I’m completely over the moon with all the brio content that occurred in 4x06 and I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I’m wondering what you see Rio thinking when Beth reached for his belt. I’m just not quite connecting the dots I think because it felt kind of...random to me? Like, she says that it’s not fair that she’d be excluded from the business if his family doesn’t like her and then she goes for his pants. It seems like you have a very keen sense for character motivations and I’d love to hear what you think his perspective was in that scene and why he chose to lean into the moment instead of rebuff her because she was acting suspicious. Like I said, I’m THRILLED, just feel like I’m missing the party because I don’t quite understand why things happened the way they did. 😭
Tbh this is something that tripped me up and that I’m still not entirely solid on my reading, but here are my initial thoughts.
There’s two things I don’t think should be ignored: the show has an established history of Beth balking or determinedly standing her ground at the suggestion sexual coercion (Boomer, the man in the drug den, Fitzpatrick, Troy) and then the obvious parallel to Beth snapping and grabbing for Fitzpatrick’s belt when she was yelling at him that he had made it very clear that this was what she “had” to do to get him to do his job. I personally read that scene as Beth behaving aggressively in order to turn Fitzpatrick off to her because she shed her demure role and took off her mask.
In this scene, Beth reaches for the belt and there’s a motivation outside a desire for intimacy for the sexual act in terms of wanting to distract Rio and maybe to even please him in hopes of getting an invite back in order to keep the Secret Service investigation going, but the logic falls apart from there.
Beth doesn’t need to initiate sex to distract Rio. He’s not looking for the wire and his back is turned. Beth has the ability to lead him out of the room and away from the wire with a plausible excuse—returning to the party because his family is waiting—but she doesn’t. Instead, she keeps him in the exact place she doesn’t want him to be for longer.
Initiating sex in order to keep the Secret Service deception in play doesn’t quite work either. She’s got Rio talking and telling her about his family and business—valuable information. Instead of pressing for more while they’re (seemingly) in private, she pivots so that they become silent and stop talking. Not only that, throughout the conversation, her dialogue is ambiguous and reveals her hesitation with the plan, even if she presses forward with it at the end of the episode when she tells Dean about it (setting herself up for chaos when she ultimately fails).
I read the Fitzpatrick parallel as a contrast. Like I said—we have repeated references to Beth standing her ground against unwanted sexual contact (the only exception being with her own husband in an attempt to get pregnant to save her own life). Unlike the moment with Fitzpatrick—obviously a disingenuous initiation where the mask is dropped—the initiation with Rio seems to be a moment where the mask is on. She plays up being coy and coquettish, batting her eyelashes and aiming to pleasure him.
It reads as distraction, as manipulation, as desperation—but like I said. The logic falls apart based on Beth’s characterization and the fact that the episode established that although Beth says she’s afraid of Rio, the tide has really changed. Her dream sequence reveals that she’s not stewing over the possibility that Rio might kill her if he finds out what she’s doing. What’s actually weighing on her is the idea of simply disappointing him and betraying his trust. All of those reasons are false motivations that make up the mask to hide what Beth really wants.
Rio gently grabbing her wrist and shaking his head while looking her in the eye as he pulls up her skirt is Rio calling her on it. He’s not going to let her pretend that this is anything but what it is: Beth wants him. He turns her on. Despite everything else, the intimacy they share is real. He knows it. He wants her to know it too.
So he touches her. He feels exactly how turned on he can get her in just a few seconds. He hears her pant in his ear. He makes her fall apart on his hand. And he knows that she knows that that wasn’t faked. It was real.
Rio cut through the bullshit in the wire scene in her kitchen and here he cut through the bullshit in his grandmother’s house. This is the truth, raw and bare, and he didn’t need to get her naked to see it this time.
They’re each holding something over the other’s head (the fingerprinted gun, the fingerprinted cash). They’re each setting each other up as their fall guy (the secret service, the banker). They’re each stringing each other along with half-truths (the “if I make another cookie I’ll die” speech, the eight ball shot in exchange for the loan). They’re each diminishing what this is (Beth says she just needs him alive, Rio says she’s just a work friend).
But this episode, Beth said they were partners and Rio didn’t correct her.
They’re on the same page. The power is rebalancing.
And in the midst of all that, they’re remembering that they like each other.
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