The finale of season one. How did Rio know for sure she wasn’t going to shoot him with his gun? He gave her the fun to shoot who? Him or Dean?
We know when she picked up the gun she told Dean to shut up twice. I believe that’s the first time he framed the question what are you doing Elizabeth.? And used her name that way. He also touched her hair for the first time.Was he testing her feelings for him? So much went on in that scene. 
I think Rio accurately predicted that Beth wouldn't be able to pull the trigger and that the whole thing was orchestrated to show her that although she thought she could beat him, he still held all the power, and that he always would, because she doesn't have what it takes to do what he does—which he proves at the end of the scene when he lulls her into a false sense of security before casually and callously shooting Dean who, from Rio's perspective, has done nothing wrong. His ability to pull the trigger against Dean is not only punishing Beth for her transgression of getting him arrested, but it's punishing Beth because her inability to pull it on Rio lead to him having the opportunity. It also operates to show the contrast between them: she can't fire the gun even when Rio poses an active threat—holding her beaten and bloodied husband captive—but he has no qualms doing it to someone he's got no personal grudge against.
I think it's actually a popular theory that Rio was asking her to shoot either him or Dean, but I've never really read it that way? I think he was daring her to shoot him and only him because he was shaming her for acting as she had the power to put him away, only to realize that she had no power at all.
I don't think Dean factored into Rio's original plans for showing up at the house, but Rio adapted and worked him in and probably even enjoyed that the entire scene likely marred Dean's conception of Beth, not to mention that he had a stand-in to enact violence against instead of her.
As for the hair touch, I think several things go into it! I do think he is genuinely attracted to her by this point, but I don't think the intentions are pure at all. Part of it was a performance of intimacy for Dean, a way to undermine and emasculate him in his own home, and part of it was enjoying the level of power he has over Beth that she still trusts him to lean into his touch despite herself, and part of it is about honey trapping her, which both added more dramatic flair to swerving to pull the trigger and taught her never to let her guard down.
Just seeing how Fitz and Rio treat strangers, Fitz comes across as more dangerous, entitled, and sociopathic, like inflicting violence on random people is normal to him and something he really enjoys. While Rio is dangerous, I've never seen him inflict violence on people (or show cruelty) who he believes don't pose a threat to him. He certainly wouldn't have reacted the way Fitz did with the salmon, I feel like he would've reacted similarly to Beth. I think Fitz is a threat.
Ah, I agree that Fitz is a threat and that the way Rio and Fitz engage with violence is different, but I think we should be careful not to woobify or dismiss Rio’s violence or capacity for violence either. I think that was part of the reason that people found his killing of Lucy OOC although I think the show had established multiple times that Rio generally (with the exception of the girls) ties up what he sees as “loose ends” (even when those loose ends aren’t a serious threat—i.e., he was going to kill the girls in 1.02, despite the fact that they had his money, even if it was in the form of eBay bids, and despite the fact that they also posed no legitimate danger to him; going to the cops would likely put the heat on them for their robbery of Fine and Frugal, and they don’t know who Rio is, either, so they don’t exactly have a lot of information to give anyway).
Rio has inflicted violence against someone that didn’t pose a threat to him. He shot Dean, who didn’t pose a threat to Rio before that point—and even when Dean hired a hitman later, Rio didn’t bother to retaliate, showing how little he sees Dean as a threat even now. Sure, he shot Dean to punish Beth and to make her fall in line, but he still harmed an innocent (in relation to Rio) person for his own means.
On top of that, I’d argue that the show has demonstrated that he enjoys violence too—for instance, he seems to have fun smashing up the car, puts on a performance when he’s got Dean tied to the chair, laughs delightedly when he hands Beth the gun and asks her to shoot him (knowing that he will ultimately shoot Dean), is a bit smug when he makes the call for Mick to kill Lucy, and I read an amused energy in his interaction with Gil, as well.
I agree that Rio wouldn’t assault a chef for cooking a dish incorrectly, but Rio is not exactly morally upstanding in the crimes and violence he chooses to commit, either, even if generally his moral code is something that is easier for us to swallow.
