‘Feels flabby and elongated, with far less satiric bite’

The new series of “very slow burning” satire about luxury resorts is uneven and disappointing.

Take a closer look at the opening credit sequence for White Lotus this season, set in a luxury resort on Thailand’s Koh Samui Island. The camera shakes over colorful paintings depicting scenes centuries ago in landscapes and culture, but soon the image of Buddhist shrines and elephants is a monkey in the green of flowers, an angry monkey, and Give way to a wrecked man who is being eaten by sea creatures.

Its ominous pattern reflects the plot of every season of white lotus. However, unlike the credit sequence and the previous two installments, the rest of this extremely slow burning season hasn’t reached danger almost either quickly or sharply. Never move the series So It just slowly starts to take off along the way. White Lotus still has fingerprints of writer and director Mike White, and sometimes his symbolism and originality. However, this uneven repetition gives it a loose, elongated feel and much less biting.

Like before, this season begins with an unidentified corpse after gunshots interrupt a meditation session with the resort’s so-called “health mentors.” For the Eastern spiritual calm, some wealthy Western tourists may have wanted. The story will then be flashed back to the week when guests arrive.

As the show constantly distorts Ultra Rich while heading towards murder, it makes sense that the most interesting characters are the wealthy financial advisor and his family. Tim Ratliff is dressed in serious, predictable business troubles from his hometown, but Jason Isaac has the character’s desperate guts urgent. His wife, Victoria (Parker Posey), is a character from one note who is constantly shunki about anti-anxiety medications.

But White’s inspiring casting often makes the season better than the story suggests, and Ratliff’s children are particularly well played. The middle child, Ernest Piper (Sara Katherine Hook), led his family to Thailand, allowing him to study university papers on Buddhism, one of the few plot points that actually relates to Thailand. . His eldest son, Saxon, is a good-looking and sexually obsessed Dort. Patrick Schwarzenegger effectively guides this sibling layer where hedonism has returned to bite him. Sam Nibola plays the youngest child, shy high school senior Rochlan. If you have an uneasy feeling that this family’s sexual boundaries are a little too loose, trust your instincts. White offers a twist that is both ICK and evidence that he has not lost all willingness to place dark psychology. The casting of the Ratliff brothers may seem to cry Nepobay, as Patrick is the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Schreiber, and Nibola’s parents are Alessandro Nibola and Emily Mortimer. But both are completely natural and persuasive, and worthy of casting on your own.

In another wise and unexpected choice, Fallout’s Walton Goggins plays the enigmatic Rick. His flashy shirt and messy look put him out of place at the resort. He seems to be some kind of glyfter with his young, patient girlfriend (Amy Lou Wood). But once Goggins is not asked to laugh wildly, and when Rick’s impure motives are revealed, it becomes heart-pounding if you believe his story.

Natasha Rothwell then returns to Thailand for her first season as Maui’s spa manager Belinda, and is now returning to Thailand for wellness vocational training. Rothwell has always impressed his characters. With a sweet, difficult smile that shows that she doesn’t expect from life. Here she is used primarily as a plot device, but it’s a clever plot full of callbacks to previous seasons, and spoilers too for details.

The weakest storylines include three long-time friends on a girl’s trip. Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb’s roles were shockingly determined, including jealous, gossip and Holiday’s escape. Near the start, Kuhn swallows the entire wine. Wine is typical of character robbery and telegraphy in threads that seem the most comic but old.

It’s a shame the show isn’t using that setting well, as there are so many possibilities. It is sometimes cut into shots of monkeys and monkey statues. And while the premise is full of built-in cultural and class differences, Thai characters are slightly shallow. Lalisa Manoban, known as Lisa from K-Pop Group BlackPink, plays Mook, a member of wellness staff who has little to do with security guards and smiles and cheating at the resort entrance.

Several major themes come to the fore as the eight-episode season ends, especially when Piper visits a Buddhist monastery. But by the end of episode 6, the last one had been sent to critics, but the season is still merely an echo of what was before. The fourth season has already been ordered, so White Lotus has a chance to get it right in itself, but perhaps not in Thailand.