#jenna bans & bill krebs

[harpersplay]

as a women Do you offended by rio and nick conversation about the ponytail and the other things they said about beth.i mean like they see women an object When i think about it the writter is a women 😠

Maybe because I don't wear shipper goggles, I didn't see the ponytail comment as heavily sexual. Pulling a girl's ponytail/pigtails is a common idiom about teasing a girl to show one's interest in her. Setting aside how it's a totally fucked up trope and extremely juvenile, my read on the scene is that Rio was telling Nick that Beth would respond better to teasing (or, more correctly, being challenged) than being treated nicely (or, more to Nick's usual politician way, being charmed).

I've written a lot (here here here here here) about Beth, Nick, & Rio. Couple that with Dean's (and now apparently Stan's, because let's totally destroy the Black man's characterisation) MRA storyline and it's a HUGE miss for a show that sells itself about strong female characters and women's empowerment in the face of being taken for granted.

And let's not forget that Jenna Bans explicitly stated that a (the?) major theme for the season was men vs women (groundbreaking! 🙄). So they are skewing all the storylines to play to that.

(I don't think you meant this in a bad way, anon, but one does not have to be a women to care about sexism and misogyny. Just as someone need not be a member of a marginalised community to care about the injustices carried out against that community.)

[pynkhues]

I think one of our biggest regrets of where we were going in the last five episodes is they've been so adversarial this season with him wanting to kill her because she shot him, and then she was like, "The only way to not get killed is to kill him." They've been at each other's throats for 11 episodes. The last five were really going to take us in a new direction. We were going to, and still will in the opening of season 4, throw them into putting that adversarial weaponry aside and having to begrudgingly work together in a way that they haven't before. That chemistry is not something that can be snuffed out, so it brings up all of that good stuff, them working in such close proximity. That's something we're really looking forward to jumping into in season 4 and something we're sad we didn't get to show the fans in season 3, but it's all still coming. You don't go from having the hottest sex of your life to wanting someone dead without conflicted feelings. KREBS: You don't stop thinking about bathroom sex.

Jenna and Bill,  Good Girls bosses talk Beth and Rio, potential season 4

[septiembrre]

Really enjoyed your nuanced post about respect for Latinx characters on the show. Why do you think there’s such a divide between the respect Rio commands from the majority of the audience versus the how the show treats him? I have empathy for all the characters but the longer the show goes on, Rio is the standout “main” character that receives the least amount from the show itself. I’m interested to see how this shifts with the introduction of Nick as the bad egg, but was thrown by bill kreb’s response that Beth will never soften to Rio because of the situations he puts her in. And not that #brio is the entire show but Beth is the person/lens who we see Rio through, so her opinion/attitude is by default the one that matters here (petition for first person Rio POV). I’m not totally sure what I’m asking hahah but would love your thoughts on any of it if you wanted to share. 🧠

Hi Anon! 

When I got your ask yesterday I realized that damn it, I finally needed to track down this post I wrote last April in the middle of Season 3 airing. Back in the day (lol, a year ago, but a year in pandemic terms, okay?), I didn’t tag anything in purposefully -- I mean I only meagerly tag things now -- and thought I had lost it forever, but I’m so glad I found it. I didn’t do all that emotional labor for it to fall into the Tumblr abyss. 😭I fucking transcribed something from a Youtube video (so extra.) 

It’s weird reading it now because so much it still feels salient. I hate that. But, even though it’s time-stamped from a year ago, I think it still gets to your question: 

Why do you think there’s such a divide between the respect Rio commands from the majority of the audience versus the how the show treats him? 

1. I think there isn’t enough support for writing Latinx characters on the show. I wonder if there are any Latinx writers on the show, and if there are, whether they are junior writers/what their power looks like in the writing room. The conversation doesn’t have to stop at writers either, just how many Latinx creators allowed to have voices in the decision-making involved in the show? 

2. I still think MM lacks the traditional star power to have Rio’s character get more narrative weight. I think there are certain things within his control, pieces he can lobby for and effect -- but not larger narrative choices. While Rio is the fan favorite, MM is still the least prolific, known of the cast, hasn’t paid his acting dues to get higher billed, etc. I do laugh tho every episode when MM is billed right above Lidya Jewett the actress who plays Sara, Ruby’s daughter, who has barely been in this season (but kudos to her and her ppl for advocating for her billing spot). 