You think Stan and Beth are on good terms in general? I kinda feel like he partially blames her for Ruby getting into all of this trouble/getting shot... (not that I can blame him tbh)
I think this is probably an unpopular opinion, but while I love the Stan-and-Beth-as-BFFs headcanon, I tend to believe that Stan and Beth have been superficially friendly but that they are not really friends.
One, I agree that he feels a lot of anger and likely even blames her for Ruby getting into trouble and then getting hurt. I know we were teased that in season 3 we’d finally figure out how Stan “really feels” about Beth, and then we were all a bit disappointed by how brief the interaction between them when Ruby came home from the hospital—but I actually think that interaction probably shows the distance between them? If they were closer, I think Stan would feel more comfortable confronting her more directly. Stan is honest and not really a man that shies away from expressing his opinions, after all. He’s actually generally very clear and direct about how he feels about a situation, and we’ve seen that with Ruby, Sara, and even Turner. In that sense, I believe he probably keeps his mouth shut in this scene because of how it would impact Ruby, not Beth, and that’s because I suspect it goes deeper than the present situation.
Two, I think about the way that Ruby talks to Stan about Beth and Annie. When Stan wants Ruby to go to the cops and confess in 2.01, this is their conversation:
STAN: So you go in there and you tell them everything. You hear me? All of it. You tell them what you did. How you did it. And who you did it with.
RUBY: You mean Beth and Annie?
STAN: They got DNA. This is over.
RUBY: Beth was my maid of honor.
STAN: Look, nobody said this was going to be pretty and fair, Ruby.
RUBY: I used to babysit Annie!
At this point, Beth and Annie have been a part of Stan’s life for over 20 years and Ruby’s reminding him what Beth and Annie mean to her, not to them.
Then Stan pretty clearly divides a line between “us” and “them” in this scene and the next. First, he makes Ruby confirm that she did it for their family, then tells her to “get it out of it — for us” and when she’s unable to turn Beth and Annie in, he paints her a picture of how many of Sara and Harry’s birthdays she’ll miss while in jail, telling her flippantly: “You think on that when you’re drinking rosé with your besties” [emphasis mine]. When Ruby says that Beth and Annie have kids too, Stan’s speechless, like he can’t imagine that the information even holds much weight in their argument. It seems that Ruby sees the girls as part of her inner circle—her family—but that Stan doesn’t include them in his despite the family’s intertwined histories.
On that note, I think there are a few other things that probably color Stan’s impression of Beth in particular. 1.04 seems to suggest that Stan isn’t particularly fond of Dean and that he just tolerates him. To him, Beth-and-Dean are probably a unit and his feelings about Dean likely also impact his feelings of Beth.
With that, I think that there are even more reasons that Stan’s opinion of Beth is probably complicated. While he and Ruby have been working themselves to the bone for pennies for all these years, Ruby’s best friend has been a white suburban housewife that gets an allowance. Based on Annie’s description of Beth in the pilot of Beth as a “Stepford wife without a pulse,” I really don’t see Beth and Stan having a lot in common particularly as their lives grew to be so different?
On top of that, Beth generally seems like she’d be a hard person to get to know, and she struggles to confide in Ruby, and Stan’s even further removed from that. Add in disparities in wealth status and subtract the intimacy of Beth-and-Ruby’s childhood friendship, and I could easily see how it would be a hurdle for Stan and Beth to really form a strong friendship, particularly because we’ve seen that Ruby really struggles to choose between Beth and Stan, and that’s likely been somewhat of a low-level competition for her attention for a long time (especially because Beth really relies on Ruby for the emotional support that she doesn’t get from Dean).
At this point too, I think they’ve unfortunately established how little crossover there is between the families. The only time all the kids have been in the same scene together is at Kenny’s birthday, even when the kids are just in the background. Although I know that’s probably a decision largely influenced by child labor laws and convenience, at this point, it just is what’s canon: when the girls hang out together, they don’t bring their kids with them.
So before all of this, I think Stan and Beth got along but weren’t particularly close, and the situation probably put a wedge in whatever relationship they did have.
