#2.09 analysis

Thinking about their conversation in the car in season 1 where he told her to tell the police he was hitting it and her flustered and prudish reaction to it, I just can’t believe he thought she wanted to hook up. In a dirty bar bathroom, at that. I’m not sure if you’ve already addressed this. If so, just ignore me. 😅

(this ask is so old, im v sorry, but tysm and i'm glad you enjoyed it!)

as for your question, i've always interpreted it to be that he highly suspected, but didn't really believe he could be right until beth locked the door. even then, i think he was still shocked when she turned back around (not kissing him) and lifted up her dress.

i think this for a few reasons:

beth went to a place she suspected he'd be at because he'd already invited her there, but didn't seem to have contacted him to meet up. the place and timing was also unusual - it wasn't on two separate park benches in the daylight or in a back alley where nobody could see them, but in the middle of a crowded bar when he was out to be social. so i think he put the pieces together that it wasn't about work and it was therefore personal - and rio was dialed in and frankly just waiting to their sexual tension to break between them.

beyond that, i think the fact that rio knows that he's been invited to follow her to the bathroom - to even try the lock and find it open for him! - indicates that he was correctly reading the signals. typically a bathroom would be a place to find reprieve and privacy in a bar.

lastly, i think rio's choice not to speak - not to ask beth what she wanted or why she was there - was because he knew how fragile the moment was and wanted to see what would happen without his interference. rio's a man of few words, but he also typically likes to get to the point so he can smoke bomb out of there, and here was dead silent, waiting.

i think it's the same (but more complicated and layered) when she invites him back to her place in 2.09. he knows, but he doesn't entirely believe he's right, and that seems to be the case right up until the moment she closes the door and starts taking off her shoes and her coat.

imo, beth's unpredictability is something that fascinates him and keeps him hooked on her. in business, he finds it can be both advantageous as much as it can be disastrous, but in romance and their personal relationship, he seems to find it completely fascinating because he's always straddling a line of what he knows (that she's attracted to him, that she implicitly trusts him, that she blooms under his attention) and what he can never seem to put his finger on (for instance: how, exactly, to get her into bed, what the effect of prompting her jealousy will be, what she ultimately wants the two of them to be). rio seems like he has the upper hand because he's had more experience and he's her boss that has literally threatened her life and shot her husband, but in their intimate relationship, it's actually beth that holds the cards - partially because he lets her, and partially because she's just so elusive and unpredictable and, i believe, unusual in the sense that she has incredible levels of self-denial. frankly, i think rio's used to getting whichever woman he's interested in, and he's completely flummoxed that this isn't the case with beth, and he doesn't know why because he does know she's interested.

i could daydream about my bedroom break headcanons forever ❤️ here's the ones that i can remember off the top of my head right now:

they drove separately to beth's house and beth was a nervous wreck and rio thought it was a hook-up but he also kept trying to quash his expectations because beth had already given him so many curveballs

rio was still into the game of making her come to him until she finally did and she kissed him and then he wanted to drop it immediately and he did when he just went full throttle and kissed her like he wanted to

he wanted to keep kissing her and was content to take things slow but she was too nervous to let it build so she went to undressing him immediately

he slowed her down, though

he maybe let her unbutton his shirt and get off his undershirt, but if she moved towards her own clothes, he grabbed her wrists gently and murmured something about taking their time

they still didn't talk much, but it wasn't as taboo like it was in the bathroom break. it's moreso that words failed them—at least at first.

rio relished the foreplay this time and beth was tense and nervous at first but he relaxed her with his lips, with quiet compliments as he kissed down her body.

he went down on her and it was the best head beth had ever gotten and it was good enough to make her forget—for a moment—that this was the end.

the sex was slow and tender at first, but very intense. personally i ascribe to believing that it was missionary (with modifications to increase the intensity and closeness) and eye-contact heavy.

beth couldn't stop touching him. once that dam broke and she allowed herself to explore his shoulders, his jaw, his skin—she couldn't stop. it was the last time, and she was going to get her fill.

my most controversial opinion is that i don't think they went more than one round. i think the foreplay just lasted an extraordinarily long time and that the sex was drawn out as well.

at least once—even if it was very quietly—she moaned his name, breathy and desperate—right into his ear.

i don't think beth could handle more than one round emotionally. i think it was already so hard for her to cut it off that the break would be too much of a cool down for her. she'd get into her own head.

she did hesitate between the end and putting on her robe, though, just letting herself steal those last few moments before she pulled up the drawbridge and isolated herself from him (and her emotions).

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.

I think the line is intentionally ambiguous! I think he literally means “do you want [the last question]” but I think he purposefully phrases it in such a way (with the slow closing of the gap and gravelly voice to match) that it forces Beth to ask herself the question of whether she wants him—mostly so she has to face that truth right before he rejects her and kicks her out like she did to him.

