‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 4 Deep Dive and Theories: Rick’s Revenge in Bangkok

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Speaker 2 This episode of the Prestige TV podcast is brought to you by Coffee Mate. Coffee Mate has been searching the globe for flavors that pair perfectly with coffee.

Speaker 2 So, when they heard that the new season of HBO's The White Lotus was set in Thailand, they were inspired to brew two new flavors: Thai iced coffee and pina colada flavored creamers.

Speaker 3 They're available for a short time only.

Speaker 2 So, for the love of coffee, go try them now.

Speaker 2 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joyna Robinson, I'm Rob Mahoney.
We're here today to talk to you about season three, episode four of White Lotus: Hide or Seek.

Speaker 2 There's a lot going on on the Prestige feed this week because you and I are doing three whole ass entire prestige episodes together this week, Rob.

Speaker 3 What are we covering? We are indeed. We're covering White Lotus, obviously.
That's why we're here today. We will be taping an episode of the Pit that will be dropping in the indeterminate future.

Speaker 2 Great.

Speaker 3 Covering through episode 11. Cannot wait.
We've been getting, Joe,

Speaker 3 a lot of people clamoring for our specific takes on the pit on some of the big revelations of the recent episodes.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 A lot going on in the ER, to say the least. And of course, we're covering severance.
Every week, all week, the emails are streaming in. They are increasingly unhinged.
I'm loving every second of it.

Speaker 2 In addition, of course, Bill and Mallory and I are covering White Lotus on Sunday nights immediately after the episode ends.

Speaker 2 You can catch that on YouTube or on Spotify or listen to it on a podcast app of your choice. A lot going on on the Prestige feed this week.
In addition to

Speaker 2 Mallory and I are covering Yellow Jackets, Daredevil, The Last of Us Trailer, all that sort of stuff over on the House of Our Feed. So there's a lot happening.

Speaker 3 Are you, Joe, up on Paradise?

Speaker 2 I have not watched a single second of Paradise.

Speaker 3 You know what? It was like pulpy fun, and then one episode later in the season just kicks into high fucking gear.

Speaker 2 Is it episode seven? Like that's what I've heard.

Speaker 3 Episode seven really, really pulls it together in a fascinating way.

Speaker 2 You think I would like, you think I, Joanna, would like Paradise?

Speaker 3 I do. I do.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay. I trust you because you were the one who was like, Joanna, you're going to hate Landman.

Speaker 3 And you were right. Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, there's fewer speeches about like uh chinese lithium mines and how they're ruining the environment so i think you're gonna be open to this oh fingers crossed for zero speeches about that and we can we could dare to dream um this is maybe best served uh saved for the severance podcast but i'll just say today um we learned a thing we did a little unboxing experiment on the severance pod on friday and i got some feedback that mostly what people saw was my laptop and not like the items themselves.

Speaker 2 So I have a lot to learn about unboxing. That was my first time.
Thanks for bearing with. But if you wanted to watch me half unbox some Severin stuff, we did that on the pod

Speaker 2 last week. Okay, quick opening question for you, Rob Mountaine.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 What was the worst mistake of the episode? Was it

Speaker 2 my guy, Guy Talk, leaving the gun out?

Speaker 3 Or

Speaker 3 was it Belinda?

Speaker 2 Straight up slow-mo mean-mugging a guy she knows.

Speaker 3 That was not great. Did a murder.

Speaker 2 Which are you picking?

Speaker 3 The gun is bad.

Speaker 3 But look, I've been hard on Guy Talk. I've been skeptical of his ability to read the room.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 We're going to give him some grace today. Not in the professional sense, but at least in the personal sense.
Professionally, he might be the worst person at this job in the entire hotel.

Speaker 3 Like in terms of fulfilling his specific capacity. Very, very bad at his job.

Speaker 2 I can't defend it. I'm not inclined to.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 However,

Speaker 2 personally,

Speaker 2 where are you on Mookon and Guy Talk?

Speaker 3 I think we just have to look at the facts of this episode, which is Mook is reciprocating, I would say, in a degree that is slightly different than in previous episodes. She is flagging him down.

Speaker 3 She is pursuing him, wanting him to come watch her dance. She is swinging by in her dancing outfit just to show it off a little bit.

Speaker 3 And I will say her initial response to being asked out on the date, I read as like, oh, I'm not sure that she ever actually agreed to it before Guy Talk had to rush off.

Speaker 3 But it seems like later in the episode, we have some confirmation that they are planning for a date.

Speaker 2 Okay. So, date, come watch me dance.
She looks so beautiful and cute in her dancing regalia.

Speaker 3 He just the golden hour sunbeams behind her head. Like

Speaker 3 the whole scene is coming together.

Speaker 3 And I will say this: we got many, many great emails from people kind of walking us through some of the specifics of Thai courtship and the dating in this region of the world in general, specifically one from Dillis that I really appreciated, where Dillis talked about kind of the archetypes of Thai and

Speaker 3 Southeast Asian cinema and TV and how Mook and Gaita kind of fall into those ideas.

Speaker 3 This gentle but persistent guy, this coy, sweet girl, and that based on that read, it does seem like they're kind of falling into those modes.

Speaker 3 They are sort of giving a very familiar presentation, which might let Guy Talk off the hook as far as my previous concerns about how he would react if Mook wasn't as interested as he was.

Speaker 3 That said, on a show show like White Lotus, the idea that we're getting a very familiar presentation potentially of a type of romance does not make me feel great about their chances for these two crazy kids to end up together.

Speaker 2 The actors who play Mook and Guy Talk were, you know, the pair that they featured in the after-episode interview on HBO this week.

Speaker 2 And Lalisa, who plays Mook, was talking about how ambitious she is, how she wants more, she wants a bigger life, she wants a better life, she wants to leave, she wants to travel.

Speaker 2 Guy Talk's like, happy to be incompetent at my job here at the White Lotus forever, you know?

Speaker 2 And so that has me a little concerned.

Speaker 2 Not that like he will rage out in any kind of way, but something Mala has been talking about in the pod we do with Bill from the start is like her concern that he will try to prove himself to her in some way that might go bad.

Speaker 2 Or alternatively, she just simply won't.

Speaker 2 It's not the end of the world, but she simply won't pick him in the end because he's not what she's looking for.

Speaker 2 She's looking for someone, you know, some beefy bodyguard who can take her around the world. So

Speaker 2 I am as ever rooting for guy talk.

Speaker 3 I even after the gun snafu of this week.

Speaker 2 I feel very disappointed in him that he left the gun out. But to go back to your point, golden hour

Speaker 2 mook, golden hour Lilisa with the flowers and the I mean who among us?

Speaker 3 The distraction is very understandable, but just put it back in the safe.

Speaker 3 Put it back in the bottom box. Seriously, The bare minimum.
Carry it with you. I don't care.

Speaker 2 All right. So I have like a kind of a big picture question to start with here.
We are at the midway point of the season. I've been hearing, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 Covering both Severance and White Lotus right now, I really feel like we're at this crux of

Speaker 2 people have forgotten to watch how to watch television week to week.

Speaker 2 They sure have. And I feel like people misremember the cadence of previous seasons of White Lotus.

Speaker 2 And on Severance, that's a different thing we could talk about on the Severance pod, but I feel like people are used to maybe watching Severance Season 1 as a binge.

Speaker 2 And so, sort of some of the peaks and valleys of

Speaker 2 the plot and the rhythms are influencing people. But I've heard from plenty of people that they think this season of White Lotus is boring.

Speaker 2 I think season four is sort of we're ramping up. You know, we're headed towards a full moon party.
Like,

Speaker 2 I think we're headed towards excitement, but I think, do you think this season is measurably different from any of the previous seasons of White Lotus? And, or,

Speaker 2 or just simply and, are you having a good time with it?

Speaker 3 I am having a good time with it. I don't feel that it's measurably different.
To me, this show has always been some variety of this.

Speaker 3 A bunch of different character studies kind of overlapping, kind of not, various boiling points reaching their temperature over a handful of episodes.

Speaker 3 I don't really consider White Lotus to be a super plot-heavy show, which is why the kind of dangling bait of the dead bodies is always like such a fun and silly part of it because it's so clear what's happening there.

