‘The White Lotus’ episode 6 recap: “You cannot outrun pain”
This week, the guests at the White Lotus took some time off from their usual hijinks to uncover some cold, hard truths about themselves. If episode four was all about explosive plot developments, episode six was all about the consequences. Incest, rage, spiritual awakenings, and marriage came under the spotlight, and wouldn’t you know it, things got pretty darn profound.
The moment that will undoubtedly draw the most attention is that incesty sex scene. After weeks of uncomfortable allusions (and a drunken snog), Lochlan and Saxon have finally done the deed. Waking up naked next to each other on Greg/Gary’s yacht after the Full Moon Party, they do not, at first, remember what happened and quickly reassure each other that they both blacked out. Slowly, however, Saxon recovers snippets of memory, and what he recalls makes him visibly ill. Lochlan and Chloe had sex together in bed next to him – weird but not much worse than that time that Saxon (naked) told Lochy that he was going into the other room to masturbate. Then, he remembers something much worse. While having sex with Chloe, Lochlan reached over and jerked his older brother off.
While Saxon tries to pull himself out of the dark pit of his colossal hangover and forget everything he remembers about the night before, Laurie is determined to drag Jaclyn back into the past. When Kate tells her that their friend snuck Valentin into her room the night before, Laurie is done with the niceties. Gossiping behind each other’s backs is no longer enough. She confronts Jaclyn at breakfast, reminding her that, for as long as they’ve been friends, she has goaded her into sleeping with guys, only to snatch them out from under her at the last second.
This confrontation feels like a turning point for this uneasy trio. Even when Kate tries to play the peacemaker (or the two-faced suck-up, depending on your perspective), Jaclyn wants nothing to do with her. “Do you know how much gossip I have to put up with?” she asks. “And now the only two people I can trust are talking shit behind my back.” Like everyone at the White Lotus, these three childhood friends are discovering that a relationship built on artifice can’t survive honesty.
The most refreshing and brief moment of unsanitised realness comes when Fabian (who, as usual, was a minor character in the episode) approaches Belinda and her son Zion to invite them to a small staff party he’s organising so that he can sing to them. “Feeling better about everything today?” he asks, referencing the conversation in which she told him that Greg/Gary was a possibly going to murder her. “Not really,” she responds, pointedly. This is why we love Belinda and why that business opportunity that her newly-minted lover Pornchai proposed must come to fruition.
Following Piper’s announcement last week that she is planning to spend a year at the monastery after graduating from college, Victoria insists that she and Tim must vet the place for themselves. “If that strange man is going to have my baby,” she hisses, “He better be the best Buddhist in China.” As it happens, however, Victoria doesn’t end up meeting the monk. She wanders off at some point, leaving Tim to confront the alleged cult leader. After coming to the brink of suicide in the last episode, he isn’t really thinking about Piper’s monastic aspirations. Sitting in front of the kindly old man in orange robes, he has a mind-blowing experience, and not the one he was trying to have when he stole Gaitok’s gun.
“Many young people come here from your country,” the monk says. “I think because maybe spiritual malaise. Lost connection with nature, with the family, lost connection with the spirit. What is left? The self. Identity. Chasing money, pleasure. Everyone runs from pain towards pleasure, but when they get there, only to find more pain. You cannot outrun pain.”
When they get back to the resort, Tim tells Victoria that he thinks a year at the monastery might be good for Piper. “We want our kids to be resilient,” he says, “I mean, what if we lost everything?” What he actually means is, we have actually lost everything, Victoria, and I am going to prison. “If we did [lose everything],” she responds breezily, “Honestly, I don’t know if I’d wanna live. I just don’t think at this age I’m meant to live an uncomfortable life. I don’t have the will… Don’t think I ever did.”
As the camera zooms in on Tim’s face, his eyes well with tears. You could read this in multiple ways, of course. But at least some of that anguish must be from his dawning realisation that the person he’s been married to for decades has never been there unconditionally. It’s another devastating truth that landed in this episode, and no matter how much you despise these characters, there is more than a hint of tragedy about it.
Saxon is also facing a personal reckoning. This is a particularly startling development because his strongest trait – as is the case for all men who sink comfortably under the spell of male superiority – is denial. After getting back to the resort, he heads down to the pool, where Chelsea is relaxing with a book. “I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t hook up with me,” he says. He’s nonplussed when she tries to explain the basic concept of voluntary monogamy. “Hooking up with you would be an empty experience,” she concludes. “And how would you know that?” he asks. “Because I know,” she responds simply, “Because you’re soulless.”
It seems we’ve met another turning point here. In the first episode, Saxon tells Lochy that the secret to happiness is getting what you want: “Money, freedom, respect, and pussy.” Being told that he has no soul, right when he’s clearly feeling existential for perhaps the first time, puts us in treacherous territory. Men like Saxon rarely handle self-reflection well, which suggests that we are either headed towards a rage-fuelled killing spree or (fingers crossed) a transformation.
The final moment of truth in the episode is still hanging in the balance when the credits roll. Rick persuades Frank (the sure-to-be Emmy-winner Sam Rockwell) to pretend to be a film director so they can get into Sritala’s home. We see Rick’s face as he sees her husband (his father’s presumed killer) for the first time, and like the moment when Tim takes in Victoria’s unsuspecting bombshell, his expression is quietly devastating.
The only character who didn’t succumb to the allure of truth-telling in this episode was Chloe, whose livelihood and possibly life depends on Gary/Greg not finding out that she hooked up with both brothers. He has decided to invite everyone over for dinner and even invites Belinda in person. The next episode may feature an uncomfortable dinner party, which has been the set-up for some of the most memorable and explosive scenes in film and television history.
