Hi!
So okay, I always come back to this and hope you can help me out. What do you think was the point into the show putting in this Dylan character of having Rio show such affection and being so soft towards her? That always broke me because he should have hugged Beth like that 😭 and I get it that then Beth had a line somewhere along “I don’t care who he sleeps with” when taking to Annie and Ruby , but it’s pretty clear she was feeling some type of way. I just don’t get why they’d put Rio being so freaking affectionate to her in that parking lot, what do you think?
I believe Dylan exists for a few reasons:
I think Rio thought flaunting her in front of Beth would make Beth jealous and the result of that jealousy would be Beth attempting to make some sort of claim on him and therefore they’d end up back in bed together (he’d attempted and failed to do that himself by suggesting another bathroom break and flirting in the parking lot during the commercial and he ended up miscalculating)
At the same time, I think Rio did want to underscore that Beth wasn’t special to him and that the introduction of sex into their relationship didn’t tip any scales in her favor. I think he realized he was developing real feelings for her at the same time that he was setting her up as his fall guy, and ultimately he was also convincing himself that he wasn’t going soft on her. Letting her know she was one of ~many was a way of communicating this.
I think Rio’s affection towards Dylan emphasizes that how Rio behaves towards Beth is highly influenced by the circumstances under which they met and the conditions of their relationship as boss/employee. Rio would never freely be affectionate with Beth like that because of the image and power he has to maintain over her—not to mention that it’s never particularly seemed like Beth wants that level of easy physicality.
At this point in the series, we only know Rio through Beth’s eyes as her boss, and this scene demonstrates that there is far more we don’t know about him as he lives his life outside of work. At the same time, I think the ease between Rio and Dylan shows that Dylan is rather insignificant and probably lacks insight into Rio that Beth does have, although she doesn’t realize it.
I do actually like the scene for all those reasons, but also because I think as much as Rio is tactile and physically affectionate, he also does read people fairly well for the most part, and I think there’s an element of him reading and recognizing Beth’s comfort level with touch. He introduces it into their relationship in micro-doses and it’s genuine at the same time that it’s manipulative. Had Rio showed Beth that level of affection while he was secretly betraying her—especially while she was flustered by far more brief and innocuous touches—I think it would’ve really made him and his feelings for her seem inauthentic and duplicitous—like a little over the top in the exact same way it was with Dylan (he’s basically using her as a prop for an interaction with Beth, although Dylan doesn’t seem to know it).
On the surface it looks like a meaningful moment between Rio and Dylan, but because it’s a calculated performance (Rio announces he’s bringing cars into Boland Motors and that it’s for secret reasons AND that he needs to deliver him this one car AND he is condescending to her, telling her to stay in her lane when he KNOWS she’s a snoop) and because Dylan doesn’t seem to exist outside of that moment (Rio’s loft is absent any sign of any woman), I think it’s fairly insignificant. Rio can just be more freely affectionate with people who don’t know him on a more intimate level because they can’t use that affection against him—like we do see Beth try to do later when she dresses up for him or tries to initiate sex with him in order to distract him.