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.
Why does he trusts her enough to make her his banker?!🤔 I was so suprized! Isn't he still mad because of the 'hitman' lie? And he undressed her...!😘 He just started himself (as a boyfriend...) and then stepped back to let her finish and Beth did not protest... for me there was no fear in her eyes ... just trust in him to be naked and she knew he never can take more advantage of the situation!😍 Why are they so complicated to understand sometimes? Are they accomplices or enemies?!
I do think Rio trusts Beth to some degree (and that Beth trusts Rio too) but I don’t think trusting her had much to do with his decision to make her the Banker.
In fact, he’s just made her life more complicated by doing so, which is why she balks when he tells her she’s not done.
It’s clear from this episode that Beth is disposable to the Secret Service—literally. If she doesn’t deliver, they don’t care what happens to her, since they refuse to even consider putting a cop outside of her house for safety when she tells them that her life is at stake.
By making her the Banker, Rio pulls her in deeper at the exact moment that she needs to be pulling away, and it’s only her face that the operation will lead to. Rio says he’s laying low and explicitly tells her that he’s making her his fall guy (exactly like she’s making him hers):
Basically Beth is saying being the Banker is risky when she’s being scrutinized after Dean’s arrest and the Secret Service attempting to work with her to take Rio down, and Rio tells her it doesn’t matter that she’s being scrutinized because he’ll be lying low and she’ll be the one on the hook—i.e. it’s only risky for her, and that’s not his concern.
On top of that, Beth will feel pressure from Rio too. She points out that she’s not the right person to strongarm these people into paying up (she actually uses the phrase “big dirty thug” which is yikes) and Rio tells her she doesn’t have much of a choice.
So Beth’s in a bit of a bind. If she fails to collect, she’ll face consequences from Rio. If she fails to deliver Rio to the Secret Service, she’ll face consequences from them. Most importantly, the job Rio’s having her perform is one that gets her face out to dozens of people who could be potential witnesses in a case against her. This isn’t a job he gave her because he trusts her; it functions as a punishment and ratchets up the stakes for her.
On the other note, I don’t personally think Rio touched her as a boyfriend but I do think Beth didn’t feel victimized in that scene even if fear of getting caught out felt present. I do agree that she trusted him not to cross a boundary—and I think that’s a really important point to bring up here. Rio has overstepped all sorts of boundaries in their relationship—talking to her son in 1.03, entering her house and then her backyard through her bedroom in 1.04, putting a gun to her head when they were working together in 1.07—but so far, never one that he couldn’t uncross with her. He typically gets right up to the edge and toes the line, but we’ve seen Beth when she feels like someone has stepped over it and we’ve seen her react to unwanted sexual advances multiple times—her response to seeing Boomer try to assault Annie in 1.01, her reaction to the threat of rape in the drug den in 2.07, her explosion at Fitzpatrick in 4.03, her immediately trying to put a stop to what she thought was Troy’s sexual favors idea in 4.04. This is an area where we’ve seen Beth repeatedly speak up and fight back, even when the moment was incredibly dangerous (most notably in 2.07 when the guy holds a gun). In this scene, they pointedly make no reference to Rio’s gun. Rio reaches for her buttons, Beth balks and asks what he’s doing, and then Rio looks her in the eye, unmoving. When Beth doesn’t back away or protest, he continues to unbutton. After he pushes off her shirt, he steps back. He communicates that she should take off her bra and her pants, and Beth does. Does she look comfortable? No, not particularly. But she looks determined. I also think it’s important to look at how the scene ends—Rio warns her and leaves out the door and Beth remains standing, nude, watching him go. She doesn’t rush to cover herself. There’s no lingering shot of her feeling exposed and vulnerable. There’s no urgency to get redressed. Hell, in the scene she doesn’t even move to use her hands to cover up her breasts or her vagina. She just stands in front of him, exposed, chin up and shoulders back. Her main concern in the following scene is whether Rio knows and what will happen, not what did happen. I agree with this post and this post—that scene wasn’t sexual, it was tactical, and while Rio walked right up to that line, I don’t think the show was suggesting that he crossed it. If they meant that, I think it would’ve been shot much differently.
So did Beth give the gun to that girl? For her protection? Was she telling the girl to use it next time on who the next banker will be? Which is Beth? And did that girl actually give Beth the money? Sorry for all the questions, that scene just confused me
My interpretation of that scene was that Beth was handling the situation in her own manner.
The first scene between Beth and the girl is ambiguous. Does the girl actually know where the money is and is she withholding it because she doesn’t take Beth seriously? Is she manipulating Beth with the story about her mother’s illness to get Beth to back down? Or is everything the girl says true and she’s actually oblivious?
Beth still has a moral line where she won’t harm someone completely innocent, but she doesn’t have a moral line when it comes to lying and manipulating to get her way.
