#2.09 analysis

[foxmagpie]

First off, I’ve just read ‘Better Underwater’ and it’s pure perfection. I love the cute backstory. 😍 So, I’m currently rewatching season 2 and I was wondering what you think Rio was expecting to happen when he followed Beth to the bathroom in 2.04.

Thinking about their conversation in the car in season 1 where he told her to tell the police he was hitting it and her flustered and prudish reaction to it, I just can’t believe he thought she wanted to hook up. In a dirty bar bathroom, at that. I’m not sure if you’ve already addressed this. If so, just ignore me. 😅

(this ask is so old, im v sorry, but tysm and i'm glad you enjoyed it!)

as for your question, i've always interpreted it to be that he highly suspected, but didn't really believe he could be right until beth locked the door. even then, i think he was still shocked when she turned back around (not kissing him) and lifted up her dress.

i think this for a few reasons:

beth went to a place she suspected he'd be at because he'd already invited her there, but didn't seem to have contacted him to meet up. the place and timing was also unusual - it wasn't on two separate park benches in the daylight or in a back alley where nobody could see them, but in the middle of a crowded bar when he was out to be social. so i think he put the pieces together that it wasn't about work and it was therefore personal - and rio was dialed in and frankly just waiting to their sexual tension to break between them.

beyond that, i think the fact that rio knows that he's been invited to follow her to the bathroom - to even try the lock and find it open for him! - indicates that he was correctly reading the signals. typically a bathroom would be a place to find reprieve and privacy in a bar.

lastly, i think rio's choice not to speak - not to ask beth what she wanted or why she was there - was because he knew how fragile the moment was and wanted to see what would happen without his interference. rio's a man of few words, but he also typically likes to get to the point so he can smoke bomb out of there, and here was dead silent, waiting.

i think it's the same (but more complicated and layered) when she invites him back to her place in 2.09. he knows, but he doesn't entirely believe he's right, and that seems to be the case right up until the moment she closes the door and starts taking off her shoes and her coat.

imo, beth's unpredictability is something that fascinates him and keeps him hooked on her. in business, he finds it can be both advantageous as much as it can be disastrous, but in romance and their personal relationship, he seems to find it completely fascinating because he's always straddling a line of what he knows (that she's attracted to him, that she implicitly trusts him, that she blooms under his attention) and what he can never seem to put his finger on (for instance: how, exactly, to get her into bed, what the effect of prompting her jealousy will be, what she ultimately wants the two of them to be). rio seems like he has the upper hand because he's had more experience and he's her boss that has literally threatened her life and shot her husband, but in their intimate relationship, it's actually beth that holds the cards - partially because he lets her, and partially because she's just so elusive and unpredictable and, i believe, unusual in the sense that she has incredible levels of self-denial. frankly, i think rio's used to getting whichever woman he's interested in, and he's completely flummoxed that this isn't the case with beth, and he doesn't know why because he does know she's interested.

their lack of communication is an absolute curse for both of them, but they really do seem to like the game too much to ever give it up.

[foxmagpie]

Now that you’ve answered the bathroom break question I’m curious if you have any head canons about the bedroom scene? Please share you head canons with us. They’re always the best. Also, how do you think the s*x was? Same as in the bathroom or more slow and gentle?

i could daydream about my bedroom break headcanons forever ❤️ here's the ones that i can remember off the top of my head right now:

they drove separately to beth's house and beth was a nervous wreck and rio thought it was a hook-up but he also kept trying to quash his expectations because beth had already given him so many curveballs

rio was still into the game of making her come to him until she finally did and she kissed him and then he wanted to drop it immediately and he did when he just went full throttle and kissed her like he wanted to

he wanted to keep kissing her and was content to take things slow but she was too nervous to let it build so she went to undressing him immediately

he slowed her down, though

he maybe let her unbutton his shirt and get off his undershirt, but if she moved towards her own clothes, he grabbed her wrists gently and murmured something about taking their time

they still didn't talk much, but it wasn't as taboo like it was in the bathroom break. it's moreso that words failed them—at least at first.

rio relished the foreplay this time and beth was tense and nervous at first but he relaxed her with his lips, with quiet compliments as he kissed down her body.

