In the back porch scene in 206 after Beth are caught by dean why do you think Rio nods and says “yeah”?
I’ve never understood that.
Do you think it’s because dean has moved back in?
It's such a loaded look, isn't it?
I think it can be read in a few different ways, but more than anything, I think it's an acknowledgement of the fact that Beth's maintained her facade.
In a lot of ways, season 2 is about the lines between Beth and Rio's worlds blurring and them starting to see what's behind each other's mask. Beth discovers Rio's a father, she breaks into his apartment, she forces her way into his business, and Rio discovers exactly how ruthless Beth can be, and how fractured her marriage is given she seduces him weeks after he shot her husband, but then stops Rio from telling said husband about it.
They dig themselves into each other's lives and are constantly making the efforts to plant parts of themselves there, and while Rio seems more than willing to acknowledge that, Beth's abject refusal to name or recognise it is something I think Rio finds immensely frustrating.
That scene in 2.06 where Dean appears clutching his and Beth's daughter isn't just a reminder to Rio that his and Beth's intimacy is something she won't acknowledge, I think it's a reminder that he only gets a part of her. It's a reminder that everything that's sharp and intimate and true about Beth and Rio's relationship, professional and personal, is something she hides behind a facade of something soft and distant and untrue. It's a facade she maintains in this enormous part of her life, and while Rio might get the real her, he doesn't get all of her, and I think that beat is really about him feeling that.
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Is it just me or the masterbation scene was always kind of cringe to me like?? Also her face is so blank in that scene idk. What do you think ?
It's very cringe, anon, that's why I love it, hahaha.
I actually love that her face is blank too. A huge part of Beth's character is in how guarded she is, and I think there's something desperately poignant in her being that guarded even in a fantasy in the privacy of her own bedroom. Hell, she's even immediately shown to be justified in that with how Dean barges in and interrupts.
There's also a degree of reality to it, I think. So many masturbation scenes in TV and movies are hyper-sexualised and have elements of performance to them, when masturbation itself is something that tends not to require it. Beth's fantasy was actually about Rio performing for her in the way that he destroyed these symbols of her domestic life – it was about him doing, and her getting to consume, something Beth never gets with Dean, and I loved that she kept her walls up while simultaneously letting Rio in. It's an imperfect, messy contradiction in the way her character so often was, and to me that feels really human.
In 414, when Nick says "it won't be me serving time" do you think he believes Rio told Beth about his role in everything based on her "all your projects are above board" comment?
Oooo, those are such interesting questions, anons! I'm actually thinking he probably didn't prior to that moment? And if it's not about Beth, I think it's about Rio, and well.
In that case, my answer's the same, and we should break that down.
I've said it a bit on here before, but I actually don't think Nick knew much at all, if anything, about Beth before the family dinner in 4.06, and even now, I think his curiousity around Beth is entirely driven by three factors - the first being the way Beth presents by default as a face that can move between worlds like Nick's fought to be able to do himself; secondly, that she's becoming a pretty clear weapon he can use to control Rio, and third, that he's - - for want of a better phrase - - the parasite to Rio's host.
Rio, for better and for worse, is authentic; Nick's not, and I think we're seeing that firm up across the season. The way Nick presents with Beth is markedly different to the way he is with Rio after all, which both in turn are different to the way he presents with the cop, but underneath all of that is the an interesting thread – he's often surprised. He's surprised that Rio's boned Beth despite the fact that Rio was clearly staking a claim in 4.06 (and fingering Beth with an open door, haha), he's surprised when the cop confronts him with the UFC tickets Rio's used as evidence, he's surprised when Denise comes to the table, despite the fact that Denise had originally outbid the girls on Sweet P's.
That surprise, to me, shows a lack of investment in the people around him, and the consistency of it in all of his relationships, is I think indicative of the fact that Nick's narcissistic. He's so hyperfixated on his own goals that he doesn't really see other people unless they factor into what he's doing, and, as a result, he can't plan as well as he thinks he can.
Nick is - in a lot of ways - a textbook narcissist. He's glib, superficial, manipulative, controlling. He's entitled, and exploits others without guilt, and - - importantly - - he seems to be a really jealous person, particularly when it comes to Rio.
Even as far back as the flashbacks in 4.08, we had baby!Rio fantasising about being a boxing champion, and then, in the second flashback sequence, Nick pointedly, purposefully takes that dream away from Rio through his arrest. That ambition, that fantasy, was further yanked away by Nick using one of his guys to hold Rio back and hit him in 4.09 after Rio had beaten him in the fair fight.
