Hey! I have a question about the pilot. Do you think Beth was open with Ruby and Annie about the state of her marriage? In that scene of the three of them talking about Dean possibly cheating Ruby says "ain't nobody want Dean". If Beth never opened up to them about how bad her marriage was, don't you think that would be an incredibly rude thing for someone to say to their best friend? Love your blog by the way :)
That’s a great question!
I think Annie and Ruby had a sense of what Beth’s dynamic with Dean was from a combination of observation and Beth confiding some details but not others. For instance, Beth freely shared (and defends!) Dean’s choice to get Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons for their anniversary. She’s also open about Dean giving her an allowance and she takes Annie with her to discover whether Dean is having an affair and then immediately confides in Ruby. 2.04 also shows that Beth’s been pretty open about the various flimsy excuses Dean’s given to justify when his business is struggling.
In that sense, Annie and Ruby definitely seem to know what type of person Dean is, and both of them rib her about him—Ruby saying “ain’t nobody want Dean” and Annie saying “not to pile on, but look who you married!”
But we also know Beth hides things: only Annie knew Beth and Dean hadn’t had sex since the birth of their youngest. We never see her tell Annie or Ruby that Dean’s cancer was a lie, and Ruby has to pry in 2.03 to ask, “So is Dean good with you now?” The more that their relationship fractures an the more that Beth and Dean ignore it, the less she confides in others about him and their relationship.
I’d argue that Annie and Ruby are a bit insensitive and rude in the sense that they’re not exactly gentle in expressing how they feel about Dean—but the way they freely criticize him gives us a sense of who Dean is, the familiarity of the relationship between the girls, and the understanding that Beth’s not oblivious to what kind of person he is even if she has ultimately chosen to stay with him (her retort to Annie is that “marriage is hard”). Additionally, Ruby’s comment, although blunt, is intended to reassure Beth that Dean is still faithful to her. It’s definitely insensitive as it’s also insulting to Beth since she’s chosen Dean, but I think Annie and Ruby’s disdain from Dean definitely stems from the ways that they see him treat someone they care about.
When Beth saw Rio in the warehouse in the first season, something seemed to shift between them in that scene. What do you think she was thinking in that moment? And do you think he was attracted to her that early on?
Ahhh, I love this question!
So, I need to analyze two things at once here, simultaneously to be able to talk about what Beth is thinking in that moment: what’s happened so far in the series in Beth and Dean’s relationship, and in Beth and Rio’s interactions.
So in the pilot, we see:
Beth is much more upset by Dean’s financial missteps than the fact that he stepped outside of his marriage. His bad investment led to bad loans led to unpaid mortgages which led to… Dean doing absolutely nothing to change this reality. Beth finally has solid evidence she can’t ignore that Dean has failed—has been failing—his family for years. She realizes this to the point that, as soon as she is financially capable, she is immediately fed up with their twenty-year power imbalance and kicks him to the curb. It’s significant that she doesn’t once mention Amber while she’s kicking him out—she just demands the passwords to the accounts and tells him she handled the mortgage because he “couldn’t.” Amber wasn’t the reason Beth and Dean’s marriage fell apart—any more than the other “three” are (how much does it say that Beth doesn’t even seem to wonder at this point if Dean has slept with other women?). Anyway, Amber is just the trigger point for Beth discovering how impotent Dean is—in every possible way.
That all of that happens before Beth meets Rio. She’s already emotionally done with her husband—she has been. It was confirmed in their very first interaction when he says “Love you” and, after telling each of her four children she loved them, she says, “Tuna fish. Keep it in the fridge.” That was us seeing them at their best. Everything that happens next with Rio—from this to 2x09—is a logical extension of Beth being emotionally and physically separated from Dean as a starting point for her character arc.
Beth reacts to Rio with absolute terror—and that goes far beyond the scream. When Rio first breaks into her house, Beth hides how frightened she is much better than Annie and Ruby, but she still swallows thickly when he finally leaves and then immediately removes her kids from her house in order to protect them from him (by the way, how long does it take for Beth to stop keeping her children as physically far away from Rio as possible?)
In Mo Money Mo Problems:
Beth chides Dean for admitting he misses her after two days, saying “Kenny goes to sleep away camper for longer. Let’s keep it together.”
She also starts reasserting her independence, insisting she can push a mower and figure out the satellite TV. She no longer sees Dean as a provider financially, emotionally, or even physically. His role in her life has completely been eradicated. Within the same day, she sells her wedding ring—which she only hesitates in selling because it was his great-great-grandmother’s. She’s convinced by the saleslady when she asks, “How much do you hate him?”
Meanwhile, Rio is still an incredibly ominous figure in her life. Now he appears at Ruby’s work, swinging his gun around in public.
Then, importantly, Dean screws up Beth’s plan to steal the money to pay Rio back by ignoring her insistence that she can mow the lawn. In the middle of their burglary, she rushes back home to stop Dean from discovering Boomer tied up in her tree house. Beth tells the girls that she “choked” and “couldn’t” rob Marian, but we never actually see her hesitate—we see her gleefully discover the money only to be interrupted by a phone call with the babysitter. Now, I don’t buy that Beth is too concerned with Dean’s opinion of her—possibly only of his ability to try and take her kids away from her. We already know Beth is cold—we just saw her sell a wedding ring of sentimental value! Now we’re supposed to believe she wouldn’t rob a stranger? No way! Dean is such an embarrassment and a liability to Beth that she can’t even admit to the girls why she has to go in such a hurry.
