Shedding friends is a painful fact of adulthood. If you haven’t experienced one or a few of these platonic divorces, congratulations – but I assure you, they will happen. Look to the left of you, look to the right of you. One of you will not be here in four years, possibly less.
But if you’re motivated to hasten the process, take a trip with your besties. There’s usually something that one friend can afford that the others can’t, or something that someone wants to do that someone who doesn’t will resent them for doing without them. British performer Savannah Gracey captured this relationship-straining phenomenon in a TikTok that made the rounds last year.
There’s no more efficient colonic for your contact list than booking a trip with shared accommodations for you and your pals — the more luxurious the better. Koh Samui, Thailand, where Season 3 of "The White Lotus" is set, is where grace and spirituality scrape against snake shows and sensual hedonism. There may be no riper locale for betrayal and homicide. Between Carrie Coon’s Laurie, Michelle Monaghan’s Jaclyn and Leslie Bibb’s Kate, however, the likeliest death this season may be their lifelong friendship.
There’s no more efficient colonic for your contact list than booking a trip with shared accommodations for you and your pals.
Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie enter their $15,000-a-night villa under the mistaken impression that their annual dinners and infrequent phone check-ins are enough of a bridge to keep their affection alive. Many friendships operate on a similarly low but steady electrical current. It takes spending sustained time with those same people, in bathing suits no less, to realize how far apart you’ve drifted ideologically, or sympathetically.
Wealth has a way of sorting relationships when one friend's opulence brings out lustful envy in the others, the deadly sins most likely to drive daggers into the gut of any platonic bond.
Michelle Monaghan in "The White Lotus" (Fabio Lovino/HBO)Jaclyn is a famous actress paying for everything which, of course, she’s happy to do! She’s in Los Angeles while Laurie works in New York and is on the other side of an ugly divorce. Somewhere in the middle — both geographically and figuratively — is Kate, all smiles about her life in Austin, Texas, and very secretive about her politics. Distant from the judging eyes of people they know and with every thinkable comfort at their fingertips, each drops their guard, just like the other guests.
At first, the ladies are all giggles and clinking wine glasses, celebrating the fact that they’ve finally found time to connect. “You look amazing!” “No, you look amazing!” “You look incredible!” “No, you look incredible. . . ” and so on.
Kate shares that this is their “victory tour,” not the midlife crisis vacation her husband thinks it is, but before they utter a line of dialogue, we can see the divisions.
Laurie’s haircut and off-the-rack fashion are modest compared to Jaclyn and Kate’s chunky gold jewelry and shimmering resort couture. Jaclyn’s heavy gold comedy and drama mask earrings are harbingers of the two-faced backstabbing ahead. They may have launched from the same circumstances but reconnect in their 40s as unequals.
Jaclyn, recognized wherever she goes as a bonafide famous person, hears from wealthy socialite Kate that she is also a celebrity, albeit a local one. Telling her she is just “winning life,” Jaclyn goes on to gush about her multiple homes and beautiful kids and then swivels to Laurie, a midlevel corporate executive, offering only, “Everything you do is just so hard! You’ve always been so impressive, and the corporate world is so tough.”
“Uh huh,” Laurie says weakly, gulping her chardonnay.
Yes, Jaclyn’s all smiles and compliments until a tipsy Laurie retires, giving the others some one-on-one time.
Laurie’s a great friend, and such a hard charger, says Jaclyn, to which an agreeing Kate replies, “She looks great!” A few beats later, she slides in gossiping about Laurie’s menace of a kid and gnarly divorce. Jaclyn guesses her career has stalled out.
“No wonder she looks defeated,” Kate sighs.
Carrie Coon in "The White Lotus" (Fabio Lovino/HBO)“I thought you said she looked great,” Jaclyn counters with a naughty look on her face, and Kate’s grin returns. “Well, uh, she does! But she also looks tired. Don’t you think? A little down?”
“Might be the drinking,” Jaclyn evilly coos. The pair express more venom about their pal before Jaclyn sighs, “I just love her so much!”
Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate are the kinds of women who claim to buy into the O Magazine ethos of a woman having evolved beyond youthful insecurities in midlife. But sharing the attention of their studly Russian health concierge Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius) hurtles them back to being competitive adolescents again.
From the jump, Jaclyn pushes him on Laurie as a possible sexual conquest. She’s the only singleton of the three of them, and what happens in Thailand stays in Thailand. By the fourth episode, they've wrangled Valentin into taking them on a nightlife tour, and Laurie has warmed to the notion of seducing him.
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And yet, when the trio trades the results of their biomarker tests, the Hollywood-toned and tucked Jaclyn is visibly dismayed — but still so positive, love her! — that “tired” Laurie has similar results to hers, including a low body fat percentage. Shortly after they smirk through that exchange, Jaclyn casually reminds Laurie and Kate that she’s married to a man a decade younger than she is.
Since Jaclyn and Kate shared a little midnight gossip about Laurie we can assume, correctly, that Kate and Laurie will rip into Jaclyn about that.
It’s Kate’s turn, at last, brought on by Laurie and Jaclyn uniting in shock to find out that their friend has become a churchgoer. Laurie asks if talking politics with that crowd ever gets awkward, and Kate casually replies, “Why would it?”
The full weight of their friend’s new identity smacks Laurie across the jaw. “Wait, are you a Republican?!”
“No!” Kate says, appearing shocked at the implication, and once her friends relax again, she chirps. “I’m an independent,” before murmuring into her wine glass that her husband is a Republican.
Laurie asks the question on most viewers' minds. “You didn’t vote for Trump, though, did you?” Kate responds with a tight high-wattage grin, smizing like her life depends on it before deflecting with, “Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?”
Being in places where other people are catering to your needs can inspire people who view vacation as a “get out of jail free card” to do and be their worst . . . the core premise of this show.
Mike White writes some version of the awful best friend archetype into each season, but he may have peaked with these three flavors of blonde, stunningly performed by Coon, Monaghan and especially Bibb. Kate’s “it’s no big deal” smirk through her non-confession to going MAGA should be the highlight of her For Your Consideration reel come awards season.
Between the actors' silent conversations and the nuances of envy and backhanded slights White conveys through dialogue, these friends brutally play out the intimacy gap that can doom vintage friendships. That they’re hurtling toward that chasm’s cliff on vacation, however, feels painfully real.
Getaways have a knack for testing relationships. We’ve long known that to be true about romantic pairings, but folks tend to be quieter about cutting off contact with companions with whom you’re otherwise compatible after a miserable trip.
Unfamiliar places bring out everyone’s insecurities, and if the person who has long claimed to have your back doesn’t make you feel safe, that’s a problem. Being in places where other people are catering to your needs can also inspire people who view vacation as a “get out of jail free card” to do and be their worst . . . the core premise of this show.
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An entire subset of TikTok is titled “The Tea on Why Friendships End on Vacations,” where layman advisers explain why this is such a common issue. Most of the people offering their two cents are women in their 20s or 30s, which is about right. That’s the time of life when people may not have defined what vacationing means to them and cling to the importance of doing everything together.
At some point in adulthood, though, spending power becomes something your friends either share so everyone can have a good time, or flex so they can stunt on you. No place is better for bringing that to a head than a tropical destination where the drinks flow freely and there’s a staff available to clean up everyone’s messes.
With four episodes of Season 3 to go, we can’t say for certain that Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate’s weak sisterhood won’t survive this trip. But nobody can blame them if they were to take their next vacations separately — and solo.
New episodes of "The White Lotus" debut 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO and stream on Max.
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