Given what we have seen of Saxon this season, I am not sure he is the kind of guy who would give such a self-aware speech, saying things like, “If I’m not a success, I’m nothing, and I can’t handle being nothing.” (I can, however, believe that Tim would answer his son’s very real concerns with a mumbled, “Nothing’s up, kid. We’re all good. It’s a party, get out there.”)
It’s a tricky balancing act for White, trying to show more than he tells and letting the audience make assumptions. I thought about this also this week during the Bangkok scenes with Rick and Frank. I figured these two were seasoned old pros, skilled at running cons, and that they would know what they were doing when they met up with Sritala and her ailing husband, Jim (Scott Glenn), at the Hollingers’ house. Instead, Rick and Frank are surprisingly — and ridiculously — unprepared. They try to get by on improvisation; Frank in particular is really bad at it.
Sam Rockwell is hilarious here as Frank, pretending to be a big-shot director but struggling to name any of his credits. He claims he mostly makes action films, like “The Enforcer,” “The Executor” and “The Notary.” (That last one is a trilogy.) And while Rick told Sritala that Frank had been watching her old movies, Frank can’t name any of them or remember any of the characters she played. (She was a prostitute, maybe?) Eventually, Rick abandons his friend so he can talk to Jim, leaving Frank to babble ignorantly — albeit appreciatively — at videos of Sritala’s old TV variety show appearances.
If Rick failed to properly prep Frank, it’s probably because he has been so focused on getting in the same room as the man he believes killed his father that he has failed to factor in the feelings of his nearest and dearest. He abandons Chloe at the White Lotus. He abandons Frank at the Hollingers — where this man who had been “trying to lead a better life” copes with his panic and anxiety by falling hard off the wagon.
Do the ends justify the means? Rick’s conversation with Jim is, on the surface, unsatisfying. Jim has no apparent memory of Rick’s mother, and while he has some regrets about mistakes he may have made in building his empire, he seems fairly proud and relatively unapologetic about it all. Unable to bring himself to shoot this weak-looking old man, Rick settles for pushing him to the ground, then fleeing with Frank. Later, Rick watches beatifically as Frank indulges in whiskey, drugs and sex. Is that a satisfied smile on Rick’s face? That is something else White lets us interpret for ourselves.