sorry but I’m really not gonna get over the “a dress like that” line maybe ever. Rio clocked and called out that Beth was dressing up for him, but also admitted that it’s working for him. the dress goes past her knees. the last time she wore it was to work in a professional setting. but he’s into it. he’s into her. he likes her just the way she is 😭
So what did Rio mean with the "a dress like that draws the wrong kind of attention"? Do you think it had something to do with the fact that Beth wore that kind of dress to the cookout and Nick flirted with her because of it?
Mmm, no, particularly because the dress she was wearing at the bar is actually a lot more modest than the one she wore to the cookout. It does have a v-neck but it doesn’t actually reveal much cleavage? She wore it to work! It’s business casual!
I think Rio meant two things by it:
He was calling out that he recognizes that Beth dressed up AKA he knows she likes him because she wanted to look pretty for him
He was telling her she stood out AKA she couldn’t pass as an invisible suburban mom in jeans and go under the radar AKA he thinks she looks good AKA what she’s doing is working on him AKA he likes her back
What’s really neat about it is that Beth did not need to clarify “why jeans?” because that was not the point of what Rio said (“as long as she’s in mom jeans...”) as he likely wasn’t being literal.—he just meant as long as she looked like a regular mom, they’d be good.
By asking the clarifying question, she set him up to flirt and point out her dress and boy howdy did he take the opportunity by making his voice all gravelly and smirking at her.
What do you think Rio knew or thought about the hitman? I feel like he had to have realized it wasn't secret service since they wouldn't have been attempting to kill him that way. It always felt weird to me that he never pressed her for more information on what all that was. I get the feeling he was proud of her for making the decision to finally kill someone in that way and clean up but I feel like it was left so open ended for Rio.Would he really not want to know more about what she was up to?
IMO he absolutely figured it out, but didn't feel the need to press for more information because it was fairly self-explanatory from his end. He understood she had hired a hitman, but that she'd also called it off, and that the reason for that was because she'd decided it was better for her self-interest to work with the Secret Service to turn him in.
That's why he didn't show up to the next drop and why he searched for the wire and why he set her up as the Banker and invited her to the barbeque and let his guard just far enough down to let her know he was still attracted to her.
I think he'd worked out that she'd wanted him dead because he'd wanted her dead after the shooting, but he also realized she'd changed her mind, and that it meant something, even if she was still trying to make moves against him. He was able to see that there was some level of softening in her decision to give up on killing him, and he figured he could finagle things so that she gave up on turning him in, too. He pulled her closer—both by bringing her further into his operation, just like he did by becoming partners with her in 2.04, and by letting her really see him, just like he did by introducing her to Marcus in 2.01.
I agree with you that there was an element of pride for him. I think he realized he was still underestimating her, and that she still had the capacity to surprise him, and that she was still a worthy adversary—something I really do think he has enjoyed in their dynamic, even if he did shift over the course of season 4 to wanting a different one once Nick tried to come in and interfere.
To me, there's not a lot of information that Fitzpatrick could really have given him that he couldn't figure out himself—and while I think Rio may have considered confronting Beth more directly, I also think he was trying to get her to break and switch sides and choose him without that, which is why he played along through 4.07 until the last possible second when he finally dropped the game and actually laid it all bare.
Do you really see Beth and Rio having sex again this season? I can’t see how it happens!
Yeah, I do. Rio seems to be very much operating off of the fact that he has deep and real feelings for Beth.
What can Rio do to Beth that he hasn’t already done? How can he punish her in a way that he hasn’t yet? He knows what doesn't work: putting a gun to the head, refusing to pay her, shooting her husband, killing her coworker, stealing everything she owns, setting her up as his fall guy—none of it incentivizes her to be compliant, which is exactly what attracted him to her in the first place. So he's in a bind because what’s left, save for physical violence?
I think some people are waiting for or frustrated by the fact that he hasn’t enacted violence against her and/or allowed it to happen to her because that’s normally how he’d operate to handle a rotten egg, but I don’t think he ever will, nor do I want him to. One, they’ve put in work to establish that it’s a line he’s unwilling to cross and that motivation is fed by his feelings for her. Two, I think they’ve (rightly) been very careful to avoid Rio falling into the trope of a physically abusive ex-lover. They’re both deceitful, manipulative, and toxic—but that’s a different line, that’s a different dynamic, that’s a dangerous stereotype, and that’s not something I want to see. At all.
