S01.E06: Departures

[SlovakPrincess]

OMG HBO, we could probably figure out what Armond was doing in that suitcase without ... um ... making it quite so obvious.  LOL.

It must be the wonderful actor, because I felt for Armond the whole time even as he clearly created increasingly insane problems for himself and everyone else.  

Poor Belinda, although at least by the end she learned to put up some boundaries with these needy guests.

Paula is a damn idiot, and so is Kai for going along with her terrible plan.  I guess she's going to have to live the rest of her life knowing she helped Kai ruin his life ... though she seems to be getting over it fairly quickly.  She's kidding herself if she thinks she's that much less selfish and spoiled than Olivia.

Good for Quinn, though he's gonna have to start working at the resort to support himself probably!  Unless Nicole and Mark cave and send him money (which they probably will, lol).  I was weirdly happy to see Nicole and Mark improve their marriage even though they're both fairly annoying.  Well, I just love Connie Britton, so I wanted her character to be happy. 

Rachel ... one step forward, two steps back with this girl.  Hopefully she figures out a career before Shane inevitably starts cheating on her and the marriage finally blows up!  

[DrSparkles]

On 2/15/2022 at 1:01 AM, lidarose9 said:

This was a show about privilege disguised as a comedy. The guests were all solidly narcissistic, right down the line. I found it very frustrating cuz they were all as fucked up at the end of the story as they were at the beginning. If I'd known that was the deal, I would never have started watching. Which is a shame cuz it was really well done -- except for the gross part, which should never be seen by anyone, ever. 

But narcissists don’t change, in my experience.

[Blakeston]

I just finished this series. I put off watching it for over a year, because I'd been given the impression that a huge part of the series was watching an insufferable asshole torment a hotel's staff because he didn't get the room he wanted. That's not my idea of entertainment.

Enough people told me White Lotus was great that I finally gave it a shot. And I found that my friends weren't wrong about Shane being a huge asshole. I hated the way he treated Rachel, and his general douchiness.

But to my shock, I found that in the Shane v. Armond conflict, everything was Armond's fault. If I had only seen the scenes with Shane and Armond, I don't think I would have hated Shane at all. Each step of the way, Armond fucked up.

- Shane and Rachel got the wrong room on the honeymoon, despite his mother paying for a more expensive room. Armond chose to lie to Shane about it, and pretend that he didn't make a mistake.

Naturally Shane wanted Armond to correct the overcharge, admit the mistake, and do something to smooth things over. That's totally reasonable. Armond refused.

A call from Shane's mother's travel agent call Armond finally got Armond to make those concessions. Shane was wiling to move on, and pleasantly asked Armond for a romantic dinner.

- Then Armond, being a drug-addled loose cannon, deliberately sabotaged Shane's honeymoon by putting him on the same boat as Tanya spreading her mother's ashes. That was an appalling thing to do to Shane, Rachel, and Tanya. No one in the hotel industry should keep their job after that kind of sabotage.

After that, Shane was determined to complain to Armond's boss. Totally reasonable. Armond repeatedly lied to him, and doctored a fake business card, to prevent him from doing so.

Shane then saw Armond having sex with a subordinate in his office, and was smug about it. I would have been too, after all that. Armond had it coming.

Shane then got Armond fired, as well he should have.

Finally, the stabbing was Armond's fault as well. Armond broke into Shane's room to commit a (completely disgusting) crime. From what Shane heard from the Mossbachers, he had good reason to believe that a violent criminal was in his room. Armond didn't identify himself when Shane asked who was there. Shane turned the corner, and accidentally stabbed Armond. That's on Armond.

Obviously Shane should have paid more attention to Rachel and less to the room situation. But IMO, nothing he said or did to Armond was out of line.

[TVMovieBuff]

On 8/15/2021 at 10:26 PM, Laurie4H said:

I think that was a first for me watching someone take a dump in a movie or tv show lol.  
Obviously Quinn will be searched for.  Legally he would have to be returned home if found.  
How much money did she give Belinda?  
I don’t think Kai’s name would be mentioned when asked what his name was.  I would think that would have been confidential 
Paula was the worst.  And was that family that bad?  I didn’t think so.  Quinn was a naive kid.  The daughter showed some emotion at the end and the parents meant well. 

I think the dump in the suitcase was digital. Pooping on cue would take too much time. 