Speaker 3 But I'm never really waiting for White Lotus to like explode. Like, maybe I'm waiting for some characters to bump up into each other in a different way.

Speaker 3 You know, like we've gotten all these hints about like Tim and Rick, for example, how much they dislike each other.

Speaker 3 And it's like, at some point, they are going to collide, at least I would hope, in a way that's kind of fun and interesting.

Speaker 3 And I'm eager to see it, but I'm not, I'm not waiting for the next plot development in White Lotus, the show about a bunch of rich people at a luxury resort sitting around and pulling each other apart.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm just kind of watching them pull each other apart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it always seems like

Speaker 2 we, I just, I remember this from previous seasons that it's like, it's a character study show, right? It's a comedy of manners kind of show

Speaker 2 with the like a fake mustache on it that makes it a sort of mystery show. It's not really what it is, but it's like part of the, part of the hook

Speaker 2 to get get people watching. But it's always been this kind of slow burn.
And I think if you go back and re-watch or reconsider previous seasons, you'll see similar things.

Speaker 2 That being said, if people aren't vibing this season, that's fine. That's your prerogative.
I'm not here to change your mind. I just think it's, you know.

Speaker 3 I would say two things to in the defense of people who are feeling the pace at this point and feeling it as a bit of more of a slow presentation.

Speaker 3 We've now gotten like three episodes in a row of Rick talking about going to Bangkok, but not going to Bangkok.

Speaker 3 And we've gotten at least two episodes episodes of people talking about the full moon party, but not actually being at the full moon party.

Speaker 3 And so there is a little bit more of a lead up in terms of some of those events that I'm hoping will really pay off when we get there. But there's been some serious prelude for those things.

Speaker 2 That is completely fair.

Speaker 2 I want to do a quick section that I'm calling the well-actually section, which is just people sort of correcting or weighing in on things. And to be clear, I'm not saying I don't like these emails.

Speaker 2 If it's a well-actually email I don't like, I simply won't be reading it. But

Speaker 2 on this sort of like, is that

Speaker 2 Jason Isaacs and all of his natural splendor or not? We did get several emails about this.

Speaker 2 Rob, this is not what we're here to do. We don't need to dwell on this, but I will just say.

Speaker 3 No, I think we do because I woke up Monday morning. I, you know, just had a very normal one, poured myself.

Speaker 2 This is not my fault, Rob.

Speaker 3 You know, this is not my fault.

Speaker 3 I'm just saying, I woke up, poured myself a cup of coffee, opened the old prestige TV email box, and was met with a startling number of emails about whether British men are circumcised or not.

Speaker 3 Who am I to dispute people's area of expertise? But I'm just saying it was, it's been a very normal one over here for the last couple of days.

Speaker 2 I just want to read my favorite one, which simply reads this. You guys, ellipses, British men are almost always uncut.
It's not his. Love, comma, a gay man.
So that's

Speaker 2 how our listener signed his email. That's how I will read it out.

Speaker 2 I sent that evidence to our pal Mallory Rubin. Yes.
And her counter is that Jason Isaacs, the actor, is Jewish. So no matter what, he might be, you know, circumcised anyway.

Speaker 2 That being said.

Speaker 2 Bill Simmons has told Mallory and me he has the straight dish on this, which he will be revealing on our episode five podcast. He hasn't told us yet.
I don't know the answer. Okay.

Speaker 2 But Bill has gotten it straight from the, not the source, but like a source. source, and he knows.
So the answer will come on the episode five instant reaction.

Speaker 3 What a tease.

Speaker 3 What a setup, Joe. That's why you're a pro.

Speaker 3 I will say this. Yeah, I have no idea whether it's real or not.
It does seem like in this show, which is no,

Speaker 3 not shy about male nudity, it has been almost exclusively prosthetics. And in fact, I was watching an interview with Steve Zahn where he was talking about his prosthetic junk

Speaker 3 for season one.

Speaker 3 What was interesting to me was not that it was a prosthetic. That's pretty common.

Speaker 3 It was that he was presented with the prosthetic by Mike White to say, like, do you give the sign-off on this prosthetic junk for yourself?

Speaker 3 So, regardless if it is Jason Isaacs in all his glory or not, it is what he and many craftspeople believe that Tim Ratliff looks like.

Speaker 2 A Jason-approved

Speaker 2 item. Okay.

Speaker 2 In regards to the dry,

Speaker 2 Tim Ratliff just dry neck in some pills, which perturbed me. We had several people write in, a concerning amount of people perhaps, to let us know that

Speaker 2 Lorazepam is sweet and will just dissolve on your tongue.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 David wrote, clearly you've never been strung out on Adavan. It dissolves in your mouth without any taste at all.
So thanks, David, and all the other people who wrote in about this.

Speaker 2 Now we know.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Look forward to our future video on the Prestige on the Ringer TV YouTube channel where we all take Lorazepam and just kind of just coast through it together.

Speaker 2 A lorazepod?

Speaker 3 Is that what we want to do? I do want to do a lorazepod. I think it'd make for great content.

Speaker 2 I think that we should do the White Lotus finale as a Lorazepod. I think that sounds delightful to me.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 And then on the Lorazapam front, we got a lot of emails about Lorazapam withdrawals and how nasty and sort of instantaneous they are.

Speaker 2 And the fact that, you know, we were kind of joking a bit about, like, okay, we've got

Speaker 2 Lorazapam Tim or Larazza Tim, as some people are calling him on the internet. Great stuff.
Love that for us as TV consumers. Vicky.

Speaker 2 Lorazepam withdrawal. Vicky, what's going to happen there? I don't think that Mike White is intent on giving us like a harrowing

Speaker 2 DT's episode of White Lotus, but I will just list some early withdrawal symptoms of Lorazepam, a highly addictive drug that you should never go cold turkey on. This has been your PSA.

Speaker 2 Increased anxiety, irritability, insomnia, sweating, tremors. That's all stuff that I feel like, because we're only, that's like one to three days.

Speaker 2 We're only at the white lotus for like three more days.

Speaker 2 So I feel like all of that is something that Parker Posey is completely capable of giving us without like us sending us down into a dark, dark spiral of something.

Speaker 3 So very much so. But the anxiety is already high for Victoria.

Speaker 3 On the sweat front, it's going to take some work to outsweat Goggins in this episode, who is just moist,

Speaker 3 perpetually moist.

Speaker 3 But she could potentially catch up, you know, if she goes into some shudders and sweating here. Yeah.
I could really see it for her, regardless.

Speaker 3 Look, our girl needs help getting through like two conversations on the yacht. Yeah.

Speaker 3 She's going to come crashing back down to earth real fast.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I want to talk about that a little bit later, a little bit more, but there's a difference between what they are exposed to on the yacht and the sort of like, I'm just eating melon all day vibes of her existence at the White Lotus.

Speaker 2 Well, quite, yeah, you know, so I think that, like,

Speaker 2 it will be there was way less friction for her waiting back at the resort in terms of social anxiety and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 But she was already popping the Laraza Pam at the resort eating the melon just to get her massage.

Speaker 3 That's insane. Just to take the edge off, to take the edge off.

Speaker 2 I can't believe she made it through that yacht ride. I was feeling for her.
I like

Speaker 2 there are some looks that Parker Posey gives in this episode that are just like instant meme like worthy. Like, move over Leslie Bibb, squint smile face.

Speaker 3 Some of these Parker Posey faces are making their rounds, but like the cringe as she's watching these guys and their younger Thai girlfriends from across the boat is wonderful.

Speaker 2 And then like kind of trying to settle her face and be like, this is fine.

Speaker 2 I do that. That's what my face does.
I've been told quite often.

Speaker 3 I also love the reaction to the reaction when she prompts the one Australian guy if he and his girlfriend are married.

