#4.05 analysis

Ah, what a great catch, anon!

I think we definitely are seeing Beth change and flip her allegiance. And I do think she chose Rio at the end of the episode—but not in a way that’s definitive and absolute. I just think the needle moved and we’re going to see that transformation process happen over the rest of the season.

I think of it like this:

3.07-3.09

Coming off of Lucy’s murder, Beth is 100% committed to the hitman plot because she feels its the only viable solution. She tells Max they can’t go to the cops because, as Ruby says, “we’ll all end up in that van.” These episodes are the height of Beth struggling in her relationship with Rio. She tells Max she feels “nothing” and Annie explicitly says that “it’s not a life” if all they do is work for Rio without pay, agency, or choice. She feels utterly trapped and sees this as the only way out. After Rio gets her fingerprints on the gun, she’s distraught, but once she has Fitzpatrick lined up, she’s proud of herself and feels incentivized because it ultimately means she will be free from him.

3.10

Beth passes Fitzpatrick’s test, but she’s resistant to making the call and the needle nudges because she’s unable to watch it happen. She celebrates Rio’s death, but has a brief moment of reflection looking out over the picnic table, remembering that there were better times between them. She insists no one was jilted, but corrects the girls when they say it was a “one and done.” She chooses to let go of the door handle when she’s in the car with Rio, ultimately taking the chance that he won’t hurt her and she’s proven right. Her inability to lie to him returns when she can’t come with a plausible excuse for where her money is going—a marked difference from her cocky assertion that she “can’t control the world market” or the way she tries to play him when she dresses up in the polka dot dress. She’s proud of her hot tub scheme and she gets frustrated, throwing a temper tantrum, when Rio doesn’t give her his full attention and stamp of approval. 

3.11

Beth’s ire gets reignited when Rio “consolidates,” forcing Beth to print and wash while he takes a large cut of the profits. She’s frustrated by his control over her, but she can’t help but feel flattered when he tells her that he “loves” Boland Bubbles, asking him, “Really?” Rio flirts and while Beth doesn’t flirt back, she is somewhat playful. She asks when it “gets to be mine” because she “made all of this happen.” She wants credit, but the fact that she asks also means things might be different if he were ever willing to let her have anything to herself. Rio essentially tells her that will never happen until she kills him. The moment is loaded, but when Rio leaves, Beth doesn’t look victorious—despite the fact that she has an active hit on him.

I do think Rio trusts Beth to some degree (and that Beth trusts Rio too) but I don’t think trusting her had much to do with his decision to make her the Banker. 

In fact, he’s just made her life more complicated by doing so, which is why she balks when he tells her she’s not done. 

It’s clear from this episode that Beth is disposable to the Secret Service—literally. If she doesn’t deliver, they don’t care what happens to her, since they refuse to even consider putting a cop outside of her house for safety when she tells them that her life is at stake.

By making her the Banker, Rio pulls her in deeper at the exact moment that she needs to be pulling away, and it’s only her face that the operation will lead to. Rio says he’s laying low and explicitly tells her that he’s making her his fall guy (exactly like she’s making him hers):

Basically Beth is saying being the Banker is risky when she’s being scrutinized after Dean’s arrest and the Secret Service attempting to work with her to take Rio down, and Rio tells her it doesn’t matter that she’s being scrutinized because he’ll be lying low and she’ll be the one on the hook—i.e. it’s only risky for her, and that’s not his concern.

On top of that, Beth will feel pressure from Rio too. She points out that she’s not the right person to strongarm these people into paying up (she actually uses the phrase “big dirty thug” which is yikes) and Rio tells her she doesn’t have much of a choice.

So Beth’s in a bit of a bind. If she fails to collect, she’ll face consequences from Rio. If she fails to deliver Rio to the Secret Service, she’ll face consequences from them. Most importantly, the job Rio’s having her perform is one that gets her face out to dozens of people who could be potential witnesses in a case against her. This isn’t a job he gave her because he trusts her; it functions as a punishment and ratchets up the stakes for her.

My interpretation of that scene was that Beth was handling the situation in her own manner. 