Mistake that Quinn's family let him out of their sight while boarding. This was forseeable, that he would bolt!

The actress playing Olivia nailed it so hard! Perfect portrait of a spoiled miserable rich kid. 

[TVMovieBuff]

On 12/12/2022 at 4:57 PM, PurpleTentacle said:

There is so much trash in the ocean, a bunch of shells on a fragile string is not what's going to kill those sea creatures.

Is Hawaii even a good place for a high end spa? Sure a lot of rich people come there, but they stay in high end hotels, that have Spas on their own.

I would say to open a high end Spa you should find a place where a lot of rich people live or where they have vacation homes.

Thus is the life she has chosen.

To be honest, doesn't sound too bad in exchange for infinite money.

The only thing that sounded like crap was the prenup she talked about, that would leave her with some money, but not set for life. I hope the sum at least goes way up when he leaves her, instead of the other way around. Because he will. In 20 years at the latest.

I was raised by a mother who was born in 1923, and raised me to believe the best thing you can do in life is marry a rich man. Part of me deep inside thought Rachel should just put up and shut up. The other part knows, that some things aren't worth the money. Prenups can be renegotiated!

[Blakeston]

Also, if money is the goal, someone who looks like Alexandra Diddario shouldn't have much trouble finding a rich guy who's less of an asshole than Shane.

[chocolatine]

1 hour ago, Blakeston said:

Also, if money is the goal, someone who looks like Alexandra Diddario shouldn't have much trouble finding a rich guy who's less of an asshole than Shane.

If money is the goal, then a college-educated woman like Rachel can figure out how to make her own. I hate that we're still acting like the only way for a woman to acquire money is to marry into it.

[aghst]

True, she should look to make more money.

But she did talk about struggling financially for years.

I forget the details but she'd worked as a journalist, not for some big publication but lower level, and it was not very well-paying.

Ultimately that experience may have caused her to stay with the husband.

Spoiler

By contrast, in the second season, the wives are affluent, even Daphne, but stay with their husbands even faced with evidence of poor behavior.

Money wasn't a factor in her decision to stay, for Harper, who was described as a successful attorney.

 

[AstridM]

19 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

If money is the goal, then a college-educated woman like Rachel can figure out how to make her own. I hate that we're still acting like the only way for a woman to acquire money is to marry into it.

Thank you!

[chocolatine]

2 hours ago, aghst said:

True, she should look to make more money.

But she did talk about struggling financially for years.

I forget the details but she'd worked as a journalist, not for some big publication but lower level, and it was not very well-paying.

Ultimately that experience may have caused her to stay with the husband.

Of course making money is not easy (or quick), but if a woman wants financial security without depending on a man and/or his family, she has to earn it herself. Once Rachel realized that journalism wasn't paying off for her, she should have researched the most lucrative fields for which she was qualified, and pursued one of them. Instead she took what she thought was the "easy" option of marrying Shane. No sympathy for her.

Edited January 15, 2023 by chocolatine

[aghst]

I think she loved Shane.

This trip is where her eyes were opened to what he could be like.

Weren't they suppose to be fairly recently married?

It's not like she's been living with his awfulness for several years before they came to Hawaii.

[izabella]

They had a short romance and quick wedding, if I remember right.   A few months?   This was their honeymoon, so they really didn't know each other well.

[Blakeston]

10 hours ago, chocolatine said:

If money is the goal, then a college-educated woman like Rachel can figure out how to make her own. I hate that we're still acting like the only way for a woman to acquire money is to marry into it.

I wrote that because the character chose to stay in a terrible marriage solely for the money, and didn't seem confident that she could have a successful career on her own - not because I think women can only get money by marrying.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Blakeston

[chocolatine]

9 minutes ago, Blakeston said:

It's not that the only way for her to make money is to marry. But she was willing to stay married to a man she didn't love solely for the money, so she didn't seem to think she could earn it on her own.

Exactly, she seems to think that marriage to Shane is easier than doing the kind of work it takes to make money, which is why I have no sympathy for her. She had the gall to write an article criticizing Nicole, a woman who achieved financial and professional success on her own, but chose the gold digger route for herself. Lazy hypocrite.

