#2.10 analysis

Probably Beth having the meltdown with the cookies.

I kind of see it as an inverse parallel to the ‘vette scene in 2.04. There, right after they’ve slept together for the first time, Rio yanks the string between them tighter and unleashes all the pent up energy in this delightful, gleeful performance with a tire iron. And part of what makes it so delicious to watch is that it is a performance—one to intimidate Dean and which ends up having the effect of turning Beth on, and one I read as being rooted in Rio wanting all of Beth, but having to settle for 60%. But still, at least he wins, and he wins with witnesses, the people he’s exploiting for his own gain by infiltrating their business.

The scene with the cookies is the exact opposite. Immediately following her break up with Rio, where she’s severed all contact with him to the point that she’s blocked his number because she can’t even be tempted, Beth’s putting on a performance. But this performance isn’t a demonstration of her power; it’s a demonstration of her subservience. It’s one of quiet domesticity. Of compliance. She packs herself neatly back into a box labeled ‘housewife’ and tries to pretend for everyone else—for Dean, for the kids, for Lauren and Asmita, even for Annie and Ruby. But it’s blatantly clear to everyone how well she’s holding up. Dean sees that she misses it; he just doesn’t care. Annie and Ruby know, but they only talk about it with each other, not with Beth. Lauren and Asmita recognize a rebelliousness in her (and we recognize how she’s using the PTA as a substitute for crime) and they goad her on but are too cowardly at the end to follow through or say anything to Beth’s face.

She’s made something better, and they pack it away and replace it—replace her—with something generic. Just like Dean with Amber, with Patty, with any of the warm bodies that were anyone but her. Just like Dean with the dealership, swooping back in and ousting her and destroying everything she created and then inviting her to come take a look. Over and over, she’s rendered invisible.

So Beth has this moment with the cookies. And it’s not a performance, but something deeply private. Falling apart alone because she doesn’t have anyone to fall apart with. Nobody to pick up the pieces. Nobody, as Ruby says, to clean up her mess.

But the scene has the same mesmerizing quality as the scene with Rio and the ‘vette. You can’t look away. But there’s no glee in this scene, only devastation. And it’s about the cookies, something that doesn’t really matter at all, except it’s not about the cookies and it does matter. Because what we’re witnessing is a woman who believed she had to give up any part of herself that wasn’t palatable to her husband, a woman who was willing to make that sacrifice for her children, and a woman who is realizing that she can’t. Not anymore. Not after tasting freedom, power, joy—things that are quite present in Rio’s scene, but which are utterly absent in Beth’s. Because while Rio won with witnesses, Beth lost, completely alone, unseen.

Except that she’s not, because there’s still Rio.

I think Beth does worry Rio is going to forget her just as easily as everyone else has, but the prospect is too awful so she instead convinces herself he can’t run his empire without her. Has to imagine he’s not even going to be able to function. “How is he going to do it?” she asks. But what she’s really asking is how is she going to do it, do this, be this. She has to overinflate her importance to him because she’s been cut down in every other aspect of her life.

And Rio? Well. He has Annie and Ruby’s number, has an open line of communication, but he shows up at the park. “They suck your soul out yet, or what?” He sees her. He names exactly what’s happened to her and he wasn’t even there to witness it. But he knows! And he’s not indifferent to her like Dean, or scared for her like Annie and Ruby. He sees her and he likes her. Not only that, he wants her. And not just anyone. Her.

My personal interpretation of Rio’s behavior in 2.10 is that he believes Beth is orchestrating the Annie/Ruby Canada pill scheme. When he approaches Beth at the park, I think he believes that she does miss crime and that she can’t stay away, but that she’s behind-the-scenes. I think that’s why he went ahead with letting Annie and Ruby do that job (and why he didn’t immediately follow up with them when they failed) because he ultimately thought it would rope Beth back in. Instead, he found out that Beth had blocked his number and that she didn’t seem inclined to play the game anymore.

In 2.11, then, I think he ramps up his behavior. The body parts are used to pull Beth back in and while I think it starts as a reminder that she can’t cut her losses that easily (his world is not one people get to come in and out of whenever they feel the whim). I do think it becomes more of a game for him when he realizes that she’s going to resist that hard. The body parts are really interesting to me because he doesn’t utilize them when she tries to steal 50% of his business, but he does use them to get her back in business? And he doesn’t actually do anything besides send them with a greater frequency? The purpose is to get her to break—he doesn’t actually seem all that fussed about actually leveraging the body as evidence for the FBI to pin her; it’s simply to get her back in his orbit when he realizes how much she really is trying to step out (something he recognizes she doesn’t actually want, as evidenced by him asking her in 2.10 “they suck your soul out yet or what?”).