The first scene between Beth and the girl is ambiguous. Does the girl actually know where the money is and is she withholding it because she doesn’t take Beth seriously? Is she manipulating Beth with the story about her mother’s illness to get Beth to back down? Or is everything the girl says true and she’s actually oblivious?

Beth still has a moral line where she won’t harm someone completely innocent, but she doesn’t have a moral line when it comes to lying and manipulating to get her way.

Instead of strongarming the girl or threatening her, she handed her a gun and was essentially parroting what Rio told her: Watch your back. 

She did a miniature demonstration of how to use the gun, clocking that this was all new territory to her. The girl fronted that she would be just fine, but Beth could see that she was crumbling. Beth reminded her that someone would come to collect, and that if the girl handled him, there’d be another after... forever. 

I believe Beth came off genuine and the threat felt legitimate because Beth was speaking from her own experience. Once you’re involved, you’re involved for good—and you can’t remove yourself from the cycle by being stubborn alone. 

Ultimately, Beth wins. The girl doesn’t want to be looking over the shoulder for the rest of her life and she doesn’t have the stamina to withstand the pressure or the consequences of actually using that gun to protect herself.

It’s a really interesting moment because it’s one where Rio hands Beth a gun (by proxy of Mick) and she both weaponizes it as leverage to get her way but she also disarms it by refusing to utilize it in the way in which it’s intended. She’s lying in the same breath that she’s telling the truth, manipulating the girl to spare her further danger, and bluffing with Mick and Rio to buy herself (and therefore the girl, who functions a bit like a Max or a Lucy—someone relatively innocent that’s dragged in it—someone Beth wants to protect) more time. Essentially, it’s peak Beth. She’s thinking on her feet and succeeding when she’s doing things her own way—not Rio’s. She also pulls it off because she’s riding the high of being good at something again. 

Thank you so much! That’s so nice!

And yes, it did happen! It’s implied by Beth knowing how to use the gun in the next episode, but really doubled down on in 3.07 when Beth teaches Max how to shoot to prepare him for killing Rio and she tells him “Pro tip? Exhale before you pull the trigger ... Most people hold their breath, which increases your pulse and makes your hand shake.” Then this exchange happens:

Afterward, she channels Rio’s energy which I think gives us a bit of context as to what that training looked like, haha:

Then I think it’s once again further emphasized by how “comfortable” and “knowledgable” Beth comes off with the gun in 4.05, despite the fact that we know that she’s actually very uncomfortable with guns in her presence since 2.13, considering the way she freaks out on Dean for buying the shotgun and how she says she doesn’t “want it” when Rio tries to hand her another gun in 3.09:

I read that all as Beth having paid very close attention to Rio’s lessons and absorbing them—which fits into her usual M.O. with how often she tries to mimic him, which she does again in The Banker scene where she warns the girl to “watch [her] back.”

I agree that Nancy was very hard on Annie for an easy mistake that anyone could’ve done, but I do think that treatment was in character? I think in that scene Nancy stands in as a proxy for how Annie feels that everyone views her—an incompetent fuckup that can’t do anything right. And Nancy herself is exhibiting new mother stress combined with leftover resentment for Annie, both in her being generally irresponsible, but also because Annie and Nancy have never really made up from Annie’s transgression of sleeping with Greg. She can’t view this moment with Annie in isolation the same way she might’ve with someone like Beth because of their history. And Annie telling her that she really wished she’d get it right this time was, to me, not just Annie wanting to prove herself as capable generally, but wanting to attempt to mend things with Nancy specifically.

What didn’t work for me in that scene was that I didn’t think there was a lot of logic to Nancy carrying around a cream that she knew caused Dakota to break out in a rash as an “emergency” for if the first cream ran out. Especially for someone as finicky and financially secure as Nancy, I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t toss the second cream and buy an emergency reserve of the first cream. And if it was that important to Nancy, I didn’t know why she wouldn’t have provided Annie with a list of instructions or double-checked with one of the many text messages she sent along to Annie throughout the day. It felt like a weak plot contrivance.

