#and it made sense when the s1 arc of the boys was Annie thinking the seven are good

[hoodlander]

Finally finished Season 4.

My thoughts:

Karl Urban looking fine as fuck even though Butcher is supposed to be dying.

And Colby Minifie is looking hot as hell this season, not sure what it is.

Overall, a strong finale.

The writing for the entire season has been all over the place though. If there was ever an argument for going back to the 22 episode seasons - this is it.

So many heel-turns that happened too fast.

And I felt like half the season sacrificed good writing for stupid shock value gags. Shocking scenes should have a place in the narrative, but not just added to try and shock the audience for no reason.

I love Hughie. I really love him. He was going through it this season. I am disappointed in Kripke and the other writers for thinking the Tek Knight stuff was funny and not seeing it for what it was. That is was the same thing that Deep did to Annie in S1. I am disgusted when male SA is not taken seriously in media.

And then the triple whammy with the shifter. Hughie needs a damn break.

I think Erin Moriarty did an amazing job with shifter!Annie though. She was brilliant to watch.

Frenchie and Kimiko’s storylines this season made little sense to me and didn’t progress their characters. I’m glad the writer’s back tracked the ‘platonic soulmates’ thing and made Frenchie/Kimiko genuinely happen. If you want to do platonic that’s fine, but not after what they went through for 3 seasons and how they behaved with each other. Glad that was rectified.

I love MM. And A-Train’s redemption arc was the strongest arc of the season for me. It was the best written imo.

The Deep has wanted to be BFF’s with Homelander since S1. Loved seeing him doubling down on getting that friendship bracelet. RIP Ambrosius. She was the one Deep. She truly, truly loved you you stupid fuck.

I like Firecracker, she is interesting. Having her doing things for Homelander out of gratitude and respect instead of attraction was very refreshing. And I love how she and Deep are Homelander’s Ride or Dies. Whenever I see the three of them together all I see are Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith.

New Noir is baby. Love him. As much as I miss Old Noir, this was a good way to progress the character and give Nathan Mitchell more to do. Loved his fight with the Boys as they reacted to him flying and talking.

Sage is fantastic. I love her. And her final scene with Homelander was brilliant. Like, yes girl come get your sad murder chihuahua he needs to go back in your purse.

And finally…

Grace really be making Homelander look like a #1 Dad.

Great idea, threatening arguably the second most powerful supe on the planet with imprisonment. I feel like she expected Ryan to be as easily radicalized as Billy. Then didn’t know how to handle his need for space. Like, kid just got a bomb dropped on him and needs to think. She couldn’t even give him that.

Whereas Homelander lets him go after their fights. He gives him space. And so far, he has shown Ryan genuine affection as much as he is capable of giving. If Ryan does go back to him in S5, which I think he will, Homelander will accept him back but then have to deal with some hard questions.

Ryan lashing out at Grace was expected honestly. She was going to gas him. He was already emotionally charged. He didn’t look happy or sad after her death. And if Billy only sees Ryan as Becca’s son if he kills Homelander then his love comes with conditions.

Grace and Butcher both fucked up.

Billy killing Victoria and putting his faith in the virus was short-sighted on his part. Vic could have helped them with the long game.

And ultimately the supe virus is a temporary genocide.

A virus only works when it has something to infect. If it kills every supe then Vought just needs to wait a few years to make sure the virus is gone and then start dosing more babies. And the cycle starts again. Vought could potentially find a vaccine for the virus as well.

The thing The Boys have to destroy is Compound V. And every Vought scientist that can recreate it by memory.

As long as Compound V exists there will always be Supes.

