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.
Idk if you've talked about this before but the brio billiard/pool/8-ball scene felt so weird to me... I din't feel the usual chemistry, the moment and placement felt all wrong, I don't even how to explain it. It just didn't work for me. What do you think about it?
i agree with you. ultimately i shrugged and rolled with it and leaned into the excitement because they were touching again and i am a simple woman (no shame in that!) but for such a pivotal moment of the reintroduction of touch into their relationship, particularly after the weight of the reason that aspect disappeared from their dynamic, it didn't land for me as a natural build-up. ultimately, i didn't know why rio chose that moment to do it, or more specifically, what he wanted out of it? like, yeah, sure, i suppose he wanted her to make the shot so he could yank back the offer on a technicality, but then the duplicitousness of his actions was a bit too heavy-handed for me? i think it maybe lacked that kind of double-edged sword that rio nailed in season 2 where everything was a manipulation, but it was such a successful manipulation because it was driven by real feelings underneath it? like, again, i can see micro-steps that got us there from rio's increasing agitation and jealousy over dean (extremely present in the scene because beth is fighting to save him) to the way he began crowding into her space again in 4.01, and i'd even argue that it was very important for rio to be the one to re-introduce physicality into their relationship again, but something about it didn't really gel. imo, though, they got back on track quickly.
1. Is this the first time Rio touches her again since before the shooting? If so, LOVE how he bypasses anything small and goes just straight to touching her whole body with his whole body! I mean, go big or go home, right?
2. Did he do that to distract her from making the shot? Was that the main reason, and then obviously the underlying reason was to get all up on her...?
Thanks!!
It’s not the first time he’s touched her, no. He grazes his finger along her hair and grips his hand around her wrist in the bar in 3.03, squeezes her leg in the clinic in 3.03, puts his hand on top of hers over the glass of alcohol in 3.04, and claps his hand over her shoulder in 3.07. So it has been a slow progression! They were all intimidating or condescending touches, which continues with the way he gets in her space in 4.01 to threaten that he might give the cops the gun and, I think, in the pool scene.
I don’t think he did it to distract her from taking the shot, no. I actually think he was aiming to help her make the shot so that he could pull the rug out from underneath her when he told her she could borrow the money out of the cut she owes him. It was very much part of the pattern that @pynkhues has pointed out before, where he gives and takes with the same hand.
I also think it’s becoming clearer that as much as Dean has a problem with Beth spending time with Rio, Rio has a problem with Beth’s attachment to Dean. He’s dismissed, insulted, and taunted her about her husband and marriage over the last three episodes, a shift that started with Beth symbolically recommitting to Dean by going into business with him. Rio has correctly sensed that their relationship is both devoid of intimacy (“might even want to hit that again”) and full of jealous insecurity (“you rather I do it inside?”) that’s partially sparked by the lies within the marriage (“ready whenever you are”), but also the personal history between Beth and Rio.
It’s been repeatedly reestablished that their history is not as buried as they’d like to pretend and that it’s close to the surface, particularly for Rio, who references the pregnancy lie at the first opportunity (though it’s not something Beth has been able to forget either, as she remembered the date on the clinic form).
In that sense, I think Rio was also choosing to touch her because he can, and doing so is a way to further erode whatever is left of Beth’s relationship. I mean, it’s certainly a choice to call out Beth’s sexual disinterest in her husband (which she doesn’t deny) right before draping himself against her in a position that is reminiscent of their bathroom break (which she doesn’t protest). Although the end result is antagonism, he plays on their chemistry, history, and comfort with each other to evoke that result—which I think reminds both of them what still exists between them, even if they want to dent it.
Do you have any thoughts as to why Rio pulled the cue back? It seemed so randomly playful and I can't figure it out.
I think part of it is just being playful! This is a new aspect of their dynamic that I think we’ve been seeing on both sides—Beth asking him to buy her a drink, Rio looking at her in baffled shock when she ordered a non-alcoholic drink before Beth caves and orders a bourbon, Rio laughing at her for knowing what smurfing is, Rio asking after Dean. He is definitely gloating in that scene and having fun, completely unperturbed by the turn of events (which, side note: I noticed in my rewatch last night that Beth doesn’t tell him what’s happened, she just announces that she needs bail and Rio knows exactly what she’s talking about and she’s unsurprised that he does—did they have a chat sometime in between that we didn’t see? I’m oddly obsessed with the idea that they talk way more often that we know).
