ok so i just rewatched the scene where the girls and rio are at "carolyn's" house and noticed that there is a butterfly at the wall behind beth and it's quite interesting bc it's like the third time there we see a butterfly (at the wall in granny's room and at beths dress) so i looked up the symbolism of butterflies and it says that it's "a representation of resurrection, change, renewal, hope, endurance, and courage to embrace the transformation to make life better" so do you think it might be about beth choosing crime?
Ah, what a great catch, anon!
I think we definitely are seeing Beth change and flip her allegiance. And I do think she chose Rio at the end of the episode—but not in a way that’s definitive and absolute. I just think the needle moved and we’re going to see that transformation process happen over the rest of the season.
I think of it like this:
3.07-3.09
Coming off of Lucy’s murder, Beth is 100% committed to the hitman plot because she feels its the only viable solution. She tells Max they can’t go to the cops because, as Ruby says, “we’ll all end up in that van.” These episodes are the height of Beth struggling in her relationship with Rio. She tells Max she feels “nothing” and Annie explicitly says that “it’s not a life” if all they do is work for Rio without pay, agency, or choice. She feels utterly trapped and sees this as the only way out. After Rio gets her fingerprints on the gun, she’s distraught, but once she has Fitzpatrick lined up, she’s proud of herself and feels incentivized because it ultimately means she will be free from him.
3.10
Beth passes Fitzpatrick’s test, but she’s resistant to making the call and the needle nudges because she’s unable to watch it happen. She celebrates Rio’s death, but has a brief moment of reflection looking out over the picnic table, remembering that there were better times between them. She insists no one was jilted, but corrects the girls when they say it was a “one and done.” She chooses to let go of the door handle when she’s in the car with Rio, ultimately taking the chance that he won’t hurt her and she’s proven right. Her inability to lie to him returns when she can’t come with a plausible excuse for where her money is going—a marked difference from her cocky assertion that she “can’t control the world market” or the way she tries to play him when she dresses up in the polka dot dress. She’s proud of her hot tub scheme and she gets frustrated, throwing a temper tantrum, when Rio doesn’t give her his full attention and stamp of approval.
3.11
Beth’s ire gets reignited when Rio “consolidates,” forcing Beth to print and wash while he takes a large cut of the profits. She’s frustrated by his control over her, but she can’t help but feel flattered when he tells her that he “loves” Boland Bubbles, asking him, “Really?” Rio flirts and while Beth doesn’t flirt back, she is somewhat playful. She asks when it “gets to be mine” because she “made all of this happen.” She wants credit, but the fact that she asks also means things might be different if he were ever willing to let her have anything to herself. Rio essentially tells her that will never happen until she kills him. The moment is loaded, but when Rio leaves, Beth doesn’t look victorious—despite the fact that she has an active hit on him.
4.01
When Lucy’s body is found and Rio reminds Beth that he can and will use her fingerprints against her. While Annie and Ruby are fixated on contacting the hit hitman, Beth instead focuses on how she can offer him something he “really needs” in order to try and get the gun back. After successfully bribing the inspector to look the other way, Beth goes to the bar and meet Rio to celebrate, trying to capitalize on the shared success (“I’m making you bank”) by asking for the gun back because it “doesn’t make sense” to hold it over her anymore. When Rio agrees and tells her that she’s right, Beth doubtfully asks, “I am?” like she wants to believe him. However, when Rio doubles down and suggests that he might turn it over to the cops, Beth feels that she’s at the end of the line. Instead of scrambling to find another solution to her Rio problem, she instead prepares to be arrested, writing Dean the letter, telling the girls that she won’t run, and that she “may as well have” killed Lucy herself. She’s still committed to the hitman, but its with less fervor than before. Instead, she’s more actively playing the cat and mouse game. Even when Fitzpatrick visits her at the end of the episode and she asks him to move her up on his schedule, it lacks intensity. She emphasizes how much money she’s paid him, not how badly she needs Rio gone.
