#4.09 analysis

they both get sloppy and impulsive when their ego is involved

they both get sloppy and make their worst mistakes when each other is involved

i love, too, that it's in the middle of a scene that shows how little nick knows. not only does he wildly misinterpret rio's reasons for murdering lucy (for beth instead of a punishment for beth, to somehow impress beth rather than to intimidate her) he doesn't realize that rio has never had to try and impress beth. she was always most attracted to his natural charm, confidence, and control. also, while nick wondered if there was more to beth and rio's relationship at rosa's house, he didn't know. he's on the outside, prying for information—which he only gets because rio's chafing against nick's intrusion. rio's been just as protective over the details of his relationship with beth as she is, but he can't help but confirm here, pushing back against nick's suggestion that rio's trying to sleep with beth to show that he's already been successful (the detail i love extra is that rio loves to play with ambiguity but here he's decidedly clear: she knows AKA she hasn't forgotten AKA it was memorable). still, he's flippant about it, laughing, acknowledging only the sexual aspect of their relationship—nothing more.

i love this moment as a parallel to dean asking beth if rio listens to her more or encourages her more than he does. like nick, dean is an outsider to the relationship and he can't understand it. dean also typically sees beth and rio as stereotypes of themselves: he struggles to recognize that beth is more than a simple housewife or that rio is more compex than a cardboard cutout "gang banger." when he asks these questions of beth, it's not because he believes it's possible—it's the opposite. he is so baffled by beth's interest in rio (as nick seems to be with rio's interest in beth when she's "merely" a soccer mom) that he can't fathom that rio could actually treat beth with more respect than he does.

it's kind of fun that they play in different ways too: nick minimizes what beth must mean to rio, and dean hyperbolizes it. they're both circling the truth, though. although beth won't admit it, those are part of the reasons that she's attracted to rio. and though nick's wrong about the details, there is a way in which rio killed lucy for beth—it was, after all, in lieu of her own life or that of her girls' (idea credited to @riosnosestud).

like rio, beth flaunts their sexual relationship in order to put dean in his place like rio did with nick. but also like him, she diminishes what they have, saying that she just "really likes having sex with him" (my favorite detail being that she uses the present tense despite the fact that she and rio are very much broken up and he's just unscrupulously tossed her out of his loft—not unlike rio showing that he's bothered nick might think nothing's happened between them so he yanks their history to the present despite the fact that they're in a low spot after the betrayal and arrest).

simultaneously, they both want nobody to know a single shred of a detail about what they are to each other AND they can't help showing each other off too (not only in these respective scenes, but with rio's hand on beth's back, or with beth correcting annie and ruby that it was a "one and done").

haha, well, my first somewhat controversial thought is that i think s4 was manny's weakest season performance-wise overall. i don't think that's a sweeping statement by any means—i just think he had a few weak scenes that stood out because he didn't have any comparable ones in seasons 1-3, where he was extremely consistent, even if what the season required of him was less nuanced overall. however, oddly, i think the scenes that mm didn't nail in s4 were smaller scenes that required less of him (almost like he checked out?), but he nailed the ones that were really meaty and complex.

anyway!

i do absolutely agree with you about those two scenes, and while i hated nick as a person operating in the characters' world, i loved him as a character for the way he affects others to respond to him and highlight different aspects of the brio dynamic. he was probably the freshest, most revitalizing aspect of the show for a long time, and he was utilized perfectly imo *chef's kiss*

one thing that i loved as a shipper but which i loved less when i took my shipping goggles off was how frequently rio's scenes were just opposite beth across seasons 2 and 3. scenes where he was with marcus or rhea or service workers or turner or mick or gil really shaded him in, but they were infrequent, and some of those people saw the same side of rio that beth did. seeing rio with nick—or responding to nick—did, as you say, allow us to see another side of himself that he wasn't willing to share with beth. with her, he relied so much on power dynamics that she couldn't see him vulnerable or weak, scared or nervous. he was always calm, cool, and collected (even if he really wasn't), and while a lot of people didn't like what nick brought out in rio, i agree that it made him more complete and imo more human.

