#fmp analysis

yeah, she does, for a lot of reasons, which I think the show demonstrated consistently and complexly as it aligned with beth’s characterization and the conflicts in the plot. I think it’s pretty obvious and safe to say how that’s displayed in the beginning of the show, but even at the break-off point where some people doubted her feelings, they were shown when:

she defends him to her husband and calls him for help, thinking he’s someone she can rely on in times of distress (2.07, 2.12, 2.13)

she had to drink to cope with ending their relationship and couldn’t go through with it without an intimate goodbye (2.09)

she had to block his number to stop herself reaching out or responding to reach outs because she needed an extra barrier otherwise she couldn’t help herself (2.10)

she was hungry to learn everything she could about him, even meaningless things like how soft his shirts are (2.11)

she considered them more than work and felt insulted and betrayed by him diminishing it (2.12)

she’s betrayed at the deepest level possible when she believes that their entire relationship was a ruse to use her as a fall guy (2.13)

she grieves his death and tries to take care of his son, whom she knows is the most important person in the world to him (3.01)

she looks up to and wants to emulate him even at their lowest (3.02, 4.05)

she puts herself at-risk and entrusts him not to harm her even when it’s illogical (3.04, 3.10)

she eventually moves past him killing lucy to punish her (3.05)

she’s comfortable being vulnerable and hurt by him in front of him, which is rare for her (3.06)

she’s still turned on by their dynamic even when they’re at their lowest (3.07)

he makes her feel sexy just by being herself; she doesn’t have to perform for him like she does for dean and fitzpatrick (3.08, 3.09)

despite the ways she’s pushed for the hitman plot (even putting herself in danger by being present when she has max meet rio), when she has a gun in her hand and is dared to, she can’t do it (3.09)

she acknowledged to annie and ruby that what they had was more than an insignificant hookup (3.10)

she can’t help but linger on their good memories even when she’s supposed to feel relieved he’s out of her life for good (3.10)

she genuinely cares what he thinks and is flattered by his positive opinions of her (3.11)

she can lie to everybody but not to him (4.04)

she’s anxious and troubled about betraying him until she literally starts feeling haunted about it (4.04, 4.05, 4.06)

her commitment in betraying him is minimal effort at best, even when everything is on the line, and she even drops hints to him (4.05, 4.06, 4.07)

she’s protective over his special name for her (4.06)

she still thinks of them as partners despite a lack of evidence to support it and will declare this to his nearest and dearest (4.06)

the show went to great lengths to show how she’ll hold a line and refuse to get intimate with people she doesn’t want to, even when it offers her protection or freedom (fitzpatrick, troy, nick) but she is intimate with rio which shows a part of her still genuinely feels something for him (4.06)

she flirts with him and is genuinely flattered by his attention (4.07)

she’s thrilled when she thinks she finds a fall guy in exchange for rio and literally only turns on him when it becomes a clear choice between him and the girls; afterward she’s guilty and it weighs heavily on her and she even takes some accountability (4.08)

she denies nick’s offer for a drink because she hasn’t “earned” it showing she likes her dynamic with rio where she feels he makes her earn everything (4.13)

once rio changed his behavior toward her, a flip switched and she reciprocated (4.14)

she’s shocked and overwhelmed by rio returning the money and the furniture—but also deeply touched (4.14)

she protects him against the secret service even when she has good reason to think he may have sent mick to hurt her (4.16)

she chooses to work with him despite their history of betrayal instead of starting fresh in nevada or getting him out of her way; she declares that she trusts him to annie and ruby (4.16)

she was always extremely (and imo logically) guarded and mistrusting of his feelings and intentions, but there was always something there that she tried and failed to compartmentalize or kill that she couldn’t. the end of s4 proved that all she really needed was some sort of proof that it was all real and then she was able to commit to him fully and freely in a way she had been doing despite herself in half-measures (with plenty of backtracking and contradictions and betrayal mixed in).