Speaker 3 And he sighs so hard, I thought he might pass out like he was just the mere question being posed not appreciative of it um

Speaker 2 do you want to do a little like

Speaker 2 killing theory roundup we got we got the tenor of the emails right now around sort of like who who could have died who who did the killing who is dead at the end of the season are the exact kind that I like where they're going back to previous seasons and they're like let's look at what usually happens on a white notice what kind of story is Mike White interested in telling us not like some wild kakami me i think a monkey got a gun that's that's a me theory but like you could please email us at monkeyshootout at gmail.com a very a very normal email address or press ccb at spotify.com either way but like um

Speaker 2 but like what story could mike white weave for us with any of these given deaths and here here are like a couple chief things that people wanted us to remember okay don our listener don and a couple people but like uh his email chiefly was talking about the way that our

Speaker 2 spoilers for previous seasons of White Lotus, Armand, who dies in season one and Tanya, who dies in season two, were characters who did not have close emotional ties to anyone else on the show.

Speaker 2 Certainly Greg Gary did not give a shit about Tanya and even Portia was like not invested. Armand's like co-workers like liked him, but we didn't explore any of those relationships too closely.

Speaker 3 And so those well, we explored some of them quite closely, but maybe not in that exact way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just because you go ask-to-mouth doesn't mean that you are like, you know.

Speaker 3 Kind of intimacy, I gotta say.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 the fact that the seasons don't end with like this plaintive mourning from any of our other characters, right? So if...

Speaker 2 A Ratliff dies, then we have to grapple with the rest of the Ratliff family mourning. If Rick or Chelsea dies, that would be devastating to either Rick or Chelsea, I believe.

Speaker 2 If one the fancies dies, I think that would be like maybe a little bit perhaps.

Speaker 2 So, on the one hand, Mike White has said this season might be a bit darker than other seasons, so it's possible that he's going to zag in that direction.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, I think that is a useful thing to sort of keep in mind: is like

Speaker 2 how, you know, usually when we like go to the airport and sort of see all of our characters, how they're existing after this vacation at the airport, it's not anyone sort of like

Speaker 2 dressed in black grief sobbing. That's not how we end a a season of White Lotus, usually.
So that's something to think about, you know?

Speaker 3 Definitely so.

Speaker 3 And I would say, as an offshoot of that, maybe the variation for this season is not taking someone who has no ties, but taking someone who has them, sever them, and then they become vulnerable in their way, right?

Speaker 3 Like if the truth about what Tim has done gets out, all of a sudden those familial ties aren't as strong as they once were. And I think all of the rat lifts would be spiraling out of control.

Speaker 3 I don't think Tim is the dead body. I think he has the gun in his hands almost too early in the story for him to actually be the one who ends up dead, but he could be involved in some way.

Speaker 3 It's like you can start to triangulate the way these things might connect, right? Tim has the gun. Guy Talk's potentially trying to get it back.
We see this very like

Speaker 3 lingering shot of a security camera early in the episode, where I would imagine Guy Talk is able to piece together the fact that

Speaker 3 Tim has the gun in the first place. You also have Belinda, who is jumpy at everything in a way that could keep her alive if Greg's googling turns into ill intentions, turns into him coming after her.

Speaker 3 And so you can see all these people getting increasingly antsy. And obviously, there's the gun in the middle of the room now that's going to change the dynamics of a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 3 But I have no idea which way it's going to be pointing at the end of the day. Other than I feel good that Chelsea will not die.
She's almost been in too much danger too fast.

Speaker 3 I don't believe the final destination of what she's proposing.

Speaker 3 And I don't think Tim is going to die. But other than that, I'm open to most permutations.

Speaker 2 Some of the listeners are suggesting because of this idea of like, who will we not be sort of like, I mean, actually, I was quite devastated that Arvand died, but who will we not be like,

Speaker 3 yeah,

Speaker 3 not a great guy, but a great character.

Speaker 2 I don't know. A delight, honestly.
Um, okay, but, um,

Speaker 2 who will we not be devastated by? And so, you know, some people are like, well, is it going to be Greg, Greg Gary? Like, could we possibly be so lucky?

Speaker 3 Uh,

Speaker 2 and I saw an interview that Jennifer Coolidge gave variety where she said, quote, I hope they do something terrible to him.

Speaker 2 So shout out Tanya now and forever. But there is this like theory floating around that I think is interesting where

Speaker 2 follow me down this domino path. Belinda finally decides she's like that guy did a murder.
And she, I don't know how one calls Interpol, but she calls Interpol.

Speaker 2 And Interpol shows up, you know, guns drawn or whatever to capture Greg Gary.

Speaker 2 But Tim thinks it's the authorities there.

Speaker 2 And Rick perhaps thinks it's the authorities following up on whatever it is that goes down in bangkok so like

Speaker 2 hence monkeyshootout at gmail.com like every everyone thinks the the guns are there for them but you know and then and then panic and chaos ensues so i like that i i don't know how belinda's gonna get interpol on the horn i i don't know does

Speaker 2 monkeyshoot at gmail.com if you work for

Speaker 3 interpol please hit us up i would love to know mechanically how this works i was actually thinking about it. Like, once she finds out that Greg Gary is the guy she thinks that he is, is a murderer.

Speaker 3 What do you do if you're in Belinda's position, right? Do you go, do you go to the hotel staff? Do you call the Thai police?

Speaker 3 Do you call the American authorities, especially because he's at least an expat, probably still an American citizen?

Speaker 3 Do you need to work out Italian extradition laws before you even start going to anybody?

Speaker 2 I was,

Speaker 2 I mentioned this, I think, on the pod with Bill and Mel, but I was looking up like Thai extradition laws mostly because I was like,

Speaker 2 why do all these guys feel like they're safe here? Like, you know, what's extradition like in Thailand?

Speaker 2 Turns out it's not, it's not as free and breezy as I thought it would be. It's not, it's not the

Speaker 2 crime shelter that I thought it might be.

Speaker 3 No, but they're just there for the anonymity of all the other bald guys. It's just that you can't pick them out of a lineup.

Speaker 2 Blend. You really blend, you know?

Speaker 2 Okay, so

Speaker 2 here's the question, though.

Speaker 2 for Tim,

Speaker 2 you mentioned sort of uh okay, so like the news, the news is tightening on Tim.

Speaker 2 We're downing the Laurazepam's.

Speaker 2 Um, Jason Isaac on the official

Speaker 2 podcast gave this great interview where he was talking about how, you know, on this theme of identity that we've been talking about all season, how like Tim is being stripped of all of the things that he identified as like provider, father, pillar of community, good businessman,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 you know, a literal Boy Scout. A son of these, of this lineage,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 a man of notoriety at the club, all these things that he had sort of like.

Speaker 3 What do people at the club think?

Speaker 2 All these things that he had defined himself as, he's being stripped away.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 is White Lotus a show?

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 there are ever actually consequences for the wealthy or are they inoculated somehow? And so, will we come out the other side of this vacation?

Speaker 2 Tim is so convinced right now here in episode four, they're gonna lose the house, they're gonna, he's gonna go to jail for a little time, like all this sort of stuff like that. They're gonna be poor.

Speaker 2 Uh, none of his kids are equipped to live this life, like he has not prepared them for this. His wife is not equipped to live this life, like he has failed entirely.

Speaker 2 Would it make sense on a white lotus show for this actually to not

Speaker 2 happen to Tim for there to be no actual consequences for him at the end of the day, other than this dark week of the soul that he is experiencing in Thailand.

Speaker 3 Yes, I think it would make total sense. And I see there's two variations of that.

Speaker 3 One is a very internal dark week of the soul, where it is him going through all these possibilities, spiraling out of control, freaking out, and then the air is taken out of the balloon.

Speaker 3 And actually, it's all going to be fine. Got, you know,

Speaker 3 his lawyer cut a deal, something happened, Kenny Wynne is found liable for this, that, and the the other. And all of a sudden, Tim's off the hook, off the hook.

Speaker 3 Or we had an emailer, Tim, reach out to us a couple episodes ago, honestly, about the possibility of Tim being out of touch with his phone.

Speaker 3 And we see him go back to the phone, despite Pam's objections in this episode,

Speaker 3 back to the phone today.

Speaker 3 But what if he spirals out of control? His family finds out the truth from him or from some other means. He has to deal with all the personal consequences of this.