On another level, though, the action of handing her the pool cue and then yanking it away at the last second when she reaches for it is exactly what he does with the loan. He offers it in exchange for her sinking the eight ball, then pulls the rug out from underneath her by telling her she can take the money out of his cut that he knows she can’t earn. It’s part of Rio’s pattern of giving and then immediately taking away—not unlike giving her the money in 2.04 only to come in and snatch it back and insert himself in her business at the end of the episode. The scene echoes 2.04 a lot with their positioning (Beth bent over, Rio draped over her, face in her hair, Dean half-present but somewhat forgotten) and this small, insignificant moment adds to that for me, even if it’s tonally quite different.
Interested in getting your view on why Beth continues to go to Rio for help when she gets herself into these situations? He’s literally never been helpful and especially now why would she think he would be? How can you simultaneously have a hit on someone and still ask for their help? Not trying to be negative here ... truly interested in your opinion (and anyone else who would like to chime in once you respond —- if you do)!!
I think there are a few reasons, but first, we need to break down and identify when Beth goes to Rio for help. I think they can be divided into two categories: proposals and favors.
With proposals, these are moments where Beth asks for a job or pitches a scheme. While it may not always be a fair ask (based on what she has proven to him), it is designed to be mutually beneficial—and usually, Rio benefits more as the boss and the person earning the larger cut of the money. Under this category, I would count the kitchen conversation after Beth leaves the pearls (1.03), the secret shopper scheme pitch (1.05), when Beth asks for 5x the amount they’re currently washing (1.06), and the Botox pitch (1.08).
Favors would be moments that Beth needs Rio’s help to solve an immediate, pressing issue. It might be beneficial to Rio, but that’s not Beth’s primary concern or her angle. For these moments, I would count her asking him for help retrieving Jeff’s body from the dump (2.05), asking for help to look for Jane (2.07), asking for money for Stan’s bail (2.09), asking for money to pay off Boomer (2.13), and asking for money for Dean’s bail (4.03). I think you could also make an argument that she negotiates a few more favors based on her moral limits when she asks Rio not to harm a PTA mom secret shopper (1.07), not to interfere and kill the baby hitmen (2.08), and not to harm Max (3.06).
Within that, I think Beth continues to go to Rio for help because of four main reasons: a part of her trusts him even when she shouldn’t, her largest asks are usually fueled by desperation and limited options, she knows Rio has experience wiggling his way out of consequences, and one of her flaws is that she is entitled and often has tunnel vision about her own needs without considering the needs of others.
TRUST
Despite the ways that Rio has betrayed that trust, a part of Beth instinctively trusts Rio. We see this in the way she leans into his touch after he’s beaten up Dean and just before he shots him (2.01), the way she goes to him alone in the middle of the night to confess he doesn’t have a reason to kill her anymore (3.04), and the way she ultimately takes her hand off the handle when she’s in the car wash with him after the failed hit (3.10). This doesn’t negate that she doubts her safety with him (after all, she does explicitly worry that he might kill her in the G Wagen) but she regularly takes the chance to trust that he won’t harm her in the midst of those fears.
Most importantly, though, we see that Beth trusts Rio when she defends him in 2.07 against Dean’s accusation that he is involved in Jane’s apparent kidnapping before immediately going to him and asking for help. In that instance, Rio refuses to help her... and then helps her anyway.
He looks for Jane. He retrieves the dubby. He gives it back. From that point, we see Beth confide in him both when the baby hitman rob her (and he freely offers to help, but Beth rejects it) and when Dean takes her kids. I think this moment was really critical in their trajectory and I think a part of her remembers that he helped her even when he acted like he wasn’t going to because he cared about her and how she feels.
That is only re-emphasized every time he agrees to her limits about using violence against other people, such as Mary Pat and Max. Rio may tell her she doesn’t get a say, but he doesn’t follow through, meaning Beth continually tests her limits with him.
DESPERATION
Beth frequently asks Rio for help when she feels she has no other option. For instance, she leaves the pearls after Dean makes it clear that they can’t afford to separate and that Beth can’t get her own line of credit. She asks for the amount of cash they wash to be quintupled when Ruby is pressuring them to get out because it’s not worth it, and she tries to unload the Botox on him when her plan to make some money outside of his enterprise fails. Rio says yes in most of these instances, which encourages Beth to keep trying.
In instances where she’s asking for a favor, though, she’s often exhausted her resources or has a reason why an alternative option would be especially difficult. When she asks for money for Stan’s bail, she feels unable to commit a crime because Dean has threatened to take away her kids permanently. When she asks for money to pay off Boomer, it’s to avoid arrest by the FBI for a murder she didn’t commit. She tells Rio directly that if she could ask anyone else, she would, too. And when she asks for money for Dean’s bail, her accounts are frozen, her business is shut down, and she’s under scrutiny.
In these instances, she really feels she has no other choice.