Completely random question. Do you think there’s any symbolism in the fact that Rio‘s S3 gun is a total basic bitch piece, in comparison to his notorious gold gun? He upgraded his car, got his nose pierced, but his gun is significantly less flashy. First I wondered if it’s because it’s smaller and has less kickback, seeing as he was shot in his right shoulder. But maybe it’s a case of bruised ego, bc his gold one always struck me as a bit of a status symbol and then he was shot with it🤷🏽♀️
Okay, SO, this question completely stumped me and I had to mull it over with @mego42 and she’s responsible for, like, 95% of these ideas.
THE GOLDEN GUN
The gold gun was a flashy, attention-drawing status symbol that was used as a sort of shorthand in Rio’s introduction. Combined with how he surprised Beth by showing up at her house and delighted in making a show of it, the gun represents the part of Rio that’s flashy, dramatic, and likes luxury. Gold is symbolic of wealth, success, and status, i.e. Rio in a nutshell. It’s also strongly associated with royalty, which is apt since Rio is “the King.”
The golden gun is fairly prevalent throughout season 1. It’s sitting beside him, untouched, when Beth enters the house in the pilot. He casually uses it to gesture around like it's an extension of him. It sits beside him as a reminder of his threat in 1.02 at Ruby’s diner (but interestingly, it never makes an appearance in the scene where they’re actually set to kill the girls—instead, it’s Mick’s gun). He flashes it to remind Beth of its presence at Kenny’s birthday, puts it to her head in 1.07, and, of course, slides it across the table and dares Beth to shoot him in 1.10. Essentially, in season 1, the gun has power over Beth, despite the fact that we never actually see it used.
In season 2, things begin to shift (and we begin to see the gun less—seeing it only at the beginning, the midpoint, and at the end). In 2.01, Rio takes the gun back from Beth when she fails, unable to use it—and then he re-establishes his power at his weakest point (after the arrest) by using it to shoot Dean.
Theoretically, the gun is present in a lot more scenes that we don’t have access to—it likely had a role in Rio teaching Beth how to shoot (though she likely learned to shoot on the pearl-handled gun that Rio loaned her to take care of Boomer), it may have featured in both the sex scenes in 2.04 and 2.09 (since it’s implied Rio usually has it on him), and it was likely utilized in the drug den when he retrieved the dubby in 2.07. But mostly, we don’t see it—at least until 2.06, when Beth steals the pills and Rio shows up in her backyard and it hangs, impotent, between his legs.
He quickly proves Beth right—that he won’t hurt her—when he strides halfway across the lawn and the gun hangs loosely by his side while his other, free hand twitches in agitation. It’s only when he’s unable to get Beth to budge and answer his question that he finally tries to use it to remind her of his power—but it doesn’t matter; Beth had already established prior to this scene in her conversation with Annie and Ruby that she wasn’t afraid of the gun (and by extension, of Rio). Rio can’t even maintain the facade within the scene; when Beth challenges him and reiterates his need for her, Rio seems to subconsciously lower the gun even while he’s glaring at her, jaw working, and telling her that she isn’t special:
He then hides the gun as soon as Dean and Emma come out, and Beth handwaves away its use against her, excusing its use as Rio being “upset.” Later, in their negotiation scene, Rio doesn’t use the gun at all, and Beth strongarms 50% of Rio’s profits. I think from this point on, Rio knows he can’t use it against Beth and so he doesn’t even try—to do so would only be to underscore its ineffectiveness.
We next see it in 2.13 when Rio hands Beth his own gun, as @elixir448 points out—pointing towards himself—and tells her to shoot Turner. It’s interesting that Rio gives Beth his own gun in this moment, particularly as the whole seems to have been planned in advance and he likely had time to procure another gun for her to use. I’m not entirely sure of his motive here on a character-level as opposed to a show-level (where it becomes important that he’s betrayed by his own gun).
@mego42 pointed out that there’s a “layer of artifice” between Beth and Rio throughout season 2, and that the gold gun has a role in that. It’s a flashy distraction piece and its bark is bigger than its bite, as shown in 2.06. Perhaps Rio wanted to remind Beth of the gun’s power (and his power over her) by forcing her to make this move before she was ready with his own piece. Either way, the artifice falls away and the gun does become powerful again—only its when Beth recognizes the ways that Rio has manipulated her throughout the season and instead turns it on him instead of Turner, effectively upending their power dynamic wherein Rio is the one in control all of the time.