he went down on her and it was the best head beth had ever gotten and it was good enough to make her forget—for a moment—that this was the end.

the sex was slow and tender at first, but very intense. personally i ascribe to believing that it was missionary (with modifications to increase the intensity and closeness) and eye-contact heavy.

beth couldn't stop touching him. once that dam broke and she allowed herself to explore his shoulders, his jaw, his skin—she couldn't stop. it was the last time, and she was going to get her fill.

my most controversial opinion is that i don't think they went more than one round. i think the foreplay just lasted an extraordinarily long time and that the sex was drawn out as well.

at least once—even if it was very quietly—she moaned his name, breathy and desperate—right into his ear.

i don't think beth could handle more than one round emotionally. i think it was already so hard for her to cut it off that the break would be too much of a cool down for her. she'd get into her own head.

she did hesitate between the end and putting on her robe, though, just letting herself steal those last few moments before she pulled up the drawbridge and isolated herself from him (and her emotions).

they didn't cuddle, exactly. but maybe rio kissed her after finishing, long and deep, and beth allowed it, and then he rolled off her and posted up in that lounging, comfortable position while she lied there, catching her breath, steeling herself for what came next.

[foxmagpie]

If you could change the “break up “ scene in 2x09 would you? if so how would you change it?

You know, at first my answer to this was "nothing," because I really do love all of it. It's peak angst, AKA my favorite.

I love that we jumped from the kiss to the aftermath and how the sex was so intimate that it was even withheld from the audience.

I love the way it's framed, with Beth and Rio on opposite sides of the bed, in opposite moods, her closing herself off to him by tying off her robe, him lounging half-naked in post-coital bliss, completely at home in her bed.

I love Rio in his necklace that he kept on but otherwise keeps tucked underneath his shirt, private and just for him—but now something Beth knows about, too.

I love the way she hasn't paid him yet and the way he's already promising to help her the next day because he's in such a good mood.

I love the way she can barely look at him but how she forces herself to anyway. I even love how callous she is because she needs it to be the end, because if there's a single loose thread, she's not going to be able to stop herself from going back to crime, to him. And if she isn't harsh, she knows he'll come back to her, and she won't be able to resist.

I even—controversially—wouldn't change her leaving the money on the nightstand because I love that Rio teases her to expose that he knew the lie was a ruse to get him into bed, and that it confirms that this wasn't a plan, but Beth desperately clinging to one last moment with him, needing to say goodbye but not knowing how to, instead just letting go to wordlessly express what she never could in any other circumstance. I love the juxtaposition of how harsh leaving the money looks visually with how much it's contrasted to how Beth feels emotionally, even if she keeps it all guarded—and I think Rio knows what they just had was real, and that visual cue doesn't change that for him at all.

I love that she can't watch him leave, and that the camera allows us to see Rio's face as he processes it.

And I wouldn't change that they break up, either, tbh. That paradox of them only being able to be as vulnerable with each other as they are because it's the end is something that destroys me in the best possible way. On top of that, while their feelings were honest, there was such a stark power imbalance between them with Rio's duplicities and setting Beth up while she was so powerless. Anything they had moving forward at the 2.09 would've been tainted by that, so I think it was important that they came together and exploded apart like that—and that they didn't come back together again, not truly, until every last secret was exposed.

But! After a lot of thinking, I did come up with one teeny tiny thing that I would change. I wish that the camera shot didn't just pan from the foot of the bed, but the floor. I'd have liked to see their rumpled clothes strewn across the room for no other reason than that it would please me (and maybe tell a visual story of their undressing of each other).

[foxmagpie]

In the 20 question scene when Rio asks Beth do you want it? Is it obvious what he’s asking because he has said ambiguous things before so my question is, is he asking her if she wants to fuck him? 

I think the line is intentionally ambiguous! I think he literally means “do you want [the last question]” but I think he purposefully phrases it in such a way (with the slow closing of the gap and gravelly voice to match) that it forces Beth to ask herself the question of whether she wants him—mostly so she has to face that truth right before he rejects her and kicks her out like she did to him.

He’s still stung from her dumping him, but he has the power in the scene in multiple ways: he’s caught her red-handed, he’s blackmailing her with a dead body, and he’s forced her back into crime. He also knows what he’s about to do (tell her to leave when he’s built an expectation of tenderness) while she’s in ignorance, so it really is about flipping the script on 2.09.

