Nikki Baird
speaker
146 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Nikki Baird’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I think it's also very interesting that this is an age gap couple, which is a very common thing we see in White Lotus. But this is really one of the only times I see an age gap couple that we want... to root for. Like, it's actually very sad what happens to the M in the end.
And it feels like this great tragedy where, like, he was so close to just figuring it out and then it all slipped through his fingertips and then everything went to shit. And, um, not only that, his... And Rick's self-destructive tendencies ended up destroying the people he loved most, which is another thing you see a lot of the time with people who have these issues.
They're spending this entire life in quest of some emotional experience they felt they were denied and they never find. And also another underrated thing I felt was super interesting was Rick and the therapist at the end, how Rick is like really like he's for the first time like excited and willing to talk to this mental health professional.
about the very real trauma and feelings of violence and depression and anxiety he's, like, experiencing. And the one time he meets her, she's not available, which is so interesting. And I don't know if Mike White did this on purpose, but to me, it was almost like a statement on the healthcare system.
I don't know if any of you guys have ever tried to sign up for therapy, but the waitlists are often, like, three months. It is insane. And I say that as, like, a waitlist of three months and I'm somebody who, like, has a job and, like, has insurance and, like, I am very able and privileged to, like, be able to do that and, like, have that as an option to me.
Um, and what scares me, and I've thought about this a lot with just overall, again, like things in, in mental health and healthcare of like how I'm like, if I was really going through something and like needed somebody and was, you know, contemplating self-harm or something like I can't, that person cannot do a three month wait list.
And it is really terrifying to me that we've just like normalized that. And this concept of mental health, especially when these things are so, uh,
urgent and we see how him not being able to have that outlet to express to makes this entire thing blow up and it's when the shooting happens and that I think is a very interesting thing I don't know if that's what the statement was designed to be that's very much the way I interpreted it and I thought it was super interesting another interesting thing too I felt about Rick was like
no matter what happens to him and no matter how much he's going through, he cannot tell the one person who loves him most. He cannot confide in her emotionally in the same way as he can this stranger who's a therapist, as he can one of his old buddies. And this is a very interesting thing.
I think, honestly, a problem I experience, too, when you know that somebody loves you and really loves you unconditionally, you somehow develop this mentality of, like, well, I can't have a genuine, serious conversation with them about this thing because they just love me and they'll be on my side no matter what, which is a very, again, like a very privileged and nice thing to be able to think.
But I have felt this way in the past too, where there's like some people where I'm like, I can't talk to you about this thing because I know you're going to be on my side. And Sometimes I don't want that. But what was so sad about Rick was like, that's all he could do to the point where he couldn't even talk with his girlfriend, the one who loves him most.
And then that makes him have this violent act of rage and all the things start to happen. Another thing, interesting things about this season is Belinda and Zion. Mike White has actually said that the ending with Belinda was one of the first things that he thought of for this season, which I think is why Zion is the opening character.
It's also this thing, this literary device that Mike White loves to use. I think it's called the Chekhov's gun, which is just this idea of, There was a writer named Chekhov who I think popularized what this terminology is in literary terms, but it's like when you introduce something into the scene that you know is going to have significance, but you try to do it very early on to plant the seed
for that big payoff moment, right? So a great example of this in the Chekhov's gun thing would be like, let's say somebody's at a diner and a police officer walks in to get coffee and a donut. And in the writing, it just very briefly mentions that he's like, sets down his keys and his gun on the desk. And just that mention of the gun on the desk, you know, eight chapters later is when
Some robber comes in and picks that gun up and uses it to, you know, shoot the guy or whatever, right? That is what the Chekhov's gun is. In this season, it was the blender. If you watch back to the early episodes, there's a lot of emphasis and conversation. Where's the blender? Why aren't you in my blender? Blah, blah, blah. And it seems, like, useless, right?
And kind of boring until the last episode, you really understand why that blender was so significant, right? Also, again, with the fruit, they talk about this very early on in the beginning. Also, Zion as a character acts as that, right? He's this character that we see at the beginning of the show.
And until we know that, like, okay, when this guy is in the story, that is when the conflict will happen, right? And then when we cut to the beginning and see he's not there, we know we're in the exposition. We know that the climax is far away. And that also means that the episode Zion does show up is where like, oh, things are really heating up.
I think a lot of people that have complaints about this season is that it felt slow in the beginning. Whereas I actually think in order for the season to end as well as it did, a lot of these seeds had to be planted very early on. There had to be a lot of just these big dialogue moments between the three girls fighting. There had to be this showing of Zion as a character only to not show him.
There had to be a lot of scenes of Saxon talking about a blender, right? Like that is what good writing is. It is setting expectation to then defy those expectations. That's how you get a good, exciting moment. And in order to do that, you kind of have to, that's what exposition is. And his story is. So then again, we get to this story with Belinda.
And, you know, I think her entire point of the character, again, is to show this idea of injustice. And we live in an unjust world. And whether it's depressing or not, what happens to her is very accurate. You know, it's not, it's very movie TV show fantasy to be like, oh, always the girl's going to get the big money and the big opportunity. And la-di-da-di-da, she was such a great person.
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