I actually sort of wished that the problem that arose was that Annie accidentally left Dakota’s lovey in Rio’s G-Wagen. The blanket was mentioned by Mick at Paper Porcupine and it would’ve entangled Annie in explaining what she had been doing with Dakota all day and allowed her to provide a solution (getting it back) but not one that Nancy would’ve accepted on her timeline (Dakota would be fussy and irritable without it, and Annie couldn’t deliver it immediately). I’d have also liked it for a few reasons—one, it’d re-emphasize and explore the ways Rio doesn’t accommodate Annie in the same way that he does Beth and how little negotiation Annie has to get him to do what she wants on the convenience of her schedule. Two, it’d parallel the dubby (and there’d be the potential of Rio delivering it to Beth at the diner). And three, it’s also a really easy mistake to make, but still one Nancy couldn’t be rational about until she’d had time and space to calm down. We might've even been able to get another Annie and Nancy scene of them making up directly.

Generally, I didn’t care for how much Annie was undermined as a competent mom in this episode, from Ben dismissing how involved she was with him as a baby to Annie seemingly having no intuitive knowledge about how to take care of a young child. I think it makes sense for Annie to be out of practice and habit, but it certainly felt like A Choice to make Mick, who is a by-choice absent father, a baby whisperer and to include moments where each of the girls “fumbled” at properly taking care of the baby (Annie not recognizing Dakota was hungry, Beth suggesting that Mick installing the seat where it was more convenient but less safe, Ruby complaining about the heat while Mick corrected her that it was helping Dakota sleep). 

I think Rio trusts Beth as much as Beth trusts Rio, which is more than he should but actually not all that much.

Setting Beth up as the Banker has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with making Beth his fall guy. It puts pressure on her and if she fails, she’s got to deal with consequences from Rio and the Secret Service. His job gets done but there’s no risk for him. His name and face are completely detached from the operation. 

However, we do see that Rio trusts Beth too. He acts on the “Dave” tip because he buys the narrative she’s selling of herself—the one where she hates PTA and carpool and baking cookies. The one that wants crime. The one that wants to be like him. 

I do think there is an element of truth to Beth’s speech, but I think there’s a falseness too. I think Beth doesn’t only want those things, but I’m not sure she wants to give them up entirely, either. That identity is something Beth has clung to and we see that over and over and over again with her “I’m a mom!” protests. Alone, it doesn’t give her satisfaction. But alone, crime doesn’t either. When she was left with crime and without her kids in 2.09, she was distraught. 

But Rio—Rio has been trying to pull her over to that side and to get her hands dirty since 1.10/2.01. They fight about it in 2.07, he tries to force her hand in 2.13, and her crime success in setting up Boland Bubbles in 3.11 is something that softens him toward her once again. 

So I think there’s an element of Rio still wanting this version of Beth, a version of Rio that still has feelings for her and that gets wrapped up in that image of her at her best, which makes him a bit idealistic about a version of the two of them where they could work together and complement each other. The problem is, that fantasy of Rio’s usually still has him at the top with the control and the power, and Beth’s actively fighting against being under his thumb and being the one that will take the fall for his crimes. 

She’s fighting too hard for her family to do that they don’t have that kind of relationship, trust, history, or intimacy, to make her willing to do that for him. We’ve seen that she will take responsibility (even for things she hasn’t done!) to save Annie and Ruby, like she did when she confessed to Boomer’s murder in 2.13, but Rio’s not in that inner circle. Not yet.

The other instances where Rio trusts Beth—like when she tells him she’s pregnant—are very much fed by his feelings for her. We see his doubt in her claim in 3.03 and 4.01 confirms that he ultimately decides it was a lie. He calls her on her bullshit with the “World Market” ink prices in 3.07. He’s suspicious of what she’s doing with her money in 3.10 and refuses to pay her any more until she comes up with a system. 

But he’s always kept on the hook by the moments where she pulls through and proves herself. She picks up and hands over Boomer (something she failed to do earlier in their relationship). She pulls off Boland Bubbles (until she doesn’t). She makes the call for him to take out Fitz, a move she resisted for a long time.