[felineverdure]

anywaysss manga jean >>> anime jean

dont get me wrong he is still one of my best bois. finally caught up to the anime and was lowkey upset that a lot of good jean dialogues/reactions/little things were shafted, cut out or moved to other characters. (mostly s1-s3 stuff.) some rambling of mine on parts that they change that i dislike.

one small thing that they changed it up for anime was his motivations for joining the mp. sure we all know that his purpose was to live what little time he has left comfortably in the interior. but he also emphasize on being sick living in the frontline towns that is prone to titan attacks which is pretty normal and valid reason to want to escape to the inner walls imo. animes only sees jean as a spoiled brat bc eren says he is but manga jean is not?? also his face calling out marco in manga is just * chef kiss *

2. this one bugged me A LOT. i think they move this whole dialogue to a another character. ( i cant rmbr) basically jean aint dumb. he went on to school eren on the 'reclaim wall maria operation' aka the culling when eren chastised him for his 'selfish' reasons for wanting to join the MP. here we we have the classic pessimist, defeatist jean kirstein. (also lowkey baby anarchist)

3. his jealousy towards eren isnt really purely from his crush on mikasa but more of eren dragging mikasa and armin into 'an early grave'

4. THIS ICONIC FACE

5. jean eventually stopped slacking off but likely to get back on eren (love his level of pettiness)

6. after training everyone wants to be in marco's team with marco as a leader which prompts marco to tell jean he makes a much better leader than him. (i find it weird that they insert the dialogue in the trost arc itself. it gives little time for jean to digest the idea of him being a leader whereas it makes more sense here in the manga, pacing wise)

7. his motivations to join the scouts. its not just eren or marco words that inspired him into joining. NO. trost arc made him realized he does care about his comrades. his decision to joining the scouts includes him wanting to not have to worry about his other comrades dying. (i feel that this doesnt translate well in the anime ugh) if u noticed, connie and sasha's fear was 'to be eaten by titans' for jean its 'watching his comrades be eaten by titans' its not about him saving humanity or be a leader. he just doesnt want his friends to die.

8. strategist jean!!!! (i know this is included in the anime but i like the manga ver more. it feels like he has more confidence and authority here) and reiner's thoughts on jean's change.

9. after the entire military rescued eren from reiner & bert, suffering huge losses, jean gave eren a reality check. (i think this part was shorten greatly and moved to another scene in the anime) + the scene of the scouts noting how jean has changed was removed completely.

10. when jean managed to bring marlowe and hitch to help them. levi says GOOD JOB JEAN.

& the whole scene was changed from the MP compound to the MP checkpoint where jsc busted through with a cart. manga was pretty badass in that we were shown how levi squad arent children anymore, having the need to wound the mps to reach their goals. (plus jean and sasha busy being baddies on the roof sniping and shooting arrows at the mps ??? )

11. I CANT FORGIVE YOU REINER line. it make no sense in the anime for them to remove this because annie's 'what about me' makes no sense without that line!!! also makes their conversation on the flying boat and titanic scene more impactful later on.

12. jeans & floch relationship!!!! please please trust me when i say floch makes one of the best jean relationship & interaction because how they are each others foil and weakness. the anime straight up made jean a floch hater and floch that one weirdo who cant take a hint. their relationship is so subtle and nuanced in the mange. PLUS jean straight up tries to stop floch from bleeding to death, something the anime cut out bc they dont want to show someone cared about floch!!! also trying to stop someone from dying even tho its 100% happening?? not a very jean like reaction me thinks (ooooh). and the manga panel focusing on flochs dying words with jeans stressed expression is so so good

13. THIS

ok anyways these are just some of the things i can think of reagarding to jean at least. there are also other parts of the story that i was upset that they didnt include. i know anime runs on strict time limitations but *grumble* *grumble*

other things that im upset about: eren kruger adaptation in anime was meh. warriors training era was cut out. RBA spying days was cut out too which is a big L IMO. also facial expressions in the manga were so much more impactful than the anime version like how??????? and manga is jean is top tier hot. i hate what mappa did with him.

