#3.07 analysis

First, let’s look at one of the biggest complaints about Beth’s choice not to leave Dean: She was a badass in season 1. Where did that version of Beth go?

There are a lot of ways in which Season 1 Beth is everybody’s favorite. She confronts Dean about Amber and the mortgages! She decides to rob a grocery store to save her family! She kicks Dean out! She tells him the little wifey who “lived to make [him] dinner has left the building” (1.06) and that she was done with the version of their marriage where he “brought home the bacon” and she doesn’t “ask any questions” (1.01). She actually crimes pretty well, comparatively! She’s taking care of business! Hell yeah, right?

This version of Beth makes sense to us because Dean’s betrayal cuts so deep. He’s cheated on her and mortgaged her house so many times her family is on the edge of homelessness, and she didn’t even know.

It also makes sense to us because we saw ten episodes of it and loved it.

But that version of Beth? That’s not Beth—not really. That version of Beth is responding to a fresh wound. She’s high on rage and low on culpability. She is, throughout the season, responding to the idea that she’s got nothing left to lose, so she might as well plow ahead and tell that kingpin off and kick her husband out. It shocks her sister and best friend multiple times over. Who is this Beth, they seem to wonder, as she kicks down boxes at a grocery store robbery and asks Rio for another job. 

But we already know that she’s a compartmentalizer, a peacekeeper, a grin-and-bear-it type of person. That’s who she is at her core, and they establish that quickly in the pilot episode:

1. When we learn Beth isn’t in love with her husband but is still married to him

2. When she accepts the ways that he treats her without qualms

3. When she justifies her choice to stay with him

4. Annie says it herself, as someone who knows Beth best:

Annie and Ruby clearly don’t like Dean—even before it’s an established fact that he cheated and lost all their money—and Beth does… nothing. Has never done anything, actually. 

Dean capitalizes on what he knows about Beth (she’s a caretaker, she’s prone to guilt, she wants what’s best for his kids) and he fakes cancer. And… it works. Once Beth loses the momentum of successful criming and righteous anger, Beth starts to thaw before the end of the season (1.08):

Once Beth thinks that her crime life is over (that she’ll take care of Rio by putting him away), she even tells Dean to go ahead and make that 20th anniversary dinner reservation (2.10). The initial rage and indignation has worn off, and she’s accepted a return to the status quo.

And that’s before Rio shows up with a gun and shoots Dean in the chest.

After?

After, Beth completely absorbs the guilt and responsibility, and she tries to smooth everything out by reverting back to her “role.”

She little wifey who lived to make him dinner is back in the building with all his favorite comfort foods at 9:00 am (2.01):

He may have cheated on her and nearly lost all their money, but she nearly got him killed. Is that even? No, I think it’s fairly clear that Beth’s is worse. Does it mean Dean’s transgressions should be forgiven and forgotten? Also no. But 2.04 established that Beth had rolled with every single misstep of his, had accepted him as leader of her household—she accepted every excuse he gave her for his failing business, and she always stuck by his side. 

There have been multiple ways that we’ve seen that Beth has pushed down and aside her own needs in order to serve others—Dean and her kids, yes, but also Annie and Ruby. 

Although Beth did quickly become fed up with Dean again and start holding her against him in terms of his affairs (significantly, the only wound that was was truly reopened via the conversation with Amber in 2.05), the power imbalance was too vast for two reasons:

Dean had the upper hand because Beth’s activities had directly put her family in harm’s way, and he could use that against her in not only a custody case but in a criminal case,

Beth was worn down by the significantly more intense and serious aspects of the job that she did not deal with in Season 1, namely Turner’s heightened investigation and Rio’s orders for her to kill a man. She had some successes in Season 2, but more failures, and that’s because she was out of her sphere (box stores and a grocery store where her sister worked for home court advantage) and in Rio’s sphere (dumping bodies in dumpsters and drug dens). 

This left Beth little room to wield control over Dean, but also little control over her own life and choices. 

Beth’s back was against a wall in the pilot of Season 1, but she’s like a trapped animal in many senses in Season 2. She wasn’t back with Dean, but she was tolerating his presence, and Dean exploited his power over her by taking the kids. 

Eventually, he seemed worn down and presented her with divorce papers, and things seemed to be on track.

So Why Don’t They Do a Divorce Storyline In Season 3?

Everything was set up perfectly! The kids were told, the papers were signed! So why did they drop the ball?

Because Beth shot Rio. Because she had just spent a season trying and failing to catch her breath and get her feet planted firmly on the ground.

She failed to kill a man on Rio’s orders (2.02). Her children started acting out because of her behavior (2.03 with Kenny and the cake, 2.07 with Jane running away). She discovered her husband had not just one affair, but at least four (2.05). She seduced a man only to feel that she was a “sidepiece” (2.05). Rape and/or violence was threatened against her in a drug den (2.07). Her best friend nearly betrayed her (2.08). Her children were taken away from her (2.08). She was robbed of everything she had earned after she had given up nearly everything to earn it (2.08). She discovered her true feelings for a man other than her husband only to be forced to give him up (2.09). She realized that she was addicted to crime (2.10). She had body parts sent to her in the mail in order to force her hand back into crime (2.11). She was nearly caught by the FBI (2.10, 2.12). She felt abandoned to deal with the consequences of her failures and turned herself in (2.13).

