‘The White Lotus’ episode 7 recap: “Knowing when to stop”
Tim is back on the pills, big time. Remember that whole enlightenment thing last week when he had that heart-to-heart with the monk? That’s all over and done with. In this week’s episode of The White Lotus, there was a lot of backsliding.
Things get off to a rough start when Saxon drags his parents to Greg/Gary’s party, and he tries to get through to Chelsea again. Men like him love nothing more than chasing a woman who’s hard to get, at least until they realise that, just as she’s explained from the start, she is truly not interested in being gotten. Yet again, Chelsea provides the killer line of the episode. When Saxon gestures towards a sea of middle-aged men with trophy girlfriends and says, “These guys must know that the only reason they’ve got these hot girlfriends is because they’re loaded,” Chelsea lightly responds, “That’s gonna be you in 30 years.”
Tim has gotten to the point where he needs to be in a permanent state of staggering drunkenness in order to bear existing. In a moment of desperation, Saxon confronts him at the party to ask if there is anything wrong. Tim, looking like an ancient turtle with zero wisdom to show for it, blinks groggily and insists a little too many times that all is well with the kingdom. Saxon is tentatively relieved. He has nothing else, he tells his dad. No hobbies, no interests, justwork. “I can’t handle being nothing,” he says, “I put my whole life into this basket, into your basket.”
Elsewhere at the party, Greg/Gary tries to bribe Belinda with $100,000 in exchange for her silence. Stop me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that $100,000 in this day and age is nowhere near the amount you’d need to start a wellness centre, especially if you’re planning to cater to the White Lotus set. Zion encourages her to take the money, but it seems unlikely that Belinda will take him up on it.
At the resort, the relationship between the three friends is falling apart. Jaclyn is playing the morally outraged victim, Laurie is acting like there’s nothing to lose, and Kate is walking on eggshells. After Jaclyn accuses Laurie of constantly and even purposefully making bad decisions, Laurie storms off to make another one, this time choosing to go by herself to the fight in town where Valentin and his friends are waiting.
Gaitok and Mook are also at the fight and also on unsteady ground with each other. Their date starts out very sweetly with a moped ride into town and some food at an outdoor market. He decides it’s time to be honest with her. He isn’t getting a promotion, he says. He isn’t going to be a bodyguard. He just doesn’t like violence. Mook is confused. “I thought you were ambitious and wanted a better job,” she says. After six episodes of pining after her, Gaitok looks as though he were contemplating, for the first time, whether he actually likes Mook. We’ve all been there. You spend weeks (or years) daydreaming about a crush, only to realise once you have an actual conversation with them that they aren’t the person you idealised them to be.
This is just the first revelation of the evening for Gaitok. The second comes when they arrive at the fight. Seated across the ring from them is Valentin and his friends seated opposite. Gaitok has a sudden flashback of the robbery in episode two and realises that it was them all along.
Laurie is in her spite-fuelled yolo era, but she quickly discovers, like Gaitok, that the Russian hunks are utterlyshameless. After having sex with the one who isn’t bald or named Valentin, she lies in bed next to him, presumably feeling like she’s gotten even with Jaclyn. Then, he asks for $10,000. His mother, he explains over a very on-the-nose soundtrack of a very high-pitched violin, is ill, and he needs to return to Russia. She wisely leaps out of bed and out the window just as his girlfriend gets home. May we all pray for Laurie’s safe passage back to the lion’s den of the resort.
Meanwhile, Saxon is trying it on with Chelsea again. After Chloe tells him that Greg/Gary’s childhood trauma makes him crave watching her have sex with other men, he decides to leave the party sharpish and accompanies Chelsea back to the hotel. “I could be somebody else if I wanted,” he says, “I bet I could even connect with you on a spiritual level if that’s so important to you.” She tries to show him how to meditate, only for him to sensuously stroke her hands after approximately four cleansing breaths. Old habits die hard.
His siblings aren’t faring much better. Piper and Lochlan are spending the night at the monastery, and their roles might just have flipped. When she asks him what he thinks of the place, he tells her that he’s thinking about spending a year there too. “I don’t want to give into my dark shit,” he says, presumably thinking about that wild night of sex he had with his brother. “I don’t want to make things worse.” Piper seems blindsided by this revelation, and not in a good way. Is it possible that she’ll change her mind about the whole thing and Lochy will end up staying there by himself?
Perhaps you’re wondering why it’s taken so long to mention Rick. After an entire season of build-up, he confronts Sritala’s husband about supposedly murdering his father. Played by the monumental character actor Scott Glenn (who’s been in everything from the Bourne movies to The Virgin Suicides), he is an elderly man with a cane who doesn’t seem to know what Rick is talking about when he details the source of his entire personality. There is a moment where it seems like he might know who Rick’s mother was and have a completely different version of events, but it’s fleeting. In the end, Rick can’t bring himself to injure, let alone kill, the man. Instead, he tips his chair over and runs.
Sam Rockwell is now part of the main cast and spends most of the episode distracting Sritala for Rick. After that instantly iconic monologue about self-discovery from episode five, Frank falls off the wagon hard, downing whisky and cocaine like he’s a groupie on tour in 1972. He goes on a bender, bringing prostitutes back to a hotel, while Rick sits on a sofa, watching the tableau with what looks suspiciously like a peaceful smile.
