I have mixed thoughts, but I am on the side of liking this season overall. I’ll certainly watch a fourth season. I had some issues with season 2 as well, but saw nothing but praise for that season. I think that feedback loop may have led to the bigger-is-better mindset behind season 3 (seriously there are like 90 characters). I’ve seen a little more criticism toward this season and I’m hopeful we might get some course correction out of it. For me, season 1 is still the strongest. Season 2 lacked season 1’s bite, season 3 had the bite but lacked the cohesion.
Watching the season finale was one of the most stressful TV-viewing experiences I’ve ever had, so that speaks to how invested I was.
I think the easiest way to talk about the show is to power-rank the plotlines. I’ll just blur the whole thing to be safe:
The storyline that I felt was the strongest was the three women (MAGA, Actress, and Carrie Coon, as the internet has named them). It’s been apparent for some time now that Mike White’s greatest strength seems to be writing women, and so this was just a feast. Other storylines got repetitive quickly but running counter to that, I could watch these women gossip about each other for the entire show (which kinda surprised me because I have a visceral aversion to Real Housewives). I also liked the exploration of how friendship can be scary, especially as we age, because our friends see our real vulnerabilities.
The Ratliffs kinda-sorta worked…? For a while, at least. They’re entertaining. The patriarch and matriarch were both way too stagnant. Both are great actors and equipped to give us more. I feel like with Parker Posey’s character specifically, we got the quirky quotable-ness of Coolidge’s Tanya, but without the emotional heft. For a show obsessed with chekhov’s guns, I feel a little conned out of not seeing the family’s reaction to becoming poor.
Saxon’s storyline feels the most complete, which it should because I feel like he got 4 hours of the 8.5 hour runtime of the show. That being said, while I don’t expect a person to undergo a super dramatic change in a week, it’s still pretty nebulous what the change he experienced was, other, than, y’know:
Piper’s storyline makes perfect sense, and her line about being able to tell the food wasn’t organic got a laugh out of me. I can’t hate on it because the way she talks about the Buddhist monastery is pretty much the same way I talk about the entire east coast of The United States.
Lochlan… idk that was quite a ride. And I really enjoyed his parts of the show, but given that his storyline was set up to be along the lines of “is he gonna be more like the men or the women in his family? Duke or UNC?” etc. I feel a little robbed of any sort of clarity on that. I not only don’t know where he ends up but I also don’t know if he feels like he found a resolution. I liked the dreamy ocean sequence.
Belinda was fun to see again. I also really like Natasha Rothwell from Insecure. Her storyline is functional but it feels rushed. I kept having questions about how we were getting from point A to point B. Why did you give up on the greg/gary thing after the hotel manager brushed you off? Why are you never in fear for your life?? Her scumbagging Pornchai is rough, maybe a little predictable, but works. The low point of this plot for me is Zion. Not sure what else to say about him, just really didn’t work for me.
I think the two standout acting performances of the season are Aimee Lou-Wood and Walton Goggins. We can throw Sam Rockwell in there, too. I think this is the case of very talented actors selling a mediocre plot. Like you pointed out, it felt very cliched by the end. Plus, the whole thing is built on pretty tenuous foundation - we know that man “killed [his] father” and “ruined [his] life” but… how? We don’t really get the backstory we need to build on that. Chelsea is up there as far as favorite characters from the season go, but she’s a bit of a bodhisattva (I had to look that word up), not really changing much since she’s relatively enlightened, mostly there for the service of other plots. Ultimately, while their scenes were some of the most enjoyable bits of the show for me, I’m not quite sure what this plot is supposed to be or supposed to say. When they died in the shape of a yin yang
Completely gagged to see Greg/Gary again, but sadly that initial reveal is kinda the high water mark for this plotline. He has to be there for the Belinda plot, but I grew more and more skeptical of his presence as the show went on. I’m especially skeptical after the storyline culminated in… not much. Chloe was fun
Sritala + Fabian. LOVE the representation of one of the core truths of the universe: older Asian women all have immaculate taste in watches. She was always fun when she popped up. Fabian is also okay. They’re both pretty flat characters. I think the absence of a strong hotel manager character ala Armond/Valentina is felt throughout. That center could’ve helped ground a lot of the storylines but instead it seems like each party had their own designated hotel staff to interact with (The women with Valentin, the Ratliff’s with Pam) and we never crossed streams.
Those Russians. Wait, wut? They just… get away with it? That feels… bad. Esp since it kinda runs counter to the Hawaii season where one of the guiding principles is that poors can never get away with bad behavior. On a positive note, Valentin is hot and I would do what Jaclyn did.
Mook and Gaitok… Look it’s cool that we got the kpop stans watching and such, but… oof. Really dull a lot of the time. So repetitive. Yet, at the same time, unmemorable.
Overall, it felt like too many plates for the show to keep spinning