The only other time Rio’s been so forward in initiating sex was when he didn’t have power—when Beth was strong arming him in the 50/50 deal.

I’ve always read the innuendo in the 20 questions scene, but thought it was more Rio forcing Beth to reckon with her feelings as a form of tit-for-tat punishment than it was about making a serious offer. He knows she still has feelings for him (her curiosity and jealousy over Rhea taking precedence at the top of the game establishes that), but since he only realized the true extent of his feelings after she closed the gap in her bedroom, now he tries to recreate that same wound in her when he closes the gap in his bedroom and sets up the same kind of false expectation.

Ugh, such a good scene. Now I want to watch it 150 times.

[foxmagpie]

Hi love! I’m re-watching GG season 2 and am currently watching episode 9. When do you think Rio realized that Beth wanted to have sex with him? I was trying to figure it out but came up with several times it could’ve happened. Just wanted your opinion on it. Please. ❤️

Hello! ❤️

Personally, I think he suspected but still had pretty big doubts right up until the moment that she closed the bedroom door—and that's when he felt like this is really happening, which is why he whipped around like he did when he heard the click.

I think when she told him "I don't have it here, though" with her voice like that looking at him all big-eyed and soft, he definitely thought there was an insinuation. But I've also headcanoned that on the drive over, he got a little antsy and unsure—I mean, it's pretty much out of no where and I don't think he ever quite wrapped his head around the aftermath of the bathroom break (let alone the trigger!) so I think he kept the possibility open that he was entirely wrong because she can be so tough for him to read.

I think he felt a bit confident that he was right when she was nervously twittering around the kitchen, which is why he basically asked her to cut to the chase with, "What am I doing here, Elizabeth?"

But i think he didn't swallow that reality until the door was closed and suddenly they were alone, but not like they were alone in the bathroom. It was bright and they'd just been talking and it wasn't heat-of-the-moment lust, but something planned and considered and weighed and decided, and the nervousness was palpable. To me, that's when he fully realized something was happening, but not in the way he expected it might, and once again he was charmed by her ability to surprise him.

[foxmagpie]

working on rewatching every brio scene ahead of the finale and after watching 2x09 scenes I’m wondering about their choice in having us see Rio’s reaction to Beth kicking him instead of hers. We see a little bit when she’s doing the laundry, but she’s also in getting ready for the kids to come home mode at the time, not reacting to having to give him/crime up immediately after doing it. Have you talked about this before? Any thoughts on why they did it that way?

Oh, I actually completely read that scene of her doing laundry and remaking the beds as being a reaction to having to end things with Rio and give up crime.

It's preparation for her children to come home, yes, but there's really not a lot of joy in it. The captions even describe the music as "bittersweet":

And the lyrics include lines such as:

She's happy to have her children back, but it comes at a great personal sacrifice, and I think we see that loss across this season and 2.10, where she ultimately has a complete breakdown at being shoved back into this box—not to mention that she has to block Rio's number to stop herself from answering his calls or reaching out to him herself.

I even read the lack of focus on her face during the actual breakup scene as really important. She forces herself to look at him through a lot of it—when she acknowledges that she didn't leave the money at home, right after she tells him "I'm not," when she tells him "I'm done," when she tells him he should go—but she's unable to look at him, choosing to look down or away, when she says "I don't need [the money]" and "no more cash, no more pills" and, most significantly, when she says "It's over." It's very much a scene where Beth emotionally closes herself off to get through it, and her inability to look at Rio is a signifier of how difficult the conversation is even as she pushes through it with a detached brutality. I think the camera angles emphasize that rather than diminish that, just like the choice to have Beth redressing and tying off her robe at the top of the scene while Rio relaxes naked.

Choosing to focus on Rio instead of Beth in the immediate moment both sets up the entire arc that leads us to 4.14, but it also allows us to see Beth process it through her established MO of compartmentalization. When things are too difficult for Beth to process, she rejects them entirely, and they set it up so she changes outfits after her shower (refusing to put back on the clothes that she took off with Rio) and throws herself into focusing first on setting up her children's bedrooms before she can even bear to confront hers. I've always read the decision to pour more detergent in the sheets as symbolic of her feeling that the memories are going to be powerful and hard to dilute and scrub, and that she needs to do that, because otherwise it hurts too much.