4.02
Annie insists that if they “pop [Rio], all of this goes away” while Beth waffles over whether or not to go to dinner with Fitzpatrick in order to speed up the timeline. She’s pushed to make this move, however, when Rio forces her hand to hold some of his money while she’s feeling “heat” about her books as it reminds her how “the last time [she] did that”—that being held something for him—”[she] got tied to a murder.” On the date with Fitzpatrick, Beth struggles to play her part despite the stakes. Despite being a canonically good liar, she’s really putting in bare minimum effort, diverting the conversation back to the job by saying she just “needs [it] done.” When Fitzpatrick asks her what the hurry is, she says, “He’s making my life hell”—which is a very different motivation than we saw across 3.07-3.09. At this point, Beth is focused more on how Rio is making life challenging for her and how much money she’s sunk into hiring Fitzpatrick, but she’s no longer feeling the same dread, fear, and hopelessness, all emphasized by how she asks Rio for things (like when the business gets to be hers or to get the gun back). She thinks she has leverage with him she didn’t before, and while she’s still moving forward with her plan, their dynamic is shifting and her resolve is weakening. It weakens further when Fitzpatrick asks her what life will be like when Rio’s gone and Fitzpatrick challenges Beth when she says it will be “normal.”
4.03
Beth goes to Rio for help after Dean is arrested, believing him at his word when he says he’ll cover the loan if she sinks the eight ball. Despite herself, she still trusts him, and she feels burned when she realizes the catch. When Beth complains about Fitzpatrick to the girls while bemoaning her predicament with Fitzpatrick, she says, “I wish he’d put a bullet in me.” Again, she’s less focused on him completing the job and more focused on her present problem. She only hits a breaking point when Fitzpatrick shows up and tries to get her to come to Fiji with him. Even at the exact moment she’s pushing him to complete the job, she says she wants “to be nothing like [him]” which he points out is ironic considering she hired him. When he promises to fulfill the contract when he gets back, we get a lingering shot of Beth breathing heavily before she shakes herself off and finishes unloading groceries. She’s still going through with her plan, but she’s pausing more and seems to be feeling doubt—not necessarily because of how she feels about Rio, but because it’s becoming real and she seems uncertain if this is the kind of person she wants to be.
4.04
Dave and Phoebe approach Beth, offering Dean’s freedom in exchange for Beth becoming an informant. Beth insists that Rio will kill her and that she “can’t do this.” The Secret Service threatens that if she doesn’t do this, she, Annie, and Ruby will all get rounded up and arrested for their crimes. In order to avoid this, she goes to call off the hit—but Fitzpatrick is mysteriously gone. She clues Dean into the Nevada plan, but gives him no indication of how it could be possible, potentially signifying a lack of commitment. When she tracks down Fitzpatrick, her reactions have shifted. She doesn’t correct him when he calls them jilted lovers. She pauses before answering when he says she just can’t live without him and when he tells her she’s not the only side dish. Realizing that Beth’s cut a deal, Fitzpatrick calls her on it, and she insists that “it’s complicated.” In order to wrap up the hitman plot, Beth cons Rio into taking care of Fitzpatrick for her—only she gives Rio an honest monologue about how she can’t go back to her normal life in order to accomplish it. She says she wants normalcy, a fresh start, a blank slate—but she wants crime. When she succeeds in duping Rio, she’s not celebratory or pleased. Instead, she’s weighed down, feeling like this was her last resort. Again, she’s unable to lie to Rio. When he signals that he doesn’t buy that the person he killed was Secret Service, Beth can barely hold it together, further emphasizing that she can only lie to him when she threads that lie with a truth and when she has extensive time to practice. She says it herself: her commitment to the Secret Service plan and her manipulating Rio into doing her dirty work is because it’s the “only way this goes away.”
4.05
When Beth waits for Rio at the sting drop, she nervously checks her phone, but never attempts to contact or call him. She insists he “knows” and the Secret Service refuses to do anything to protect her, making her upset. Beth defiantly strips to prove to Rio that she’s not wearing a wire, then agonizes whether or not he knows. Beth then enjoys being The Banker and imitates Rio while creatively coming up with her own way of handling Penny, telling her to “watch [her] back.” She’s having fun again, riding the hide of being successful, and regardless of the reason or the truthfulness of Mick’s statement, she’s rattled when he tells her that Rio trusts her. Beth alludes to the idea that “someone is still watching” directly to Rio’s face in order to try to weasel out of remaining the Banker and Beth realizes she’s Rio’s fall guy as much as he’s hers. She then tells the Secret Service that Rio has a boss, AKA someone that’s an even bigger fish to catch than Rio himself.