rio being tough 100% of the time is a mask he has to put on for his work; i'm just as intrigued seeing behind that curtain and seeing what rio's bad at because it's real. when he's nervous in the boba scene, i could feel how significant this betrayal was to him. he was willing to do it, certainly. but it wasn't easy for him—and i didn't want it to be! it would cheapen the complexity of that relationship if it was, and i think not only make rio a more callous person, but give the opposite impression that i wrote about here. basically, i think if rio was indifferent to betraying a person he'd come up with and worked with for 15+ years, someone that was family, it would suggest that he was miserable in that relationship for a lot longer, that there wasn't warmth and benefits for him as much as there was coldness and drawbacks. by extension, it would make rio look weaker because he put up with it for as long as he did.

the boxing scene is one where i think mm truly shines. the agitation and twitchiness that he tries to hide but can't when nick's questioning him? the seamless switch from playful fighting to defensive knockout? the smooth, smug confidence when he announces he's slept with beth because he can't help himself—even if the announcement is to his own detriment? and then the switch to confusion—even more quickly—dread, as he realizes what's about to happen? and then it's followed up with this weighted, depressing acknowledgment that he got his bruises the same way beth got her money—being himself. being cocky and too confident. not seeing danger. and putting up with nick!

I’m really of two minds about Nick and Rio’s history. 

On the one hand, it’s clear that Nick has been exerting power and control over Rio’s life for a long time by turning him in (and therefore pushing him into crime) for his own benefit. We also see him guilt Rio when he bails him out and call the shots in terms of what to do in regards to Beth. In that sense, their relationship dynamic is definitely unhealthy and Nick exploits and manipulates Rio in order to force his hand.

However, I’m less certain how much direct violence has played a role in their relationship. 

Rio and Nick have this conversation prior to getting in the ring when Nick first shows up:

Despite the fact that we saw Rio chafing against Nick in the dinner scene (reiterating that they’re cousins, not brothers—something that seems to flip flop back and forth showing the topsy-turvy nature of their dynamic), here they’re fairly playful with each other, joking and laughing. Nick reminds Rio that he “used to beat [his] ass” and Rio ribs him back saying that that hasn’t happened since they were very young. It’s obviously an exaggeration, but I do think it implies that that level of violence is not the norm or standard in their relationship.

The tension, once they are inside the ring, seems to ping pong a bit too. They’re fighting for real, but there’s no animosity and Rio is smiling and laughing at first. Rio gets his first hit in and Nick grimaces. Rio holds back. Nick asks him questions about the alibi fight that Rio never attended. When Rio lies, Nick pushes him into the corner of the ring and starts walloping on him. Rio holds his hands in front of his face and seems to be in a vulnerable position because he’s trapped. So then Rio retaliates with a direct hit on Nick’s face, flattening him. The mood is tenser now and Rio deflects as Nick asks him more and more questions.

I'm going to answer your question in reverse order if that's okay!

WAS NICK ALWAYS THE BRAINS BEHIND EVERYTHING?

4.08 established that Nick was clearly the one who came up with the initial plan whereby he got ahead legitimately by taking advantage of throwing Rio under the bus and having him perform the "dirty work" or criminal aspects of their schemes.

He was also the older of the two and had a clear power advantage of Rio while they were younger, so I do think this factored into their dynamic because it was their established roles from the beginning. However...

DID NICK MAKE ALL THE DECISIONS FROM THE START?

While Nick made all of the decisions at the beginning of their partnership, I think there's more evidence to suggest that while Nick still felt like he made all the decisions (or at least had final say), Rio had a considerable amount of independent power, knowledge, and skills that Nick didn't interfere with—at least until he decided he needed to.

First of all, Nick does not have the same skill or experiences in the lifestyle that Rio does. We see this when Beth asks if she should expect a gun to her head and Nick outlines that that's not who he is. We never once see Nick with a gun, and I have little reason to believe that he would be able to survive doing the work that Rio does. Therefore, he couldn't reasonably make many of the decisions Rio has to make in a moment-by-moment basis doing what he does, nor would it make sense for Nick to have the final say in a lot of those decisions. He simply wouldn't have the insight or knowledge to know how things operate.

Since Rio has lived a very different day-to-day life than Nick, I think it's more than likely that Rio made a lot of decisions based on his experiences and therefore operated within his own domain while Nick operated in his, and they met in the middle for the schemes that overlapped. I think that's clear, too, with how little Nick knew about Beth's involvement in Rio's business, the shooting, and Lucy—not to mention Rio's "be the king, kill the king" speech—that Rio only shared what he felt was necessary to their joint operations.

