#3.05 analysis

[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]

so are we thinking that if it is rio on trial that's from beth's working with the secret service?

I think Rio is on trial for Lucy’s murder. I know a lot of people find this frustrating because of how much Rio has gotten away with up until this point and I think they feel like it’s a plot contrivance, but I go back to a few things:

Lucy’s death was in lieu of Beth’s and unplanned. He discovered Lucy’s role in the artwork and ordered the murder on the same day. He knew nothing about Lucy’s life (confirmed when he only discovered she had a live-in boyfriend via Beth the following episode). Basically, there wasn’t a lot of prep or planning involved in the scenario, and we know Rio was feeling pressure about his “debts” while he was struggling to get his business ventures in order after a two-month hiatus which came immediately after the implosion of his pill scheme and his counterfeiting operation. Basically, Rio’s primed to be sloppier than usual because he’s juggling too many things and none of them have been going smoothly (a lot of which circles back to the ways he has let Beth get away with things after she has caused problems—including letting Beth convince him not to handle Max.)

People say that there are no witnesses, but actually Mrs. Harris was a customer just before Lucy’s death that is the last known person to see her alive, giving insight into time of death. The van Lucy was murdered in was at Paper Porcupine the night she was murdered. Rio was a customer in Paper Porcupine the last day she was alive. Rio and Beth have a known connection and Beth works at Paper Porcupine. This is not even mentioning the bullet connection that the police were leading with—which isn’t that absurd of a connection either. Rio canonically wielded the same gun all through season 1. None of this is evidence that makes this an open-and-closed case, but it is enough for there to be prolonged interest in Rio and a lot of dots to connect. His alibi is fake and there’s also the issue of Rio was actually behind Lucy’s death. Although he didn’t pull the trigger, I don’t know what’s wild about the fact that he’s a Person of Interest in a case that is actually connected to him. It’s implied Rio got off when Beth got him arrested for racketeering in season 1—so it’s not that Rio never gets caught, it’s that Rio never gets convicted. I think we’ll see this again.

And last but not least, I think this connects to Beth’s season 1 assertion—the one that saved her life—that people care when unexplainably “bad things” happen to “good people.” The show went hard on establishing that Lucy was a good person. She’s sweet, naive, optimistic, hardworking—and she’s got people that love her. Max was distraught, Dorothy was worried. A missing persons report was filed. Beth’s fellow PTA moms paid attention—and I don’t think we can assume that Beth went around announcing that the girl she got murdered had gone missing. They saw it in the news, they latched on, and they followed the story enough to connect it to “that girl you worked with” when her body was found. This is not a typical victim of Rio’s. That was confirmed when the cop knew Rio was behind the Six Mile gang member murders even if he couldn’t prove it. 

Combining all those things together—the unforeseen circumstances, rash decisions, outside pressure, circumstantial evidence, and the fact that Lucy is different from Rio’s usual victims in a way which means more attention is drawn to trying to solve the case (we know there’s a police bias against in the way they approach investigating gang deaths vs. deaths of "sweet, innocent young women")—I think it’s very likely that this case will go to trial, particularly because it puts stress on the Beth and Rio relationship. 

Ultimately, I think Rio won’t go down for it, but that puts him in the position of making a difficult choice.

[foxmagpie]

Okay so this episode and the scene with Nick made me think about Lucy's death. Was Rio doing it for her? I know this sounds crazy but did he see a rotten egg situation that was really dangerous to the whole operation (maybe most of all Beth) and decide he had to take care of it? I know a part of him did it to punish her. I can't get over that scene last night! It gave us so much insight into his state of mind.

I think the only way that Rio was “doing it for” Beth was that he chose Lucy instead of Beth (or Annie or Ruby). Lucy’s murder was a punishment for Beth not only failing to deliver the drop, but also inviting another person into Rio’s business without his knowledge or consent. However, we’ve seen Beth make similar and bigger mistakes before, and this was the most severe response he’s ever had, so I definitely think Rio was still reacting to and responding to his frustration with himself that he ultimately allowed her to buy back her life after the shooting. 

I don’t think there was any part of Rio that was trying to protect Beth even if he did legitimately think Lucy was a loose end that may jeopardize their operation. I think the fact that he lets Beth take control over how to handle Max (in lieu of sending Mick to murder him) emphasizes that as well. Max is just as much as a threat as Lucy, particularly because Rio doesn’t know what Max knows and now Max has a motive to make noise, but he didn’t make the same move for their “safety.” It was important for Rio to remind Beth that he’s not a person to be trifled with, especially after he didn’t fulfill his threat of retaliation after the shooting. 