EXPERIENCE
I think she also relies on Rio because she trusts his experience in crime and his ability to not get caught. He’s also helped her in key ways, which means that she’s more likely to go to him for help in the future. She asks and he tells her about flipping his game (1.06), he teaches her how to shoot a gun (2.02), finds and hides a dead body for her (2.05), counsels her about a turf war and tells her to set limits which is advice she takes (2.08), warns her of the raid (2.10), and advises her to set up a system so as to not burn her cash (3.10).
In 3.01 she wonders what he would do in any given situation and in 4.03 she directly points out that nothing sticks to him, something she is both jealous and curious about.
ENTITLEMENT
But yes. She goes to him even when she has an active hit against him (4.03). She goes to him even when she’s deliberately ignored his advice to keep her safe (2.07). She goes to him when she’s lying about what she’s accomplished for him with Jeff’s body (2.05). She pitches schemes to him after she’s failed (1.05) and she asks him for favors after she’s shared his business without his knowledge of permission (1.07). This all happens because Beth is a mix of naive (as much as Rio has taught her, he’s also kept her fairly isolated and not fully explained many aspects of their business) and entitled. She has an ego—something Rio’s fed (1.06, 2.04, 3.11) and undermined (1.09, 2.06, 3.10)—and she believes she deserves what she asks for, even when she hasn’t earned it. Part of this is because she believes she is very good at what she does and gives herself credit for that (1.08, 2.11, 3.11) and part of it is because she doesn’t seem to truly understand the ways that she’s been an exception for Rio—over and over and over again.
Her ability to compartmentalize and her tendency to prioritize herself and her own survival/desire to thrive makes her behave selfishly towards Rio when she asks for help at the same time that she’s working against him.
Was there any sexual energy in the pool scene? I couldn't tell? Rio just seemed to be F*cking with her. She just seemed annoyed.
Well, I think that’s up for interpretation, but I personally felt like there was sexual energy in the scene and that Rio fucking with her and Beth seeming annoyed have been components of other key UST scenes between them, like:
The “what do you want?” and eye fuck in 1.04
“Tell them I was hittin’ it” and Beth’s frazzled response in 1.05
Rio pressing a gun to Beth’s head and Beth saying “I thought we were past this” in 1.07
When Rio tells Beth she doesn’t need Botox before he rejects her pitch and ghosts in 1.08
When Rio checks her out and condescendingly asks if she wants to be an astronaut when Beth rejects the key in 2.04
When Rio asks about another bathroom break and Beth snaps “no” in 2.05
When Rio asks about labels and Beth tells him he can’t tell people he’s her partner before he tells her to picture everyone naked but after he tells her he’s keeping her dead body as blackmail in 2.05
When Rio invites her for desk sex and Beth snaps “do we have a deal or not?” in 2.06
When Rio honey traps her with 20 questions before kicking her out and embarrassing her in 2.11
I think that’s just a normal part of their dynamic. There was really no reason in the moment to explain why Rio was touching her in that way, and it says a lot to me that Beth not only didn’t question it or reject it, but that she leaned into it by asking Rio if she was holding the cue correctly.
There’s still too much animosity between them for their walls to really come down in that scene—not to mention that Beth has too much stress and anxiety from the stakes of the scene—but the fact that that level of touching is being reintroduced into their dynamic is, I think, dangerous for both of them.
So you think Beth was Lying to Dean when she said I love you to him
It’s hard to say for certain based off of the briefness of the promo, but at best, I think Beth believes she means it but it’s not true. Not deep down.
Compare it to the last time that Beth had the opportunity to tell Dean how she felt about him: they’d just been intimate, Dean made her coffee, and he told her he loved her. She stared at him blankly. Privately, she was dealing with the fact that she thought her ex-lover was going to murder her—something she didn’t confide to her husband, although she did eventually tell her best friend and her sister. He thought they were in the best spot of their relationship in years.
Before that, the last time we saw Dean tell Beth he loved her was the morning of the robbery, where she plastered on a fake smile and told him to keep his tuna in the fridge. It feels significant that Beth threw the original motivation for that robbery—him almost losing their home—in his face the second he started getting suspicious about the books in this episode, right before Dean was about to discover a major betrayal of Beth’s.
Beth’s never moved on from Dean’s original transgressions (reiterated in 3.11 when she threatened Gayle that her family would “hate her forever”) and clearly, Dean’s never forgiven her for her relationship with Rio either (which Beth is aware of, which is why she tried to slink down in the passenger seat of Rio’s car when he came to move his money into her accounts at the exact time that she was trying to move money out in order to mask the crimes she was committing at her family business—which Rio called “our business”).
I know people have been wanting Beth to leave Dean for a long time now, but since season 2, I’ve thought two things:
Dean will be the one to leave Beth
Something huge has to happen to cause this shift
So far, Beth has put up with a minimum of five affairs and Dean almost losing their home, not to mention that he cut the plates when she literally told him that Rio was going to kill her. I’m not sure what Dean could do to make her finally budge; she’s resigned herself to a life with him, to the cold comfort that his familiarity and normalcy brings.
