me when he became a more vulnerable character?

Speaker 2 Also, when he became more Chelsea's type, if we're going to be honest about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, but like that goes hand in hand when he starts to grow a little baby soul inside of him, when he has some vulnerability, when he has some introspection, when he has some self-reflection.

Speaker 1 Jaclyn right now is doubling down on no introspective, no introspection, no self-reflection. There is this like,

Speaker 1 I really hated her whole like, people whisper about me wherever I go. I really didn't need it from my friends.
Like, that's not true vulnerability. And I'll just, I'll be the bad guy.
I'm used to it.

Speaker 1 That's not actual self-reflection and vulnerability. But she, there is potential for her to have that in the finale.
And if she does, I would like to see that from her.

Speaker 1 Right now, she sucks, and I don't like her. And

Speaker 1 with love and respect to Michelle Monaghan, okay, last but not least, okay.

Speaker 2 If there's a way back for Saxon, there's a way back for Jacqueline.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 And also, Joanna, who would you be if not someone who is endeared to a previously irredeemable character with a baby soul growing inside them? This is, this is your zone.

Speaker 1 It really is. Okay,

Speaker 1 that's true. Wow, right down the middle.
Okay, Amber wrote in to say, we've gotten a version of this email throughout the season, but this is the first time I'm taking it seriously. Okay.

Speaker 1 With love and respect to all the other versions that we've gotten.

Speaker 1 Amber says, I'm a lawyer slash legal journalist, and I couldn't stop thinking about the legal doctrine that you've probably heard of, the fruit of the poisonous tree.

Speaker 1 Basically, it is the one where if you obtain evidence illegally, anything that you discover that comes from that first illegal act is tainted and can't be used in court.

Speaker 1 So we've been getting emails about this all season when we're like, hey, there's a literal fruit of the poisonous tree at the Ratliff compound. And people are like, have you heard of this doctrine?

Speaker 1 But I don't, and forgive me if I missed it, but I don't think in previous emails they made such a connection between that to this idea of Tim Ratliff getting off scot-free.

Speaker 1 So this idea, it's not just like fruit of the poisonous tree for fruit of the poisonous tree's sake. It's fruit of the poisonous tree, this idea that

Speaker 1 If you obtain evidence illegally, anything you discover that comes from that first illegal act is tainted and can't be used in court.

Speaker 1 If that is what gets Tim Ratliff out of the absolute morass that he has found himself in, if he gets his phone back and is like, oh, hey,

Speaker 1 the first step they took in this investigation was illegal, so the whole thing is tossed out, then you get to go home and you don't need to tell anyone that you dreamt about murdering your family for a couple days in Thailand.

Speaker 1 Nobody ever needs to know that, Tim. Again, I said this on the Sunday pod, but it really does feel to me like Tim Ratliff is the kind of character for whom there will be no actual consequences.

Speaker 1 If he manages to just not murder anyone between now and the boat ride home, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I think he's capable of that.

Speaker 2 Well, he doesn't have the gun anymore, so that helps.

Speaker 1 I feel like he's not going to jail. I feel like that's true.
So, yeah.

Speaker 2 I do agree with you. It does feel like that might be where we're headed.
I do wonder how that's going to leave people watching this show.

Speaker 2 If the summation of Tim Ratliff's story all season is nothing, right? It is self-perpetuating anxiety and a drug-addled stupor for seven straight episodes, leading in nothing.

Speaker 2 I think that's a fair part of an ensemble story, but it's an ensemble story that we have dedicated quite a bit of time to. This is not just like a running background thread.

Speaker 2 This is a key element that many other characters are hinging on.

Speaker 1 It's a great point.

Speaker 1 Will anyone be satisfied with the White Lotus finale?

Speaker 2 Tune in and find out. Tune in and find out.

Speaker 1 All right. So we'll be back on Monday next week to talk about White Lotus episode eight.
I had a great time.

Speaker 2 I have to say one more thing. Of course.
And it is a moment of very sincere thanks for something I have been clamoring for, begging for from the White Lotus this season. Guy talking Mook.

Speaker 2 Thank you for giving us some street food. Thank you for taking us on a proper date.

Speaker 2 Like, why are you going to take me to one of the great street food areas of the entire world? And look, it wasn't necessarily in Bangkok. I don't think they're in Bangkok.

Speaker 2 I don't know where they're on their date, but at least least thank you for indulging me this little bit with some proper noodles. Like it was the least noodle could do.

Speaker 1 You love a noodle. Okay.

Speaker 1 Thank you to White Lotus for making all of Rob's Anthony Bourdain dreams come true. We appreciate you.
As always, we'll be back for episode eight.

Speaker 1 Like I said, we're recording on Monday, so you want to get those emails into monkeyshootout at gmail.com. Don't listen to anything Michelle Monaghan says.

Speaker 1 Thanks to

Speaker 1 the whole crew on the episode today. We got CT here.
We've got Justin Sales. We've got Donnie Beacham on the edit.
We are, we appreciate the whole team. My time in LA is wrapping up.

Speaker 1 I'm moving out of the void soon,

Speaker 1 but it's been a delight. How do I feel about leaving the void?

Speaker 2 Yeah, specifically.

Speaker 1 Leaving the void, I'm overjoyed. I, you know, love podcasting with you in person, Rob, but doing it over Zoom from a weird little

Speaker 2 black box

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 its own little experiment. No, but it's been really fun to be in LA, actually.
It's been really, really fun.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I will

Speaker 1 see you guys later for the pit. Okay, that's how this episode ends.

Speaker 2 Bye.