#4.11 analysis

Many apologies for my slow response on this one! It's been a hectic few days between the double episodes, cancellation news, and a major heatwave in the Pacific Northwest!

So this is the exchange in Beth's minivan:

RIO: Lady Lucky ain't on your side tonight, huh? [Here he makes a gambling reference to tip off Beth that he knows that she gambled the money away before completing the drop]

BETH: There was a problem—

RIO: Always is—

BETH: —And I had to get rid of it.

RIO: Never a solution. [Here Rio calls Beth out for how something always goes wrong when she does a job, but she never solves it properly]

BETH: Well, I didn't have a lot of options.

RIO: Oh, yeah? Or did the dice just not roll your way? [Here he calls her out for intentionally gambling the money away; it's possible he believes she tried to increase her cash flow and in the process, lost it all. He has little context for her decisions after all]

BETH: We were being followed.

RIO, frustrated: Yeah, by my people.

BETH: Well, that would have been really nice to know. [Once again, Rio's lack of communication and detail made what could be a simple job exponentially more difficult.]

RIO: They don't like to make a scene. [His people don't like to draw attention to themselves]

*Beat*

RIO: But I don't mind so much. [This is an implied threat; Rio is not worried about making noise AKA the heat that might be drawn to him by handling Beth]

BETH: Well, someone else will. [Beth is referring to Nick because of his statement/llie earlier in the episode that he doesn't "like to get involved in his 'things.' Just puts me in a bad place, you know?" Basically, she's saying that Nick will mind if Rio draws this kind of negative attention, particularly because he would know Rio was responsible]

RIO, amused: Hmm, you got a guardian angel I don't know about?

BETH: Maybe.

At this point, Rio seems to consider her words, a flash of surprise and irritation and maybe even understanding crosses his face.

I don't necessarily think that Rio had an idea about Beth's association with Nick outside of the dinner prior to this moment, but between Nick grilling Rio about Beth and Beth now acting like she has a connection to someone that will both notice if she disappeared and that has power to make that a problem for Rio, I think he connected the dots fairly quickly.

The problem, though, is that Beth has a misconception. She believed Nick when he told her that he doesn't like to get involved with Rio's business, but we know that's not true. Nick is not her guardian angel, then—he even seems to have been the driving force between Rio wanting to use Beth to retrieve the stolen money from the Secret Service, which means he was fairly willing to sacrifice her for his and Rio's business interests if she got caught.

That would mean, then, that Rio understands the situation on a deeper level than Beth. If Nick and Beth really have forged some connection outside of himself without his knowledge, that means trouble for him. Because Nick beat Rio with a chair over Rio being "out of control" with Lucy's murder, which Nick believes was "for Beth" in some capacity, I think Rio realizes that if Nick is seeking Beth out, he's trying to yank back control and power. It also means that Beth is less controllable because she thinks she has someone in her back pocket protecting her, when the reality is that she's digging herself a deeper hole.

I do also think the "always a problem/never a solution" comment is in some ways an extension of the "you had a choice" moment. Rio expected her to either sacrifice herself for him or to come up with a way to save them both at that time, and in this conversation, he seems exhausted of the cycle they find themselves in. He wants Beth to figure out answers to problems, but there's so many problems with this expectation of his.

mmmm i think she thinks of nick as a "normal" person that would choose the "right" thing since that's how he presented himself. it's also not outside of the bounds of believability. when it came down to it, rhea stuck her neck out to save beth from being murdered even though she was on rio's side. marion pushed boomer to turn himself in because it was the right thing to do. beth couldn't rob marion even though it meant saving her own life.

also, her warning was just that nick would care, which doesn't necessarily mean that he would go out of his way to take rio down, but that nick wouldn't put special effort into protecting rio and that it may even fracture their relationship. this isn't really the part of that threat that is effective to rio, but the news of the association is enough to pull the rug out of from under his feet.

she was talking to a lawyer.

after dean confesses everything to the MRA cult, vance (breckin meyer) brings someone over for him to meet.

while at first i thought he was a divorce lawyer (specifically because he is introduced as "never having lost a case") i think he might be a criminal lawyer because dean talks to him about the trial date moving up in his office—and his suggestion is for dean to turn on beth.

when dean meets with him at the office, the lawyer tells dean a story about a famous golfer up on his private jet "on top of the world," only the hull was breached (the surface of the plane was punctured) which meant that "everyone inside was sound asleep from no oxygen." dean asks what happened, and the lawyer says, "plane's on autopilot... just cruising... all they gotta do is wake up." they don't, though, and the plane ultimately ends up crashing in a corn field, killing everyone.

it's a metaphor for dean's situation. his and beth's marriage—and from the lawyer's perspective, dean in particular—is on autopilot. they're not tending to it, they're not following emergency protocol for emergency situations. they're cruising in stasis.

