The Sunday Scaries, sans White Lotus
On the White Lotus, friendship, and having a seat at the table
Season 3 of The White Lotus gave us a lot to fuss about.
Mike White is very good at that. I think he writes his little scripts purely to piss us off, rile us up and get us on our keyboards, spouting theories, memes, and cries for more—or less.
I had a lot of fun watching this season. I read all the no-plot plights, and the plot hole frets, and I agree with some — but mostly, I had fun. I could forgive the slow-moving episodes, and the boring penultimate, or the fact that Tim Ratliff didn’t rinse out the blender, for the joy of appointment television shared on a friend’s couch almost every week. White Lotus Sundays felt effervescent and giddy. Not even a tariff could spoil that.
Like every white woman with a screen and an HBO/Crave subscription, I was most infatuated by the three-ladies storyline. Kate’s (Leslie Bibb) fuck-ass bob and church-going Trump-spill. Jaclyn’s (Michelle Monaghan) narcissism. Laurie’s (Carrie Coon) profound and biting emptiness. Their trip took us on its own journey, completely independent from the other mess of characters at the White Lotus. At first, I could not believe the nightmare of this trio and their poor decision to make a trip of it, and then, as I settled into the season, I realized: that the ladies…they’re mostly just like us!
I could faintly see glimpses of my own lived experiences scattered across different stages and seasons of prickliness. The sadness. The self-righteousness. The self-centred diva moments. The preachiness. The drunken nights. The hurtful gossip. The wails after too much wine. The years and history stretched thin between us like gauze, barely holding together what was, what is, and what might be — surviving on “remember when’s,” while the “what’s new” felt off-kilter and unfamiliar.
And beneath it: a fossilized love and quiet yearning, ancient but intact.
The beauty and the ugliness of it was the visceral relatability. Every single Are you watching White Lotus? came back to: The three women, though! Oh my god, so relatable.
It’s why we can’t let go of shows like Girls, Sex and the City, Big Little Lies, Friends, and Insecure. Friendship is so impossible to distill, we have to gobble up seasons of television to make sense of it and feel closer to ourselves and our beloveds.
I squirmed and fussed as the episodes went on — detailing rollercoasters of fun, silliness, awkwardness, back-stabbing, and cringe-on-the-couch polemical reveals of religious and political affiliation. There are moments on the girls’ trip in the White Lotus that felt like a hell you couldn’t come back from. By the end of the season, I was sure there’d be nothing left to salvage between them but a few good photos, and future communications through stiff emails around the holidays and limp birthday posts on Instagram.
And then we got that dinner scene.
Laurie’s monologue was a delicious condiment to an otherwise languid season: White Lotus Season 3 would have been fine without it but that scene — watched with my breath held, hand on my mouth — packed a punch that felt personal, profound, like she held the answers, all along.
“I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning, because time gives it meaning. We started this life together — we’re going through it apart but we’re still together. I look at you guys and it feels meaningful..even when we’re sitting around the pool talking about inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.”
That line about time? Are you fucking kidding me? Watching it come out of her mouth felt like I was standing in front of a James Turrell installation, transfixed into every time I sat at a pool, at a dinner table, on a couch, in a car with a friend, enveloped in the joyful intimacy of being a witness.
Her monologue — a 180 from where we expected her to go— gave life to the depths of friendship that are impossible to bottle.
“I’m just happy to be at the table,” she says.
It made me think about my best friend since I was fifteen years old, and the white chocolate mochas we’d bring each other from Starbucks every birthday. Sipping them at our lockers like we were the lucky ones. Because we were. I think about how nearly 20 years later, our friendship is fulfilling, borderless, and complex, and has taken some of the hardest inner work I’ve ever done to say that.
It made me think about every time I’ve jumped on a plane and bloated a credit card to witness a milestone — a growing belly, a new human, a remote destination to celebrate love and vows.
It made me think about how a friendship breakup has rocked me more than any romantic relationship ever could.
It made me think about being the first call — with many different shades of news on the other line. It made me think of dating and celebrating anniversaries of knowing each other with the same love and care reserved for marriage. Of check-in texts, and I read your newsletter emails, and unhinged voice notes about work, and family. It made me nostalgic for long, gripping hugs in parking lots, airports and in restaurant booths. Ass shaking on sticky bar dance floors, bellowing laughs at happy hour, and endless, endless, endless, glasses of wine over the highs and lows of fucking existing.
The motion of life has sent us tumbling into each other like nesting dolls. We have borne witness to each other over and over again, in every version of ourselves, wearing the decades like Drag. All of this ire — the fights, the friction, the stubborn silences, the diverging life choices — lives right alongside the complexity of love. It’s part of the story too.
What a thing to define and explore — in a season of television where a little brother gives his older brother a handjob.
Early pandemic, when I was in a transitional season and far from a lot of people I love, I journaled about my loneliness. I wished for more people at my table. It took work, surrender, and tenderness to fill the seats, but the return is plentiful.
I revisited that journal entry earlier this year. I don’t remember a lot about that era of life, but I remember that I was craving the depths of friendship that Laurie exemplified. It’s a feeling that’s become all the more salient as time has passed — the quiet ache of understanding that these connections, in all their mess and beauty, are what we search for, even when we can’t fully articulate it until the last night of a dramatic trip.
One thing White Lotus is going to do is serve us friendship du jour —mirroring beautiful, codependent, toxic, unhealthy, enduring relationships for us to chew on and discuss until the next season’s casting announcement.
But for now, tell your friends you love them. Find a new Sunday night show. Shake off the scaries, and voice note a friend about your wishes and woes.
I’ll do the same.
xo
P.S. Drop your favourite White Lotus cast drama theories in the comments! I have been IN the Reddit threads about Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood! Mess!!
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