but he was always important to her, and she was always intensely affected by him.

if you think about the things she was capable of moving forward from with rio versus the things she wasn’t truly capable of moving forward from with her husband of twenty years, I think it’s clear to see she’s deeply committed to entwining her life with rio, and that her feelings for him are absolutely a part of that equation. after all, the only reason she truly guarded them in the first place was because she felt the intensity of her feelings and her loyalty were unreciprocated and betrayed (2.06, 2.13). and while she went through many (many, many, many) motions to extricate him from her life, she continuously displayed gut-instinct trust him in him as well as an inability to quash her fond memories of him.

there's a few things that contradict the timeline, but we know:

1.01 is firmly established as taking place in october (fine and frugal is decorated for fall, boland motors has a halloween display, beth mentions at the waxing place that the kids are freshly back in school, and when ruby suggests that dean bought beth the lingerie for christmas, she says, "in october?")

nancy's pregnancy takes place between 2.01 (when ben reveals it to annie) and 2.08 (when nancy gives birth to dakota), but it's possible that she's pregnant in the gap between 1.08 (when we learn she and greg are trying) and 2.01. in that case, season 1 could take place in the course of 3-4 months, which isn't all that unlikely. i did start doing a gg timeline once and assuming the narrowest possible timeline, 1.01-1.08 can take place between october and january, meaning nancy could have a post-1.08 pregnancy between with the baby born in october

that wouldn't contradict the fact that 2.10 takes place in november of the following year (when jane's class is having a turkey-themed fall party)

that also tracks because in 1.08, mary beth says jeff has been dead six months (meaning he'd have died around june 2018) and in 2.03, we see an eight month flashback (which would put 2.03 in approximately march)

there are approximately 3 months between 2.09 (beth and rio's hookup) and 3.03 (when rio can still conceivably believe beth is pregnant with his child and not showing).

there are only two months between 2.13 (the shooting) and 3.04 (when beth asks to buy back her life, she says, "you haven't been in the game for what? two months?")

there are only a few weeks between 3.05 (lucy's death) and 4.01 (the discovery of her body)

roughly that means there's about a year between 1.01 and 2.09 (theoretically october 2018 to november 2019), three-ish months between 2.09 and 3.03 (november 2019 to february 2020), and i'd say 3.05-4.01 would probably only push us out to march, maybe april after that (beth quickly flips on the pregnancy lie and rio fairly quickly murders lucy in retaliation). considering the general pacing before that and the fact that there's no clear indication that there was a time jump or any of the episodes took place over a particularly long period of time, i'd say the rest of season 4 takes place over a few months too.

in another way that looks like:

june 2018: jeff dies (pre-series)

october 2018: the girls rob the grocery store (1.01)

november/december 2018: the girls take care of eddie, begin the secret shopper scheme

january 2019: rio goes into a shut down, the girls rob nancy's spa, and mary pat blackmails them (1.08)

february 2019: beth and dean have their anniversary (confirmed as february 2nd in 4.11) and nancy likely gets pregnant and rio shoots dean and the girls stop working for him

march 2019: mary pat runs over boomer eight months after jeff dies (2.03). this means rio probably only left the girls alone for a few weeks at most, which tracks because dean only comes home from the hospital in 2.02 and because he's prompted to return because boomer is talking to the feds, which happens in season 1.

