The new season of a TV show set 9,000 miles away has a plotline that will resonate with everybody in North Carolina. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says it speaks to the power of our state’s fiercest rivalry.
If you’re an avid TV watcher, you’ve probably heard of the show “The White Lotus” on Max. It’s a blend of dark comedy and murder mystery about troubled rich people who try to escape their troubles at a beautiful exotic resort … and fail.
I should note that the show is fiction, in case you were looking forward to seeing real rich people in trouble.
Every season features a new locale and a mostly new cast. This season — season three —is set in Thailand.
You are probably wondering why I’m telling you all this. I’m telling you all this because season three contains something every journalist lovesa — local angle.
You see, one of the troubled rich families in the new season has a problem that not even a five-star resort can solve.
Two of them went to UNC. Two others went to Duke.
The Dukies in the Ratliff family are the husband, Timothy, and the older son, Saxon. I am going to stop right here and award the scriptwriters five stars for naming a Duke grad Saxon.
The Tar Heels are the mother, Victoria, and daughter, Piper. Five stars for that name, too.
In fact, the whole reason they’re at the resort is that Piper is a senior at UNC, majoring in religious studies, and wanted to come to Thailand to interview a monk.
You can find flaming hot discussions online about whether the actors playing the Ratliffs get their Southern accents right. Lots of fans seem to think that actor Jason Isaacs, who plays Timothy, has a better accent than Parker Posey, who plays Victoria. Isaacs is from Liverpool, England. Posey spent most of her childhood in Laurel, Mississippi. (For what it’s worth, I’ve heard a LOT of women who sound like Victoria.)
The larger point is this: I love that even a premium-TV show like “The White Lotus” understands the depth of feeling in the UNC-Duke rivalry.
They’re eight miles apart on the map but a million miles apart culturally. Duke is private, UNC public. UNC draws from all over North Carolina, and Duke draws from all over New Jersey. (I might have just given away which one I root for.) The fans are so close together, they can’t get away from one another. And a few times a year, when they play basketball, all the focus of love and hate and passion focus on one court and two hoops.
The Duke and UNC women’s teams split their two games this season. Duke whipped the UNC men’s team by 17 a few weeks ago in Durham. They play again on Saturday in Chapel Hill. Duke has Cooper Flagg, the best player in the country. UNC is still bathing in the joy of 2022, when they beat coach Mike Krzyzewski in his last home game at Duke, then beat him again in the last game of his career in the Final Four.
I should mention one more thing about “The White Lotus.” There’s a fifth member of the Ratliff family, a high-schooler named Lochlan. It turns out he has been accepted to both Duke and UNC. Here’s how powerful the rivalry is: On a show that features fraud and murder and all kinds of other assorted mayhem, one of the plot points is going to be whether a high-school kid picks the Tar Heels or the Blue Devils.
I haven’t seen Sunday’s episode, so I don’t know if he’s decided yet, but here’s my wish, for dramatic purposes: I hope he picks N.C. State.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