[pynkhues]

I just have ask, cause I need to just voice this.. (BTW I do love the show no worry) Am I the only one who thought it was such a stupid reason that the new FBI decided that the fake money was made by women was because they used fuckin' NAIL POLISH?!! I legit sat dumfounded, I mean... wtf? What, men can't think to add nail polish to their fake money?

Haha, I get why you don’t like it, anon. As a functional plot device it’s a little hammy, but I appreciate it as a thematic plot device so much that I actually like it a lot overall. 

This show doesn’t really have a lot of recurring objects like many shows do, but when they are introduced, they usually serve as a means of underlining the gendering of spaces, crime and life, which is a theme this show is about as obsessed with as I am. I talked pretty extensively about the gendering of spaces and how the show uses them in this post (man, I should update this with the delicious new spaces in s3, because they continue all of these trends in such interesting ways!), and briefly touched on the gendering of objects too (namely Rio’s golden gun, and the dubby), but it really does extend well beyond that.

So let’s break that down a little!

(Under a cut to save your dashes!)

Functional vs Thematic Plot Devices

Plot devices take a hundred different shapes and forms throughout a story, and of course, always serve to drive narrative forwards, tell the audience something about a character, or drive home a narrative theme. Plot devices aren’t always physical – in many cases they can be a trope, expectation, lie, red herring, among many other things, but for the sake of this post I want to talk about physical plot devices.

So basically, I want to talk about the way this show uses objects.

It might not seem like it on the surface, but this is a show that uses objects as plot devices a lot. Sometimes these are obvious – the money for instance, the Boland Motors car Turner drudges from the lake back in s1, the dubby (and ho, boy, I have a lot to say about that last one, but I’ll come back to that), the guns, Lucy’s phone, etc etc etc.

While these are, of course, essentially props, this is a show that typically lends a lot of weight to them, and in particular, it lends a lot of weight to feminine-coded objects that would in other shows frequently be dismissed as inconsequential.

A pearl necklace, an old lady’s porcelain figurines, a smear of lipstick on a pen cap, a child’s blanket, a new engagement ring, a pregnancy test, vials of botox, and nail polish, among many other things, become objects of narrative and thematic importance.

When it comes to these sorts of physical plot devices, I generally separate them into two categories: functional and thematic.

Functional plot devices are ultimately what they sound like. They serve an often purely functional purpose in the story. Things like the Boland Motors car that the girls took to Canada, dumped, and then was drudged up by Turner. It was used as a means of re-directing Turner’s attention on Beth, while also revealing to Dean that Beth had been the person who’d robbed him back in 1.03. More recently too, the hockey jersey that Ruby stole was a means of ultimately giving us a fun heist as the girls scrambled to get the money to pay for Beth’s life, as well as getting us to the pawn shop where Ruby would see the pen that Sara had stolen.

Functional plot devices – at their most basic – move plot forwards, bridge the gaps between characters and accelerate the action and drama of a story.

Thematic plot devices on the other hand serve a different purpose, and are often less bogged down, I find at least, in perfect logic. While they need to do what a functional plot device does, they also carry the extra weight of underpinning character arcs and often punctuating the key themes of the story. The sled in Citizen Kane is a really good example of this – as a functional plot device it’s just a specific sled and a sort of silly thing for a multimillionaire to want when he can buy as many sleds as he wants, but as a thematic one, we lean that it’s the key thing in his life connecting him back to his childhood, his innocence and his humanity, and comes to represent the central loss of the film.

Similarly, Harry’s lightning bolt scar in the Harry Potter series serves as a functional plot device to tell us and Harry when Voldemort is near, but it actually evades logic to eschew a greater purpose – which is reiterate the theme of motherly love and protection in the story.