4.06
The Secret Service refuses to pay the girls to make up the difference in what they are no longer making working for Rio so they rob the jewelry store and leverage the meeting with the boss in order to con the Secret Service into paying up, causing trouble for them and definitely not acting compliant or loyal. Beth has a dream that explicitly explores that she feels guilty that she’s letting Rio down and betraying his trust while feeling pressured to deliver for the Secret Service. Before going to meet the boss, Beth tells Dean that she’s “stuck for life” in crime. Phoebe and Dave do nothing to prepare or reassure Beth when she’s nervous about wearing the wire. Beth starts off the scene asking Rio if he wants to frisk her. Despite the fact that it doesn’t benefit her to announce this over the wire—or that she looks at her plate like she’s waiting for the correction from Rio—she announces that they’re partners at dinner. She becomes protective over the name “Elizabeth,” showing that she’ll only allow Rio to call her that. An intimate hand on her back causes Beth to become frantic and panic, furiously removing the wire and desperate to find somewhere to stash it. As you point out, costuming puts her in a butterfly dress. There are more butterflies on the wall in Rosa’s house. A romantic song about softening and forgiveness plays. After tucking the wire away, Beth studies the photos of Rio growing up—until she’s interrupted, at which point she can barely form the words “I don’t know” in answer to what she’s doing. The entire conversation works on two levels to be about the immediate moment and the larger operation to betray him, with Beth signaling that she might not be good enough for him or his business. Rio is telling her about the overlap between business and family in private, yet Beth takes no opportunity to try and ask him anything that might gather evidence for the case. Then, under the guise of trying to distract him from finding the wire—despite the fact that she had better means to do so—Beth initiates intimacy with him after meeting his family.
4.07
Beth insists that she only hooked up with Rio to distract him from finding the wire, but her behavior in the episode doesn’t correspond with this. She refuses to wear a wire again. Although Dean knows that she’s working against Rio to cut a deal with the Secret Service, she lies to him about going to see Rio, dressing up, fluffing her hair, and putting on perfume. At the bar, she flirts with him. She tries to say that she didn’t want to hook up with Rio again, but Ruby—her best friend in the world who knows her better than anyone—doesn’t believe her. She goes along with the plan the entire way, but it’s painfully obvious that Rio doesn’t buy it and Beth is just sticking her head in the sand because what else can she do? When Rio asks if Beth is “really gonna do this,” she offers that they can back out of the deal with “Carolyn” to use someone else instead, like she’s entirely willing to cancel this operation at the last second, instead of even attempting to convince him that it’s fine. Again, subtextual clues are consistent and clear: costuming, blocking, and music all underscore that Beth aligns with Rio. She admits she felt like she didn’t have a choice, and when he gives her one, she’s able to go home to Dean, indicating that she picked Rio and crime. She’s glassy-eyed and, in contrast to her scene in 4.05 with Rio, she’s unable to strip bare for him, getting into the hot tub with her own husband in her own home fully dressed.
Her reasons for her lack of loyalty shift from actively fearing for her life to feeling like her life is meaningless under his control to feeling like he makes her life hell to working against him to save herself to feeling like she has no other option. It’s a gradual shift, and we’ve only just crossed the line.
The monologue at the bar in 4.04—reiterated in 4.06 just before the start—set us up to know that Beth is committed to (or “stuck in”) crime for life. Her dynamic with Rio is shifting, but only just. They’re trying out real, straightforward communication and honesty for the first time… ever. So far, it’s more effective than anything else they’ve tried. But there is still a lot of holding Beth back, including the fight with Ruby, Dean’s reliance on the plan, and her inability to take accountability for her actions.
While I think that needle nudged over the line to choosing Rio, I don’t think we should yet expect that she’s going to be clearly and completely on his side just yet. It’s still jumbled and complicated, but we’ve already seen her admit to him that she’s working with the Secret Service only to duplicitously try to continue to do so in secret. I think we’ll see a progression from that, even though I’m not 100% sure in which way we’ll see it yet.
But I do think she’s now more loyal to him now than she is to the Secret Service and that they’re only going to get closer, she’s only going to soften more towards him, and we’ll see a lot of development from this point forward with the needle moving more and more towards Beth proving her loyalty to Rio.
When you think about it, Rio didnt have to explain himself to Beth. Couldve just demanded the routing number. He told her that he was feeling heat and had to move money around into their business account. He's opening up more to her then probably any other chick including whomever he went to the basketball game with and kissing on.
I mean, I also think it’s significant that he went to Beth at all. Surely Rio has been in this situation before and had to move money around. Sure, putting money in Beth’s accounts incriminates her, but it also links her to him. Binds them tighter. She has access to his money—something that he’s notoriously possessive of, something she’s repeatedly stolen from him. Beth should be the last person he goes to. Instead, she seems to be the first.