At this juncture, I think Beth and Rio are more equal than they’ve ever been:
They both have evidence to hold over each other’s head (the fingerprints on the money, the fingerprints on the gun)
They are both using each other as their fall guy (Beth with the Secret Service, Rio by setting her up as the banker)
They both basically said as much in terms of using each other as their fall guy (Beth told Rio in order to utilize him to take out Fitz so it was deceitful, Rio told her in order to keep her in line so it was manipulative—but both of them know, which was confirmed in this episode but logical to assume in the previous episodes since Rio knew Fitz wasn’t Secret Service and he basically said as much to Beth; he had zero reason to believe her deal with the Secret Service was over)
They're both incapable of actually taking the final step to get rid of the other (Beth couldn't pull the trigger in 3.09, she tried to cancel the hit in 4.05, she used the first opportunity Rio expressed doubt to suggest that they utilize someone other than Carolyn; the gun was effectively useless in 2.06, Rio allowed her to buy back her life in 3.04, he directed his ire for Beth at Lucy in 3.05—and in 4.07, Beth handed Rio a presumably loaded gun but didn't turn it against him, and Rio took that gun from her and hid it away without turning it against her in a conversation about betrayal)
So I think Rio's switched tactics. He knows what he's incapable of doing to handle Beth, so now he's drawing her closer, being more honest with her, letting her in, letting her peek behind the curtain—and it's done more to sway Beth than any of his punishments ever have. Beth isn't motivated by a stick; she's motivated by carrots. This has always been true. She wriggles out of punishment and she preens under compliments and positive attention. Rio's finally adapting; Beth is finally responding.
They both acknowledged what happened between them against the bookshelf in a way that was positive. That's the first time that's ever happened. Beth ignored all his flirtations after the bathroom break, and the bedroom only explicitly came up when Rio was dismissing it as insignificant ("C'mon, darling, you remember—I hit it in the bedroom while your husband was at work").
Then, Rio told her that he "thought things were different" which allowed Beth to see him vulnerable. They're basically as close to admitting that they have feelings for each other as possible.
And then Rio allowed Beth to make a choice, and while her motivations may still be murky and complicated and while I don't expect yet that she's 100% loyal, I think she's flipped to being more loyal to Rio than the Secret Service, where before she was more loyal to the Secret Service to Rio (but not enough to actually try hard to get that much information about out of Rio).
So Rio is (rightfully) hurt by Beth right now, but not enough to cut ties. Not enough to truly punish her. He asked her to pick him, and she did, and the conflict with Nick will only push them closer (especially if it's rooted in—as I think it might be—that Nick is concerned about the exceptions Rio makes for Beth and how it makes him sloppy).
I think they will sleep together again—and with their feelings so close to the surface now, I think it will be romantic again.
Rio knows about the wire and that Beth was setting him up with the Secret Service. He wriggles out of it in the episode, and this is their final conversation:
That’s where the episode ends, without telling us her answer.
However, this conversation is a flashback. We actually see Beth come home to Dean before we end off on this scene, so we know that Rio let her go back home (implying she chose Rio). Maybe she just told Rio she chose him but plans to work with the Secret Service, but I think this is unlikely for three reasons:
Rio (and her by extension) play the Secret Service hard in this episode. They already benched her at the beginning of the episode and have no reason to trust her and she hasn’t yet delivered anything for them.
Beth explicitly lies to Dean earlier in the episode when she dresses up to go see Rio. Dean asks her if it’s part of the operation, which he clearly knows all about, and Beth lies and says she’s just getting “groceries,” denying that she “smells good” while she’s literally putting on lipstick and fluffing her hair. Meeting with Rio has nothing to do with the operation. It’s a drop-by.
When Beth comes home to Dean, they do have a moment of intimacy—a sort of snuggle moment. Right beforehand, though, you can see that Beth’s eyes are glassy. I interpret this to mean that she knows she just picked a marriage-ending choice. She picked Rio for real.
She lets herself have this moment with Dean I think because she knows it’s over.
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.
Okay, I just watched and I have so many questions!! The scene at the bar- was he actually telling her that he found the wire with the book? The bar stuff was so cute but I guess I felt confused about what he was implying to her. Also in the diner scene Rio ordered his bacon crispy... made me think of his hash browns in season 1 ("How do they stay so crispy?)
under a read-more:
my interpretation is that rio knew everything the whole time and the entire arrangement for a security deposit box was to see how far beth would take it and to (hopefully) get her to break and change her mind about betraying him.
in the bar scene, rio really leans into his words being ambiguous.
first, he tells beth that dinner was fun but that they “got a problem, though” before he brings out the book the pelican brief:
He taps the book and watches her closely. The silence stretches and Beth is visibly tense, worried he’s going to confront her.