Importantly, MM doesn’t seem to have allies in the three leads. For example, I would argue Reno’s professional relationship and friendship with Retta and Matthew’s relationship with Christina (lol, Matt seems to be a set favorite) have very much paid off for both of them (especially Matt). It feels strange to watch classic work dynamics play out like this on the show bc you would think it would be more effected by NBC’s bottom line. But I’m getting that classic workplace read, that your job standing is based on who you’re allied with and who is your advocate. And this is just pure speculation, my personal read, but I think there are also vibes of ~unconscious bias~ discriminatory stuff around MM being a Latinx actor from a working-class BIPOC community layered in all of this. 

I don’t want to fully get into the subject of MM but I feel like this ask would be incomplete to not mention the following. Something else that stands out in this situation is MM’s public shade towards the show, and social media presence overall. *sigh*  At this point, I can’t imagine MM hasn’t been come across as unpalatable to his castmates. From the little glimpses we get on social media it hasn’t looked pretty. However, as much as he makes me cringe, I see his work vibes, and I feel a sad echo of my own experiences as a brown Latinx person trying to get my white coworkers to recognize my fuller humanity. 

Anyway, NBC’s gripe is that Good Girls doesn’t make them enough money and the thing is we know how it could. With a few tweaks (not making GG the Rio!Show but giving Rio more narrative weight, putting him in even one substantive scene with Annie or Ruby for example) Good Girls could more easily get renewed, be more popular etc. I don’t think shifts like this would have to compromise the integrity of the story Jenna Bans originally wanted to tell with the focus on the three female leads. There can be more effort put into the Latinx representation without it breaking the premise of the show.  

But, on the bright side in Season 4, Rio has a new scene playmate~ Little by little we are populating Rio’s world, and we finally have someone he can work against one-on-one in scenes independent from Beth. Love for that for him!~* Idk, I’m still skeptical about this Nick storyline. I really enjoy aspects of it, but I feel like it’s pinging a radar re:poorly thought out representation in a way I haven’t fully processed yet.  

Thanks for the ask! (I will take no further questions about MM at this time.🙈)

[medievalraven]

me: yeah i just don’t see how brio could ever be endgame

jenna bans and bill krebs: we agree, rio isn��t a long term romantic prospect

me:.... EXCUSE ME???? WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT????

[msnikkimoneypenny]

I will say it again. Good Girls fucked up at episode 213.

It was a stupid ass move to have Rio kidnap Beth.

It was a stupid ass move to have Beth shoot Rio 3 times.

Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs fucked up.

The show wouldve been cancelled after season 3 in my opinion because the storyline and the writing didnt make sense.

Good Girls ratings were already low. And it started to go down. They used Brio as click bait but the powers that be were really resentful that we liked Brio.

If it wasnt for the pandemic shutting studios down, then season 3 wouldve been it.

Pay cuts my ass.

This is what happens when you have creative freedom and you take creative direction down the wrong path. It becomes 213.

I feel like this is what happens when you are an artist trying to create a masterpiece the way you want it and how you see it. But someone comes in and takes your work and actually makes it a masterpiece in another but better way. Fans gather to look at it and admire this masterpiece but you the artist are resentful and a hater. You wanted to create the masterpiece your way. So you take that masterpiece of work and instead of appreciating it and admiring it and working with it, you destroy it to make it how you want to make it. Build it up to how you want it to be but it ain't as good nor does it get the praise.

And honestly if Good Girls had casted anyone else as Rio then it wouldnt have been good. Yeah it's about 3 women. But the show wouldve gotten cancelled after season 2 most likely. Jenna's original masterpiece wouldnt have made it this far. Brio was the masterpiece that we all liked that they didn't expect.

[jade-marie]

I used to love Good Girls, I discovered it on netflix at first, when they still just had one season and loved it so much and season 2 also got me excited, till the last episode happened and then just everything went downhill, it become a torture to watch it. And all these over excited twitter stans that hyped up the show all the times were getting on my nerves. So I am not really sad about the cancellation,Bill Krebs and Jenna Bans have treated the fandom like sh*t anyways.

sorry, it's been 84 years, proscrastination is my jam lol

i agree. i absolutely loved the show but, like you said, it went downhill. at this point, i'm not sad to see it cancelled and the way people in the fandom behave is probably 75% responsible for that. people's toxic behaviour surrounding gg makes the show that much more unenjoyable because all of the stuff i dislike most about the show seems to be reflected in its biggest fans. i don't think anyone is ready for that conversation though

[tedbecca]

i’m convinced jenna bans and bill krebs use jeremy bearimy when plotting out the show

[elixir448]

Do you really think they going to get rid of brio?

Sorry! Took me a minute to get to this! If it’s okay with you, I’ll answer your second question here as well:

Do you think brio fans might well forget about beth be rio being a couple because sound like bill krebs and Jenna bans is ending brio?