Sharp Objects

Good Girls uses objects this way a lot and frequently shifts them between the two purposes, and it has done that since the very beginning. Using toy guns on the very first Fine & Frugal robbery for instance, was a silly plot point used ultimately to get them into the situation with Boomer at the end, but it also thematically represented the naivety of the girls in the robbery, and Annie and Beth’s powerlessness overall, but especially in the scene with Boomer (something immediately juxtaposed with Beth hitting him with the bourbon bottle). It also works effectively as a means of showing how far Beth would come across the first season as she held a real gun at the end of it, and the further slip of her moral character and what she’s capable of across season 2 and 3.

Sometimes they seem to appear as purely functional too, but evolve into thematic ones – meaning they are enriched with weight and purpose as they transition in their design.

A good example of that is Boomer’s cell phone in 2.03 which was purely functional – serving as a means of tricking the girls into believing they were disposing of Boomer’s body, not Jeff’s, before it was pivoted in the last scene to be used on a thematic and character level. By Annie listening to Marion’s voicemails through it, it served to re-link Annie to her own humanity, and underpin her arc with Marion that would ultimately lead to betrayal, redemption, grief and guilt.

The Dubby: a quick aside

The best example though, at least to me, is, of course, the dubby. The dubby does a lot of heavy lifting on virtually every story level, and I could honestly wax lyrical about it until the end of time.

On a functional plot level, it’s there to ultimately get Beth shirking Rio’s instructions and throwing her weight against him in their partnership. It forces her to confront the fact that she views herself and Rio as equals, when the reality is – in situations like that – they’re not. It also gets us to confrontations between Beth with Dean, Rio and Ruby, as well as Annie and Ben (I told you it did a lot of heavy lifting!), served as the means to which Noah and Annie met (boo), revealed Rio’s hand emotionally, and forced Beth to face on a textual level (as opposed to subtextual level) her changing relationship with her home, with her role as a mother, and ultimately her children.

On a thematic level, it explores all that and more! Not only is it deeply, deeply symbolic of a loss of innocence (a baby blanket in a drug den!) – something that’s reiterated by the girls almost being raped in that house – but Rio’s desire, for whatever reason, to give it back to her (something actually reiterated in 2.08 when he tries to handle the baby hitmen for her) – a really, really interesting beat for a character that seems to revel in her moral decline. Rio has, I think, always wanted her to be both. Again, something that is the clearest we’ve ever seen in this episode – he wants her to own up to what she is (a drug dealer) during their fight, while simultaneously trying to restore her to a seemingly frivolous comfort as a mother. It’s complicated! And I love it!

It’s also a highly feminised object that is weaponised against Beth twice. Firstly, by Jane as a means of guilting Beth (she lost it in the drug den), then criminally (by the, y’know, criminals), and then Beth actually weaponises it herself against the woman in the craft store in a female hierarchical sense which is totally fascinating to me and feels very true of Beth as reiterating the sort of alpha woman she is.

I could keep talking about this, but let’s move on, haha.

Claws

It’s not just about character arcs though.

Thematic plot devices are also often used as symbolic touchstones to re-emphasise the key themes of the show overall, and it’s in this sense that the nail polish operates – to me – really effectively. The writers aren’t saying that nail polish is only used by women, they’re saying that it’s a feminine-coded object deemed frivolous or silly by a patriarchal society (which it is, even when men wear it), and that women can use that dismissal as a weapon.

In other words, the key through line of the show.

The girls have operated with this sensibility since the show began, acting within underestimated, feminine-coded spaces and using them, basically in a way that messes with people’s expectations. It doesn’t always work in their favour, but that’s not a bad thing, and I don’t think that that’s the story this show is trying to tell. Rather I think it’s simply trying to say that these things are active, and can be powerful and used in interesting ways. They’re not passive or frivolous as history has told us.

They’ve frequently actually tried to use female-coded objects in crime before too – namely Marion’s figurines, the secret shopping scheme, the botox – all of which failed in unique ways (all of which too were briefly entertained but ultimately rejected by Rio, and it’s interesting that a key transition in Beth and Rio’s relationship occurred around Boland Motors – a masculinised space that Beth feminised on her takeover of it – I spoke about that quite a bit in the gendered spaces post I linked to above!)

