#disasters!

Neither, hahaha.

That's not true actually, I think they have different sorts of emotional intelligence, and a lot of that's impacted by their lives, lifestyles and their backgrounds.

I think one of Beth's biggest issues is that she has arrested development as a result of being thrust into an adult role when she was still a child. She was repressing her own needs to provide for her mother and her sister from the time she was fifteen (at the latest!) and that snowballing into a relationship and then marriage with a man who never really grew up himself sort of sealed her off to an extent. As a result, I wouldn't say that she's emotionally unintelligent, but rather emotionally immature. She approaches everything with this very particular mindset, because she was never given the chance to grow into adulthood in a way that gave her agency or power.

I've talked about it on here before, but I think Good Girls is very much a coming of age story for all three of the women, but especially Beth. Her arc, moreso than Ruby and Annie's, is about discovering who she is as an adult, and reconciling her needs, her independence and all her flaws too.

I actually do think Rio suffers from some of the same arrested development and emotional immaturity, but in a really different way. I think he was also forced to grow up too quickly, but it wasn't through a domestic setting that sealed him off, it was through prison and then crime through his brousin's orchestrating that saw him thrust into a very different adult world. If Beth's arrested development saw her pushed into motherhood, Rio's saw him thrust into a very specific sort of manhood.

Both though lost this formative adolescence, and I think while Rio had more time to gain experience before having Marcus than Beth did before having children herself, I think his perspective was, of course, skewed by the life that he found himself in.

I find myself coming back a lot to the rotten egg shot in 4.08, where Rio's was good, while Nick's wasn't. It really repositions Rio as somebody who's experience of life has been shaped for him, and while he's forged his own path in light of that, it's no doubt contributed to him as being the sort of guy who sees sending body parts in the mail as an appropriate seduction, haha.