As for the basketball game, I was under the impression that was a fake alibi. Obviously we know he was actually present at the scene of Lucy’s death. Maybe he went to a basketball game afterward, maybe the few hours difference were enough to make him look like he had an alibi? But either way, I’m going to guess that Rio is sleeping with other people, but that they’re insignificant to him in the grand scheme of things.
Mick comes across as kinda nicer (idk if that's the right word) than Rio in some ways imo. Mick offering Annie some dumplings came across to me as him comforting her in his own way, but if it were Annie and Rio having that conversation Rio would've been way more of an ahole imo.
I think it’s a bit easier for Mick to be nicer than Rio. As the boss, Rio has to maintain a certain image and he can’t look too soft or accommodating (although he often is much softer and more accommodating with the girls than he would be with anyone else). He can’t look weak, and I think he’s very aware of this. He stops bringing his boys around in season 2 to instead deal with the girls privately, which benefits him when they fuck up the pill-run and he lets them get away with it in order to rope Beth back into the game (2.10) and also allows him to keep it private that Beth strong-arms him into a 50/50 deal (2.06).
But Rio’s boys returned in season 3 after the shooting, and I think this was very deliberate, particularly in 3.05 where I believe they act as witnesses to keep Rio from deviating from his plan to teach the girls a lesson by killing Lucy.
Mick has a little more freedom; he acts in conjunction with Rio and ultimately seems loyal to Rio, but he also doesn’t have the same pressure Rio does. I’ve found it very interesting how Mick has repeatedly helped Beth (and likely now Annie too) without Beth delivering on her end of the deal, seemingly with Rio’s approval. At the same time, though, Mick doesn’t have a personal relationship with the girls, and in that way, he’s also more of a threat (I don’t think he’d let his attachment to them stop him from following orders, for instance).
There is a personality difference too, of course! I talked a bit about how Mick opened up to Annie’s direct question about having kids in a way that Rio typically doesn’t, and Mick is obviously a little more comfortable sitting with someone who is going through a rough time (compare him giving Annie the dumpling—basically an invitation to stay in the car—with Rio smoke bombing out of the conversation with Beth when she tells him Dean took her kids. Rio is still fairly gentle with her in that scene and even thoughtful to set her up on his tab, but it seems that the conversation makes him more uncomfortable than Mick feels in his conversation with Annie, even though they don’t know each other as well).
So, yes! I do think part of it is personality, and part of it is their different roles within the gang, but the fact that Mick is continually allowed to behave that way with the girls suggests to me that Rio might behave slightly differently with them if there wasn’t so much at stake for him, too.
I’m sorry but the pantry dropping comeback was so random. What is Rio saying here?
I think Rio is simply irritated with Dean’s involvement in his operation; it’s interesting that he immediately jumps to Dean naming it Boland Bubbles when Beth bought the store and Beth’s last name is also Boland, so it could very well be her idea, but the pantydropper line also comes right after Beth defends the choice (“I think it’s cute”) as a good one. I saw it as a way of dismissing and insulting Dean, but along with that, a way of poking at their marriage/family business. We don’t know yet whether Rio knows that his own involvement is a secret, but it seems like Dean and Rio might both be chafing at their other’s involvement with Beth. The fact that Rio was specifically taking a jab at Dean’s lack of sexual prowess is very exciting, to say the least, haha.
Do you think by Beth and Rio not having a long term relationship that mean we won’t see any Romantic Scenes from them ?
No; they’ve never really entertained the idea of a long term romantic relationship with each other thus far and we’ve gotten the bathroom break, the kiss, an entire season of them grappling with their romantic history where he called her his girl, Annie called him Beth’s boy, Dean told Beth he loved her, she dressed up to flirt with him, and he checked her out and invited her into a hot tub. Feelings aren't logical. At this point, they shouldn’t have any feelings for each other—yet 4.01 still reiterated that Beth wanted him to see and acknowledge and compliment her success (“Buy you a drink?” / “Well, why don’t you buy me one then?”) and that Rio was a mix of annoyed and impressed when she revealed that she’d pulled one over on him with the fingerprints. I said it a few times last season, but I really think season 3 was resetting the board for them and we’re starting to see their earlier dynamic peek through with their cat and mouse games, only this time it’s layered with their history. I fully expect us to get another romantic scene in the future in some way, shape, or form.