march-september 2019: beth and rio fuck in a bar bathroom (2.04), beth ousts dean from boland motors (2.05), beth strongarms their way into the pill operation (2.06), rio retrieves the dubby (2.07)

likely october 2019: dean hires the baby hitmen, nancy gives birth, dean takes the kids, and beth sleeps with rio again

november 2019: beth takes a break from crime and loses her mind; annie and ruby try working with rio alone (2.10)

december 2019: beth likely shoots rio

january 2020: rio reappears and beth tells rio she's pregnant (3.02)

february (ish) 2020: after a few weeks where beth attempts to get pregnant with dean, rio takes beth to the clinic (3.03) and then beth tells him she lost it and suggests it's been two months since the shooting (3.04)

march 2020: rio kills lucy (3.05), max tries to kill rio (3.07), the girls deliver boomer to his death (3.08), the girls hire a hitman (3.09), the hit fails and the secret service start orbiting (3.10)

april or may 2020: beth and dean launch boland bubbles and lucy's body is discovered (4.01)

not long after and in somewhat quick succession: dean is arrested with boland bubbles hardly being open at all (4.03), beth strikes a deal with the secret service to help them get to rio and has rio kill fitzpatrick (4.04), which has rio reverse and give her the gift/punishment of being the banker (4.05) and then inviting her to meet his family to guilt her into not snitching on him, and they sleep together again (4.06).

after that, the girls buy the strip club and beth has her campaign run, which is probably a couple of months at most.

by that measurement, it seems likely that the whole series takes place in roughly two years, maybe a little less.

Thinking about their conversation in the car in season 1 where he told her to tell the police he was hitting it and her flustered and prudish reaction to it, I just can’t believe he thought she wanted to hook up. In a dirty bar bathroom, at that. I’m not sure if you’ve already addressed this. If so, just ignore me. 😅

(this ask is so old, im v sorry, but tysm and i'm glad you enjoyed it!)

as for your question, i've always interpreted it to be that he highly suspected, but didn't really believe he could be right until beth locked the door. even then, i think he was still shocked when she turned back around (not kissing him) and lifted up her dress.

i think this for a few reasons:

beth went to a place she suspected he'd be at because he'd already invited her there, but didn't seem to have contacted him to meet up. the place and timing was also unusual - it wasn't on two separate park benches in the daylight or in a back alley where nobody could see them, but in the middle of a crowded bar when he was out to be social. so i think he put the pieces together that it wasn't about work and it was therefore personal - and rio was dialed in and frankly just waiting to their sexual tension to break between them.

beyond that, i think the fact that rio knows that he's been invited to follow her to the bathroom - to even try the lock and find it open for him! - indicates that he was correctly reading the signals. typically a bathroom would be a place to find reprieve and privacy in a bar.

lastly, i think rio's choice not to speak - not to ask beth what she wanted or why she was there - was because he knew how fragile the moment was and wanted to see what would happen without his interference. rio's a man of few words, but he also typically likes to get to the point so he can smoke bomb out of there, and here was dead silent, waiting.

i think it's the same (but more complicated and layered) when she invites him back to her place in 2.09. he knows, but he doesn't entirely believe he's right, and that seems to be the case right up until the moment she closes the door and starts taking off her shoes and her coat.

imo, beth's unpredictability is something that fascinates him and keeps him hooked on her. in business, he finds it can be both advantageous as much as it can be disastrous, but in romance and their personal relationship, he seems to find it completely fascinating because he's always straddling a line of what he knows (that she's attracted to him, that she implicitly trusts him, that she blooms under his attention) and what he can never seem to put his finger on (for instance: how, exactly, to get her into bed, what the effect of prompting her jealousy will be, what she ultimately wants the two of them to be). rio seems like he has the upper hand because he's had more experience and he's her boss that has literally threatened her life and shot her husband, but in their intimate relationship, it's actually beth that holds the cards - partially because he lets her, and partially because she's just so elusive and unpredictable and, i believe, unusual in the sense that she has incredible levels of self-denial. frankly, i think rio's used to getting whichever woman he's interested in, and he's completely flummoxed that this isn't the case with beth, and he doesn't know why because he does know she's interested.

i think rio is a little less agitated in that particular beat with rosa than he is overall in the scene, but i think it's a result of a few things at once:

rio's real purpose in bringing beth to this event is to remind her of the people he has relying on him in order to get her to shift gears from her plans of betrayal. it seems as if he had a bit of tunnel vision regarding this plan bc he didn't properly anticipate the long term consequences of introducing her to nick OR the short term realities, i.e. he seems unprepared to answer his nephew's questions about who beth is, how they know each other, and what they do together.