I assume that when he was young, Rio worked for someone else and rose through the ranks, utilizing Nick's privileges and power as an asset until he eventually ousted the boss and took over. From that point forward, I do think Rio was the boss of the criminal side while Nick was the boss of the forward-facing side.

So then...

HOW MUCH CONTROL DID NICK HAVE OVER RIO BEFORE SEASON 4?

I'm inclined to say: not much. At least not to the point that Rio felt constrained by or under the thumb of Nick in meaningful ways, and not in a way that was real.

I think that largely, Nick imagined and assumed he had power over Rio, believed himself to be the puppet master, and when he felt that perceived control slipping because of Beth's influence over Rio, he panicked and snapped.

I've written before that I think the violence Nick enacted against Rio was—while not necessarily a first—was most likely rare because Rio seemed confused before he seemed terrified.

While the showrunners referred to Nick as Rio's "boss" prior to seson 4 airing, I don't think they actually designed Nick as his boss. They certainly wanted us to believe he was at first—hence Rio telling Beth he wanted her to meet his people and explaining that he had debts to them—but everything that came after suggested more that Rio and Nick were partners with dual roles and a symbiotic relationship, and that mostly what Nick did was guilt Rio for the favors he pulled for him.

Once Nick felt that Rio was endangering their operations, though, and more specifically, endangering Nick's job with the undisclosed murder of Lucy, things shifted radically. At first, Nick tried to swoop in and control how Beth was being used, but the more he understood the ways that Beth had a hold on Rio, the more he felt threatened by her presence. At that point, Nick felt the need both hurt Rio physically and to try and destroy what Beth and Rio had as a display of power. His error was in misunderstanding both the significance of their bond and the lengths to which Rio would go to protect it.

While I think Rio and Nick had a strained relationship for a long time—and how could they not, with the way Nick betrayed him when they were merely teenagers, setting Rio's life on a trajectory out of his control?—I also think they got along. They grew up together. They're seen spending a lot of time together, eating together, laughing together, and although it's nebulous, they spend a considerable chunk of time seeing each other as brothers—brothers that loved and hated and fought against each other and triumphed with each other.

you know, as much as dean does have an ego, i don't actually think that this is going to be the biggest issue for him in this particular scenario. dean already knows beth relies on rio financially (she threatened to go to rio for help with money in 4.01 in order to spur dean to getting boland bubbles up and running) and he already thinks they're sleeping together (he tells eric that she's probably enjoying that dean's stuck in jail because it means she can "hump the tats off her boyfriend").

the sticking point will be, i think, that beth and rio are still working together after beth told dean she was working with the secret service to take him down—and that she succeeded. stumbling upon them working together alone, presumably after he believed a lie beth told? it's like a big, red, blinking neon sign that's advertising: this will never end.

what dean will realize in this scene is that nothing—nothing—will stop these two from orbiting each other. beth will still work with rio after he shot her husband, after he held a gun to her head, after he inserted himself and took the majority profits of dean's business. rio will still work with her after she got him arrested—twice. and that's just what dean knows. he already thinks rio's in love with her and that's why he won't kill her. he's basically walking in on proof.

dean has already explicitly told beth how much he "needs" nevada, and beth has essentially thrown that dream into the garbage can without even looping dean into that reality. the fantasy, the illusion that this will ever be over, that she will ever be dean's completely again—it's about to be shattered.

my prediction is that the scene is less about dean discovering new information and more about dean finally having to face information he's been trying to ignore.

I think the only way that Rio was “doing it for” Beth was that he chose Lucy instead of Beth (or Annie or Ruby). Lucy’s murder was a punishment for Beth not only failing to deliver the drop, but also inviting another person into Rio’s business without his knowledge or consent. However, we’ve seen Beth make similar and bigger mistakes before, and this was the most severe response he’s ever had, so I definitely think Rio was still reacting to and responding to his frustration with himself that he ultimately allowed her to buy back her life after the shooting. 

I don’t think there was any part of Rio that was trying to protect Beth even if he did legitimately think Lucy was a loose end that may jeopardize their operation. I think the fact that he lets Beth take control over how to handle Max (in lieu of sending Mick to murder him) emphasizes that as well. Max is just as much as a threat as Lucy, particularly because Rio doesn’t know what Max knows and now Max has a motive to make noise, but he didn’t make the same move for their “safety.” It was important for Rio to remind Beth that he’s not a person to be trifled with, especially after he didn’t fulfill his threat of retaliation after the shooting.