And then Rio kidnapped her, put a gun in her hand, and asked her to do the one thing she was unable to—to kill a man in cold blood. And then he yelled at her and advanced on her, and one shot went off, and she steeled herself and shot twice more—and I hate everything about it, but I think she was scared, legitimately terrified, and knew once the first bullet was shot that she had to finish the job because otherwise?

Well, we’ve seen otherwise. 

Rio comes after her and now has the capability to pull the trigger that he didn’t have before.

But she thaws on Dean before she shoots Rio. She tells Dean not to get the apartment in 2.13 before she’s been kidnapped. Why? Well, it’s just like she did in 1.10. She thought her crime life was over. She’d turned herself in and gotten away with it, and she thought she was free. Rio had already disappeared (empty loft) and refused to help (“Don’t be like that, Elizabeth”) and she thought it was all behind her. 

So she went back to what was safe and familiar, even if it wasn’t happy. And remember: she was used to that. We’ve been able to piece together that, by the time of the pilot, Beth had been clearly unhappy for at least five years. And she had accepted that as just part and parcel of her life.

Is it right? No. Does it make for fun viewing? No. But is it consistent with Beth’s characterization, when she’s been denied what she really wants (crime, Rio)? Yes. 

And that’s only heightened after she believes she killed Rio, because I think she has PTSD. 

There are four main types of PTSD symptoms:

Re-experiencing the traumatic event through intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, or intense mental or physical reactions when reminded of the trauma.

Avoidance and numbing, such as avoiding anything that reminds you of the trauma, being unable to remember aspects of the ordeal, a loss of interest in activities and life in general, feeling emotionally numb and detached from others and a sense of a limited future.

Hyperarousal, including sleep problems, irritability, hypervigilance (on constant “red alert”), feeling jumpy or easily startled, angry outbursts, and aggressive, self-destructive, or reckless behavior.

Negative thought and mood changes like feeling alienated and alone, difficulty concentrating or remembering, depression and hopelessness, feeling mistrust and betrayal, and feeling guilt, shame, or self-blame.

And I think we see Beth experience most of them, and her trauma is re-opened by both Rio’s threats and Lucy’s murder.

I would call her speech to the customer at the beginning of 3.01 an intrusive memory—the customer asked for a sympathy card, and Beth started talking at length about death, much to the customer’s discomfort. 

We don’t see flashbacks or nightmares, but we do see intense mental reactions when she’s reminded of the trauma, first with her zoned-out reaction to Rio’s reappearance in the bar and second with Beth’s reaction to Dean buying a gun in 3.04, despite the fact that she’s legitimately worried about being murdered.

She definitely feels emotionally numb, confirmed by her telling Max she felt “nothing” in 3.07, yes, but also confirmed by her wanting to spend her time in bed after Rio sets up Mick to watch over her, and with how hollow she seems standing in front of Au Ju’s cage at the end of 3.05.

We also know she’s detached from others—she can’t remember Dean’s job, she’s visually isolated from Annie & Ruby a number of times through costume choices, hell, I think you can even read her choice to set Max up to kill Rio as detachment. 

Here’s her sense of a limited future:

Not to mention when she yells at Annie, “I’m dead!”

And god, we now she’s going haywire on reckless and self-destructive behavior, from showing up in the middle of the night at Rio’s bar and announcing he has no reason not to kill her anymore to stealing from him.

We’ve seen guilt with the way that she stared at the photo of the father and son in the picture frame (3.01), with her attempts to befriend and take care of Marcus and Rhea (3.01 and 3.02), and with her keeping Au Jus as a physical reminder of her guilt over Lucy’s death (3.05).

Basically, I read her going back to Dean as her attempt to avoid anything that reminds her of her trauma. Start over from Square One, and try to pretend that none of it happened. She gets away with about two months of pretending, and then that trauma is ripped open, fresh, when Rio reappears, and it’s just a constant scramble for her to save her own skin. 

I can’t imagine anyone thinking that was a great time to file for divorce and start dating. No, Dean’s one saving grace is that he’s familiar. She’s used to the ways he lets her down, and she’s accepted that, at best, he’s just a person who is there. In some ways, his presence (and the kids’ constant presence) is a shield. Take that away and Beth is more vulnerable and more susceptible to violence. 

The Point of the Seduction Scene

I’ve already done a deep dive of what I think they were trying to go for in Beth’s seduction of Dean—but I think there is a point to it. I think we’re seeing Beth back on the up-and-up. In 3.07, she gave Au Jus back to Max and helped him find closure with Lucy’s death. By extension, I think she found some of her own, as well (emphasized by their conversation in the van afterward).

The seduction scene underscored that Beth also felt powerful again—not just from her own success, like in 2.04—but against Rio. Despite the fact that Rio knocks her back down again by stealing everything in her house, the promo makes it look like Beth holds her own against him again, too—or she at least feels confident enough to try. 

This is good. It means that dynamic is still shifting and that Beth is, in some ways, possibly moving away from her trauma. The more powerful she feels, the less likely she is going to seek Dean’s familiarity and comfort and support. 

Ultimately, Beth’s choices to stay with Dean have been out of convenience and the limited sense of safety and security he offers her, because she’s used to his behavior. 

Beth’s increasing power has always been a force that drives them apart, and I think we’re about to see that come back.