The nail polish though has been the first true, pure success of a weaponised, feminine-coded object in the crime storylines, and it’s not an accident that that has coincided with the launch of the girls’ operation and their pure success without Rio. Being able to use it to make the money has been key to representing their feminisation of the crime world and the crime space on a thematic level, and I’d argue represents a ‘full circle’ moment with the success of their returns-for-cash scheme working with Rio originally (again, a feminine-coded operation).

Like I said in my gendered spaces post – Beth, Ruby and Annie are at their strongest and smartest when they’re utilising the familiar, feminine-coded world and weaponizing it, as opposed to copying Rio’s highly masculine-coded world (one of the clearest examples of this ever on the show was this season actually when Beth realised she couldn’t intimidate Gil like Rio, but could blackball him in PTA mom mode). The nail polish is actually a key symbol of that too, and the fact that it’s identified by a female FBI agent is about reiterating the same themes. Phoebe has a chance to take down the girls and close in on them because she doesn’t underestimate that world like Turner did and Rio’s still prone to doing.

The nail polish in that sense formed not only a functional plot device (with making the money in the first place), a thematic one (the underestimation of feminine-coded objects by men), but a bridging device that makes Phoebe a real enemy to the girls. It also serves as a great narrative underscore as Phoebe removes that nail polish from circulation, not only indicating that Phoebe operates in that space as well as Beth, Ruby and Annie, because she’s a part of that world in a way Turner wasn’t, but forming a terrific narrative parallel where as Beth loses further control of her operation, she also loses control of a key ingredient which gained her that operation in the first place.

So yes! Less function, more theme, but I don’t know.

I’m pretty into it, haha.

[pynkhues]

Say Dean did give her the necklace. Out of all the horrendous things he’s done to her, why would she decide to wear it tho?

Well, assuming that he is the one to give her the new necklace, which Istrongly suspect he is (although I’ve been wrong before!), I think there are afew reasons she’d wear it. And hey! I’ve had five or six asks since 2.08about Beth and Dean’s relationship, history and age gap, which I had a fewdrafts of, so I’m so sorry! I’m going to highjack your ask to combine/answerthem all! Hope that’s okay. 

Putting all myheadcanons and theories aside (at least for the first half of this post haha),let’s just talk about what canon has established about Beth and Dean and theirrelationship over the last 18 episodes. 

This is like, verylong (seriously 2,800 words), haha, so I’m putting it under a cut to save all your feeds. 

The Marks’ Family ValuesWhile 2.08 clarified a few things about the way Beth, Ruby and Annie wereraised, there’s still a lot that we don’t really know, so let’s look at what wedo know: 

1. Beth as a youngteenager crashed her mother’s car out the front of Ruby’s house with her kidsister in the passenger seat because there was no food in the house, and theirmother wasn’t getting out of bed. The implication, from Annie’sdialogue “She just really likes it there” is that this is not a new thing.(2.08)

2. Annie was areckless kid and had a broken arm during a time it’s implied she and Beth were neglected.(2.08)

3. “You knowwhat my mama used to say? You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” – Beth(2.01)

4. Beth played pianofor six years after her parents dropped $$s on it, despite changing her mindand wanting to play violin, which on its own I think can be written off as generalchildish indecisiveness, buuuut I think means a little more than that in thecontext of everything else. (1.05)

5. Beth worked heronly legitimate job in highschool at the Dairy Queen. (1.03)

5. Annie used to gethigh and was sexually active in highschool, and had gossip/rumours spread abouther. Their mother came into the school to address it and, it’s implied, madethe situation a lot worse, causing Annie not want to do the same to Sadie with Sadie’sbullies. (1.04)

6. Then Annie gotpregnant in highschool. (mentioned multiple times)

7. Beth has alwaysbeen the one that Annie has called to bail her out of trouble (mentioned a fewtimes).

9. Beth had postpartumdepression with at least one of her children. (2.05)

The Boland Timeline

While we haven’t gottenconfirmed ages of the characters, we do know that Dean is, at the very least, ayear older than Beth, although I think it’s more likely around three yearsgiven the way it’s framed in the episode. SO. 