dean recognizes part of the metaphor—that the cornfield is him in prison—but he doesn't recognize how to avoid it. the lawyer and vance say it's about turning beth in. dean balks, saying his kids need their mother, then vance offers up several rather superficial examples of why his kids need him (he taught them how to ride a bike, how to do a slap shot, he built the tree house). it signals for the audience how much these men don't understand what mothers do—fatherhood is just the fun stuff, and that's equally as important in their eyes as the duties of parenthood because all of that is invisible to them.

the scene ends with vance telling dean to "wake up," and dean sighs. he's still mulling it over privately though the rest of the episode—and then beth fails in what he thinks is her role. she's unable to get to danny quickly (when dean can't go at all because of house arrest, because of her) when he's hurt and alone in the hospital, and it's because of crime.

dean ends the phone call saying, "next time, just lie to me."

in dean's mind, that's the final straw. not only is he convinced she is not the same type of mother she once was, he comes to believe that the kids don't need her. as he says, "he didn't even ask for you."

it's a really heartbreaking line because this whole season has been about beth waffling about choosing crime or her family, when her family feels her absence so acutely that they've become used to it, and yet it's because of her family—because she's been trying and failing to protect dean, even—that she hasn't ever been able to fully commit to crime either.

in the final scene, dean meets with the lawyer again, who tells him he doesn't look so well. dean says, "i'm fine."

I think it's definitely both, anon, but if I had to pick one over the other, it would be the loss of control he has over her, particularly if he loses that control to Nick, who has Rio under his own thumb. He also knows what Nick is capable of and the ways that Beth pushes and crosses the limits, which means that he not only loses control over her, but he may be exposed in ways he's uncomfortable with. In addition to that, Rio has been more deliberate and tried to execute more long-term plans in order to wield control over Beth, while his personal feelings for her often cause him to slip up and make mistakes, which I think means there's more to lose for him professionally than personally.

I also think that Beth and Rio are in some sort of romantic relationship as much as they are not, so while he clearly feels possessive of that—and we saw that with the 4.06 back rub—there are limitations to this, i.e. he really doesn't do all that much about however he feels about Beth's marriage status.

i think it's very realistic that what beth thinks is an easy choice turns out to be much more difficult when she's actually the one making the decision. she asks ruby to pick her over stan because as she says, "i would always choose you every time." but when reality sets in, when she's thinking about how it would affect her children, when she's responding to the fact that dean took the fall for her in the same way stan took the fall for ruby, suddenly the choice isn't so simple.

this season is playing around with beth facing consequences in so many ways I'm really loving, not only with the confrontations with fitzpatrick and stan and phoebe and dean, but with beth's own words coming back to haunt her in both this instance and her flippant wish in 3.09 that "just once" rio would show up at annie or ruby's house so they would understand what it's like to be her. she'll absolutely be eating those words in 4.12 when annie goes missing because, at the end of the day, beth will always choose to go down for annie and ruby. as much as she resents being the one that faces the most difficult choices, the truth is she'd rather it was her than them.

in that vein then, although the choices seem similar on a surface level, they really aren't. in 2.08, ruby makes an active choice to betray beth in order to save stan, but ultimately fails to commit. in 4.10, beth's initial choice to run has nothing to do with ruby, but ruby becomes an unintended casualty of beth's decision. that decision then becomes intentional when beth agrees to stan's terms.

beth and stan also put ruby into very different positions, and while both hurt ruby, they do so in distinct ways.

beth asks ruby to make an impossible decision without real understanding or empathy about the weight of that decision. it's selfish and self-centered, but the onus of responsibility lies with ruby—and regardless of beth's feelings, it always did. ruby had to make a choice and she had to live with it, regardless of who she ultimately chose. ruby's choosing stan makes sense, but so does beth's pain in reaction to it.

in contrast, stan doesn't ask ruby to make a choice—he asks beth. ruby has no agency in this dilemma. her choice is made for her, behind her back.

that means beth and ruby's roles aren't just neatly flipped in this scenario, despite the fact that they're both placed in the dilemma of choosing between their best friend and their husband. in 2.08, beth had no agency at the hands of ruby—whether or not she goes to jail depends on ruby's decision—but in 4.10, ruby has no agency at the hands of stan, who forces that choice when again, ruby wasn't originally actively part of that choice.

this is why it's important that stan balks when beth easily agrees, and beth admits that the circumstance has only arisen because she's already planning to run. in this scenario—the only scenario in which beth would agree—beth theoretically saves everyone. dean doesn't go to prison, her kids get to keep their father, and stan and ruby (and their marriage) is safe because, presumably, they also get to exit crime without beth being the supposed driving force between ruby's involvement with it.