My straightforward answer is no, I very much doubt that the writers are going to do away with Beth and Rio as a romantic relationship on the show. I never got ending Beth and Rio vibes off of any of their recent interviews, or actually from any of the spoilers we have received so far.

For those who are interested, Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs have done a few pre-season 4 interviews:

https://tvline.com/2021/03/05/good-girls-season-4-preview-beth-rio-spoilers-interview/

https://www.distractify.com/p/who-dies-good-girls-season-4

https://ew.com/tv/good-girls-season-4-love-triangle-beth-rio/

Specifically, the interview in the EW link above has a quote from Bans:

“And it leaves Beth with a much more clear understanding of who this person is just as a human, which I think both equally softens her to him and also gives her clarity that this is someone you can't really be with romantically long-term. But it makes it all really messy and juicy. There's a lot of sexiness in there too. What's even more fun is that is happens pretty early in the season — I don't think people will have to wait very long.”

I think I’m getting sick of hearing myself say this but interviews definitely need to be taken with a grain of salt. Prior to season 2 airing, Manny said that Beth and Rio were unlikely to ever cross the line and then they banged in 2x04 so...

If we take the above quote at face value, it doesn’t change my opinion at all. To me, Beth and Rio don’t necessarily have to be in a defined relationship. In fact, I’ve never considered that a possibility for these two messes. I could absolutely see them being crime partners or bosses operating within the same region, crossing paths and banging each other but not anyone else haha.

I guess your reaction to that quote is dependent upon what you consider the term couple to mean, in the context of a TV series and for this particular pairing. If, to you, that means Beth and Rio in an established relationship, you may be disappointed. But if you broaden the definition and include unlabelled relationships, partnerships, a mutual understanding, longing with the occasional lapse of judgement and falling into bed together, etc, that might be what we get.

As I said above, I think it’s extremely unlikely that the showrunners will ever scrap Beth and Rio from the show’s storylines. There are a few reasons why.

• Other interviews that the showrunners have done repeatedly make reference to the fact that Beth and Rio are not done and that they love playing with their dynamic.

Bans: Yeah. At the same time, he’s obviously one of our favorite parts of the show. We love the Beth-Rio relationship, the push and pull. And we were going some really, really sort of interesting juicy ways with that, in the last five [episodes]. So, regardless of what happens, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.

(https://www.tvinsider.com/933107/good-girls-season-3-finale-season-4-rio-beth-annie-ruby/)

Bans: They've been at each other's throats for 11 episodes. The last five were really going to take us in a new direction. We were going to, and still will in the opening of season 4, throw them into putting that adversarial weaponry aside and having to begrudgingly work together in a way that they haven't before. That chemistry is not something that can be snuffed out, so it brings up all of that good stuff, them working in such close proximity. That's something we're really looking forward to jumping into in season 4 and something we're sad we didn't get to show the fans in season 3, but it's all still coming. You don't go from having the hottest sex of your life to wanting someone dead without conflicted feelings.

(https://ew.com/tv/good-girls-season-3-finale-season-4/)

• While they were filming season 1, Jenna Bans actually thought it would be fun for one of the girls to sleep with Rio and thought Annie would make sense!

Beth and Rio’s relationship was a direct result of Christina and Manny’s explosive on-screen chemistry and, when they realised what they were seeing on screen, the showrunners actually leaned into it and altered the season 1 ending prior to the show being aired. In other words, Beth and Rio were an unexpected surprise but were absolutely not a product of the fandom wanting them. Their relationship exists solely because of the actors and the showrunners cashing in on the goldmine before any audience saw their chemistry. So, it wasn’t fandom pressure that forced the showrunners to make these two an on-screen back and forth relationship; they were already cultivating this relationship and rewrote season 1 to factor this in. This has been stated in interviews and at one of the Good Girls panels that Bans, Krebs and the cast did.

•  Bans makes it pretty clear that whatever happens in season 4 is going to make Beth and Rio’s relationship “juicy and messy”, with a bunch of “sexiness” (isn’t that what it was lol?). She even says that it happens relatively early in the season.

At the end of the day, I have no idea what’s going to happen. We can speculate all we want but I’m sure we’ll all still be shocked by what unfolds when the season airs. I do think we have a lot to look forward to and, personally, I’m just going to enjoy the season and have fun being part of the fandom! ❤️

[cashisqueen]

https://t.co/pH1GSY5yAV

Those who want to read about season 4

[harpersplay]

If I wasn't already a villain, this would be my origin story.

[pynkhues]

I just read the new TV Insider interview with Bans and Krebs and I honestly think Dean and Beth are endgame for the show. It's just so unsatisfying to me. Yeah, maybe Brio will hook up again, but it'll never be more than sex. It's pretty much what I gained from their interview.