When Rio reappears, the camera immediately pans to Beth’s reaction to Rio destroying Hans—not Annie’s, although she had been the one introducing and displaying the figurine to him. Beth’s scared in this scene. It’s one of the few times we see her cry—barely!—in a series where girl has gone through some shit!
In the last scene, Beth’s still scared of him. She yells at Kenny to go inside to get away from him, and then she stands between Rio and the house, in mama bear mode. She backs away as Rio approaches her. She lets down her guard—barely—as he asks her about the passports.
All that’s to say: by the time she sees Rio in the warehouse, she’s become painfully aware of her husband’s powerlessness and incompetency, and acutely afraid of Rio and his power over her physically and financially (remember, she’s essentially destitute once her interactions with Rio are complete).
Beth’s afraid to enter the warehouse after their jaunt to Canada. She steels herself before driving in, saying, “Okay. Okay.” When she first exits the car, she fidgets, pulling her coat tighter, smoothing her hands down her jacket, and then, finally, holding her own hands—until her eyes dart back and forth and she takes in the scope and depth of Rio’s operation. Like, immediately upon entering, she sees about 13-15 people that aren’t the two people he’s dropped by with so far.
He’s got unloaders, wrappers, dyers, dryers, hangers, blue-lighters, slicers, counters, bundlers—not to mention the mysterious man in the suit who is taking orders! My god, this place is a fortress, and he’s the boss—and honestly, did he even need them to do that job for him? Look how comparatively little they bring to the table!
Beth is, at this point, already free of Dean in every way except legally. But this is the moment where she’s about to become free of Rio and his hold over her. Because of this, she demands his attention. She refuses to live in fear of his returning, for him to have any kind of power over her life. Importantly, he’s discussing business while this happens: standing his ground, refusing to budge, insisting on a renegotiation. He’s actually running his business, while Dean is driving his into the ground. Beth still has a healthy fear of him here (she has to build up her confidence—in front of him—to be able to gain his undivided attention) but we’ve also seen her develop a sense of awe and respect for his ability to command a room, to run a business.
That’s what I think she’s thinking about in that scene: how fundamentally different he is from her husband. Do I think she’s attracted to him in this scene? Yes! Do I think she realizes it on any level? No! She’s too wrapped up in establishing who she independently to really be very conscious of how handsome he is right now.
Beth returns to the warehouse to find him immediately after one last interaction with Dean: he comes to her house, even though he’s kicked out, and rifles through her fridge, asking to steal some of the food because he’s getting tired of eating “the hotel vending machine” (the man can’t even feed himself—I mean, my god). Then, he proposes that they stay together on a purely practical, financial level. He’s basically signally to her, “I will never be able to take care of even myself, let alone you!” Honestly, he tries to save his marriage by talking about the sewer bill, of all things. Beth, offended, remarks that he sucks at wooing her—and Dean admits to not even trying to woo her. He’s begging her, he says. Can the man look more powerless? Then he basically says they need to stay together because they “don’t have a choice” (i.e., Dean says he doesn’t know how to fix problems) and then Beth insists, “There’s always a choice.”
That’s the last thing she says before she leaves the pearls—a likely gift from her husband that she exchanges for the opportunity to be able to commit to the choice of leaving him!
I mean, if Amber is the trigger point for Beth finding out about the financial woes that led to her leaving him, then Rio is the trigger point for Beth making the conscious choice to make that permanent.
I think it’s important that Beth isn’t aware of her interest in Rio yet, here. Before anything else, he represents opportunity and power to her. He represents freedom and independence and agency. He’s just a vehicle for her to be able to pursue these things. After she feels more comfortably established in those areas, even temporarily, she starts to visibly show that she’s developing an attraction to him—laughing while she says his name, exasperatedly berating him for bringing a gun to her party, sputtering when he suggests telling the FBI that they’re fucking.
As for your other question: Rio, I think, is aware of his general attraction to her the moment he first sees her—probably even before (I mean, he rifled through her photographs, right? How could he not?). But I think that it was a dull attraction, as much as he would feel toward any beautiful woman, and it didn’t affect him significantly.
He becomes genuinely intrigued by her when she gives the P.F. Changs speech (he tells her he can’t stop thinking about it!) and becomes genuinely attracted to her when she acts high and mighty enough in the warehouse to insist upon his giving her his full attention (I mean, funnily enough, I get some Mr. Collins trying to introduce himself to Mr Darcy vibes here—she just ignores all social convention and acts like she’s got a right to his focus!).
So, yeah, I think something shifted here: I think Rio decided he wanted to get her into bed somehow, some way, some time, and I think Beth learned that, while she went in with the intention of hoping to never have to see him again, she went out with the idea that he could be a means to her freedom, if she felt she needed it—and she follows up on that almost immediately.