Speaker 3 Maybe there's even some horrible outcome he can't take back, or the family is irre,

Speaker 3 or the family is irrevocably broken. And then he gets back on his phone.
And oh yeah, now everything is actually fine.

Speaker 3 And so it's not so much that real consequences come for people of this kind of privilege, but the realest, like the most real damage that they can do is the damage that they do to themselves.

Speaker 2 It's interesting because,

Speaker 2 you know, one of our listeners, Peter, and wrote in about

Speaker 2 this idea of a winner of a season of a white lotus season. And this is like a way in which our beloved boss, Bill Simmons, likes to talk about stories.

Speaker 2 And usually that's not how I like to think about it. But I think it is interesting that,

Speaker 2 you know, this listener brought up the fact that like Mike White loves a reality show. Yes.

Speaker 2 Was on Survivor, went quite far on Survivor, did the Amazing Race a couple times. We've talked before about how this is like sort of like a thinly, thinly sheened version of Survivor.

Speaker 2 He always puts Survivor players in every season and stuff like that. So like,

Speaker 2 you know, is he thinking about his show as some as a story that has winners and losers? Um,

Speaker 2 and I think your mileage may, you know, like this listener, Peter, wrote in with who he thought won individual seasons.

Speaker 2 And I'm actually not sure I agree with all of his takes, but like, I think your definition of winning may vary at the end of the day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But one thing that I always consider losing on a season of White Lotus, and we talked about this a little bit last week, is this idea of like the character that I'm rooting for to break free out of something, and then they just don't.

Speaker 2 And they just sort of like melt back into the world of privilege

Speaker 2 that, you know, that we are sort of like, you know, or, or

Speaker 2 do not break the cycle. So I bring this up all the time, but I'll be in season two, who I was like, you're not like your dad or your grandpa.

Speaker 2 And then at the end of the season, he's at the airport oggling women just like his dad and his grandpa or

Speaker 2 Rachel and Shane in season one.

Speaker 2 And so like the person that I most have my eye on for this is someone like, and we talked about this before, but someone like Piper, who is like, I'm I'm not like my family, I'm not like my family.

Speaker 2 And inside of this episode, Vicki says to her, You're just as judgmental as I am. Like, you're just judgmental.

Speaker 3 And she's very, very right. If you're more judgmental, honestly.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I thought that I think that's really interesting. So, like,

Speaker 2 Piper is someone who won't be able to

Speaker 2 go to the monastery and live a different life than her family has sort of planned for her.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But, and we got, we got, you know, another,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 word word of encouragement from Amrita about Rick, that Rick is someone who I'm hoping.

Speaker 2 Though usually when I hope, I get disappointed, but Rick is someone who I'm hoping can. You know,

Speaker 2 you are not your story, right? You, you can break out of this karmic cycle and

Speaker 2 find something new for yourself.

Speaker 2 I just think that that's, I don't know. Piper, I have no confidence in her, and I do apologize to her for that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't think it's going to go great. Honestly, it's a little thing, and maybe it's truthful, and we just haven't been given the full picture of what's going on there.

Speaker 3 You're referring to what I think we understand to be a temple or a monastery as a meditation center, I thought was kind of a telling little detail.

Speaker 3 It's like, for her, this is a very specific, very westernized, very sanitized kind of idea of what she's walking into. Yeah.
And I think she's going to be.

Speaker 3 In for a lot more than that, if she actually does end up there in any capacity at all, ultimately, I think she's going to walk to the edge and blanch.

Speaker 3 I think that's probably what the future of that character holds.

Speaker 2 That's what it feels like. If previous seasons are any indication, I'm always like wondering if Mike White's going to zag and he'd be like, Oh, you think you know what White Lotus is?

Speaker 2 You have no idea.

Speaker 3 I love a Zag, and Mike White is as adept with those Zags as anybody, like in subverting our expectations.

Speaker 2 He's a Zaggy.

Speaker 3 He is a Zaggy.

Speaker 3 I don't like that.

Speaker 3 I don't either.

Speaker 2 But we're going to keep it in the pod, but Lauren's again. You're never going to say it again.
Okay.

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Speaker 3 As far as Rick, though, I'm glad you brought them read a bit as far as

Speaker 3 him letting go of his story.

Speaker 3 Because as soon as she said that, and then we get deeper into the episode and find out the extent of what Rick's story really is, which is a story that his mom told him about his dad, who is just the kindest, gentlest soul who has ever lived.

Speaker 3 A do-gooder.

Speaker 3 A do-gooder, a straight Robin Hood type out here, working for the good of the people, who was murdered in cold blood and definitely never did anything wrong, and also definitely is not Hollinger himself.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I feel like when Amrita is telling him that he can let go of his story, it's as much telling him he can let go of that story and not just this creation of who he is and his identity, but this, like, the only thing he really knows about himself and this formative gem that he has now created everything that we know Rick to be from is something that his mom told him on her deathbed that just, I'm going to say, does not seem to be very true.

Speaker 2 Definitely not true.

Speaker 2 And also that idea that, like, okay, so there's two things, you know, when we're watching middle-aged men with daddy issues and stories, there's like two things that you're going to need to be more specific.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of that going around.

Speaker 2 All of it.

Speaker 2 That there's

Speaker 2 the energy of

Speaker 2 my father is a criminal and so I'm a, you know, okay. So to take our guy Walton Goggins, Justified,

Speaker 2 which is just a show rife with daddy issues. You've got Rayling Givens, a character on Justified who is a U.S.

Speaker 2 Marshal and his father is a criminal and this whole like the shadow that his father casts over him on that show

Speaker 2 and the struggle that he has with like, I'm an upstanding law but i've got this rage and this darkness inside of me that i think comes from my dad or whatever but he's but he's a zaggy at the end of the day you said we weren't gonna

Speaker 2 okay um and then you've got boy crowder who's whose daddy was also a criminal sorry his daddy his daddy his daddy was also pronounce it correctly thank you um

Speaker 2 but uh but he has chosen a life of crime and that's that's just the show and it's the best but for rick it's like okay i live in shame because my father was good and i am can't go to australia for some reason i'm something of a of a scoundrel yeah and so the the like how freeing would it be to not live under the weight of this like fictional saint who you think was your father and you have failed to live up to um

Speaker 2 the vader comp i just want to i mean You and I were in on the Vader theory.

Speaker 3 I can't believe we're here, though. I can't believe this is what seems to be happening.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I think you and I agree that Jim hollinger is probably rick's dad

Speaker 2 and i just want i just want to bust a theory okay okay

Speaker 2 uh one that i've seen go on reddit and it reminds me of a conversation we had on friday about severance i really need people to like have a better understanding of how old people are because a lot of people are like could greg gary be rick's dad

Speaker 2 John Grace is 67 and Walton Goggins is 53. So I just need you guys all to like remember that.
Technically, technically 14-year-old 14-year-old dad, I don't know. Anyway,

Speaker 2 they're of the same generation. And like, people, I think, are really desperate to understand why Greg Gary is here in such close proximity to a white lotus.

Speaker 2 And so they're spinning all these theories about how he was involved somehow in the land deal with the Hollanders and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 I don't know that I agree with that because I feel like if he had done all that.

Speaker 2 Though he was part of the land management bureau, but if he had done all that, would he need Tanya's money? Like, wouldn't he have money?

Speaker 2 So I don't actually think that Greg Gary is connected to any of that personally.

Speaker 2 But above all else, I do not believe that these two men who are quite close in age are father and son.

Speaker 3 Yeah, associate makes more sense to the extent that they're connected at all, but I'm just not sure that Greg.

Speaker 3 and Rick are going to have any overt connection in quite that sort of way, other than being at the same place at the same time.

Speaker 3 And as you said, maybe if the authorities get involved, they both think they're being chased in some capacity. I I can see that sort of connection.

Speaker 3 I can see them bumping up against each other in all sorts of ways. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And frankly, I'm a little disappointed we didn't get a little more yacht interaction between those two because Greg was just sequestered on the top deck.

Speaker 2 Rick also very much not wanting to talk to anyone.

Speaker 3 Also, very true. Two, two true lone wolves on the yacht.
Never the twain shall meet.

Speaker 2 One has a Chelsea and one has a Chloe, and those are two different things entirely.