[foxmagpie]

Do you think Rio's in love with Beth? I feel like he must be because of how he reacted to the shooting, imo he would've killed her pretty quickly if he just liked her.

I do think he’s in love with Beth, yes. I don’t think he wants to be, but I think he knows it and it irritates him. I read Rio as someone who is in tune with his emotions and that acts with an awareness of what they are, someone who is generally honest but that masks that with ambiguity, limited information, and behavior that’s intended to hurt and punish.

I think those feelings really started taking root sometime around 2.07, even if wasn’t ready to engage with them. The fact that Beth had put herself in danger seemed to trigger something in him, and despite what he said, he couldn’t stop himself from checking for Jane and then from retrieving and then returning the blanket—for no other reason than he could, for no other reason than it was important to her (even though it likely came with professional consequences since I believe that kind of move signaled weakness to either his enemies or his own boys). Notably, Rio did not have Beth meet him or come outside for that exchange, nor did he alert her that he was leaving it in her mailbox—like he couldn’t face her in the moment to reveal what he’d done for her. 

In 2.08, then, we see Rio at his most relaxed and open. Teasing, playful, loose. He offers to help her with no specified strings attached (or clear benefit to himself), gives her uncharacteristically open and clear advice about a turf war, and backs off with little more than a warning when she expresses that she wants to handle it herself. I think this moment is pretty powerful in showing what their dynamic might look like at its best, and Rio seems like someone that’s willing to protect, guide, and support her when things are good between them. I don’t think any of these things are things he gives away easily, and they signal very much how he feels about her.

Then, in 2.09, I think he was still taken aback by what the kiss unleashed. His reaction to the two first soft, tentative kisses look as if he’s just had an epiphany. He cedes all the games and fully seems to embrace letting her know how he feels, breaking to finally kiss her the way he wants to kiss her, without any apparent hurry to move onto the next step. Afterward, he looks comfortable and at ease in her bed, and we’re given access to his private reaction when Beth leaves him in her bed: blindsided and hurt.

In 2.10, he reveals that he still sees her (“they suck your soul out yet, or what?”) and that he’s bothered by her trying to cut him out of her life (“damn, that’s cold”) which is followed-up when he adamantly refuses to field her phone calls in 2.12 as payback—not to mention that during this time, he entertains Annie and Ruby and doesn’t touch them when they fail and fuck up the pill run, instead using it as an opportunity to get Beth back in business. This is really a juncture where Rio could have a clean break from Beth; the secret shopper scheme and the dealership have both imploded and the FBI is hot on her trail. Still, he ropes her back in, and he specifically aims to hurt her like she’s hurt him when he tells her that she’s “work” (I’ve said before that I think Beth’s reveal of the Boomer lie was one that impacted him significantly, particularly since their sexual relationship was jump started when he gave her the keys to the kingdom as a reward for handling Boomer, and made him think she was capable of surviving in his world). This, of course, results in him trying to push Beth—or rather drag her down in the dirt with him—in 2.13, only we know how that goes.

I still think he’s in love with her in season 3. First, at the height of his rage, he charges ahead with his plan to murder her, but he’s rattled when she tells him she’s pregnant. He lies low, processing the news, then takes her to a clinic—the same one he visited when his ex was pregnant with his son—where he’s sure he’ll catch her in the lie. Instead, what actually happens is that the doctor asks about the date of conception, triggering both of their memories of 2.09, and she then confirms that they supposedly made a baby that day. 

By the time Beth confesses that there is no baby (through more deceit, pretending that she’d “lost” it), that he has no reason to kill her anymore—Rio doesn’t seem to want to. There’s technically no barrier anymore—the reason he was keeping her alive is now irrelevant—but he struggles with what he has to do, taking a shot for liquid courage just to be able to muster up the strength to do it. Only then... Beth asks him how much it would cost for her life, and he puts on a show that he won’t even entertain the proposition, but then he does. 

