If you could change the “break up “ scene in 2x09 would you? if so how would you change it?
You know, at first my answer to this was "nothing," because I really do love all of it. It's peak angst, AKA my favorite.
I love that we jumped from the kiss to the aftermath and how the sex was so intimate that it was even withheld from the audience.
I love the way it's framed, with Beth and Rio on opposite sides of the bed, in opposite moods, her closing herself off to him by tying off her robe, him lounging half-naked in post-coital bliss, completely at home in her bed.
I love Rio in his necklace that he kept on but otherwise keeps tucked underneath his shirt, private and just for him—but now something Beth knows about, too.
I love the way she hasn't paid him yet and the way he's already promising to help her the next day because he's in such a good mood.
I love the way she can barely look at him but how she forces herself to anyway. I even love how callous she is because she needs it to be the end, because if there's a single loose thread, she's not going to be able to stop herself from going back to crime, to him. And if she isn't harsh, she knows he'll come back to her, and she won't be able to resist.
I even—controversially—wouldn't change her leaving the money on the nightstand because I love that Rio teases her to expose that he knew the lie was a ruse to get him into bed, and that it confirms that this wasn't a plan, but Beth desperately clinging to one last moment with him, needing to say goodbye but not knowing how to, instead just letting go to wordlessly express what she never could in any other circumstance. I love the juxtaposition of how harsh leaving the money looks visually with how much it's contrasted to how Beth feels emotionally, even if she keeps it all guarded—and I think Rio knows what they just had was real, and that visual cue doesn't change that for him at all.
I love that she can't watch him leave, and that the camera allows us to see Rio's face as he processes it.
And I wouldn't change that they break up, either, tbh. That paradox of them only being able to be as vulnerable with each other as they are because it's the end is something that destroys me in the best possible way. On top of that, while their feelings were honest, there was such a stark power imbalance between them with Rio's duplicities and setting Beth up while she was so powerless. Anything they had moving forward at the 2.09 would've been tainted by that, so I think it was important that they came together and exploded apart like that—and that they didn't come back together again, not truly, until every last secret was exposed.
But! After a lot of thinking, I did come up with one teeny tiny thing that I would change. I wish that the camera shot didn't just pan from the foot of the bed, but the floor. I'd have liked to see their rumpled clothes strewn across the room for no other reason than that it would please me (and maybe tell a visual story of their undressing of each other).