rio attempts to diminish or neutralize his relationship with beth by calling her a "work friend," but there's a distinct flavor of rio's explanation clearly being the kid-friendly sanitized version. this is largely bc of the crime of it all, but i think the adults at the table correctly clock—and nick vocalizes—an inquiry about whether partners is "all" beth and rio are, basically outright suggesting that there is a romantic and/or sexual component to their relationship.

there is a LONG beat—nearly 8 seconds—after nick asks what they are where no one responds. rio gives nick a challenging look telling him to back down and stay out of their business, but then he resumes eating, deciding to ignore the question entirely—until beth answers, announcing that she's married.

at this point, even rosa is giving nick a bit of a Look™ for being invasive, and she tries to smooth over the interaction by asking an innocuous question about beth's children.

when beth answers "4," rosa immediately swings her attention back to rio, emphasizing, she's married, which i read as rosa kinda gently needling rio that he's being a little loud or inappropriate because beth seemingly has long-established life built with another person—it comes off as a little playful or teasing, but i think there's an undertone that rio is in the danger zone and needs rosa to remind him of what's what.

rio nods an eye-contactless mhm in response. i don't personally read him as particularly agitated here as much as attempting not to elongate the conversation, but i also think rio didn't expect beth to weasel out of a direct question about what they are to each other by pulling out the married card when the fact has had little bearing on their relationship. i wouldn't be surprised then there that's a mix of rio finding the whole thing laughable (like, sure, grandma, yeah, she's "married") but also frustrating (this doesn't come long after beth was doing everything in her power to get dean out of jail, after all, and i don't think rio's ever understood why she's with him let alone stays with him)

rio's mood spikes to real agitation when nick asks where the ring is. at this point, the conversation has devolved and is definitely not following the conventions of polite social manners. nick is basically suggesting beth is not as married as she seems and insinuating beth and rio are more than they are, angling to get some more information.

then, of course, nick pulls the "elizabeth" card and rio's possessive streak comes out in full force to the point that he starts to straight up intimately touch beth and rub her back, loudly driving a stake into the ground with a giant flag that suggests YES WE'RE FUCKING which is truly so embarrassing for him bc he immediately and completely unravels his already mediocre attempt at being unphased and composed

Here it is: As much of a Brio fan as I am… is there a world where a guy like Rio is attracted to a woman like Beth? He’s nonwhite, non traditional (in appearance), tattooed, unconventional employment, some connections to organized crime, simple and sleek style, seems younger, some hipster vibes. She is older, white, living in the suburbs, wearing floral blouses and often unflattering outfits (especially in the later seasons), settled into family life and has never known much other than taking care of other people.

Like how would that ever actually work?

Or is that the whole point? It wouldn’t work and thus the premise of the show…?

tbh, i think based on that list, the question wouldn't just be "is there a world where a guy like rio is attracted to a woman like beth" but the inverse, too—is there a world where a woman like beth is attracted to a man like rio? for most people, i think that answer is a simple "yes." and in that case, i think if you can understand why someone like beth would be attracted to rio, it's not much of a stretch to understand the opposite.

for one, i think a lot of those differences in their traits are somewhat superficial. sure, i can see how they might be barriers to either of them being initially interested in each other if they met as strangers on a random tuesday, but they didn't. the specific context and circumstances under which they met positioned them to be a lot more curious and interested in each other.

for beth, rio offered her an avenue to gain independence, power, and autonomy, and then he respected her, valued her, and made her feel seen—all things that were extremely important to her. he's also obviously handsome, charming, funny, and constantly checking her out and flirting with her.