1. Beth meets Dean atschool when she’s either a freshman, sophomore or junior. He’s a senior. It’sat a point in time where we know her mother is bedridden and Beth spends a lotof time looking after Annie (she even took Annie to Ruby’s father’s funeral,which I think says a lot as to how much Beth – and by proxy Ruby – were lookingafter Annie). (2.08)

2. Beth and Dean havebeen married for 20 years during S1, so that puts them likely at gettingmarried when Beth is somewhere between the age of 20-22. (mentioned multipletimes)

3. Somewhere in thistime period, Dean takes over Boland Motors from his father (one of the photosin the screensaver Dean’s looking at in 2.04 looks like it’s from a grandre-opening, and Beth’s holding a baby boy, so it looks like this could bearound the time Kenny or Danny is born) and Beth becomes a stay-at-home motherand a housewife. Dean also has full control of their finances, and Beth is onan allowance that he also controls. 

4. Kenny has hiseleventh birthday in S1, so Beth would’ve been in her late twenties when shehad him. 

5. We don’t know theage gap between the rest of the kids (and in fact, those age gaps have obviouslychanged between S1 and S2 lol) but it looks like Jane is now the youngest, notEmma, and that Beth and Dean hadn’t had sex in the two years before gettingpregnant with Jane, and then that they hadn’t had sex since she was born until2.06, which seems to be about five or six years. (2.05 / 1.05)

6. Beth had postpartumdepression after at least Emma (it was the specific given reason as to why theyhadn’t had sex in the two years before getting pregnant with Jane), although Ithink the implication is that it was with more of the kids than just her.

7. Somewhere in allof this, Dean had multiple affairs. He says four, but the implication fromAmber is that it’s more than that, and then I think Beth basically confirmsthat when she says “Dean’s slept with half of Detroit” later in the episode.Plus Dean being a pathological liar isn’t exactly a secret. (2.05)

8. Beth finds out hesleeps with Amber in 1.01 and that he’s mortgaged their house three times andthat their savings are gone. She kicks him out, takes control of theirfinances, and robs Fine & Frugal. 

9. Dean tries to winher back a few times - first by appealing to her pragmatism (and I’ll beexpanding on this shortly) - by talking about how they’ll both be worse offfinancially if they separate - before telling her that she’s the love of hislife, then by showing up unannounced to mow the backyard (a traditionally malehousehold job), then by using Kenny’s birthday wish that they were backtogether to try and guilt her (another point I’ll be expanding on shortly!)

10. Cut to Kenny’sbirthday party. He implies Beth’s having an affair with Rio (lols for so manyreasons), they fight, Beth insinuates that she’ll be filing for divorce soon(”You’re still my wife” “Yeah, I’ve gotta get on that.”) and Dean drops TheCancer Lie. Beth is obviously upset, and lets him move back in, but he’ssleeping in Kenny’s room. (1.04)

11. Dean doubles down on the cancer lie by bribing a doctor to tell Bethhe has prostate cancer, but he also covers for her when Turnerfinds the Boland Motors car the girls stole from the lot. He then confronts herabout it in a very paternalistic way (”Why don’t you get a job?” “Sit down!”“These people prey on good, innocent people” “I’m sorry I yelled at you, buteverything’s going to be fine. I’ll take care of you.”). Beth plays along inthe moment, but Dean changes the locks without telling her (and also doesn’thelp her bring the grocery bags in which is sooo telling), reveals he’sswitched hours with a guy at work to be around to ‘protect’ her, and Bethfinally stands up for herself “You have no idea what I’ve done or even who Iam”. (1.06)