When Beth says nothing, Rio, breaking the tension and playing off the whole thing as nothing, says:
Beth takes the book, tells Rio to tell Rosa “thank you” and briefly relaxes until Rio says:
Beth tenses again, immediately telling Rio that she’ll “write Rosa a note,” trying to wrap up the conversation as if she’s worried he’s about to properly confront her. He doesn’t. Instead, he tells her he needs a bank or safety deposit box. When Beth tells him no because of the scrutiny because of Dean’s arrest, Rio says:
Usually, Rio’s indifferent to Beth being on the line for helping him solve his issues (think him wanting to smurf her in 4.02—similar situation—or even setting her up as the banker in 4.05).
This time, he concedes that he needs her to find someone else for him (as if he doesn’t have his own network of people that he could rely on for this). But when Beth suggests Annie or Ruby, Rio says, “Nah, same kind of heat.” Again—Rio doesn’t particularly care about protecting them. Sure, maybe he wants to protect his own money, but I think it’s because he actually wants Beth to lead him to the Secret Service to be able to out here.
That’s why he allows them to badly lie in the diner scene and tries repeatedly to catch them in the lie—wanting to go to Phoebe’s house and then asking Phoebe questions to prove that it’s not actually her house. He never really buys into the ruse, he only pretends.
I even think he signals this. Phoebe says that Beth was the only other mom that would “rosé all day” with her (when Rio knows that Beth doesn’t drink rosé—she told him herself in 2.04, another moment where he signaled he pays attention and knows what she likes and dislikes when he ordered her a bourbon) and he does the same thing when he orders a BLT and tells the waitress to “surprise him” for white or wheat bread—a callback to Rio telling Beth he’s not “really much of a sandwich guy” when Beth tells him she’s out of bread in 2.09 (thank you to @monicabernard for catching this!)
Even Rio telling Phoebe that he wouldn’t drink the orange juice because it “expired a week ago” is him signaling how closely he’s paying attention to everything—of course he never buys into their lie. They fumble it from the start!
Then I think Rio confirms everything when they’re sitting outside of the bank and he immediately opens with:
He’s basically asking her, “So you’re really going through with this? You’d really set me up like this? You’d really betray me? You’re going to let me go in there and hand over this duffel bag so I can get arrested?” It’s the final moment for Beth to change her mind, and she doesn’t.
She lies.
But she also gives him an out even though she won’t tell him the truth:
She’s basically saying, “Call it off. End it. I won’t stop you.”
This follows up with the other ways in the episode that she can’t entirely fully commit to the plan even as she carries on. In the beginning, she tells them she won’t wear a wire again, and in the middle, she seems (to me) to feign frustration that they couldn’t nab him at the house:
Back at the car, Rio asks Beth if Phoebe is Secret Service or FBI and confirms he found the wire, saying:
Since this is the book he gives her in the bar scene and he’s now asking her if she’s really going to do this—telling her he thought things were “different” now—he’s basically admitting he’s known for certain since he brought her to meet his family. He was duping her, pretending to be on the hook, but he knew the whole time and was hoping she’d do something different.
Still, he gives her a choice. And now this is the second time that he’s done so (the first being with Fitz when she first admitted she was working with the Secret Service). Neither time does he suggest the consequences for choosing against him. Even here, when he knows she has, he doesn’t threaten her. He’s already told her a gun to her head doesn’t incentivize her in 3.09—which was basically confirming that he was never going to use it on her.
He’s really asking her for the bare minimum: honesty. And Beth struggles to give it to him. However, she does admit to him that she didn’t feel like she had a choice and that she’s “damned” either way, no matter what she chooses.
I think she chooses Rio. I think this will cause conflict with Dean, who said he “needed” Nevada. I also think this will cause conflict with Nick when Rio is making an illogical decision to invest in Beth and to allow her a choice when she hasn’t earned it. Rio’s being influenced by his feelings for her and he’s being sloppy, which gives Nick motivation to try and break them apart (hence, I suspect, his warning to her in 4.08).
They’re aligning more and more, but falling in deeper with each other in really fun, complex ways. I can’t wait!
Hey I absolutely LOVE your analysis!! I’ve watched ep7 and i was so happy with the end, one thing i was wondering if you could explain was the part when beth said “i’ll be damned either way” i didn’t quite understand what she meant by that and also when rio said “you’ve got an angel and a devil on your shoulder” (or something like that i can’t remember) i don’t understand what he meant by that.
Okay so in what I am now officially interpreting as a scene occurring after the bank swap and near-arrest have occurred, Beth and Rio are in his car and have an exchange.