for rio, beth was always more than she seemed. he pegged her as just a suburban mom in floral blouses but she quickly proved that she was so much more than that, and that she has a similar drive and tenacity that he admires. she also, however, has a creativity and unique viewpoint that is beneficial to him, and he respects her ideas and intelligence. beth is also obviously gorgeous, easy and fun to fluster, and constantly responding to being flirted with and checked out.

i can see how it might seem easier to understand why beth would be attracted to rio based on the "good girls love bad boys" trope, and how it would be harder to see the opposite because "bad boys love good girls" doesn't have quite the same prevalence and power as a trope, but 1) i do think it's a thing, from rory/jess in gilmore girls to sandy/danny in grease to claire/bender in breakfast club, and 2) part of the reason that their relationship isn't simply superficial attraction is that beth isn't simply a "good girl" and rio isn't simply "a bad boy."

the premise of the series has little to do with brio as a relationship that would or wouldn't work imo (it wasn't planned and their dynamic evolved organically) but i do think that over the course of it, they committed to showing us all the ways that they actually do fit together quite well. beth is clearly the singular one of the trio that true loves and finds a thrill in crime and actively commits to falling in deeper with it; her good girl image is a sham and rio in particular is obsessed with getting her to take off that mask and admit she's the same as him. on the other hand, beth being "settled into family life" isn't a factor that makes them incompatible, but one that draws them together. from marcus to rosa and nick, the show demonstrated that for rio, family—fatherhood, brotherhood, and being a good son—was extremely important, and something that beth always wanted to know more about (it's one of the few areas where beth actively asks rio questions about himself and shows her hand that she's curious and interested in him).

ty!! you're very kind.

and i do! although i should caveat that i haven't read the books in about 12 years and so a lot of my opinion is formed from the films since I've taught a hunger games films elective class twice now. i know there are changes to gale's character, but i don't quite remember what they are, so take everything with a grain of salt.

what i find interesting about gale is that i think if hunger games wasn't written by suzanne collins with the message that she was constructing, he'd more likely be the lead character. his characterization imo more closely fits the archetypal YA dystopian hero. after all, he's the one that expresses wanting to live in a different world from our very first introduction to him (when he expresses that he might want kids if he "didn't live here" and katniss reminds him sharply that he does live here). he's the one that suggests breaking the rules and running away, he's the one caught and whipped, he's a protector and provider, and he's the one that steps up once in district 13 to fight for the cause. he's a rebel and he's willing to stand up for what he believes in, even going so far as to condemn peeta for urging everyone to support the capitol when he's hijacked.

katniss, is contrast, vacillates between looking out primarily for herself and those she cares about and being influenced by gale to stand up and fight. her mission is never so much about taking down the system as it is to do as little harm as possible and keep her loved ones safe. ultimately, she agrees to be the mockingjay because it aligns with her real goal, not because she's truly the rebel leader she's painted as, and it's clear that she's a prop and a pawn to district 13 as much as she was to the capitol.

what i love about all this and collins' choices is that i think most readers like to think they'd be the gales of the world—heroically standing up for what we believe in—but many of us would be katnisses—doing what we could to get by. and gale then functions as a lesson in the pitfalls of his worldview.

the hunger games has a particular view on war. it's brutalities and losses are emphasized, but it's not necessarily condemning war. it has its place and there are times where it's necessary... but collins seems to be saying what you do in war still matters. you're going to carry it with you (like katniss's PTSD after the games) and you're still going to have to live with your decisions.

and gale's a very interesting character to me because we want to be heroic like gale, but because he's so staunchly against the capitol, because he so fiercely believes in destroying the system, he functions as a warning of falling prey to radical thinking and blind allegiance. he struggles to identify that the enemy of his enemy is not necessarily his friend. he's rewarded for his loyalty in district 13 and seems to move quickly through the ranks and doesn't seem to recognize the danger signs of president coin's rule in the way katniss does because he's learned to dehumanize and rationalize the loss of innocent life as long as its in service of toppling the capitol. and anyone who doesn't agree with him or do things the way he would is the enemy (evidenced by his reaction to peeta's propos). gale would die for the cause rather than betray his worldview, and it's this dedication that makes it easy for his behaviors to escalate and his ideas to be manipulated for coin's own gain.