The throughline of this character-wise is really interesting to me, because I think it shows that Rio's a character who's always known what he likes and who he is. He has the same hobby he had when he was a little boy, he's a (relatively) straight shooter, he's got a clear sense of identity, of confidence, of purpose, and it's that that Nick's envious of.
What we've seen of Nick has shown him to be a shapeshifter. He destroyed Rio's childhood dream because he didn't have one himself; instead he existed as a sort of parasite. He latched onto wealthy men at the golf club, presented himself as harmless, used them to climb up socially while directing them at the brother-cousin he'd grown to resent.
Nick bastardises the things Rio cares about so that he can own them instead – corrupting the golf club for Rio, having him held back in boxing so he could 'win', and now, fixating on Beth.
I think that his growing relationship with Beth is entirely about that envy, and almost entirely about Rio. Nick sees her as someone he can use, but he also sees her as someone Rio cares about, and so she in turn becomes something he wants to own.
I don't think Nick thinks about Rio's relationship with Beth or what he's told her beyond that though, because I don't think he actually cares. Again, he's a classic narcissist in that sense, and he doesn't really think about either of them outside of his uses for them, and least of all their relationship to each other when it doesn't involve him.
As a shapeshifter, he wants Beth's mobility, and as a brother-cousin, he wants the girl Rio's in love with on his shelf, and beyond that, he doesn't think of them, which is in a lot of ways delicious, because I don't think he's going to see Beth coming, haha.
Why do you think Rio continued to trust or at least tolerate Nick after he got him arrested? Why do you it took him so long to finally decide to betray him? Was it just for Beth?
I think there were two reasons, anon.
Firstly, I think Rio and Nick had cultivated a symbiotic relationship professionally that was mutually beneficial. Rio brought in money while Nick offered him the protection to make that money, and while Rio clearly chafed under Nick sometimes and harboured resentments, I think he also had enough freedom generally that it was easy most of the time to put aside those feelings to focus on the work. Deciding to betray him wasn't in Rio's best business interests before Beth (and arguably wasn't afterwards either), but he was motivated I think by not just his personal feelings for Beth, but Nick so clearly trying to put a wedge between him and her.
And secondly, for Rio, Nick is family. No matter how toxic that relationship was or is, it's always going to be hard to disentangle from someone who's been a part of your life for that long, especially when your family only seems to have consisted of each other and your grandmother, and your relationship with your son's mother has ended. There was enough banter, enough lighter moments between Rio and Nick, that I felt like their relationship wasn't all bad, y'know? Nick's clearly manipulative and violent and used Rio in whatever way he could, but there were also beats of warmth and fun too, and as I said above, Nick's protection after his initial betrayal when they were young probably complicated Rio's overall feelings further.
Family's are messy at the best of times, but I think Rio was okay with the status quo until Beth. We talk a lot about Rio being a gateway to a new world for Beth, but in a lot of ways, Beth was one for Rio too. What she marked for him was a partnership instead of symbiosis, and maybe, just maybe, a different sort of family too.
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Who do you think is more emotionally intelligent Beth or Rio?
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.
So yeah, I guess I think Rio's more experienced emotionally, but they're both pretty stunted really.
I just watched the series finale again. Beth agrees to work with Rio to take down Nick. After her acceptance speech she is in the strip club with the girls counting the money. She said they have enough to go to Nevada now. So was she still planning on leaving and giving up her councilman’s job? because that really doesn’t make sense because she agreed to work with Rio. That would mean she was still planning on screwing him over?
Honestly, I don't think she'd thought that far ahead, anon. So much of the show is about Beth, Ruby and Annie being on the backfoot, and they very rarely get to plan beyond their next move. S4 very much continued that from Beth working out how to handle Fitzpatrick to getting the bail to get Dean out of prison to managing the Secret Service. Even her plan to get to Nevada was sort of ephemeral and entirely about her guilt over getting Dean arrested and burying Ruby and Annie in so deep.
Getting that money together so that the girls could leave was a goal that stopped them from treading water, it was something that moved her forwards, just like running for city council was, and helping Rio take Nick out was. In that sense, I don't think it was about screwing Rio over at all (if it was, she wouldn't have made the deal with the Secret Service to protect him), I think it was just her trying to metaphorically swim far enough out that she couldn't see the land anymore.
What I think that storyline really embodies is that sometimes people can't make choices until they have choices, and that's what happened when Beth had the money to go to Nevada. When she could go, she realised it wasn't what she wanted, and she made that choice wholeheartedly.
To me, it wasn't about screwing Rio over, it was about having a clear view so she could see and think without the constant pressure of having to fight her way out of a corner. It's what let her choose crime and choose Rio in a meaningful way. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to.