12. Dean asks her ifshe’s doing it for the kids. She says yes, and he says it’s all he needs toknow. It genuinely seems to comfort her in the moment. It’s one of their fewnice scenes and I think shows what they were like when they were at their verybest. (1.07)

13. Rio shuts down,Beth is back on an allowance. She tries to get a loan, but their credit hasn’trebounded enough and they still have too much debt. Dean solves the problem bymoving the botox via the doctor he bribed. Dean won’t tell Beth how he did it,but she’s grateful enough to end up coming clean about what she does for Rio.They have their second nice moment. “You don’t deserve anything I did toyou.” + “I think you’re incredible.” (1.08)

14. Dean obviouslyfeels like he and Beth are getting back on track, and is annoyed that Annie’sliving with them temporarily. He builds Beth a craft table with hiddencompartments to hide her fake cash! (1.09)

15. Dean tries toorganise something for their anniversary, which Beth doesn’t agree to rightaway, but does later in the episode when he tries to help her after realisingshit’s going down in the crime world. Dean gets into a car accident whilechecking out another woman, Beth finds out he lied about the cancer (like thatgrenade was never going to blow, Deansy), he came home, Rio shoots him to getback at Beth, but not before revealing a certain degree of intimacy and trustbetween the two of them, which Dean clocks instantly. (1.10 / 2.01)

Then Season 2happens, haha.

So let’s talk about Beth & Dean

I’ve said it a fewtimes before, but when it comes to Beth, we’re ultimately watching somebody whohas been disempowered and disenfranchised for a really, really long time tryingto reclaim a sense of identity and control over her life. Even before 2.08, wewere looking at that through the sense of her marriage to Dean where she had noreal independence. Her entire life was dictated by decisions that he made forthem, personally, professional and financially, and a lot of the first half of Season1 was devoted to her realising exactly how many of those decisions had been bad ones. As the series went on, she reallydid start to gain a sense of financial independence (which is incredibly important)as well as a sense of her own identity and agency, only for that to becompletely crippled again across that four episode arc - 1.09 through to 2.02 –firstly by thinking Rio had played her for a fool (the empty truck), then Rio firingher, then realising that Dean hadplayed her for a fool again (thecancer lie), and then her plot to put Rio away falling apart, Dean being shot,and her realising that she was newly indebted to both of them.

I think what 2.08contextualised was that Beth has never really been allowed to explore who sheis, because there’s always been somebody she’s had to look after. She’s alwayshad dependents and she has lived a life of constant compromise, making her incrediblypragmatic and sacrificing of her own needs and wants. The episode establishedthat Beth spent most if not all of her adolescence caring for Annie and theirmother, married young, and then spent her entire young adult life looking afterDean and their four children.

Likely the appeal ofDean was that he was older, gave her attention in a way that seemed to ‘see’ herat a time where her needs were neglected at home, and likely popular – he’s goofyand fun, as the show’s establishedmultiple times, which I think would be more likeable at that teenage age, and Ithink he probably appealed to Beth as a way out of a troubling home situation.At the end of the day, the show has established pretty firmly that Beth is, whenit comes to her and her own, a survivor. And when I say survivor, I don’t meanthe badass, action heroine sort of survivor - I mean the desperate, do-what-she-has-tosort of survivor. She has an uncanny ability to lie and perform to get herselfout of situations, and also a tendency to sacrifice her own happiness for thoseshe loves. I think when it came to Dean, for a very long time, Beth sacrificedpower and control for a security and safety that she hadn’t had growing up,first for herself (and likely in part for Annie too), and then for her fourchildren.