[Ms Blue Jay]

On 1/15/2023 at 3:01 PM, chocolatine said:

Of course making money is not easy (or quick), but if a woman wants financial security without depending on a man and/or his family, she has to earn it herself. Once Rachel realized that journalism wasn't paying off for her, she should have researched the most lucrative fields for which she was qualified, and pursued one of them. Instead she took what she thought was the "easy" option of marrying Shane. No sympathy for her.

EXACTLY.  This isn't The Gilded Age lol it's 2023 not 1923!

[shapeshifter]

I haven’t watched this since it first aired, but I thought Rachel was gaslighted by Shane into believing she couldn’t succeed without him. 
No? 
Maybe I’m conflating different show plots?

[chocolatine]

6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I haven’t watched this since it first aired, but I thought Rachel was gaslighted by Shane into believing she couldn’t succeed without him. 
No? 
Maybe I’m conflating different show plots?

We haven't seen Shane gaslight Rachel. He wasn't happy with her taking a work assignment while on honeymoon and told her she didn't have to work at all, but that's not gaslighting. It just shows that Rachel and Shane didn't discuss important life decisions before marriage.

[TVMovieBuff]

We see from Shane's mother that was how he was raised and he never saw any different. 

It wouldn't be bad for Rachel to do as her MIL suggests, work in charity events. That translates to true work experience and would let her meet people to use as connections in finding a job. 

[KittyQ]

On 8/15/2021 at 11:41 PM, ichbin said:

Paula looks down on her hosts, thinking them terrible people while she winds up being the worst of them all by being the reason a young man's life and livelihood are ruined.  Kai is a nice guy, but he allows himself to be talked into doing what he knows is the wrong thing.

This is an interesting point. The rest of the Mossbachers may have been clueless, kind of obnoxious, or a bit exploitative (at least as far as the luau went) but they didn't leave any of the hotel employees worse off than when they arrived. Paula, on the other hand, convinced a guy who was basically honest to do a very dishonest thing, and he ended up being arrested, fired (without a doubt), and if he didn't go to jail, would have such a bad rep he couldn't get another job in another hotel. All for some vague ideas of getting back what was "stolen" from his family. I think he was persuaded because he liked her a lot and he bought her sophomore year political spin. He should have known better, but young people can be idealistic and foolish at the same time.

[KittyQ]

On 8/17/2021 at 4:36 PM, dmc said:

I think Belinda crossed the line though.  Belinda works there, she is not a professional counselor.  She doesn't know Rachel and her job isn't to be moral support for the customers.  The last time she crossed the line to be an emotional coach for Tanya.  She went to her because she is a compassionate person but ultimately she shouldn't be providing this support for Rachel.  She just realized enough is enough.  She is an employee and these people are just guests.  

I agree that this was a learning experience for Belinda. I can see how tempting it would be if a person who seems to be very wealthy expresses interest in your career and even offers to bankroll this venture. I think that Belinda didn't move this relationship to a more professional level because she had compassion for Tanya. She should have recognized Tanya's inherent flakiness, though, and taken all the compliments and talk of starting a business with a huge grain of salt. 

When Tanya finally admitted that she knew she had a tendency to latch onto people because she's needy, that might have rung a bell with Belinda, because she seems to do this on a small scale too. I thought throwing the business plan away was too harsh a reaction. After all, she's done the work on it, who's to say that another (more realistic) opportunity won't come along. Maybe she needs to take a class in entrepreneurship or something to help her move forward. I was also dying to know how much money was in that envelope. Even if it isn't investment level cash, it has to be more than Belinda usually gets from clients and she can put it to good use.

I did think it was rough of Belinda to shut down Rachel after telling her to call if she wanted to talk. There must have been a kinder way to let her down, even if it meant saying something like "I'm sorry, but I've had a bad day and I don't feel I can offer good advice right now."

Also, it is important to remember that a job is a job and no corporation cares for you as an individual. It is the ultimate "transactional relationship" - they pay you to provide certain services, and your responsibility is to do that to the best of your ability and within the company guidelines. They may offer benefits and even send condolences when needed, but if they need to let someone go, just being a nice person who loves their job is not going to protect you. Go beyond your job at your own risk. 

[paramitch]

I just binged this a few weeks ago, basically because I am in love (respectfully, as a fan) with Murray Bartlett, and I was blown away by him in "Welcome to Chippendales" and then most recently on "The Last of Us," so here I am. Everyone said, "Then you have to watch 'White Lotus!' and I wailed and cried NOOOOO (I hated the first episode and noped out).