And the reason why I think he was so eager to get her back (as opposed to telling her to fuck off) is because I think he simply likes her—both professionally and personally. After she dumped him, I think he was wounded and hurt, but with a bit of distance and perspective (and especially when he believed that she was back in, just secretly) I think he pieced together a bit that her motives were more complicated than he may have initially believed. When he honey traps her in 2.11 and sees that she is still attracted to and interested in him, I think that he clues in even more. 

In a professional sense, yes! I think Rio pretty clearly directs his attention towards Beth in any instance where Annie and Ruby are present. I’ve talked before about whether or not I think Rio likes them and tend to believe that they’re a bit beneath his notice. Beth’s the one that caught his eye and Beth’s the one that he deals with, and I think he leaves Annie and Ruby for her to manage—I think his reaction to how he dealt with Annie and Ruby’s failure with the drugs in 2.10 underscores that. He didn't bother them at all, not even with a threat! He used them only to draw Beth back in, which I think was either his plan the entire time—he either suspected Beth was pulling the strings behind the scenes in the first place, or he believed that they would fail and he could use that as leverage to get Beth back. 

I think he does it because he sees Beth as the leader. She’s the one that threw down and got him to spare her, she’s the one that stepped forward to make sure they were good in the warehouse, she’s the one that pitched the box store scheme, she’s the one that gave him her name, promising she’d handled the rotten egg situation. I think he clocked her pretty early as a fighter and as someone creative and ambitious, and he respected that even though she was a bit messy too, and I think she’d genuinely earned his respect at the end of 1.07 which is why he wanted to give her advice (although he pulled back and put her in her place and told her she wasn’t a boss in 1.08). 

i liked it as a narrative device and i do think that beth opens up to strangers more than she does people she’s close to (season 3 confirmed that with her confessing stuff to strangers that she couldn’t seem to say to annie, ruby, or dean) but i didn’t think it quite worked. i think we needed to see how she got there (did dean force her?) because i didn’t buy that beth would choose it for herself? and if she did choose it, that has some pretty significant weight to show how deeply she was struggling? so the concept is cool but the execution wasn’t all there.

It’s not canonically confirmed, no! It’s just an inference—or a logical conclusion compiled from evidence. 

I use the 2.08 flashbacks as the main source of my inferences:

The other flashback scene we get is Beth and Ruby sitting on a bench outside of Ruby’s father’s funeral. Beth asks Ruby if she wants to go in, Ruby says no because it’s “going to be weird,” and Beth says, “He was your dad,” before she rests her head on Ruby’s shoulder to comfort her. 

Taking all of that into consider, I infer:

Because Beth is driving too young and doing something reckless, I assume she feels that the errand is necessary

Because Beth is buying groceries, I assume Beth has taken over her mother’s responsibilities in feeding and raising Annie

Because Annie claims her mother “likes” to spend a lot of time in bed, (showing that she doesn’t have a clear reason to do so that would make sense to a child, such as a physical illness or injury), I assume it is probably a mental illness or emotional breakdown of some sort.

Because there is no reference to their father—either an excuse or reasonable justification for why he couldn’t buy the groceries in Beth’s place—I assume he is not around

Because they show us a funeral scene with Ruby’s father and because Beth doesn’t personally relate to it by sharing her own experience, I assume Beth’s father is not dead

In 2.10, Ruby and Annie fight:

ANNIE: Just because I didn’t choose some safe-ass, boring-ass life like my sister—

RUBY: You know why she did that? Because she had to. She didn’t have anyone to clean up after her like you do. 

ANNIE: That’s not true.

RUBY: She has been mopping up your messes since the day I met you.

This confirms the inference that Beth has been mothering Annie since Beth was a teenager, and suggests that this was not a type of mothering she herself received since nobody was “clean[ing] up after her.” In that vein, the fact that Ruby says she “had” to choose a “safe” and “boring” life suggests that Beth’s own upbringing was somewhat unstable. Though its still wide open for interpretation in terms of severity, it does help us understand why she stayed—and why she stays—with Dean, who really does represent safety and security across the series despite the fact that the show starts with this illusion being shattered. This is why her reaction to Dean’s reckless handling of their finances—and its consequences plunging them into utter instability—is so extreme.