Speaker 3 I will say, I know Piper got the title in this episode, but Sourpus sad sack shithead is really Rick's title to lose.

Speaker 3 Like, he is wearing the crown in this episode, and Chelsea is over it, and I think rightly over it.

Speaker 2 A reason I don't think that Rick is inside of the Greg Gary

Speaker 2 story necessarily is because Greg Gary is currently hunting Belinda

Speaker 2 and Saxon, you know, like he's got like multiple people that he's sort of like predatorily staring at at dinner.

Speaker 3 So there's there's levels to this: murder charges before girlfriends. I think that is his, his order of operations.
He's got bigger fish to fry.

Speaker 2 Just shifted.

Speaker 3 But he is furiously Googling. You know, this is, there's a lot of great Googling going on in this episode.

Speaker 3 It's just, you know, Belinda and Greg Gary both connecting dots, trying to pull it all together. The internet is a magical place.

Speaker 3 Now, why couldn't he have done that Googling while he was on the yacht, sitting there by himself? There's no Wi-Fi on that thing. Is the reception that bad?

Speaker 3 I can't say I've been in the middle of the ocean on a yacht all that often. I imagine it's not great, but if you're on a three-story yacht of that size, you're trying to get it.

Speaker 2 That thing has to have some sort of satellite where there's no connection whatsoever.

Speaker 2 I've never been on any yacht. I think that's true.

Speaker 2 I don't think any boat I've ever been on would qualify as a yacht.

Speaker 3 So I don't think I've ever seen it. Are you a woman of the sea, Joe? No.

Speaker 2 Well, okay, yes. And no, I love the ocean.
It's like my favorite thing in the whole world. I get tremendously seasick.
So I love-yeah, a woman of the cliffs. I love to look out at the rocky cliffs.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a like great Northern California, like angry ocean. Love that.
Don't want to be on it.

Speaker 3 I was thinking more like portrait of a lady on fire, sprint to the edge and come to a dead stop dramatically at the last moment.

Speaker 2 You know, or Victoria Ratliff just sort of waving in with a duvet.

Speaker 2 Who's to say? We'll come back to Vicki's little ocean walk in a second. But on the Jim Hollinger front, we got a really interesting email that sent me a googling

Speaker 2 from a listener Gower. This is what I'm calling the historical comp section.

Speaker 2 He said,

Speaker 2 When I hear Jim Hollinger, I keep hearing to myself Jim Thompson. I've been to Thailand and Bangkok many times and have visited the Jim Thompson house.
I've also been to Ko

Speaker 2 Samui on a day-boat trip, so I'm fascinated with it all. I figured one white imperialist Jim is as good as any other gym.
Of course, I know nothing about Thompson and too lazy to do the work.

Speaker 2 Maybe there's something there you might elucidate us on, or maybe it's nothing, just a thought. I did Google Jim Thompson because I had never heard of this person.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, here's a life goal: perhaps

Speaker 2 it's one thing to have a Wikipedia page about yourself, right? The Rob Mahoney Wikipedia page. What if Rob Mahoney is that a goal?

Speaker 3 Is that what we want? I don't know. I don't think it's,

Speaker 3 I don't know, I don't have one. I don't, I don't need one, but like, but you're a New York Times best-selling author, Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 2 But you're NBA podcaster, Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 3 These things are not the same.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 but what if Rob Mahoney Death had its own

Speaker 2 special page, not just a section, its own breakout, its own actual page. Wow.
And this is the legacy of Jim Thompson, who was a sort of Thai silk magnate

Speaker 2 who sort of

Speaker 2 made big splashes inside of the industry, probably through shady business work in Thailand, was connected to a lot of famous people and a lot of government officials.

Speaker 2 And then he straight up disappeared.

Speaker 2 And nobody, and to this day, they have not solved his death. And there's all these theories about what happened, the disappearance of Jim Thompson.
And so,

Speaker 2 you know, was he murdered by the government? Was he, did he disappear himself because he was embroiled in something and wanted to vanish?

Speaker 2 All these things. I read all these articles about, there have been documentaries about what happened to Jim Thompson.

Speaker 2 And the truth is they don't know. And probably he just like fell down somewhere and they never found his body.
He went out for a walk and he never came back.

Speaker 3 And so those rocky cliffs are perilous. So you really got to be careful out there.

Speaker 2 The prevailing theory is that he fell over and that they just never found it. It just got swallowed by Thailand itself.
And that's poetic in its own sense.

Speaker 2 But I kind of like this idea that, you know, sort of this infamous unsolved mystery of Thailand is something that might inspire Mike White to do the Jim Hollinger as a disappeared version of Rick's dad sort of story.

Speaker 2 I think that's really interesting.

Speaker 3 And especially as a template, as we're seeing now, for what Tim is going through and the sort of like self-disappearance he's at least considering in multiple ways, right?

Speaker 3 It's not just him getting the gun, but him kind of talking out loud in his conversations with Gary, with Greg, Greg Gary,

Speaker 3 right? Why I keep wanting to do Glenn Gary.

Speaker 2 Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, yeah.

Speaker 3 Just sort of talking aloud in his conversations with Greg Gary about like the hiding and seeking and kind of like the do you like it here question even feels kind of pointed in a way where it's like he's at least kicking the tires and exploring his options as far as like, what happens if I have have to stay here yeah

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 it's it's to me it's giving like

Speaker 2 people wanting to play in the dv cooper space right what is this unsolved mystery and how can i wrap it into sort of the story that i'm telling yeah elsewhere on the historical comms section our listener rachel wrote in about a north carol north carolinan uh ponzi scheme uh north carolinian i think right i was My hand was hit pretty hard after I believe I said North Carolinian on an early episode of this five.

Speaker 2 North Carolinian.

Speaker 3 We're going to say North Carolinian. No disrespect to the Carolinians of all varieties.

Speaker 2 I just really like the way that

Speaker 2 Jason Isa says North Carolina.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it's accurate. That's for everyone else to decide.

Speaker 3 With all the accent work being done on this show, this is just the native accent, I think, but Pam's, oh no,

Speaker 3 when Tim comes to retrieve his phone is just a delight. And I've just been saying it aloud to myself

Speaker 3 ever since I finished the episode.

Speaker 2 Pam is Pam before Larazza Pam. That's what I have to say.
I love Pam. She's the best.

Speaker 2 We did get an email from a listener who was like, why haven't you commented on how many Aussies there are on the show?

Speaker 3 And I'm just like, geographically, it just kind of makes sense.

Speaker 2 Also, I just, having done like a smidge of backpacking around the world, I will say Aussies are like the most well-traveled people I've ever met.

Speaker 2 And so I just always expect to find Aussies wherever I go in the world.

Speaker 3 And they're the best.

Speaker 2 But Rachel wrote in to let us know that there was a guy probably named Rick Siskey

Speaker 2 who operated a sort of the most infamous North Carolina Carolinian Ponzi scheme

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 house repossessed, all that sort of stuff, and did in fact kill himself rather than face the consequences of his own actions. So

Speaker 2 anything you want to say about the full, the looming full moon party? We get this incredible closing shot of the boat headed towards the massive full moon.

Speaker 2 We get a really cool remix. It's called the full moon remix of the theme song you can find on YouTube.
It's really vibey.

Speaker 2 Anything you want to say about this or what you're hoping from it or anything you've learned about it?

Speaker 3 I'm a little disappointed that we're only getting, it seems, like age-appropriate partiers going to the full moon party.

Speaker 3 I was really hoping that, you know, like a Gary or Rick or even like Fabian would show up at the party. Like somebody who you wouldn't expect beyond just like the Saxon, Lachlan, Chloe, like Chelsea.

Speaker 3 Those are people I can see going to a party like this.

Speaker 3 I wanted to see some fish out of water and i'm i'm a little bummed that it seems we may not get that now that you've dangled the prospect of fobbying at the full moon party on friday i'm

Speaker 2 definitely gutted genuinely

Speaker 2 um i will say this monkeyshooter at gmail.com and press tv at spotify.com those inboxes have been full of people's experience going to thailand some of these things rob and i will say need not be shared with us And

Speaker 2 but you guys sure have felt fine about sharing them. But some other things are just like fun travel log experiences.