there's something very "american patriot" in gale to me, where the ends justify the means for him as long as he's broadly fighting for noble concepts like freedom and justice—and i think collins does that on purpose.

he's familiar to us. he's what we're taught to want to be. he's a loyal friend and a traditionally masculine head-of-household. a soldier. his aims are good, but we see the result of his consequentialism mindset with the bomb. gale regrets it because of the pain it caused katniss, but not because of the other innocent people he killed who were only his enemy by virtue of the fact that they were born in the capitol and, like him, blindly loyal to the system that promised to protect them.

and we see the extremes of gale's mindset through snow in a ballad of songbirds and snakes. hate the enemy enough, and you can justify anything.

if we're talking the endpoint of canon, i think it's really hard to tell and predict? beth and rio's relationship is so nebulous and while it's happening in plain sight of the kids in a lot of instances, they lack too much context to really be able to understand what it is (or isn't).

in terms of marcus, i think he has enough of a personal, individual relationship with beth from the post-shooting time period that he seems to think positively of beth and like her (she's the nice lady who gave him juice and had him over to play with his new friend, and he seemed to like drawing a picture for her). but i think it would be confusing how abruptly she was ripped out of his life, particularly since he was still seeing her through soccer practice, but also knew that rhea physically tried to drag him away from and avoid talking to beth (not to mention that he was no longer allowed to have playdates with jane). he didn't seem particularly phased by seeing beth at the barbeque with rio, but i think marcus would have questions that bubbled up if the shape of that relationship started to look different since it doesn't really add up.

beth's kids seem fairly neutral about rio but open to trusting him, i.e. kenny trusted him to help him with homework in the backyard even though they've never met before, and jane referred to him as "mommy's friend with the drawings on his neck." they don't seem threatened by his presence in beth's life or seem to understand the romantic tension that exists in their relationship, although i don't doubt that they have (at the very least unconsciously) picked up on the fact that his presence coincides with a lot more tension in beth and dean's relationship. additionally, they may perceive dean's increased agitated and jealousy surrounding beth, even if they can't name it. although it isn't shown in canon, i wouldn't be surprised if they became a lot more suspicious or anxious about rio's presence in beth's life once dean officially moved out and they formally separated/divorced. while they seemed mostly unphased about those possibilities during s2, i think it would be different once it felt 'real' — think about how stressed and anxious jane got in response to the flipped dynamics in the house once dean was home and beth was at work, for instance.

by 4.16, i don't actually think any of the kids have any real, concrete inklings about beth or rio's involvement in crime besides sara. i don't take kenny to be perceptive and we really have no confirmation that sara and kenny and ben have any relationship or communication.

i've also always headcanoned that rio would be pretty anxious about marcus's morality, particularly because it seems like he's gone to great lengths to provide marcus with a "normal" childhood playing t-ball and soccer, not to mention that he dresses him in preppy clothes and seems to maintain a fairly good relationship with marcus's mom, who is not a part of the crime world. he doesn't at all seem to be trying to make marcus a "mini me" but instead seems to encourage or at least support marcus's differences.

i think that beth is also trying to replicate that situation—as normal of a life as possible—for her own children. in that sense, i actually think both beth and rio would put off being completely honest with their kids as long they could. they both seem like they don't want their children to be like them, but beth in particular struggles with enabling her kids out of a sense of guilt and anxiety for failing them in some way. i think it's also clear that they both love and care for their children very much and want to do right by them as much as possible, and their choice to stay committed to crime is complicated because it's both supporting and in conflict with that goal. i think because of that, both of them would have a tendency to avoid that level of honesty with the kids in fear of it damaging the kids' view of them or the relationship they have with them.