And I think Dean, priorto the start of the series, had never truly been challenged on any of thecontrol that he wrought over their lives. He’s your classic embodiment of whitemale privilege, and I think he has all the baggage that comes with that,including a firm belief in gender roles, a heady sense of entitlement, and asubconscious expectation that things will usually work in his favour. The factthat he started dating Beth when she was so young, that he inherited BolandMotors from his father, and the fact that he blames Beth’s postpartum depressionfor his affairs too I think drasticallyemphasises that. We talk a lot about the power play between Beth and Rio, butBeth and Dean, since 1.01, have been in a power play of their own – Beth in herdesire to break out of their traditional roles, to ‘steer the ship’, and toreally put her family in a more secure position in life (something she realisedDean was incapable of doing), and Dean in his desire to keep them in their traditional roles, to ‘steer the ship’, and tokeep the status quo (I mean, hell, the fact that he was checking out anotherwoman on his way to his anniversary dinner with Beth in 1.10 says a lot about exactly how little he wants things tochange).

In what is typical ofpeople who are nurturers/carers or have been forced into nurturer/carerpositions in their life, Beth also seems to feel guilt to a disproportionatedegree, and in a way that often seems to cancel out any other emotion,including her anger. This is established pretty early in season one in smallways - her snipping with Annie then immediately back pedalling when sherealises Annie might lose custody of Sadie, with not being able to throw Kennythe birthday party he wants, with her telling Dean about what she does for Rioafter Dean offloads the botox, and then reiterated in big ways this season -nursing Dean after he’s been shot, crawling into bed with Kenny after he gotcaught binge eating at school, going above and beyond to get the dubby backafter Jane feels neglected, I’d even argue that the whole situation with MaryPat has partially been fuelled by guilt for putting Mary Pat in that situationin the first place when she’s a widow with four young children.

And I think Dean knows this! He has guilted her so much across the course of this show, often in a way to deflectfrom his own shortcomings or to ultimately playher. He gaslights her all the time,and she often doesn’t even realise it, which demonstrates, to me at least, howoften he’s done it over the course of their 20+ year relationship. The wholething about the cancer lie in the first place was to back her into a corner,which he succeeded in doing. He guilted her about being at Boland Motors andaway from the kids. When Jane went missing, he immediately blamed her and guilted her for her involvement with Rio(instead of………you know……….looking for his daughter), in 2.08, he guilted Beth for checking on her moneybefore untying him after he’d tried to organise a hit on her partner and gottenher robbed blind in the process.

And when the guilt and the manipulation stopped working, he did thething he knew she couldn’t ignore (and that would hurt her the most) which istake the children. Beth is, like I said earlier, a survivor and a sacrificer whenit comes to her and her own. There’s no way she won’t give up everything togive those children what she didn’t have – a mother who she could rely on. I thinkDean’s ultimatum won’t just be about them either. I could be wrong, but I thinkhe’s going to tell her that they have to try again as a couple, and I thinkthat’s what that necklace is going to be about (seriously though, if he givesit to her as a part of the ultimatum, everything about it symbolically is acollar), and she’ll put it on for her children, and I think it’s all honestlygoing to push her over the edge in a really big way before the season’s over.

I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but I think Beth fully was intendingto leave Dean before the cancer lie, but then she needed to care for him(again, a manipulation I think Dean knew would work because of Beth’s historycaring for her mother and Annie), and then the shooting (same reason, plus theadded bonus of her having caused it). Since then, I think she has almostcompletely emotionally divorced him – having sex with Rio, taking over BM,checking on the money first, not letting him back into her bed – is all verytelling of this, and I think she had likely had her pragmatic hat on and waswaiting until she could feasibly balance all the pieces in her life on her ownbefore filing for divorce. Of course, that’s now blown up with Dean holding thechildren essentially hostage.

And look, do I thinkDean loves Beth? I do actually, in his own way. Do I think Beth loves Dean? Ithink she did, but like she said to Ruby – Dean’s not a soulmate for her, oreven a partner. Beth and Dean should’ve maybe briefly dated in highschool andthen broken up, but they’re both in too deep now, and I don’t think anythingshort of a bullet or an arrest is going to easily disentangle them.