Speaker 2 And we got emails from a lot of people who've been to the full moon party and just talked about like how bonkers and bananas it is and how fun it is and

Speaker 2 just like neon-painted people and mushroom smoothies and like all this sort of stuff like that. So I'm ready for the Buccadalia to ensue next week.

Speaker 2 Speaking of Buccadelia, you want to talk about the...

Speaker 2 How would you, Rob Mahoney,

Speaker 2 respond? Were you surrounded by children with super soakers in the streets of Thailand?

Speaker 3 Enthusiastically? Joyously? I think I would commandeer a super soaker and

Speaker 3 jump into the party. That seems like what I would be wanting to do.
But the fancies are after a very, very specific, very, very, very, very narrow definition of fun.

Speaker 3 And very, I think, performative definition of fun, if we're taking it from Jaclyn's perspective, especially. Right.

Speaker 3 That responding as if they are in an active war zone strikes me as a little bit disproportionate to the small streams of water they are being sprayed with.

Speaker 2 I wrote down travelers who hate actually well traveling about them, you know what I mean? It's just sort of like they do not actually want any kind of uh experience.

Speaker 3 Um, well, they lay it out pretty cleanly. What they want is to go sit by a slightly different pool with a slightly different vibe, and they then they did, and they didn't want that because

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 3 the olds were there, the olds can't have the olds.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 for like both uh, Victoria on the boat, having to talk to people she didn't want to talk to.

Speaker 2 What does she say to Saxon Lachman? Like, you want to stay longer on that boat? I'm like, man, great stuff.

Speaker 3 I mean, in their defense, all the people she hated talking to, it seems like left. It's true.
It's people she might actually enjoy a little bit more.

Speaker 2 I think she would have preferred the second round of the boat trip, but probably not once they get to the full moon party. But Victoria at the full moon party.

Speaker 3 See, I would have loved to see that.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. What can she replace her Lorazapam with?

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? Victoria in sweaty withdrawal at the full moon party. That's a great episode.

Speaker 2 But Victoria and Jacqueline both have this just like really brittle

Speaker 2 shell, like this really thin shell that can so easily be broken of privilege.

Speaker 2 Just sort of Jacqueline is so used to, you think about all this all the time when you think about like extremely successful people in like, let's say, Los Angeles, where I currently am.

Speaker 2 There's a way in which you were just surrounded and inoculated from like actual real life.

Speaker 2 And, you know,

Speaker 2 on the office, on the official pod, they were talking about the fact that like, maybe Jaclyn has just simply not seen loose skin in the last decade because of like the life she lives in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 But yeah, this idea of just sort of like, I, I walk, I float through life in this bubble of privilege that I've created for myself via fame or money or whatever it is, and

Speaker 2 how

Speaker 2 soft and unprepared they are for any kind of challenge to that,

Speaker 2 which I think is interesting.

Speaker 3 Well, and with that, just like such a tailored existence, not just in terms of the people you're surrounded with, but being able to do exactly the thing that you want to do and know exactly where you need to go to do it, or delegate that to an assistant or a PA or whatever.

Speaker 3 It's like she's not a person who's had to make a lot of decisions for herself, probably, or like actually go out and get things done for herself in a long time.

Speaker 3 And so, this idea that her attempts to have party girl fun are foiled by basically just like a bad recommendation for Valentine, to be honest with you.

Speaker 3 She's like a really angry response to it. And I will say with the fancies overall and specifically with Jacqueline, you're seeing the sass is on Front Street right now.
Like it is, it is coming up.

Speaker 3 The passive aggression is coming up through her pores.

Speaker 3 And we're starting to see some real things happen between them.

Speaker 3 And I think a clearer dividing line between Jaclyn and the other two women than we've ever seen before in terms of how they are looking at her and how she is treating them in this, which is very much, I am on vacation with my girlfriends.

Speaker 3 They are the tag-alongs on my journey to find us the appropriate party.

Speaker 2 Because Lori and Kate were like, we're fine with this pool.

Speaker 3 They seem, they were enjoying their drinks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Enjoying the films.

Speaker 2 We got our drinks.

Speaker 3 Like, who cares?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Jacqueline is really interesting.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 that is, it's all a powder cake, right?

Speaker 2 But especially Jacqueline, when we met her and they go to the villa, I mean, we knew it was bullshit from the start.

Speaker 2 When they get to the villa and she's talking to to kate and lori uh in the first episode and she's like do you like your rooms we can take i would sleep in a tree i don't really care i'm not fussy i'm fine like with whatever i'm just happy to be here i don't need any pampering i'm so i'm such a cool girl uh and then to see her shriek and run from water guns was like deeply satisfying honestly Also deeply satisfying to see the kids parked outside the storefront waiting for them to come back out.

Speaker 2 Do you agree with the internet that seems to think that Valentin has set them up for that? That he was like, oh, this will fuck with them.

Speaker 3 Why?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Payback for being ordered around? Like, bossed around, perhaps?

Speaker 3 I could see that. I honestly didn't read into it that way.

Speaker 2 I think he was more just like, I got to go find my criminal cohorts so I can keep these

Speaker 2 women entertained.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is a place where you can spend a little bit of time if you are any kind of normal person on vacation and have enjoy the scene, enjoy the festivities.

Speaker 3 But clearly, I see it more as like his inability to read them and what they're after, right?

Speaker 3 Like him sending them to the wrong party in the first place, him dropping them at, you know, in the middle of this like market doesn't seem to understand what they're actually after or who these people actually are.

Speaker 3 And they, I mean, Jacqueline especially seems quite offended by that.

Speaker 2 Too hot, too cold,

Speaker 2 party with some criminals just right, perhaps.

Speaker 3 They're definitely not criminals. Okay.

Speaker 2 They definitely didn't rob the boutique in a previous episode.

Speaker 3 No chance. No chance.
Okay. All right.
I will say, Joe, I want to give you all due credit because when we do see these certainly not robber friends of Valentin's,

Speaker 3 guy in the giant golden eagle shirt and guy with the snake tattoo that goes all the way to somewhere.

Speaker 3 I'm not exactly sure where or what the manifestation of that is. I kind of hope we get to see it now.
You can't tease us with the snake tattoo and then not reveal it.

Speaker 2 We have to see it.

Speaker 3 But I would like to consult the text logs, Joe, because you and I were texting with our guy, Jacoby, I think like two weeks ago about Valentin and some of the characterization here.

Speaker 3 And specifically, one thing you brought up was that he really should be named Alexei by type, by look. This is an Alexi.
And I have to tell you, Alexi has now arrived.

Speaker 3 He's simply Valentin's right-hand man and not Valentin himself. So I'll do credit for you for spotting the Alexi from a mile away.

Speaker 2 I lived with a Ukrainian whose name was Alexander, who went by Sasha. And his friend was Alexander, who went by Kusha, I think it was.
And then, like, he had like four friends named Alexander.

Speaker 2 Like, they were all named Alexander or Alexi or something like that. So, yeah, it was, um, or Igor or Vlad or whatever.
Um, okay. Um,

Speaker 2 welcome to a segment. I'm calling Joanna justifies her English degree.
Um,

Speaker 3 I love this for you.

Speaker 3 I love the way you're wielding your educational background, really putting it to work.

Speaker 2 Ak Rob, well, actually, one of these books is non-fiction. Rob does not like fiction.
Let's see how he does with some non-fiction. Okay.
Let's talk about what some books that people are reading.

Speaker 2 Belinda is reading a book that I believe Reddit has misidentified and I have correctly identified, but this is what Reddit is.

Speaker 3 You're well-actually, the well-actually.

Speaker 2 They're very close. Reddit thinks this book that Belinda is reading

Speaker 2 at her sort of private pool right before she does some Googling is a book called Surrounded by Narcissists, colon, how to effectively recognize, avoid, and defend yourself against toxic people,

Speaker 2 parentheses, and not lose your mind, bracket, the surrounded by idiots series, and bracket by Thomas Erickson.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 Which sounds like a hilarious, great book to put into

Speaker 2 Belinda's hands.