But this episode also had Fitzpatrick remind her that her lines have moved too far, that she’s a different person now, that the normalcy she once had no longer exists.
Dean’s been fighting for that normalcy. He wanted a legitimate business. His conversation with DL Dave showed that he wants a relationship dynamic where he’s the boss and Beth makes him look good.
And he’s about to find out that everything between him and Beth has been a sham.
I don’t think Beth loves Dean; I think she’s scrambling to try and stop her life from imploding. I think it’s an apology.
I love your insight! I seen a lot of fans interpret the flashbacks as an attempt to redeem Dean, however I think that the flashbacks have served to lay the groundwork to explain Dean’s decision to except responsibility for the money laundering. It was right after Phoebe describes a high school popular girl who is so not Beth and Beth experience that I think it reminded Dean what Beth what Beth went through. To me it served to Reinforce That Beth is a survivor and that she is a compartmentalizer.
Thank you!
And I agree! Beth’s past has always fascinated me and I was really pleased that they further sketched it out since it mostly aligned with what I had already inferred from the pieces they’d given us in 2.08 and 2.10.
The biggest thing that I think was different was their money situation. In the 4.03 flashbacks, it appears that Beth and Annie live in a nice neighborhood and Annie is playing with a Gameboy, a relatively new technology in 1990 that cost nearly $100.
I think I saw @jade-marie talking about these cues which signify that Beth didn’t settle down with Dean for financial security (and she mentioned that early on, we know that Beth and Dean didn’t have the same type of financial situation that they had later since they talk about an early, small apartment that they once shared in 2.13). I agree with this interpretation.
Coupled with the season 1 reference to Beth begging for a piano and taking lessons for six years, I suspect that Beth’s father was around during her young childhood and that while he left the family behind emotionally, he may have provided for them financially—enough for them to feel secure in their home and with some toys and hobbies, but not enough to compensate for the tumult and stress of their mother’s illness which forced Beth to grow up fast and take on the responsibility of being Annie’s primary caretaker (something that they imply was a struggle not only with Annie’s attitude, but also with her propensity to get hurt—in the 2.08 flashback she has a cast on her arm when Beth and Ruby first meet, and in the 4.03 flashback she has a cast on her leg).
I think Dean represented a much different type of security and safety to Beth than a financial one, as the flashback to Beth in the hospital showed. He was someone that showed up and someone that stuck around, someone that saw her and didn’t judge her when she felt incredibly alone. Over time, of course, he came to take her for granted, but I think they were happy early on in their relationship and their marriage, but that Dean’s selfishness and immaturity (represented in the first flashback, where he and his buddies made a mess and Dean came back to “help” but really just to take the opportunity to flirt and goof off) were things that he never really grew out of, which probably wasn’t helped by the fact that he was handed things—such as a family business—and didn’t have to work for them.
I also don’t think that the flashbacks redeemed Dean. I don’t think learning about someone’s past redeems their mistakes of the present, even if it helps us understand them better. I think the flashbacks simply fleshed Dean’s character and Beth and Dean’s relationship out more, and yes—functioned to help us understand Dean’s current decisions.
Dean’s role in Beth’s life has been to take care of her and we see that there are benefits to that (he was a bright spot during a difficult adolescence when she lacked care from others and she settled into a comfortable if ultimately unfulfilling life with him) and drawbacks (they eventually fall into a dynamic where she’s patronized, diminished, and invisible to him).
I even though the flashbacks showed that even when their romance was blooming, it was quite superficial and Dean was still, well, Dean. Beth and Dean connected because he was goofy and charming and she was pretty and a cheerleader; he was someone she had fun with, and when she didn’t have time for him, he showed up unannounced after she’d ignored his phone calls and then dropped that he’d been planning to ask her to prom as a way to rehook her attention and interest in him. Showing up to the hospital was the most significant scene, but we didn’t see them connect over common interests or a deep and meaningful conversation. They were infatuated teenagers and he was caring, but it definitely didn’t reveal some previously unknown compatibility that makes us understand why they’re right for each other.
In some way, Dean taking the fall for Beth might be considered the beginning of a redemption since it was his financial mistakes and betrayal that caused Beth to enter crime in the first place. I don’t think that kind of redemption necessarily means that this will fix their relationship or make them fall in love with each other again, but it is Dean taking care of Beth in a way that he is able to right now—which is interesting, as Beth explicitly tells Fitzpatrick in the scene prior that she doesn’t need a man to do that.
I’m curious if we’ll get more insight into Dean’s decision next episode. I’d really like it!