Hi! So I just recently got into Good Girls and have become completely obsessed! I love your analysis of the show and scenes so I wanted to get your opinion on something. Feel free to ignore if you already answered. What is your take on Rio’s “kinda like being almost pregnant” line from 4.01? I saw so many people take it as he knew she lied about the pregnancy but I took more as a throw away comment because he was annoyed. If he does know that she lied about being pregnant, I wish the show would have included a scene or more hints because when Beth tells him she lost the baby at the bar, he looked a little upset by the idea that he may have lost a kid too. Does that make sense?
Thank you so much! Welcome to the fandom!
Personally, I think it was confirmation that—even if he wasn’t quite sure at the time—he’d figured it out. It’s quite loaded to be a throwaway line, and in context, he’s comparing the two situations and the way Beth manipulates him in both to get what she wants. Beth has lied and told him Boland Bubbles is “almost” up and running in order to get back on payroll, similarly to how she lied about being pregnant in order to get him to spare her life.
In 3.04, I agree with you—Rio does look like the information weighs on him, but I think that makes sense. One, I now think he only just barely believed the doctor anyway, but felt powerless in the scene to expose it. Two, contemplating if she was actually pregnant forced him to remember their intimacy, dulling his rage. Three, the confession at the bar is only a half-truth—she lost the baby, instead of admitting there never was a baby—which makes it so Rio still doesn’t know for sure what the truth is, only that he has no reason not to kill her anymore, but he no longer has the momentum to do so even though everything is still broken between them. She still shot him and left him for dead, and he thinks he should kill her even though he doesn’t seem to want to. When he takes the shot, I believe that means he’s going to push ahead with the plan anyway and force himself to do it, so the mood in the scene is so heavy because it’s a moment of deep conflict for Rio. In his mind, Beth doesn’t deserve mercy and yet he wants to give it to her anyway—and those feelings may have been sparked by a lie.
With time and distance, I think Rio worked out what he really believed—that there was never a baby at all—and we learn in the same moment that Beth does because up until this point, she believed she got away with it too.
I'm super late but I just caught Matthew and Christina's short interviews and how Dean was going to be involved or at least know about the business, do you think that changes how he will react to Rio being involved once that's revealed?
To be honest, I completely dismissed Christina’s entire interview, haha. She said that Dean’s been in the dark and Beth’s been keeping secrets from him this whole time and now he knows everything, but that’s categorically untrue. Beth was counting money on their coffee table in 1.07 and told him exactly what she was doing, who they were doing it for, and how much they were getting paid in 1.08:
Then she pulls out a tub of fake cash and invites Dean to use it at Boland Motors in 2.04, Dean’s present when Rio steps in to take a 60% cut at the end of the episode, and while he doesn’t know what she’s doing, he knows she’s up to something when she takes over the business and is never at home in 2.06 and 2.07. He also knows where she hides her money, which is why he tries to steal it to hire the baby hitmen in 2.08. He knows where the books are (when she doesn’t) in 2.10, and he knows she’s gone right back into crime in 2.11.
in season 3, she starts keeping secrets from him, but Dean still finds the plates in 3.05.
Then, pointedly, she lies to Dean when he says he wants to start Boland Bubbles legitimately and doesn’t let him in on Rio’s role in the operation at all. He’s still clueless about that, which was re-emphasized in 4.01 when Beth lied to Dean and told him she needed money otherwise she had to “go to him.”
Basically, Christina has it exactly backwards, haha, so huge grain of salt there.
Dean does seem to know that Boland Bubbles has crime ties because he uses an extraordinary amount of money to pay off Terry, but that seemed to be because he wanted to ensure Rio was cut out of the business.
So no, I don’t think it matters whether Dean does or doesn’t know about the the illegality of Boland Bubbles or how Beth got it. I think for him the real issue is, and will always be, whether or not she’s working with Rio.
Do you think Mick offering Annie the box of dumplings was also to have her fingerprints on the box? Or am I reaching here? Lol I feel like we are going to see a lot of selfless Annie this season and she will try to help out her sister more. Mostly Bc she thinks Ben doesn’t need her anymore and/or she’s lost the connection she has with her son. I just want Annie to be happy 🥺
I don’t personally think it for her fingerprints, no, particularly because I think they might very openly scrub Beth’s fingerprints from the gun and put Annie’s on there instead, so Mick wouldn’t need to get Annie’s fingerprints from duplicitous means.
I agree with you that I think Annie is going to risk her neck for Beth this season as part of her growing up and realizing what Beth has done for her. I think it’ll be a really interesting conflict because I think it’s just about the last thing that Beth wants—but I’m looking forward to the angst if only for the catharsis of Annie learning just how much Ben needs her, loves her, and wants her around, even if they have to go through some growing pains to get there.