The scene ends, of course, with Rio bleeding out on the floor and Turner telling Beth “gimme the gun,” leaving Turner with all the power.
That leads us to the silver gun.
THE SILVER GUN
Season 3 starts out with Turner effectively “in control” of Rio. He’s locked up in a hotel room unable to see his family and unable to run his business. Still, though, Rio’s actually the one with the power, aptly summed up in Turner’s description of the “tank killer” model plane Rio’s building:
Despite the fact that Rio’s down an appendage, he’s calling the shots: he’s got Turner taking care of his competition and he’s organized a successful hit on Turner (and other FBI members) behind-the-scenes—theoretically without getting his own hands dirty. He walks away scot-free, but he still doesn’t have his gun, which was last seen in Turner’s possession.
Instead, he gets this rather basic silver piece...
...which Beth can’t take her eyes off of:
Suddenly, Rio’s gun has power again, even though he’s less physically aggressive with it than he was in both seasons 1 and 2. It’s pointing at her, sure, but he’s not touching her and his finger isn’t even on the trigger.
But unlike in 2.06, Beth immediately capitulates and gives Rio what he wants—even when he takes his hand off the gun entirely.
It’s not until Rio explicitly tells her that he needs her alive that Beth releases a breath and relaxes.
But why the switch from such an ostentatious piece to a plain one?
Meg’s theory is—and I agree with her—that replacing the golden gun with another flashy gun would be Rio admitting that Beth (and Turner) effectively took something that was important to him. Instead, Rio gets a gun that doesn’t communicate anything besides the power of a gun. The artifice is stripped away, and what’s left is the raw truth. It’s a gun with a real capacity for violence—with no need for flashiness to underscore that message.
THE G-WAGON
Rio does however choose to invest in a different status symbol: the $130K sharp-edged and domineering Mercedes G-Wagen, leveling up from the more subtle, sleek, and classy Cadillac—a somewhat odd move because while Rio has to replace the gun, theoretically the Caddy should still be in his possession and usable. The car switch, however, is one of the first things that Rio does upon his release from the hotel room. He has it before he even visits his son.
My theory is that the G-Wagon is Rio’s way of flaunting his financial security, prior success, and strength. Basically, it says that although he’s been out of the game for two months and at his most vulnerable, he’s been minimally impacted—he can still afford to lay down all this money for something unnecessary. It may even be a form of overcompensating, camouflaging that he is hurting (as he does later tell Beth that he has debts—although what exactly those debts are is still currently unclear).
I think it’s notable, too, that the G-Wagon isn’t really a part of his business. The car is a loud statement piece (and maybe the bling of the nose ring is too) but I do think that professionally, he’s lying lower than he is personally—and the G-Wagon does seem to be used in his personal life, considering we do see him use it to drive to Rhea’s and see Marcus.
THE BAR
Which brings me to the bar. I remember it being a point of conversation that Rio’s bar was a rather boring set and that it didn’t even necessarily seem to match Rio’s aesthetic. It’s small, fairly plain, and there’s nothing particularly distinguishable about it.
Obviously, the bar is one of Rio’s legitimate incoming streams of money, but coupled with the fact that Rio’s washing cash through car washes and relying heavily on Beth’s small counterfeiting operation, I think it’s a fairly safe assumption that Rio is lying low professionally—or at least lower than he was. This is likely the effects of his arrest and also the fact that he’s probably not trying to draw too much attention to himself after Turner’s hit and his orchestration of taking out the rival gangs. Although both things are beneficial to Rio getting back on top, he explicitly tells us that he has debts (that he’s struggling to pay) and we can assume he’s still feeling the effects of the shooting (as I’ve mentioned before, I think Rio is less physically imposing and that his movements are less dynamic and fluid than they were in seasons 1 and 2).
Basically, although Rio is more dangerous to Beth and while he is still powerful, he’s behaving a bit more carefully about exhibiting and demonstrating that power to the larger crime world. His status was likely affected by his arrest, trial, and extended absence, so he’s still vulnerable and he needs to be careful about the moves he makes.
I think the gun and the bar show the ways that he’s making some different moves professionally, while the G-Wagon shows that he’s not entirely giving up demonstrating his status.