Speaker 2 This is a white, this is, that book is a white cover with these sort of like colored circles in the front.

Speaker 2 What I think she's actually reading is Surrounded by Psychopaths, How to Protect Yourself from Being Manipulated and Exploited in Business, parentheses, and in life, The Surrounded by Idiots series by Thomas Erickson.

Speaker 2 It is the same cover, but it is black, not white. And so I think it is actually another book in the Surrounded by Idiots series.

Speaker 2 But Belinda reading Surrounded by Psychopaths, colon, How to Protect Yourself from Being Manipulated and Exploited in Business is like exactly what we think Belinda might read after her whole Tanya experience, right?

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And also Surrounded by Psychopaths, hmm, is Greg Gary a psychopath? Should I go, uh, you know, Google him? Uh, all of that.

Speaker 2 That being said, I think everyone at the White Lotus could do with reading Surrounded by Narcissists. I say that without having read any of yeah, you don't know what's in there.

Speaker 3 I'd be careful, Joe.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the Surrounded by Idiots series does not seem like one I really want to, like Thomas Erickson seems like a real

Speaker 2 smug piece of shit, but

Speaker 2 you know, any inoculation, so do many people at the White Lotus, in fairness. Any, any, uh, any inoculation we can do against narcissists or psychopaths, we want to do.

Speaker 3 Okay, um, this was the non-fiction tome you were referring to.

Speaker 2 It was. Anything that you non-fiction.

Speaker 2 You don't read self-help, though.

Speaker 3 This is not my variety. No, you like my genre.

Speaker 2 You like history?

Speaker 3 What are we reading? Yeah, long-form non-fiction, John McPhee kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 That's my zone. Yeah, yeah.
All right.

Speaker 2 All right. Lachlan

Speaker 2 is reading a book called Hunger by Newt Homson,

Speaker 2 a pro-Nazi guy. Cool story.

Speaker 3 Great, cool. Very cool.

Speaker 3 All that iPad time really paying off.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, that's why he's reading a book. I was like, why is Lockheed reading a book? Because they took his iPad.

Speaker 3 Great point.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 And I'm actually, I have to wonder if this is perhaps Piper's book because

Speaker 2 not that Piper, like, that Piper would read a pro-Nazi book. The book isn't pro-Nazi, just the piece of shit authorized.
But

Speaker 2 like, it just does not seem like something a high school senior would have lying around on vacation. But anyway.

Speaker 2 The novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is given away to a delusionary existence on the darker side of a modern metropolis while he vainly tries to maintain an outer shell of respectability.

Speaker 2 His mental and physical decay are recounted in detail.

Speaker 2 His ordeal, enhanced by his inability or unwillingness to pursue a professional career, which he deems unfit for someone of his abilities, is pictured in a series of encounters, which Hompson himself described as, quote, a series of analyses.

Speaker 2 In terms of how we can apply this to Lachlan, if that's how intentional they're being with the books, which I feel like they usually are on White Lotus,

Speaker 2 just this idea of like the outer shell of respectability and the darkness that lies within. Like, is there,

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't know how you feel about close, close, uh, close magic. Close up magic.

Speaker 3 It seems to be working. I want to give him credit for that.

Speaker 2 There's a darker side lurking inside of the shell of respectability that is Lachlan Ratliff. What do you think?

Speaker 3 Well, I think the shell of respectability is what Piper is bringing to him a lot of the time, right?

Speaker 3 It's this idea of like a certain kind of conversational decency, a blanching at some of the things that Saxon and Victoria say, for example.

Speaker 3 And the darkness darkness that is increasingly winning is Saxon putting a beer in his hands and having him exercise and do some of that close-up magic for the ladies.

Speaker 3 And they really do seem to be enjoying it. You know, I'm not saying there's not a dark underbelly to close-up magic in general.
Clearly, there is.

Speaker 3 But Lachlan seems to be killing it with that.

Speaker 2 I love magicians. I'm pro a magician.
I don't have like a spicy magician take.

Speaker 2 Last but not least, back to Victoria and her duvet on wading into the ocean.

Speaker 2 Our listener Lauren wrote in about a book that most people read in high school,

Speaker 2 Kate Chapin's Awakening. It's a story, a short story.
And

Speaker 2 this is what Lauren wrote. Lauren wrote, the main character in that book, taking her own life at the end, sorry, spoilers for the awakening.

Speaker 2 Taking her own life at the end by walking out in the sea after experiencing, quote, an awakening.

Speaker 2 Will Posey's character experience a similar awakening once her Lorazepam runs out and she wakes up to her husband's situation? Will the result be similarly tragic?

Speaker 2 Now, again, I don't think that like we're going to see Victoria standing on the edge of the ocean in like episode three and then literally walk into the ocean at the end of this season.

Speaker 2 That all feels a bit too telegraphed for what a white lotus season usually likes to do. But I think, you know, in terms of metaphorical

Speaker 2 oceans,

Speaker 2 metaphorical drowning, that's certainly something that could be on the cards.

Speaker 2 Any thoughts about that?

Speaker 3 I agree with you that it's a little too overt.

Speaker 3 That's what's always so hard with White Lotus is the line between Clue and such overt red herringism. Yeah.
And that one almost, it feels too obvious. It feels too above board.

Speaker 3 Everything I feel like that's going to be leading up to, to the extent that anyone is dead, which again, we don't know that anyone is at all, will not be somebody who is overtly talking about death and dying so much over the course of this year.

Speaker 3 That's going to be my guess. But again, who knows what happens?

Speaker 2 I've got two more sort of like prompts for you that I prepped you on. Before we get to those, anything else you want to make sure that we talk about

Speaker 3 on the Saxon and Locky front, now that they're shipping off to the party,

Speaker 3 why do I feel like these two are one party drug away from doing something super weird?

Speaker 2 Because that's been the vibe all season.

Speaker 3 The incest just keeps getting escalated and escalated and escalated.

Speaker 3 And I'm just imagining, you know, true to the bacchanalea, true to the debauchery that could potentially happen at the full moon party, some giant group ordeal in which they are both somehow involved and end up getting challengers into this thing.

Speaker 3 I just,

Speaker 3 I'm concerned, Joe.

Speaker 3 I'm not looking forward to it, but I just see bad things ahead for these two.

Speaker 2 I gotta say, Rob, I really, I love podcasting with old people at the ringer, but the way that you say like group ordeal in this like true sort of Texas gentlemanly fashion.

Speaker 3 It's a hoot and nanny.

Speaker 2 It's a true hoot and nanny, Joe. It's just the way that Mallory Rubin talks about things is like, it's

Speaker 2 pretty delightful.

Speaker 2 Yes, some group ordeal feels like it could very...

Speaker 2 We're just like, yeah, you're right. One party drug away.

Speaker 2 Anything else you want to talk about?

Speaker 3 Just one quick shout out to Chelsea for a lethally effective cry pout. Yes.
I don't think that...

Speaker 3 I fully understood the power of Amy Lou's teeth specifically and what it would bring to the pout situation, but it's a level of escalation that's just not even fair.

Speaker 2 And you understand why rick is effectively powerless against it can i say one thing on the uh that's a great great shout can i say one thing on the piper front sarah katherine hook who plays piper said that this was her favorite episode of the season the one we just saw yeah and i was just like really

Speaker 2 surprised by that um because she has a great scene with tim on the boat i really like that scene and something that jason isaacs uh talks about on the official pod was that like piper was definitely Tim's favorite kid, and that he, like, his son's.

Speaker 3 We got that from the gentle caress of her face as he's breathing like a dying rhinoceros. Like, it's a weird vibe,

Speaker 2 you know, whatever. Anyway, uh, that she's a daddy's girl, that he loves her most of all, all this sort of stuff like that.
But, like, if that's Sarah's, like, I don't know, I don't know why.

Speaker 2 Maybe she was like, it was just fun to be on the boat or whatever, or it was fun to be around everyone.

Speaker 3 But I was like, I would, I hope Piper has like a bit more of an exciting episode than this one on the cards or is her vibe just like sort of subdued for the rest of the season you know i don't know i think she will yeah i mean what's weird about that is you often hear that shooting for tv and film on and around boats is very complex and very annoying uh not a pleasant experience for the people involved and so on the one hand yes you're on a yacht but you're shooting on a yacht, which is not quite the same thing.

