#4.11 analysis

[foxmagpie]

hi!! so im kinda confused about the last scene with dean in 4x12. who was he talking to exactly? cause i don't know if I missed anything or if he is just some random dude or what

she was talking to a lawyer.

after dean confesses everything to the MRA cult, vance (breckin meyer) brings someone over for him to meet.

while at first i thought he was a divorce lawyer (specifically because he is introduced as "never having lost a case") i think he might be a criminal lawyer because dean talks to him about the trial date moving up in his office—and his suggestion is for dean to turn on beth.

when dean meets with him at the office, the lawyer tells dean a story about a famous golfer up on his private jet "on top of the world," only the hull was breached (the surface of the plane was punctured) which meant that "everyone inside was sound asleep from no oxygen." dean asks what happened, and the lawyer says, "plane's on autopilot... just cruising... all they gotta do is wake up." they don't, though, and the plane ultimately ends up crashing in a corn field, killing everyone.

it's a metaphor for dean's situation. his and beth's marriage—and from the lawyer's perspective, dean in particular—is on autopilot. they're not tending to it, they're not following emergency protocol for emergency situations. they're cruising in stasis.

dean recognizes part of the metaphor—that the cornfield is him in prison—but he doesn't recognize how to avoid it. the lawyer and vance say it's about turning beth in. dean balks, saying his kids need their mother, then vance offers up several rather superficial examples of why his kids need him (he taught them how to ride a bike, how to do a slap shot, he built the tree house). it signals for the audience how much these men don't understand what mothers do—fatherhood is just the fun stuff, and that's equally as important in their eyes as the duties of parenthood because all of that is invisible to them.

the scene ends with vance telling dean to "wake up," and dean sighs. he's still mulling it over privately though the rest of the episode—and then beth fails in what he thinks is her role. she's unable to get to danny quickly (when dean can't go at all because of house arrest, because of her) when he's hurt and alone in the hospital, and it's because of crime.

dean ends the phone call saying, "next time, just lie to me."

in dean's mind, that's the final straw. not only is he convinced she is not the same type of mother she once was, he comes to believe that the kids don't need her. as he says, "he didn't even ask for you."

it's a really heartbreaking line because this whole season has been about beth waffling about choosing crime or her family, when her family feels her absence so acutely that they've become used to it, and yet it's because of her family—because she's been trying and failing to protect dean, even—that she hasn't ever been able to fully commit to crime either.

in the final scene, dean meets with the lawyer again, who tells him he doesn't look so well. dean says, "i'm fine."

dean's going to turn beth in to save himself.

[foxmagpie]

how would you interpret the 4x11 Brio " Guardian Angel" scene? The change in Rio's expression when Beth said " Maybe".

Many apologies for my slow response on this one! It's been a hectic few days between the double episodes, cancellation news, and a major heatwave in the Pacific Northwest!

So this is the exchange in Beth's minivan:

RIO: Lady Lucky ain't on your side tonight, huh? [Here he makes a gambling reference to tip off Beth that he knows that she gambled the money away before completing the drop]

BETH: There was a problem—

RIO: Always is—

BETH: —And I had to get rid of it.

RIO: Never a solution. [Here Rio calls Beth out for how something always goes wrong when she does a job, but she never solves it properly]

BETH: Well, I didn't have a lot of options.

RIO: Oh, yeah? Or did the dice just not roll your way? [Here he calls her out for intentionally gambling the money away; it's possible he believes she tried to increase her cash flow and in the process, lost it all. He has little context for her decisions after all]

BETH: We were being followed.

RIO, frustrated: Yeah, by my people.

BETH: Well, that would have been really nice to know. [Once again, Rio's lack of communication and detail made what could be a simple job exponentially more difficult.]

RIO: They don't like to make a scene. [His people don't like to draw attention to themselves]

*Beat*

RIO: But I don't mind so much. [This is an implied threat; Rio is not worried about making noise AKA the heat that might be drawn to him by handling Beth]

BETH: Well, someone else will. [Beth is referring to Nick because of his statement/llie earlier in the episode that he doesn't "like to get involved in his 'things.' Just puts me in a bad place, you know?" Basically, she's saying that Nick will mind if Rio draws this kind of negative attention, particularly because he would know Rio was responsible]

RIO, amused: Hmm, you got a guardian angel I don't know about?

BETH: Maybe.

At this point, Rio seems to consider her words, a flash of surprise and irritation and maybe even understanding crosses his face.

I don't necessarily think that Rio had an idea about Beth's association with Nick outside of the dinner prior to this moment, but between Nick grilling Rio about Beth and Beth now acting like she has a connection to someone that will both notice if she disappeared and that has power to make that a problem for Rio, I think he connected the dots fairly quickly.

The problem, though, is that Beth has a misconception. She believed Nick when he told her that he doesn't like to get involved with Rio's business, but we know that's not true. Nick is not her guardian angel, then—he even seems to have been the driving force between Rio wanting to use Beth to retrieve the stolen money from the Secret Service, which means he was fairly willing to sacrifice her for his and Rio's business interests if she got caught.

That would mean, then, that Rio understands the situation on a deeper level than Beth. If Nick and Beth really have forged some connection outside of himself without his knowledge, that means trouble for him. Because Nick beat Rio with a chair over Rio being "out of control" with Lucy's murder, which Nick believes was "for Beth" in some capacity, I think Rio realizes that if Nick is seeking Beth out, he's trying to yank back control and power. It also means that Beth is less controllable because she thinks she has someone in her back pocket protecting her, when the reality is that she's digging herself a deeper hole.

I do also think the "always a problem/never a solution" comment is in some ways an extension of the "you had a choice" moment. Rio expected her to either sacrifice herself for him or to come up with a way to save them both at that time, and in this conversation, he seems exhausted of the cycle they find themselves in. He wants Beth to figure out answers to problems, but there's so many problems with this expectation of his.

One, he has never bothered to teach her or even to give her bare minimum information in order to help her (and by extension himself) succeed. For instance, it is clearly not the first time Rio has gotten contraband over the border (hell, his first job for Beth was her picking up money in Canada that was disguised as wrapping paper) yet here, he expects Beth to come up with the answers all alone. Then, he sends people after her—because he doesn't trust her or for protection or both—and fails to include this information, causing her to have a grievous misunderstanding. This absurdity of this cycle is that Rio also doesn't have the capacity to deal with Beth in any permanent manner. He really just makes things harder on himself by creating this dynamic, and it's interesting, because if I had to guess, I'd say she's probably the only one that he has this dynamic with (for instance, imagine if he had no rules of guidelines for how his boys were supposed to handle problems, and how many other problems would bloom out of that). It's in his own best interest for Beth to do better, but he has no desire to make that happen even though it's very much within his power to do so.