I think Nick lacks the proper context or understanding of what has happened in Beth and Rio’s relationship, so he made an assumption. It needled Rio because ultimately it was confronting Rio on the fact that he not only hides a lot of information about Beth, but he makes exceptions for her too. While I think Rio’s in tune with his own feelings, I don’t think he wanted Nick to have any access to or understanding of what those feelings are, as Nick (correctly) identifies that Rio isn’t making the most logical choices when it comes to Beth. Giving Nick that information makes both Rio and Beth vulnerable, so I think while Rio couldn’t help but take the opportunity to sort of brag and/or defend the fact that he doesn’t need to posture for Beth because they’ve already slept together, he did try to minimize their relationship to being purely sexual. 

[foxmagpie]

You make a good point here that I didn’t get til I saw it: “Lucy’s murder was a punishment for Beth .. for inviting another person into Rio’s business without his knowledge or consent.” He has traditionally not been happy about that, to say the least. And whenever he’s demanded a name from Beth, she hasn’t delivered it. But this time he found about Lucy at the same time he found her, so he was able to handle the situation himself, his way. He would’ve had Mary Pat killed if he ran into her too

I mean in retrospect (I am tired, haha) Lucy was sort of roped into Beth’s business (without Lucy’s knowledge or consent for what she was doing), but Beth definitely didn’t report that information to Rio when he took over, and that meant that both 1) Beth was relying on an outside resource she didn’t have indefinite access to, as 3.05 proved once Dean destroyed the plates, and 2) there was a loose end that Rio didn’t have control over or trust in to keep their operations safe. One of the reasons he can “trust” the girls, after all, is that it’s hard to implicate him when they’re implicating themselves, too. 

I do believe, though, that he would’ve handled Mary Pat if he hadn’t made an exception for Beth because she impressed him by giving him her own name (and getting him his money). Had she actually given up Mary Pat’s name, I do think it’s likely he would’ve finished the job. 

[foxmagpie]

In rewatching 4x02, specifically when Annie goes to ask Kevin to the fundraiser and he initially tells her no because he doesn’t “want to be her favor anymore”, it feels very pointed to me that they made him homeless. Like, here’s this dude living in his car using random garbage as toilet paper (things society would have him feel ashamed of) but he seems to have more self-respect than Annie—she makes a TOTAL fool out of herself later all because she thinks Ben’s embarrassed of how poor/unsophisticated she is. I know your love for Annie is great, I’m curious to know what your thoughts are on this specific pairing and what they were hoping to accomplish by bringing Kevin into the story.

Based on 4.02, it seems like Kevin's function right now is to help Annie grow. His first appearance in season 3 where he shows up at Annie’s door, reminding her that she’s the kind of person that hooked up with a stranger in her car on the highway, supporting Ben’s point that she made questionable decisions while chasing after affection. It was a point of shame for her, and she rejected him in that moment, wanting to be different.

However, she backslid later, having a quickie with Kevin in her workplace on her fifteen-minute break after Cohen came to her apartment and called her out, and she explicitly told Kevin, “I’m getting over someone by getting under someone else.” Finding out that he was homeless was supposed to represent a “low” point her because it’s essentially used as a (problematic) shorthand to suggest that he’s not “good enough,” that he’s part of the same pattern Cohen pointed out to her where she pursues “inaccessible men.”

In 4.02, when Annie asks Kevin to the charity auction, Kevin points out that she’s using him, and by the end of the episode, the scene where she’s lying with him in the backseat watching a show projected onto the ceiling seems like it’s supposed to show that Annie is growing and letting go of some of the judgments she had of him that were making her treat him poorly. I found it pretty significant too that she was meeting him at his level and engaging in an innocuous activity with him where they were simply enjoying spending time together—a contrast to the way that she typically shoots her shot and escalates her relationships with men rapidly, like immediately sleeping with Noah or falling hard for Cohen the second both of them were nice to her.

Annie is clearly very insecure generally (as evidenced by her pleading with Greg to tell her what was on his “list” for her or feeling second-tier to Beth as the “boss” in their relationship) and season 4 seems to be delving into her specific shame related to financial insecurity and irresponsibility and the way that it creates distance between her and Ben. Kevin, like you pointed out, does not seem to share this shame although he is experiencing more difficult circumstances, and he’s fundamentally honest about who he is in a way that Annie is not—as we see when she (maybe?) lies about being Jewish and the ways she has been continually lying about her work and how she makes money while she lavishes Ben with gifts that he’s never asked for. 