I’m assuming your talking about this part of the interview?  

Krebs: Yeah, I think you're rooting for them as [Beth and Dean] in a lot of this, and that's sort of how we crafted it from the beginning. Trying to see in all this messiness, is there anything salvageable? As they both start to respect one another again, throughout this season. Even though Beth is going behind his back, and seeing Rio, it's for the right reason. She's trying to raise money to get rid of Rio, so she can get back to a normal situation, with her husband. Whether that happens..

Bans: Will remain to be seen, obviously. We've really tried to rehabilitate Dean, in the past few seasons, and show that he's grown. And whether we believe that he's the right romantic partner for Beth, and whether that's a marriage that's full of romance and spiciness, that's a different question. But, she's obviously drawn to Rio for other reasons. We didn't want Dean to be the cliche jerk season after season. We really wanted to sort of dimensionalize him, and show that he has a heart and cares about his family, too.. 

In which case, I actually disagree that the show is planning on making Dean and Beth endgame. Particularly given that in that quote from Jenna she heavily implies that Dean is not the right romantic partner for Beth and that their marriage lacks romance and passion. 

In some ways, I do think season 3 was about Beth and Dean remembering their love for one another, but I think it also starkly pointed out the fact that Beth and Dean aren’t in love with each other, something the writing of this show has told us over and over again through Beth’s silences when Dean tells her he loves her, and through the scene in 3.02 where Beth tells Ruby she’s never looked at Dean the way Ruby looks at Stan. 

That said, I do actually think they love each other (a controversial opinion in this fandom, I know, haha), and as I’ve said many times across this season, I think that that love is steeped in nostalgia and security, and when faced with the uncertainty of the future – particularly one where death’s perpetually knocking on Beth’s door in the form of Rio and his gun – it’s understandable to cling to it. 

I said it in this post, but I actually don’t even mind the writers posing the question ‘is anything here salvagable?’ because I think that’s a compelling question to ask, particularly with two characters like Beth and Dean who have so much history and trauma and four young children and steep, steep debt. It’s actually realistic, at least to me, and I can also see that Beth was – this season – planning on getting rid of Rio to resume a normal life with Dean. It’s frustrating and unhealthy, but frustrating and unhealthy is actually the status quo for Beth, and the status quo is something she holds onto very, very tightly.

Where Bill was leading and what Jenna picked up on though was also what I’ve been saying since S2. Dean’s ‘rehabilitation’ isn’t about redeeming him – he’s just a character, and they’re rounding him out, giving him shades of grey, a little more nuance, a few more layers to open up the story. Nobody’s entirely awful or entirely great. Characters are multi-faceted, and I think they’re having fun exploring that with Dean (even if I’m not always having fun watching it, haha).

Jenna’s also saying that Beth’s drawn to Rio for reasons beyond romance which to me at least sounds like they’re talking about a deeper, more complicated relationship than Beth and Dean’s, and one certainly more than just sex. Bill said in the TVLine interview that Beth and Rio are drawing closer and were about to be questioning their hatred for one another in the fallout of 2.13, and Jenna explicitly says in the same interview that Beth’s attraction for Rio is more than just sexual heat. 

And I don’t know. 

I don’t think Beth x Rio is endgame, but I also don’t think Beth x Dean is either. 

If anything, I think the endgame will be Beth x Herself, with a healthy side of Beth + Annie + Ruby, and I do think we’ll get our divorce, but I also think Dean and Beth will always be entangled in some way. God, they have four children, how can they not be?

(As for Bill saying we’re rooting for Beth and Dean in some way, I personally strongly disagree, haha, but the show’s Twitter and Instagram says otherwise). 

[septiembrre]

Rereading all the Jenna Bans + Bill Krebs interviews for the past month again and still looking like:

Coming back to one of the first press pieces again:

TVLINE | Lastly, can you give us a tease for a Season 4 storyline you’re particularly excited about? BANS | There’s one we’re really excited about, and that is Rio’s backstory. KREBS | People are always asking how Rio has risen to power. How is he always able to get out of trouble? We get into his origin story and show his evolution and how he rises to prominence, and what drives him. You’ll come to learn that he might not be alone in this whole operation… BANS | …and this person makes life difficult for Beth and complicates what is already a very complicated relationship she has with Rio. It introduces a different dynamic to the show. KREBS | It answers a lot of questions and builds a very nice romantic triangle. You wonder, how is Rio’s life so frictionless? Is he just that smooth or is there a reason for it? BANS | This season we finally find out the reason, and that reason might be even more intimidating than Rio.