Instead of strongarming the girl or threatening her, she handed her a gun and was essentially parroting what Rio told her: Watch your back.
She did a miniature demonstration of how to use the gun, clocking that this was all new territory to her. The girl fronted that she would be just fine, but Beth could see that she was crumbling. Beth reminded her that someone would come to collect, and that if the girl handled him, there’d be another after... forever.
I believe Beth came off genuine and the threat felt legitimate because Beth was speaking from her own experience. Once you’re involved, you’re involved for good—and you can’t remove yourself from the cycle by being stubborn alone.
Ultimately, Beth wins. The girl doesn’t want to be looking over the shoulder for the rest of her life and she doesn’t have the stamina to withstand the pressure or the consequences of actually using that gun to protect herself.
It’s a really interesting moment because it’s one where Rio hands Beth a gun (by proxy of Mick) and she both weaponizes it as leverage to get her way but she also disarms it by refusing to utilize it in the way in which it’s intended. She’s lying in the same breath that she’s telling the truth, manipulating the girl to spare her further danger, and bluffing with Mick and Rio to buy herself (and therefore the girl, who functions a bit like a Max or a Lucy—someone relatively innocent that’s dragged in it—someone Beth wants to protect) more time. Essentially, it’s peak Beth. She’s thinking on her feet and succeeding when she’s doing things her own way—not Rio’s. She also pulls it off because she’s riding the high of being good at something again.
It’s basically the version of herself that drew Rio to her in the first place and I really, really love it.
This isn’t really a question, but your analysis on the show feeds my soul. In season 2 episode 2, where Rio states that he’s going to show Beth how to kill... did that actually happen? I feel like that could have been a great moment in GG history to show us a montage of Rio taking Beth to a shooting range and showing her the ropes.
Thank you so much! That’s so nice!
And yes, it did happen! It’s implied by Beth knowing how to use the gun in the next episode, but really doubled down on in 3.07 when Beth teaches Max how to shoot to prepare him for killing Rio and she tells him “Pro tip? Exhale before you pull the trigger ... Most people hold their breath, which increases your pulse and makes your hand shake.” Then this exchange happens:
Afterward, she channels Rio’s energy which I think gives us a bit of context as to what that training looked like, haha:
Then I think it’s once again further emphasized by how “comfortable” and “knowledgable” Beth comes off with the gun in 4.05, despite the fact that we know that she’s actually very uncomfortable with guns in her presence since 2.13, considering the way she freaks out on Dean for buying the shotgun and how she says she doesn’t “want it” when Rio tries to hand her another gun in 3.09:
I read that all as Beth having paid very close attention to Rio’s lessons and absorbing them—which fits into her usual M.O. with how often she tries to mimic him, which she does again in The Banker scene where she warns the girl to “watch [her] back.”
It is sadly one of the fandom’s most yearned for missing scenes, but here are a couple of great fic recs!
I thought Nancy was way too hard on Annie about the rash. I think it was a mistake that anyone could've made, even someone whose really good with babies. I also think Nancy would react differently to someone like Beth making that mistake, which kind of says it all.
I agree that Nancy was very hard on Annie for an easy mistake that anyone could’ve done, but I do think that treatment was in character? I think in that scene Nancy stands in as a proxy for how Annie feels that everyone views her—an incompetent fuckup that can’t do anything right. And Nancy herself is exhibiting new mother stress combined with leftover resentment for Annie, both in her being generally irresponsible, but also because Annie and Nancy have never really made up from Annie’s transgression of sleeping with Greg. She can’t view this moment with Annie in isolation the same way she might’ve with someone like Beth because of their history. And Annie telling her that she really wished she’d get it right this time was, to me, not just Annie wanting to prove herself as capable generally, but wanting to attempt to mend things with Nancy specifically.
What didn’t work for me in that scene was that I didn’t think there was a lot of logic to Nancy carrying around a cream that she knew caused Dakota to break out in a rash as an “emergency” for if the first cream ran out. Especially for someone as finicky and financially secure as Nancy, I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t toss the second cream and buy an emergency reserve of the first cream. And if it was that important to Nancy, I didn’t know why she wouldn’t have provided Annie with a list of instructions or double-checked with one of the many text messages she sent along to Annie throughout the day. It felt like a weak plot contrivance.
I actually sort of wished that the problem that arose was that Annie accidentally left Dakota’s lovey in Rio’s G-Wagen. The blanket was mentioned by Mick at Paper Porcupine and it would’ve entangled Annie in explaining what she had been doing with Dakota all day and allowed her to provide a solution (getting it back) but not one that Nancy would’ve accepted on her timeline (Dakota would be fussy and irritable without it, and Annie couldn’t deliver it immediately). I’d have also liked it for a few reasons—one, it’d re-emphasize and explore the ways Rio doesn’t accommodate Annie in the same way that he does Beth and how little negotiation Annie has to get him to do what she wants on the convenience of her schedule. Two, it’d parallel the dubby (and there’d be the potential of Rio delivering it to Beth at the diner). And three, it’s also a really easy mistake to make, but still one Nancy couldn’t be rational about until she’d had time and space to calm down. We might've even been able to get another Annie and Nancy scene of them making up directly.
