When some people, like me, spend more time deciphering the MacGuffin of The White Lotus, which is the murder that opens each season, Mike White comes along. He reminds us of his sharp ability to portray the world as it is through bland-faced characters, even distant, but so real around the world.

In the 1st season, the acidity and irritating millennial snobbery of Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady) blew our minds; in the 2nd, the purposeful alienation of Daphne Sullivan (Meghann Fahy) who pretended to be silly, leaving the very connected Harper Spiller (Audrey Plaza) in a bad mood. Now, the trio of rich blondes, Kate Bohr (Leslie Bibb), Laurie Duffy (Carrie Coon), and Jaclyn Lemon (Michele Monaghan), the three “longtime friends” – never say “old” friends – who have been the talk of the town ever since they brought politics to the table.

Yes, I know everyone is rooting for the disgusting Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) to be the body floating in the lake, but today it’s about the women. As some have called them, the “Sex and the City representatives of reality”, or, even more accurately, the muses of MAGA (the American conservative term that is Donald Trump’s mantra: make America great again).

Three rich blondes, with a friendly exterior but internally complexes, wouldn’t necessarily be the international anchor of the season, but who hasn’t been with friends or relatives pretending that everything is fine until elections or religious views come up? The sequence in which Laurie and Jaclyn “discover” that Laurie is now religious and a Trump voter is already one of the best in the franchise. Even we choked up at home watching it.

“Are we really going to talk about Trump tonight?” Laurie cut off her “friends’” criticisms with violent smoothness, veiledly drawing the line at what she would accept hearing from them. Just swap Trump for “you know who” or “he who must not be named,” and we’ll be represented in Thailand. Up until now, the name of the current American president was taboo in The White Lotus, even though a good portion of the guests at the fictional hotel chain were his voters.

So, in an episode last week in which it seemed like very little happened (I for one am fixated on the downfall of Greg/Gary (Jon Gries), but I also kept thinking about the trio), even though the most popular character of the hour, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) had a second brush with death, or Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) is aware that his life is over and that he will be arrested, the fact that the MAGA reality entered the circuit nominally was the biggest change in the series so far.

If we go back to the mystery of “who will die” and “who will kill” that opens each season, I wouldn’t put Kate, Jaclyn or Laurie at the top of the list, but what if they freak out and go shooting around the hotel after confronting each other about all the gossip they’ve been spreading behind each other’s backs?

The tension between the three representatives of the American elite is undeniable, and it’s like escapist trips where three virtual strangers with intimate relationships try to navigate uncertain terrain. Paula and Olivia were friends, but Paula felt like she was being shown off as the pet of the “woke” (another important term that is the hypocrisy of radical liberals) Olivia. Daphne would be Kate’s best friend in the blind faith of keeping up appearances of everything being magical and beautiful, super aware of everything around her, but acting dumb, while Harper would be comfortable with Laurie (I don’t know if anyone would identify with Jaclyn, the “famous” woman who doesn’t have a role in the corporate world). I’ll take this opportunity to bring up Nicole Mossbacher (Connie Britton), the millionaire entrepreneur and Olivia’s mother, who would also be alongside Harper and Laurie in this team of guests at the White Lotus.

All of them, except Paula, are rich white people who use it as a privilege to exclude people or problems during a season in an exotic place that only brings out the worst in them. Mike White’s genius is to present, develop, and explore them in a colloquial, almost expressionless way, to highlight all the conflicts and problems of global society in the 21st century. It is brutal, empathetic, satirical, and realistic at the same time.

The ticking time bomb of the three friends is particularly tense because they are women in their 50s, not young like Paula and Olivia; mere companions like Harper and Daphne, who were in Italy only because their husbands were friends and wanted to meet up; or even Nicole, who is their age but was traveling with her husband and children. Laurie, Jaclyn, and Kate are alone for some “girl time,” and it looks like it won’t have a happy ending.

Jaclyn’s career is not mentioned, but she is a “TV actress” married to a much younger man, which implies that her facade is not very effective. She is always encouraging Laurie, her only official friend, who is single after a painful divorce, having an affair with the Russian hotel employee Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius), with an obvious insistence that if she could, she would be doing that or more. The lawyer, who prefers a drink, has refused to engage and is irritated by the insistence of the agenda.

But even though they are different, Laurie and Jaclyn are on the same wavelength. It is with Kate, now openly conservative in everything, that the disagreement is, but she is also the one who determines how the three relate. Who is the real queen bee here? Remembering Mean Girls, Jaclyn is officially the Regina George of the three, but it is Kate who is on the verge of a breakdown of being a supporting character. She likes to remind herself that she is richer or at least as rich as her famous friend and that she has morals and social commitment, as if her friends did not. This really won’t work…

And the one who has particularly shone among them is Leslie Bibb, in a performance so strong that Emmy is already starting to talk. Her tone of voice that doesn’t hide her feelings, her smile that is like a knife, and her haughtiness when being massacred by her friends are a show of perfection. I saw several Kates represented there in a heartbeat.

According to Michele Monaghan, the showrunner wrote the three friends to show people whose toxic positivity is a facade more identifiable than their physical attributes, in this case, rich and blonde women. For the actress, what the audience is appreciating is precisely how White managed to translate what is in all cultures: the female conditioning to compare and judge each other, question choices, and use as a basis for comparison the failures or successes of other women. “There is a specifically feminized way of washing away the cruelest impulses through the kindest language,” she said in the series’ podcast.

Michele also laughs that the audience is in a love-hate relationship with the friends, trying to figure out if they resemble one or the other. And there is something deeper in their attempt to reunite: throughout life, are your childhood friends really your best friends because they met you “before life happened,” or are they memories of who you still wanted to be and are no longer?

When Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie start talking about nostalgia, not everything is aligned: what for one is a fun memory has been forgotten by the other, and the third is ashamed. Do you realize how there is no recovery of what once was?

What unites them at the moment is what they avoid talking about: their lives are empty. Laurie because her self-esteem is shaken by the divorce; Jaclyn because she is in a fake relationship and yearns for something carnal and inconsequential; and Kate because she has substance and comfort, but does not have a fascinating life like her friends. They know this as much as we know about them. But with three episodes to go, there is still more to come to light. Before a body is left floating in the lake…

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