Could Rio use the money? Sure! His pill business and counterfeit operation has been imploded—by her—but do I think he actually felt that 100K was a sufficient price for her life, even temporarily? Not at all. Not considering how severe her betrayal was, not considering what it put at risk for him, and not considering how we saw how he handled Eddy in S1 or how much we saw him charge her to retrieve “Boomer’s” body. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t ever remember actually seeing Beth pay him this money—the debt seemed to be erased once he decided he “needed [her] alive” at the end of the episode and took her business out from underneath her instead.

I think taking over Beth’s operations benefitted him, absolutely. But I don’t actually think he needed her, that he’d have been in an absolutely impossible bind without her. It was convenient, yes. It was beneficial, yes. But enough to keep her alive? I don’t personally think so, not without feelings steering the ship of his decisions, at least.

That was actually a moment where a lot of people did come out and say that they didn’t understand Rio’s decision here, and I think the show came back in 3.05 to really reiterate the true motive when the script had Dean announce: “He won’t kill something he loves.” The way the entire Lucy situation goes down is interesting, because I actually think Lucy was the most valuable person (able to continually reproduce passable counterfeit artwork) even if she was the weakest link. Beth, Annie, and Ruby all share the same knowledge about the process, yet they all remain untouched—Rio refuses to cross a line he knows he can’t uncross with Beth. It’s interesting, because you’d think that he’d feel the same way about the shooting—that Beth couldn’t come back from that—but it doesn’t seem to be the case? He doesn’t let it go, no, but he seems determined to address it (“that ship sailed when you put three slugs in me,” “maybe you’re right, I’m the problem,” and “next time, empty the clip”) at the same time that he continues to refuse to physically harm her, despite the fact that she’s still uncontrollable, which she proves when she steals from him. He basically admits to her that his threats are empty, too, when he tells her that he can’t incentivize her with a “gun to [her] head.” 

I don’t think Rio wants to go off riding into the sunset with her, or even necessarily that he wants to be with her. But he seems to feel something for her that he can’t control and which influences his decisions, often making it so that she’s the exception rather than the rule in terms of how he chooses to handle her. 

[foxmagpie]

I know, it’s been a long time but one thing I’ve never understood in 2.09 is when he enters the bar and she orders him a Chardonnay. Why does she order him a Chardonnay? He’s never had one before or gave her anything to think it’s his preferred “poison”. Or did he and I missed it? I’d love to hear your opinion about this.

She ordered him a chardonnay as a joke, specifically a sort of inside joke calling back to him trying to order her one in 2.04.

RIO: Hey can we get a couple of... what's your poison, huh? Like a summer rosé or something?

BETH, denying the drink: It's ten in the morning.

RIO: The lady will take a crisp chardonnay.

...

BETH: [I want to be] a good person.

RIO: Nah, you're way more interesting than that.

BETH: You don't know me.

RIO: I think I do.

BETH: I don't drink rosé.

RIO: Can we get a bourbon? On the rocks?

While Beth only specifies that she doesn't drink rosé, it's implied that she doesn't drink chardonnay, either. For one, the "proof" that Rio knows her is when he correctly orders her a bourbon on the rocks, despite the fact that he's only seen her drink once—a long time ago, when she invited him into her kitchen after leaving him the pearls and they barely knew each other. It shows not only that he's paying close attention to her, but that he remembers everything about her, even insignificant details. Overwhelmed, Beth rejects the drink (and the idea that Rio knows her) and leaves the key.

Later in the episode, this contrasts to Dean, her husband of twenty years, suggesting that he and Beth share a bottle of chardonnay. Beth rejects the other in favor of ordering her own drink, a bourbon on the rocks, signifying she's pulling away from Dean to be more independent and true to herself—she's no longer wearing the happy housewife mask she has been—but there's also an implication that she's leaning into being the version of herself that Rio sees.

When Rio enters in 2.09, Beth drunkenly and playfully orders him a chardonnay:

BETH: I'll have another... and he'll have a chardonnay.

RIO, laughing: No, I won't.

BETH: Whatever you want. Your tab's still open.

She knows that chardonnay isn't his drink. She's mimicking him and by purposefully ordering him the wrong drink, she's also showing that she knows him. She remembers their conversation, every detail of it, and just like Rio, she catalogues and stores it in her memory despite its seeming insignificance.