Generally, I didn’t care for how much Annie was undermined as a competent mom in this episode, from Ben dismissing how involved she was with him as a baby to Annie seemingly having no intuitive knowledge about how to take care of a young child. I think it makes sense for Annie to be out of practice and habit, but it certainly felt like A Choice to make Mick, who is a by-choice absent father, a baby whisperer and to include moments where each of the girls “fumbled” at properly taking care of the baby (Annie not recognizing Dakota was hungry, Beth suggesting that Mick installing the seat where it was more convenient but less safe, Ruby complaining about the heat while Mick corrected her that it was helping Dakota sleep).
That isn’t really a crack at Mick, by the way, either. I do think a lot of emotion came through in his and Annie’s parking lot conversation and I got the sense that he loves his daughter and has really been put in a tough decision re: parenting choices and it was a moment where I felt empathy for him. And I love the idea of him being a baby whisperer too! But I didn’t think that had to be at the expense of the girls having some basic intuition when it comes to taking care of children considering they have seven kids between them.
Do you think Beth might end up setting up ? Dave up because in the being of the episode it seem like Dave was talking crazy to Beth
I certainly think they planted the seed tonight that the SS’s lack of regard for what happens to Beth will come into play. If she isn’t delivering for them, they are callous about the consequences for her. I’m not sure how it will play out yet, but that will not inspire loyalty.
Im confused on how Rio can trust Beth so much. Pls provide clarity. Not trying to be negative i just don't get it.
I think Rio trusts Beth as much as Beth trusts Rio, which is more than he should but actually not all that much.
Setting Beth up as the Banker has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with making Beth his fall guy. It puts pressure on her and if she fails, she’s got to deal with consequences from Rio and the Secret Service. His job gets done but there’s no risk for him. His name and face are completely detached from the operation.
However, we do see that Rio trusts Beth too. He acts on the “Dave” tip because he buys the narrative she’s selling of herself—the one where she hates PTA and carpool and baking cookies. The one that wants crime. The one that wants to be like him.
I do think there is an element of truth to Beth’s speech, but I think there’s a falseness too. I think Beth doesn’t only want those things, but I’m not sure she wants to give them up entirely, either. That identity is something Beth has clung to and we see that over and over and over again with her “I’m a mom!” protests. Alone, it doesn’t give her satisfaction. But alone, crime doesn’t either. When she was left with crime and without her kids in 2.09, she was distraught.
But Rio—Rio has been trying to pull her over to that side and to get her hands dirty since 1.10/2.01. They fight about it in 2.07, he tries to force her hand in 2.13, and her crime success in setting up Boland Bubbles in 3.11 is something that softens him toward her once again.
So I think there’s an element of Rio still wanting this version of Beth, a version of Rio that still has feelings for her and that gets wrapped up in that image of her at her best, which makes him a bit idealistic about a version of the two of them where they could work together and complement each other. The problem is, that fantasy of Rio’s usually still has him at the top with the control and the power, and Beth’s actively fighting against being under his thumb and being the one that will take the fall for his crimes.
She’s fighting too hard for her family to do that they don’t have that kind of relationship, trust, history, or intimacy, to make her willing to do that for him. We’ve seen that she will take responsibility (even for things she hasn’t done!) to save Annie and Ruby, like she did when she confessed to Boomer’s murder in 2.13, but Rio’s not in that inner circle. Not yet.
The other instances where Rio trusts Beth—like when she tells him she’s pregnant—are very much fed by his feelings for her. We see his doubt in her claim in 3.03 and 4.01 confirms that he ultimately decides it was a lie. He calls her on her bullshit with the “World Market” ink prices in 3.07. He’s suspicious of what she’s doing with her money in 3.10 and refuses to pay her any more until she comes up with a system.
But he’s always kept on the hook by the moments where she pulls through and proves herself. She picks up and hands over Boomer (something she failed to do earlier in their relationship). She pulls off Boland Bubbles (until she doesn’t). She makes the call for him to take out Fitz, a move she resisted for a long time.
Despite everything, his trust in her never breaks completely because over and over again, she delivers.
But I am wondering what does Dean means when he tells Eric that Beth does not want him out of jail... "so she can hump the tats off her boyfriend"?!
I think the joke is that Dean thinks Beth and Rio are boning so much that their constant skin-to-skin friction is making Rio’s permanent tattoos wear off AKA Dean is mad jealous and has never believed that Beth and Rio stopped sleeping together.