But here I am, and I did end up getting through it, and I did eventually find it kind of ickily fun, if I also hated most of the characters and wanted them to die in colorful painful ways in the Hawaiian sunset.

But back to Armond. I am glad I watched for Bartlett's performance, which I thought was pretty incredible, and he gave this spiraling disaster of a character a real core of occasional heart and humanity, as well as a gleeful dash of wickedness. 

I felt really sorry for Armond. For me, his entire arc is vital to the main story Mike White is telling here -- that he existed only to be used by these utterly horrible rich people day after day after day -- like everyone else at the White Lotus. Like Belinda here by Tanya (who disregards her sobbing openly over her crushed dreams while swanning back in to get her sunglasses, AGHGH).

The difference was THIS WEEK. The Armond at the start is a guy who's 5 years sober and visibly superb at his job, although it consumes him to the degree that he doesn't realize his new trainee is GIVING BIRTH (and he was genuinely upset by this realization). He's tired on every level, but he lives for his job, so when he makes a mistake with Shane, he's got an entire arsenal of tools to make things better.

BUT.

Shane does that thing, that asshole "I'm better than you, now fix this," thing. And in that early moment you can kind of see Armond give up every single thing he would normally do (practically sleepwalking through it) to make this douchebag happy. He looks in this guy's eyes and his smirky face, and he just cannot do it.

He falls off the deep end. He can't let this rich douchebag win (I loved the revelation that this amazing room Shane was deprived of was so ugly and shabby and dim, had no view of the ocean, etc. -- but okay, it was BIGGER!).

And from there it just all spirals downward. I would argue Shane fired first, and Armond fired back -- and then the more Shane became obsessed with getting the best of this poor guy who's just a harried hotel manager -- the more Armond was like, "NOT THIS DAY!" 

Yes, people should get what they pay for. But Shane did every single thing he could to be an absolute ass about Armond's mistake, so that it becomes a major factor in his tanking his honeymoon (his wife is very happy with their gorgeous room!), and he still cares more about one-upping Armond than in just letting it go.

So I found Armond's downward spiral tragic (if occasionally very funny and cringeworthy) -- the drugs from the rich girls are the final killing blow so that he's never acting in his right mind after that, and he's just FINALLY giving in to everything he's held in -- the addictive impulses for sex and drugs, the opportunity to give a big middle finger to these horrible rich people whenever he can, etc. It was incredibly uncomfortable to watch him go after the surfer employee (trading job benefits for drugs/sex), but it also felt like Armond was like, "If I'm going to Hell, I might as well go big!"

So here at the pinnacle, what was interesting was, Armond has lost everything, he knows he has, and then he has that one beautiful final dinner service. He's practically dancing a ballet; it is a reminder of how very good he is at his job, at his best.

And then he falls off that cliff of revenge and addiction one final time to "get" Shane one last time -- and it kills him. (And OH MY GOD did we need to see him take the actual shit? Although why am I surprised, on a show that gave us a giant closeup of Steve Zahn's [I'm sure, prosthetic] balls?)

My favorite thing about Armond's arc were his final few moments because of how Barlett acted them. He's not angry. He's shocked, he falls back into the tub, and then he sighs. And suddenly, he's awake and aware; he seems very sharp and sober, and he smiles, almost ruefully. It's like he knows both that he did this to himself AND that the hotel would be the death of him. Then he's at peace. And all of this was gorgeously acted by Bartlett (I was pleased to find after the fact that he won the Emmy for Armond -- much deserved).

That's what I took away from the season -- Armond is almost a Cassandra figure -- he is the only one at the White Lotus who has blinders off, who sees what circle of hell he and the employees are living in -- and then he rebels against that, and dies. So for me his is a tragicomic story straight out of Dante.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

NOTE: I don't know if I want to watch Season 2. We'll see. I just found all of this so revolting and gross. Everything was slimy. And I honestly thought the hotel looked vaguely dingy and ugly, and I hated the decor. I was gobsmacked to learn it was filmed at the Four Seasons Maui, because ugh.

