The White Lotus Recap: A Violent Shock Shatters the Tranquil Mood
Not everyone is feeling all Zen and relaxed this week on The White Lotus — especially after a violent run-in that leaves one guest reeling.
As Sunday’s episode begins, Jaclyn and Kate are still up late talking… about their friend Laurie, mostly. She went through a tough divorce, they tell us, and her daughter has been kicked out of two schools: “She’s, like, a hitter.” Laurie is a big-shot corporate lawyer, but she didn’t get the promotion to partner she wanted. (“No wonder she looks defeated,” Kate muses. “I thought you said she looked great,” Jaclyn points out.) Just then, a drunk Laurie scares the hell out of them by pounding on the door, looking for her phone charger. Hope she didn’t hear any of that!
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The next morning, Piper does yoga while Saxon sleeps in — naked, of course. Timothy is irritable at breakfast, but Victoria wears a serene smile: “I slept like a corpse.” (Timothy doesn’t love how reliant on pills she’s becoming.) Kate stops at their table, recognizing Victoria from a mutual friend’s baby shower. But Victoria kind of blows her off, and doesn’t seem to remember her at all. Back at her table, Kate is flustered: “Am I not memorable?” Lochlan tells his mom she was rude, but Victoria defends herself: “I’m on vacation with my family! I don’t know her!” And when Saxon mentions Jaclyn is a famous actress, Victoria just sniffs: “Actresses are all basically prostitutes. If they’re lucky.”
Rick squirms when Chelsea signs him up for a stress management session at the spa, but she already paid for it, so he’s going. Chelsea also mentions the friend she made the night before — Chloe the model, who’s with that jerk Greg — and says she invited them to dinner. Rick grumbles, but Chelsea says he and Greg have a lot in common: “You’re both old… Oh, and he’s bald! And you’re going bald.” At the spa, Victoria pops a pill to relax before her massage, while another old bald guy leers at Piper during a yoga class. Saxon gets, um, a little excited during his massage, while his dad Timothy frets that he can’t get his business associate Kenny on the phone. Belinda gets a fantastic massage from Pornchai, and Valentin tells Laurie her biometric numbers are like those of a woman half her age. “Please, tell me more,” she coos.
At Rick’s spa session, he admits to Amrita his stress level is an 8 out of 10. When she asks if he can remember a time when he was stress-free, he reveals that his drug addict mom died of an overdose when he was 10, and his father was murdered before he was born. “Real fun s–t to talk about, right?” he quips. He says his psychological tank is empty: “The car won’t start.” Over at the Ratliffs’ suite, Saxon is annoyed he didn’t get a happy ending, slamming the cabinets while looking for a blender to make his protein shakes, and Timothy is still stressed out. And when Belinda prepares to give Pornchai a massage, he strips down to his boxers to reveal a very fit physique, asking her: “How would you like me?” Hmmm… is Belinda getting her own happy ending?
At lunch with Mook, Gaitok lays his cards on the table: “I like you, Mook.” She reminds him they’ve never even been on a date, so he asks her on a date that night, but she just laughs it off. Laurie and Jaclyn compare notes after their spa time with Valentin — and they realize he told them both they have the numbers of a woman half their age. (As for Kate, he just said her numbers are average. Ouch!) Jaclyn says she has to stay in shape because she’s married to a hot younger guy named Harrison, adding they “are, like, addicted to each other. It’s kind of a problem.” Chelsea hangs out on the beach with Chloe the model girl, who calls her boyfriend Greg (who she calls “Gary”) and pouts until he lets her use his credit card. They also watch Saxon walk by… and Chloe thinks he’s “cute.” Uh-oh.
While lounging in hammocks in the water, Piper and Lochlan chat about spirituality, and then he drops a bomb: “Saxon says you’ve never had sex.” She’s offended and grossed out all at once: “He shouldn’t be talking about me like that!” But Lochlan still wants to know if she has or hasn’t. Chelsea and Chloe go shopping at a jewelry store inside the hotel — and Gaitok lets a car slip by the security gate while talking to Valentin. A masked guy in a hoodie gets out of the car and holds up the jewelry store at gunpoint, with Chelsea cowering in fear. The robber smashes the glass and snatches a few pieces of jewelry before running back to the car. Gaitok tries to stop him, but the guy clubs him over the head with his gun before speeding off.
In the aftermath of the robbery, EMTs tend to Gaitok, and a frantic Chelsea runs into Rick’s arms. Gaitok is still nursing his head, but he likes that Mook was worried about him. (She calls him “very brave”!) At dinner that night, Rick and Chelsea sit in pained silence with Chloe and “Gary,” who says they met in Dubai “through a matchmaking service” and annoys Chloe when he says she’s French when she’s really from Quebec. At the Ratliffs’ table, Piper snaps at Saxon, telling him to stay out of her personal life. Victoria giggles that her brother used to bully her, too: “I hated him for years, but of course now, we’re very close.” Oh, and Belinda looks around the dining room — and spots Greg! She doesn’t seem to recognize him, though.
Timothy steps away from the dinner table to take a call from his business associate Kenny, who’s freaking out: His office was just raided by the feds. He sobs that he can’t go to prison, and Timothy reminds him he swore this would never happen. He asks Kenny if he’s implicated, and Kenny tells him, “Yes, for sure, Tim. Yes.” Yikes. And Timothy says he only made $10 million out of this deal! He warns Kenny that if he sells him out on this, “I will f–king kill you.” (Gaitok is hearing all of this from his security booth, by the way.)
Back in the ladies’ suite, Jaclyn goes to bed early, and it’s her turn to feel left out, with Laurie calling her a narcissist and gossiping with Kate about all the work she’s had done: “Did she sand-blast her face or something? It’s very waxy.” They also suspect there’s something weird going on between her and her husband Harrison. In Rick and Chelsea’s room, he tells her he needs to go to Bangkok for a couple days to “deal with something” as they fall into bed together. And at the Ratliffs’, Timothy looks very troubled as he works the phones trying to find a lawyer — and watches his perfect family come back to the room, totally oblivious.
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