Forget Rio, Forget Dean — What if Beth Is End Game on NBC’s Good Girls?
It is easy to say Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks) is caught between two men — her husband, Dean Boland (Matthew Lillard), her partner of over twenty years who has cheated on and lied to her and is the father of her four children, and her crime boss and lust-and-or-love interest, Rio (Manny Montana), a businessman and father with a ridiculous internal and external sexiness who thrills, enrages, and scares her. Rio listens to Beth. Dean dismisses Beth. With Rio, Beth has the best sex of her life. Sex with Dean is an afterthought. Rio reflects to Beth she is “way more interesting” than being a good person, while Dean sees Beth in outmoded visions of mother and wife and as a vulnerable woman who can be taken advantage of.
But, perhaps focusing on how Beth is seen and treated by two men central to her life story, as we see it to be in the Good Girls world, is not the right approach to evaluate Beth’s identity. Partnered in marriage or crime life, notwithstanding, Beth is herself first — right?
To take full heart in Beth’s journey alongside her sister, Annie Marks (Mae Whitman) and best friend, Ruby Hill (Retta) as they navigate being mothers and suburban livers to entering Detroit-based crime life, we need to understand Beth’s motivations and internal world. Evolutionary is fine, good, even — when we meet Beth, her pot is overflowing. Messiness is part of getting organized. But, we need some form of compass, pointing semi-forwards, to orient ourselves and cement willful attention in following Beth as she tries to understand herself.
Beth hides inside, a response to an inwardly developed life of parenting her younger sister when she was a teenager herself to marrying her high school sweetheart (Dean) while still young and thus caring for others, before herself, her entire life. She chooses to stay married (a divorce was flirted with in earlier seasons) and continues a low- and high-key lustful and, according to some Brio fans, love-full, complex engagement with Rio. Beth is intoxicated by the crime world, that is, she is good at executing the activities Rio’s brand in money laundering and selling drugs requires — creative thinking and astuteness to detail.
As I try to sort out Beth’s command of her agency, and moreover, where she enjoys life, Beth’s comment to Dean in season two echoes: “It feels good to be really good at something.”
There are arguments to be made that neither Rio nor Dean are healthful intimate partners for Beth, anyhow. There is a distinction to highlight, primarily that Rio shows potential to care for Beth in a long term way — aware and responsive emotionally — while Dean fractures the opportunity to be a present, positive husband. Beth is no longer in love with Dean. Beth and Rio could develop a significant, fulfilling partnership because they understand and attract each other at a soul level, but they are far from creating that in season four, episode nine. As Redditors point out, what is wrong or even unrealistic about a suburban, stay-at-home mom entering a relationship with a city-oriented crime boss? Why not?
For a series founded on ideas and progressivisms of the feminism movement — as a key point, that women respect themselves and are complex individuals capable of making choices and driving their lives to support that self-respect — Beth staying with Dean is conflictual. As much as some Brio fans might love for Beth to sign divorce papers and Rio swoop in a second later in his Mercedes jeep, consider it even more satisfying if Beth took a minute — or two.
Beth alone at the end of Good Girls — and by alone, I mean, unpartnered and very much with self — is radical. Beth lives in response to, as opposed to taking charge of. Beth could become a mom and wife who is also a crime boss, or another vocation giving her purpose and pleasure. Schitt’s Creek’s Alexis Rose (Annie Murphy) serially but superficially dates until she finds true love in Ted Mullens (Dustin Mulligan), but they break-up by the series end to pursue careers in different locations. Single Alexis is a triumph of self and personal growth and, collectively, of women becoming self-determined. I would love to see Beth make choices in her life to explore her definition of fulfillment — in all her wildest, or perhaps, her most natural, imaginations.