The reasons I think it occurs after are:
The previous scene prior to showing them enter the bank ends with Rio putting the gun away and Beth looking confused, like it leaves her unsettled and she can’t interpret the action.
In the bank, Beth is following Rio’s lead, but doesn’t seem confident about it. She looks to him and trails after him. He’s the leader.
Beth seemed rattled in the scene with the cops, like she didn’t know what was happening, like she didn’t know what Rio actually put in the duffle and how that might implicate her/him/them.
In this scene, Beth and Rio seem to be sitting in heavy silence, staring straight ahead. Beth seems contemplative, not like she’s making a last-ditch effort, but like she just saw everything happen and she’s making an announcement.
Basically, the somber tone she takes in the “I didn’t have a choice” scene is disjointed with the way she looks at the tail-end of the scene where he puts the gun away. I read this scene as them having just gone through stuff and Beth needing to make a (larger, more important) decision about where they go from here, not what she’s going to do in the moment. If it was just about what she was going to do in the moment, why stop her before going in to do it? He knows he’s safe either way, that the duffle is full of costume jewelry. The moment is about theatrics only meant to show her and the Secret Service that he’s capable of wriggling out of consequences again. If it was about what to do in the moment alone, it’s less of a win. It’s more of a move made out of desperation, not real choice. So I think he asks her to make it afterward.
ANYWAY. So then we get this exchange:
The “angel” on her shoulder is going with the law from this juncture forward and trying to put him away (something she has no capacity to do in the bank scene). Angels are associated with goodness and morality. The benefits to choosing this side are that Beth gets to save her marriage, keep her family intact, and help Annie and Ruby safely start new lives with blank slates that erase many of their troubles—not only presently with how deeply their embedded in crime, but also the kinds of troubles that pushed them into crime in the first place. They’ll be set up with houses, cars, jobs, debts erased because their identities are wiped—all things that they were struggling with before they robbed the grocery store.
The “devil” on her shoulder is choosing crime and therefore choosing Rio. It means breaking away from the Secret Service and likely getting her hands dirty in some capacity in order to succeed.
Beth says she’s “damned either way.” Choosing the angel—working with the Secret Service to take Rio down—means giving up a part of herself that she likes. It also means giving up Rio, betraying him and letting him down, something that her dreams explicitly showed us she doesn’t feel good about doing in 4.06. It also likely comes with consequences she doesn’t know or understand yet since Rio isn’t going to just let her do that. In some ways, this makes it a false choice.
However, it’s not like it’s just easy to choose crime and Rio, either. Doing so means exacerbating her conflict with Ruby (which reared its head in this episode) since she’s making a major decision that impacts all of them and their futures. It means imploding her marriage (when Dean explicitly said he needs them to get to Nevada and start over). Likely, it means a divorce that destabilizes her children's lives. And she has no guarantee or real reason to believe that things between her and Rio have settled—in business or personally—to make sure that she could withstand the financial ramifications of the impact of that decision on her family.
The episode ends with Beth and Rio looking at each other without Beth giving a clear answer:
However, I think it’s clear she chooses Rio.
One, when she goes home to Dean, her eyes are glassy and she uncharacteristically takes him up on his invitation to be intimate. I think she knows what she’s done to him and she’s allowing them both to enjoy one of the last few good moments they have been them before the truth is revealed.
Two, when Beth gets in the hot tub with Dean, she keeps her clothes on. She cannot strip bare in front of him or expose herself, which I think signifies secrets. Also, if we’re going with “angel” and “devil” imagery from Rio’s speech, water is symbolically related to baptism or the washing away of sins. Beth enters the tub, but she remains cloaked in her crime uniform—an all black ensemble that mimics Rio’s.
In fact—point three—they very deliberately cast Beth and Rio as partners by their matching outfits, but not just any partners. The “dark” partners dressed in all black:
In contrast, they’re pitted up against the “light” male/female partners dressed in neutrals and whites with Phoebe in a soft sort of cream/beige turtleneck and Dave in his classic, crisp white shirt:
And against the traditionally uniformed male/female cop duo with also (blatantly, obviously) signifies the law or “light”:
Meanwhile, Beth and Rio are positioned to once again mimic each other with a false surrender:
Beth and Rio are perfectly matched and the male and female cop are perfectly matched, and the only duo who isn’t are Dave and Phoebe, who are at odds in this scene when Dave turns on Phoebe and tells her that she “blew it.”
In nearly all senses—costuming, body language, whether both they’re looking ahead or at each other, often even framing putting them on equal positioning—Beth and Rio are aligned in this final sequence. She’s following him. She picked him.