Edited February 10, 2023 by paramitch
typo

[blackwing]

So after hearing so many great things about this show, and all the media hype, in particular the many stories this past year painting Jennifer Coolidge out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, I finally set out to watch this show.  Just binged Season 1.

I agree with much that was said upthread .  I found myself very dissatisfied with the show as a whole.  I had thought that this show was billed as a dark comedy, and instead of finding things about the characters' lives funny, I was left with a feeling of sadness and disillusion.

Most of the characters are simply awful people.  Am I supposed to sympathise with any of them?  I think the most sympathetic people were Belinda and Rachel.  Yet I can't overlook Belinda's naivete.  She works in a spa in a high end resort in Hawaii.  Surely Tanya can't be the first rich guest that Belinda has ever encountered.  I spent the first half of the show wondering if Tanya was a lesbian and was trying to promise Belinda a good life and would take her away from the hotel.  Belinda must have heard all of this before.

Rachel is married to a psychologically abusive and controlling creep, but she put herself into that position.  She took the steps of getting her own room, but at the end, just crawls back to him?  I also don't fully understand her motivation or reasoning.  She is married to a very rich guy but then says it's important to her to be able to earn her own money.  She kind of acted like she wanted to completely support herself, but that no job that she was qualified for would allow her to do that.  Why did it have to be so absolute?  She could have insisted to Shane that she wanted to work as a journalist because she enjoyed it and it was important to her to do something of her own.  But she went to the extreme and somehow thought that if she didn't agree to accept that assignment to work while on their honeymoon, it would mean her career was over.  Why couldn't she just want to work for enjoyment, and not to prove that she can pay her own way?

I would have felt more sympathy for Armond, but it was clear he enjoyed his position of power.  Stealing the drugs from the girls, doing cocaine while on duty, forcing some young male employee to have sex with him, taking a dump in a guest's suitcase.  He wasn't as awful as some of the others but he certainly wasn't clean.

I would have liked Quinn more, but he's 16 and his desire to stay in Hawaii and row a boat was just ridiculous.  How did he think he was going to live there?  

Don't even get me started on Paula.  Were Olivia and Paula supposed to be a couple?  Or just very close friends?  It seemed evident that Paula completely resented Olivia and her family's white privilege.  Even before she arranged the theft of the jewelry, she had been sullen and unappreciative the entire trip.  I just don't understand why Olivia was OK with her attitude, and I was annoyed by the parents' complete cluelessness and condoning of her terrible attitude.

The ending was completely unsatisfying.  I kept looking at the clock ticking down and thinking that there was no way all of the plots would be resolved with any satisfaction.  And they weren't.  Shane leaves the resort, without even being charged?  I'm assuming that the killing was determined to be an accident or self-defence, but it would still take some time to figure that out.  There were no witnesses.  Plenty of hotel staff could have testified as to the many angry conversations that Shane had with Armond.  How did the police determine that Shane didn't enter his room, find Armond taking a poo in his suitcase, and kill him with a knife in his rage?  That would have been manslaughter.

Quinn doesn't get on the plane.  There's no way that the parents allow that plane to just leave.  They would have gotten off to look for him.

No charges against Paula?  Maybe Olivia convinced her parents not to press charges.  I truly don't understand the hold that Paula had over Olivia that made Olivia say she won't tell anyone about the theft.  Why not?  Paula very clearly said to Kai that Olivia wasn't her friend.  I hope Olivia dropped her as soon as they got home.

I will watch the next season but I really hope it doesn't have the same theme of rich people trudging through life with malaise and their rich people problems.

[PurpleTentacle]

On 1/15/2023 at 6:39 PM, Blakeston said:

Also, if money is the goal, someone who looks like Alexandra Diddario shouldn't have much trouble finding a rich guy who's less of an asshole than Shane.

There are plenty of hot women in the sea. Far more than insanely rich people.

And as far as rich people go, Shane was a delight. Most are way worse.

On 1/15/2023 at 7:43 PM, chocolatine said:

If money is the goal, then a college-educated woman like Rachel can figure out how to make her own. I hate that we're still acting like the only way for a woman to acquire money is to marry into it.

I'm university educated. I haven't figured that out yet.

She was a journalist. She is never going to make a substantial amount of money.

This isn't the 1960s anymore, where you could stumble into any job, make enough to buy a house and feed a family of 5 on your own. I think older people have a very warped perspective on what it's like out there.