at the end of the day, ruby does choose beth. she doesn't turn in the calendar and she calls beth and confesses. and beth chooses ruby back when she turns herself in for a murder she doesn't commit.

this is why i think the emphasis in 4.11 was on ruby's pain at stan's betrayal, not beth's. beth was willing to go down for ruby in lieu of stan in 2.13, and ruby let her go—she was the only one that knew in advance what beth was going to do. similarly, i think ruby could be willing to let beth go in these circumstances, even if it was painful.

but the betrayal is in stan asking beth to leave ruby behind, and in stan not communicating any of it to ruby. and like beth feeling the consequences when the shoe is on the other foot, now ruby is experiencing it. in season 1, she lied to stan and kept him in the dark to protect her family. now he thinks he's doing the same thing.

well he was the only one shown to us the audience, but that doesn't mean that nobody else asked any questions for the duration of beth's time at the house. rio also generally told her that family = business and that they need to know that she's good for business, which might imply less of a singular person and more of a family dynamic. beth doesn't really know much of anything, but i do think she felt a little duped by the family dinner masquerading as a significant meeting of "the boss," which was really her word for her understanding of rio reminding her that he has people counting on him and debts to pay. she still really has very little understanding of who is pulling what strings, though.

but beth does know that nick is clearly clued in on rio's business from nick's visit to her house, but i think it's important that nick frames that visit through concern for beth's "normalcy," i.e. she doesn't look like someone rio associates with and he doesn't understand why beth would work with/for him. in fact, his questions at the dinner were really more personal—he didn't really want to know about their partnership or what she does for rio. he wanted to know if their relationship was strictly business or not.

ah, yeah, i think there are a lot of people that would like something like this!

personally, it's not for me. as an ending or future for beth, one where she loses or reduces the importance of annie, ruby, and her children in her life in favor of embracing crime and a life/relationship with rio is one that's utterly depressing to me. it's essentially stripping her of everything that makes her her and saying all she needs is a man and an adrenaline rush to be happy.

i feel like i often see the suggestion that beth just needs to give up her kids to embrace her dark side, and honestly i am so confused by it. people imply that beth's lack of screen time with her children suggests that she doesn't love them, yet the two and a half scenes we've had of rio and marcus has never lead to the suggestion that he doesn't love his son or that he should have to choose between one or the other.

my reading of beth has always been that she wants both and she doesn't know how to reconcile those two parts of herself or even balance them—something that even rio struggles with as he laments that it's "lonely at the top." beth's challenge is a bit different because who she was and who she wants to become are at stark odds with each other especially when you factor in the recency of the change and the length of the life she lived before finding this new part of herself (while rio's life followed the opposite trajectory—he was involved in crime before starting a family and could never give crime up for that family).

on that note, i find it a little troubling that a woman transitioning from sacrificing all of her wants and needs for her family in order to pursue her own endeavor that makes her happy is so often looked at with such condescension. that it's assumed she doesn't care about her family if she tries to disentangle herself from the role she had before. of course crime is dangerous and risky and her involvement in it jeopardizes her freedom and the safety of her family, but the exact same is true of rio and i really don't see that same lens applied.

and yes, beth has been sloppy and made mistakes in prioritizing or balancing these competing needs (the scene where dean tells her danny didn't even ask for her in 4.11 a prime example of that), but it's also realistic to show that those kinds of major changes and disruptions in life and schedule are consequences of putting yourself first for the first time in your entire life, which is why making that choice is so hard.

on top of the fact that i don't think beth would be happy, i don't think rio would respect the decision and it would ultimately damage the relationship they had. since he does understand her well, i think he would recognize that giving up so many important parts of herself left her kind of hollow.

i think that depends on what you mean by a brio scene, anon.

do i think that they will become intimate again? mmm, i'm up in the air, leaning slightly towards no, but definitely not ruling it out with nick acting as a catalyst, an impending boland divorce, the musical choices over the bookshelf scene and the bank scene, and the way we've gotten 2.04 parallels but no corresponding 2.09 parallel when so much of season 3 and season 4 have been resetting that board and hitting season 1 & 2 beats with new layers and nuances and history.

but i consider lots of things brio scenes that don't feature beth and rio being romantic or sexual or even flirting. hell, i consider some scenes to be brio scenes that don't even feature both of them in the scene—like beth opening the dubby or defending rio against dean when he thinks rio's kidnapped jane. like, i consider the "just being myself" a top tier brio scene because beth and rio are seeing each other and connecting and empathizing with each other, and i consider dean asking beth if rio is still going to be in her head a brio scene because she can say "he was never supposed to be there" and i can even believe she means it, but she didn't answer the question and the show is still demonstrating that there's something there that's being responded to by characters in the show.