He’s still stung from her dumping him, but he has the power in the scene in multiple ways: he’s caught her red-handed, he’s blackmailing her with a dead body, and he’s forced her back into crime. He also knows what he’s about to do (tell her to leave when he’s built an expectation of tenderness) while she’s in ignorance, so it really is about flipping the script on 2.09.

The only other time Rio’s been so forward in initiating sex was when he didn’t have power—when Beth was strong arming him in the 50/50 deal.

I’ve always read the innuendo in the 20 questions scene, but thought it was more Rio forcing Beth to reckon with her feelings as a form of tit-for-tat punishment than it was about making a serious offer. He knows she still has feelings for him (her curiosity and jealousy over Rhea taking precedence at the top of the game establishes that), but since he only realized the true extent of his feelings after she closed the gap in her bedroom, now he tries to recreate that same wound in her when he closes the gap in his bedroom and sets up the same kind of false expectation.

Hello! ❤️

Personally, I think he suspected but still had pretty big doubts right up until the moment that she closed the bedroom door—and that's when he felt like this is really happening, which is why he whipped around like he did when he heard the click.

I think when she told him "I don't have it here, though" with her voice like that looking at him all big-eyed and soft, he definitely thought there was an insinuation. But I've also headcanoned that on the drive over, he got a little antsy and unsure—I mean, it's pretty much out of no where and I don't think he ever quite wrapped his head around the aftermath of the bathroom break (let alone the trigger!) so I think he kept the possibility open that he was entirely wrong because she can be so tough for him to read.

I think he felt a bit confident that he was right when she was nervously twittering around the kitchen, which is why he basically asked her to cut to the chase with, "What am I doing here, Elizabeth?"

Oh, I actually completely read that scene of her doing laundry and remaking the beds as being a reaction to having to end things with Rio and give up crime.

It's preparation for her children to come home, yes, but there's really not a lot of joy in it. The captions even describe the music as "bittersweet":

And the lyrics include lines such as:

She's happy to have her children back, but it comes at a great personal sacrifice, and I think we see that loss across this season and 2.10, where she ultimately has a complete breakdown at being shoved back into this box—not to mention that she has to block Rio's number to stop herself from answering his calls or reaching out to him herself.

I even read the lack of focus on her face during the actual breakup scene as really important. She forces herself to look at him through a lot of it—when she acknowledges that she didn't leave the money at home, right after she tells him "I'm not," when she tells him "I'm done," when she tells him he should go—but she's unable to look at him, choosing to look down or away, when she says "I don't need [the money]" and "no more cash, no more pills" and, most significantly, when she says "It's over." It's very much a scene where Beth emotionally closes herself off to get through it, and her inability to look at Rio is a signifier of how difficult the conversation is even as she pushes through it with a detached brutality. I think the camera angles emphasize that rather than diminish that, just like the choice to have Beth redressing and tying off her robe at the top of the scene while Rio relaxes naked.

I do think he’s in love with Beth, yes. I don’t think he wants to be, but I think he knows it and it irritates him. I read Rio as someone who is in tune with his emotions and that acts with an awareness of what they are, someone who is generally honest but that masks that with ambiguity, limited information, and behavior that’s intended to hurt and punish.

She ordered him a chardonnay as a joke, specifically a sort of inside joke calling back to him trying to order her one in 2.04.

RIO: Hey can we get a couple of... what's your poison, huh? Like a summer rosé or something?

BETH, denying the drink: It's ten in the morning.

RIO: The lady will take a crisp chardonnay.

...

BETH: [I want to be] a good person.

RIO: Nah, you're way more interesting than that.

BETH: You don't know me.

RIO: I think I do.

BETH: I don't drink rosé.

RIO: Can we get a bourbon? On the rocks?

While Beth only specifies that she doesn't drink rosé, it's implied that she doesn't drink chardonnay, either. For one, the "proof" that Rio knows her is when he correctly orders her a bourbon on the rocks, despite the fact that he's only seen her drink once—a long time ago, when she invited him into her kitchen after leaving him the pearls and they barely knew each other. It shows not only that he's paying close attention to her, but that he remembers everything about her, even insignificant details. Overwhelmed, Beth rejects the drink (and the idea that Rio knows her) and leaves the key.

Later in the episode, this contrasts to Dean, her husband of twenty years, suggesting that he and Beth share a bottle of chardonnay. Beth rejects the other in favor of ordering her own drink, a bourbon on the rocks, signifying she's pulling away from Dean to be more independent and true to herself—she's no longer wearing the happy housewife mask she has been—but there's also an implication that she's leaning into being the version of herself that Rio sees.

When Rio enters in 2.09, Beth drunkenly and playfully orders him a chardonnay:

BETH: I'll have another... and he'll have a chardonnay.

RIO, laughing: No, I won't.

BETH: Whatever you want. Your tab's still open.