Speaker 3 Maybe she, maybe she enjoyed it just because she gets to vibe out. She doesn't have a lot to do this episode.

Speaker 3 And so she just gets to hang out, sip on a drink, and not be concerned not be concerned with the angles and the boom mics uh for this particular part of the proceedings we've talked about a wet bump on this pod before right have we okay

Speaker 2 it's usually for background actors uh but this idea that if you do a scene and you get wet during that scene you get a little bit extra money it's called a wet bump it's just i don't think we have talked about this yeah i talked about a lot when i did the tv when i did the podcast on on lost we talked about the wet bump a lot because they are constantly

Speaker 2 soaked on that show.

Speaker 3 In that case, Michelle Mahan, Carrie Kuhn, Leslie Bitt. Yeah, get your wet bump.
Bumping through the roof this episode.

Speaker 2 Get your wet bump. All right.

Speaker 2 Belinda's googling Tanya.

Speaker 2 Freeze Fray Mahoney strikes again was prepared for my question when I when I when I texted it to you earlier today

Speaker 2 They're making a Tanya biopic.

Speaker 3 It's in the works. The rights have been acquired.

Speaker 2 This is my okay, so my my question was: like, earlier, I was thinking, if they kill Greg Gary,

Speaker 2 then that's the end of the Tanya, Greg, Belinda sort of saga, right?

Speaker 2 If season four, all

Speaker 2 Scream three,

Speaker 3 Scream two, spoilers for the entire Scream series, I guess.

Speaker 2 It's about the make, like, a movie about the victim of an earlier season, then we keep Tanya's spirit alive. Yes.
They're making a Tanya biopic who plays her, Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 3 I end up with three answers. Okay.

Speaker 3 One, Jennifer Tilly. Maybe I'm just being Jennifer biased here, but I feel like

Speaker 3 I feel like she could really pull off the Coolidge element pretty effectively. Wonderful.
Two, Catherine Hahn going full ham mode. I could also see that.

Speaker 3 The other one, I think, is a bit more of a reach given the roles that she likes to play, but I've seen such incredible range from Melanie Linsky that I could see her playing up in a way that she doesn't often have an opportunity to do and being

Speaker 3 a proper Tanya McQuad, voice and all.

Speaker 2 That is such a wonderful roster. And bless your heart for picking age-appropriate actresses.
Here's what I think is going to happen.

Speaker 3 Oh, sorry, Sidney Sawweeney was the fourth one. Ariana Grante.

Speaker 2 Ariana Grande, who does a killer Jennifer Coolidge impression famously,

Speaker 2 gets a taste of that Oscar buzz for Wicked and is like, I'm going to go full Oscar. I'm going to play this doomed heiress

Speaker 3 and do a whole impression.

Speaker 2 And she's going to be like fully 20 years younger, 30 years younger, perhaps than she actually is. But that's Hollywood, baby.
That's Hollywood, baby.

Speaker 3 So she could at least be part of the origin story, like the prologue, right? Oh, sure, sure. The flashbacks.

Speaker 3 All the flashback sequences at minimum. Like, maybe it's just called

Speaker 3 young Tanya.

Speaker 3 Honestly,

Speaker 3 why have we not gotten young Tanya? You know, these are the spin-offs we deserve.

Speaker 2 Me, Tanya.

Speaker 3 Me, Kama Tanya. Me, Kanya.

Speaker 3 I feel like Maquad is so, such a great word, though. We need McQuad in there somewhere.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's like McBain. Okay,

Speaker 2 last but not least.

Speaker 2 And this is a game only for Rob Mahoney because it has unfortunately been spoiled for me. Robin, I want to issue, like, I guess, a very mild spoiler warning.

Speaker 2 This isn't, I don't think, actually a spoiler, but if you are like

Speaker 2 hot, hot, hot, spoiler reverse.

Speaker 2 You can bail out of the pod now. We can thank Donnie Beacham, John Richter, and Dustin Sales for their work on the the pod.
So you make sure to hear that acknowledgement and then you can peace out.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 we're about to talk about something that is not like a plot point from an upcoming episode, but something that is sort of out there in the air and we want to talk about it. So even more.

Speaker 2 A thing that happens on My Lotus Rob is that like midway through the season, often a new character, a new actor enters the mix. Tom Hollander in season two, Molly Shannon in season one.

Speaker 2 In an article in USA Today, it was revealed that a big guest star is coming on the show.

Speaker 2 We will see them in the next episode, episode five.

Speaker 2 And USA Today revealed that it is an Oscar-winning performer. No, not gendered, actor or actress.
Oscar-winning, Oscar winner next episode.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 HBO has like kept a lid on who this is. They have not, they asked press who had screeners to not talk about it, stuff like that.
So this is all the information we have. Episode five, Oscar winner.

Speaker 3 So Rob Mahoney. Yes.

Speaker 2 We've already had Kiwe Kwan,

Speaker 2 but that's not who we're talking about. We had a Laura Dern

Speaker 2 voice cameo in a previous season.

Speaker 2 Which Oscar winner do you think is coming to White Lotus next?

Speaker 3 And which role

Speaker 2 do you guess or would you like to see them play?

Speaker 3 I'm going to take you on a long walk, Joe. I've got four tiers of guessing slash not guessing that's going to happen here.

Speaker 2 Hell yes. All right.

Speaker 3 Tier one, the person I hope with all due respect that we do not get, Jamie Lee Curtis. It's been done.
We've seen it. The bear, great, love it.
Let's, let's move. Let's move on.

Speaker 3 Let's get some other people in the mix. Two, if only

Speaker 3 Jessica Chastain or Tilda Swin were on this show, who I think would be wonderful fits for the White Lotus universe.

Speaker 3 I think maybe a little too starry for the kinds of performers we usually get in these roles. So I'm going to say that they're probably not going to happen.

Speaker 3 Some other possibilities that I'm going to throw on the board, but I don't think are quite fitting the bill of what I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 Brendan Frazier, who I think would make sense in sort of timeline, makes sense in sort of like the kinds of roles that he might be up for. J.K.

Speaker 3 Simmons, who I think could be wonderful in all sorts of roles, criminal, interpol, guest at the hotel, otherwise. I think Mahershala Ali would be awesome on this show and also is the kind of like

Speaker 3 chameleonic performer where i could see him doing any variety of things in terms of how a guest star would show up but my my actual guess is eddie redmain as a raver going full burning man mode at the moon party i just think he has that juice in him and maybe that's like a little jupiter ascending uh whisper shouting dynamic play going on there but i i could see that for him okay eddie redmain

Speaker 2 With the party drugs at the full moon.

Speaker 3 That's the official Rob Mahoney guess on the Guest Star. So I guess we'll check back in a week and see how we did.

Speaker 2 That's great.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 That is my attempt at

Speaker 2 a neutral response to your guesses, but I enjoyed all of them equally as Severance would want me to.

Speaker 2 We'll be back later this week with Severance for Sure, the Pit question mark when we don't know, but we are recording an episode this week about the pit.

Speaker 2 So you can either stop or actually start your emails. PressGTV at spotify.com.
PressGTV at spotify.com

Speaker 2 with your pit thoughts. We want to hear them.

Speaker 3 Your pit thoughts? There's some, there's a pun there. I'm, you know, and I'm an abandoned chip on that one.
I'm gonna

Speaker 3 zag you. Zag you're gonna zag you that thing straight out of here.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 you know, especially if you're David Jacoby, who sent us, I don't know, a hundred text messages about the pit. So keep them coming, Jacoby.
You're the best. Please.

Speaker 2 Saverance emails, pineapplebombing at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 Uh, if you guys are on the edge of your seats about it, the AirPods did go to a good home. Our hard-working video producer, John Richter, got the AirPods to give to his wife.
So

Speaker 2 they went to a good, good home. Um,

Speaker 2 and um,

Speaker 2 that's it, Rob Mahoney. You're the best, and I'll see you two more times, but then after that, I'll see you at the full moon party.
Okay, bye.