I suspect Kevin will help Annie work through her embarrassment in regards to the disparity in lifestyles she can offer Ben in comparison to Greg and Nancy. I also think that it’s important that Kevin seems to like Annie at the same time that he has no problem telling her when she’s treating him badly. Kevin’s security in himself will be something that I think will be good for Annie to be around, particularly because I think we can expect to see Annie at her lowest this season. 

[foxmagpie]

I hope I haven't missed this ask before. A meme reminded me, when Rio found out that Lucy was behind the design on the money, what do you think his initial reaction was?Glad he might get rid of Beth? Pissed of that she wasn't truthful? Him having Lucy draw with a bunch of guys there, was him in her house for the first time all over again. Why did he bring back- up? Would love your thoughts on the matter!

I’m not quite sure how I would describe what his reaction was. On the one hand, he didn’t seem too shocked or reactionary when he met Lucy and she inadvertently confessed that she was behind the design of money, and he knows that Beth isn’t truthful generally—so I’m not sure that he’s exactly pissed to discover the lie? He does say that he’d love to “get rid of” the person he’s working with now, but by the time we see him at Paper Porcupine later in the episode, it seems that he’s solidified his choice in killing Lucy, not Beth. He threatens Beth by saying “maybe you don’t need to be involved,” but then he sends Beth off with Lucy and reminds her to “be smart” (i.e. she shouldn’t do exactly what she does—which is warn Lucy and beg her not to finish the plates). He makes Beth complicit in that she can’t save Lucy, even going so far as to signaling his intent when he calls Lucy “my girl.” Because of that, I wouldn’t say that he’s glad he might get rid of Beth, either. While I think he might want to be capable of doing that, I think he knows at that point that he isn’t. After all, he was already struggling with the idea in the bar scene in 3.04 and agreed to let Beth buy back her life. 

So I think before discovering Lucy, he was feeling powerless and frustrated that he no longer had the capacity or the necessary rage fueling him to go through with killing Beth. While he took her business, I don’t think he in any way felt that she had been adequately punished, and so I think discovering that Lucy—sweet, naive Lucy—had been unwittingly dragged into the operation without her knowledge, Rio saw an opportunity. By killing Lucy, he was doing several things at once:

He was teaching Beth a lesson that her actions have consequences

He was re-establishing that he was dangerous and not to be trifled with

He was showing Beth that her old tactics no longer work on him (her speech is failure)

He was punishing her by forcing her to witness brutal violence that she knew was her own fault—therefore there was blood on her hands

As confirmed later in the season, he was setting up leverage against her so that Lucy’s murder could be pinned on her to keep her compliant

All in all, I think when he discovered that Lucy was behind the design of the money, he was pleased and the gears started turning in his head for how he could turn this situation to his advantage. He could hurt Beth without touching her (or her girls—which would have had far messier consequences). 

I think he brought his boys for two reasons. First, the presence of them creates a business boundary between him and Beth. He’s no longer dealing with her one-on-one in private (which is why I think it’s so significant that he shows up to her house alone after the failed hit). Second, they are someone to perform for, and therefore they keep him accountable. He can’t back out of his plan because to do so would be to admit weakness generally, but for Beth specifically. After his near-death and disappearance, it’s crucial for Rio not to slip up and show vulnerability to keep his position as the king. Having his boys there as back-up ensures that he won’t be swayed by Beth’s speeches or begging (something he’s already failed to do the prior episode in the bar—so something he’s more adamant to make sure doesn’t happen again).

[foxmagpie]

Is it just me are did Beth look really disappointed at the end of 3x05 episode when Dean said to her I told he won’t kill something he love then she respond it’s not me Though it’s the money rio love? kinda look like she made Realization that Rio only love money in not her so kinda look like Beth was disappointed of Rio not love her that he just love the money or maybe I’m wrong

I don’t personally think she was very concerned with what Rio did or didn’t feel for her in that moment. I think she felt like Dean had absolutely no idea what he was talking about because while Rio didn't harm Beth, he made the call to have Lucy murdered to punish Beth. That doesn’t feel like love or like a love that Beth would want to be the recipient of. To me, that scene is about Beth feeling hollow and alone in her grief. That's just my reading, though.