We’re rolling into the weekend knee-deep in crisp, new prestige television. Folks who’re keeping up with this season’s biggest dramas on streaming have new episodes of Severance and Yellowjackets to watch tonight, but are assuredly looking forward to the next installment of HBO’s The White Lotus in just a few days.
As always, new episodes of The White Lotus air Sunday night on HBO starting at 9pm E.T./6pm P.S.T. You can also watch it on the Max app anytime after that.
As for what to expect for episode four, feel free to check out my longform breakdown of the stand-on-your-feet third episode, “The Meaning of Dreams,” here. We’ll go through some quick-hitter story notes to level-set for episode four, however.
Story Notes
While we know the central event of episode four will likely be the party on Greg’s boat, where many of our characters are destined to clash, there are still a few bits and pieces to cover.
Here are some of my notes on each ensemble from my recap, linked above:
The Ratliff family
As for Dad, it sure was time for Tim Ratliff to have himself an episode in which he did his very best to be a bit more present in the scenes with his family. He does so by turning tail from the incoming tsunami. Phones away now, actually, everybody! This, of course, after the dream-convo breakfast of incessant calls from colleagues of Tim’s and Saxon’s back at the stateside office, where the FBI has shown up making warrants rain like hunnits at the club. Piper and Victoria are elated to give their phones away; Saxon and Lochlan less so.
Should be noted here that it appears as if Chloe invited Saxon onto Greg’s boat, so at least some contingent of the Ratliffs are likely headed to the warzone.
Belinda/Greg (plus Pornchai)
Elsewhere, after Belinda’s impulsive exchange with Greg—what exactly, during her monologue about having left Maui because she was in a bad place, drove her to rise from the table and confront him?—Pornchai drops Belinda off after their boozy dinner, and, before she closes the door, Pornchai wishes her good dreams of him. Decidedly not a liquor-fumbled Thai expression, I’m assuming. When she closes the door, she hears reports of footsteps out the window, the creak of a floorboard in the kitchen beyond her bedroom.
Unsurprising, but no less unsettling for it. It’s entirely possible she pressed Greg too far; it was clear in Natasha Rothwell’s delivery that her recognizing of Greg from Maui was accusatory and not, like, hey-whaddaya-know! All to say: the snakes are circling the pit, but Belinda appears fine for now.
The frenemies
Kate rises from bed to Jaclyn’s and Laurie’s distant laughter from the fire pit beyond Kate’s bedroom, and she hears her friends ripping the integrity of her ethical backbone. Earlier that night, she’d revealed that, since moving to Texas, she’d started going to church and had changed her politics such that she says-without-saying that she voted for Trump. This baffles Laurie and Jaclyn, who suffer through the dinner and wait until nightfall to shit all over their friend.
The big question here is: who confronts who, and when? It’s entirely possible the reaction isn’t confrontation, either. I’m waiting for Carrie Coon’s Laurie to get absolutely obliterated-drunk one episode.
The resort staff
And, yes, we’ve still got the mess with Gaitok, Mook, Valentin, and Fabian. Which is to say: we know Valentin—the apple of Jaclyn’s, Kate’s, and, more intimately and energetically, Laurie’s eyes—was, at the very least, an accomplice to the jewelry store burglary from last episode; he distracted Gaitok at the gate … just as the sun is setting, another guard tells Gaitok that Fabian wants to debrief with him regarding the burglary the following morning. Might it be that Valentin got out ahead of anything coming back to him by implicating poor Gaitok?
Rick and Chelsea
[Rick] remains a big-picture enigma, but we sure got a flash of his predatory charisma, didn’t we? Overfamiliar lean-ins and enchanting eye contact and flattery abound, that Goggins smile dripping with honey in a way that surely had all Justified fans giving a deserved wink to Boyd Crowder. He’s now got Sritala (not so much Fabian, who seems skeptical) under the impression that he is a producer on site at The White Lotus working on a AAA, hyper-secret project. So moved was he by her singing the night prior that he wonders if she’d take a meeting with the director of this project in Bangkok. And, wouldn’t you know it, she’s already headed to Bangkok! Rick’s kicked down the door, and is already making calls to contacts in Bangkok for meetings the next day.
The recap, of course, includes the bit about the snakes, and Rick’s apparently-authentic breakthrough with Amrita. We imagine Chelsea will be attached-at-the-hip with Chloe at the boat party in episode four.
Here’s hoping we get a boat party whose fashion blows out of the water that of Succession‘s boat-party episodes.
