We’ve all been locked in to Season 3 of The White Lotus and, as expected, Mike White has us in healthy debates with each other over the subtleties of family dynamics, relationship problems and the reality of friendship.
I remember having a pretty heated debate with my partner about the married couple back in Season 2, which brought up a conversation that we never knew we needed to have. So why would this time be any different?
“Piper, NOOOO” has become the new staple in all of our vocabularies, and Patrick Schwarzenegger, now everyone’s favorite nepo-baby, has somehow brought a likeability to the character of Saxon that at the start felt utterly impossible to do. Meanwhile, Sam Rockwell, a secondary character, has managed to annihilate the biggest monologue in the show so far, while simultaneously sending us into a deep Walton Goggins obsession… but let’s talk about Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate.
The three females’ dynamic is rooted in childhood friendship, but over time they have taken very different paths, which I think is relatable for a lot of people. You have Jaclyn- the epitome of an LA celeb, Laurie- a realist from NY, and Kate- a southern charm-type from Dallas. I keep finding myself thinking that Mike White MUST have an insanely talented female writer on his team in order to be able to absolutely nail the subtleties of the female friendship dichotomy. It’s brilliant and oh-so nuanced. It’s almost like we speak our own secret girl language, both verbal and non-verbal, and they’ve put it on full display.
The most interesting thing to me, though, is the amount of people online and IRL, both male and female, that cannot believe the way these women treat each other. They believe their friendship is crazy, vicious and mean. Imagine my reaction when I thought, ‘wait… are my friends and I MEAN GIRLS?’ because we’re kind of like this, and I didn’t realize it was so toxic. I can admit that we are guilty of doing these things. Okay, maybe not secretly hooking up with each other’s crushes, but you get what I’m saying. We know when to walk the line of passing judgement in the moment, only to later side bar each other to say “can you believe she said that??” Is this not normal??
I started to reevaluate my own female relationships and realized that our behavior, much like the behavior of The White Lotus women, feels unproductive and unnecessary. Females of the world that are guilty of this… shall we pledge to do better? We owe thanks again to Mike White and team for observing and mirroring life in a brilliant way, and providing yet another conversation starter on the subtleties of our society and its subgroups.
If you’ve watched the finale, (like most of America, I was dialed in the second it went live on Max)… you know that the ladies all made it out of Thailand alive, and although they were involved in the dramatic shoot out on the property, the three of them had possibly the most normal ending to their White Lotus vacation, when compared to the rest of the resort guests. The best ships are friendships, or whatever that saying is… and the truth did end up setting Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate free. Go off besties!
xx Erica
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