#boland motors

[stevebattle]

Moonlight Special MS-II (1978) AKA The Battelle Micromouse, by Art Boland, Ron Dilbeck, Philip Stover, Roy Kelly, Timothy Harrington, and James Thomas, Battelle Northwest Laboratories, WA. In May 1977, Spectrum magazine announced the ‘Amazing Micromouse Competition’ which would be held in 1979 in New York. The challenge was to employ microprocessor technology to design and construct a self-contained "thinking mouse" that could solve a maze and, in subsequent trials, avoid its earlier mistakes. The first micromouse preliminaries were held in the U.S. during 1978 where Moonlight Special demonstrated its learning prowess in the time trials at NCC's Personal Computing Festival. In the 1979 finals it achieved 4th place, but showed the second best ability to learn. A distinguishing feature of the Special was that it looked like a real mouse.

"The 'Micromouse', shown on the front cover [final photo], is an intelligent robot with a microcomputer 'brain' and an ability to work out how to traverse a maze after just two trial runs. On the third run it goes from start to finish without bumping into a wall, or making a wrong turn. In this respect it is more intelligent than human beings and robot designers are working on how this type of robot can be used in a more sophisticated way — perhaps domestic robots to vacuum carpets and even run household appliances. The Micromouse was built by researchers at Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratories in the USA. Its grey glass fibre body houses about £100's worth of parts — but it took something like 500 man hours to assemble and debug' this super-rodent so that it could make 33 decisions each time it ran its 20-foot-square maze. The mouse glides along on two main wheels driven by stepping motors — or motors which rotate the wheels an exact distance for each electrical pulse supplied them. The 'brain' counts the pulses to keep track of the distance covered. Infra-red beams from light emitters on the underpart of the body are aimed at five sensors attached to arms extending from the upper body. The computer 'brain' stops the mouse when approaching walls or obstacles that interrupt the light beams. On the first and second runs through the maze, the 'memory' capacity of the brain gathers data about the maze boundaries and identifies and enters the location of all obstructions. This is then processed' automatically to ensure an error-free run on the third attempt, because the 'brain' also has a capacity to work out how to respond under given conditions. For example, it signals left turn' if the mouse encounters a wall in front and a wall on the right. The `brain', in other words, teaches itself the correct programme to follow." – Robots and Robotology by R.H. Warring (1983).

[pynkhues]

In season three we see a real shift in Rio in the last episode, specifically the last scene at Boland's Bubbles. What do you think led to this sudden change? He seemed to be more season two Rio (flirty and suggestive). It really is an interesting shift and it almost makes me wonder if it was an editing thing since they didn't finish filming. Are we seeing him proud of her again and turned on by her success?

Yeah! It is a really distinct shift for him, isn't it? It makes for a really weighted moment overall, and while I think it was partially created due to external circumstances and creative decision making (the s3 COVID shutdown, and the fact that they didn't have the s4 renewal yet), I think it's a logical progression for Rio's character too.

In season 3, we're really seeing the impact not just of the traumatic events of 2.13 on both Beth and Rio, but we're seeing, I think, Rio struggling to regain control of and move forward with his business. It's very much an arc we're only seeing glimpses of as the show limits Rio's POV to maintain the pressure on the girls, but we see it in the bar scene in 3.08, in the carwash in 3.10 and we see it through Rio co-opting Beth's cash and her operation in 3.04.

We start to see his behaviour shift really by 3.09 though, and while it times with Beth's starting to doll herself up to see him, haha, I think it's actually more about the fact that circumstances have started to stabilise for Rio. He's punished her via Lucy, and they've overcome that hurdle (at least temporarily), he finally strongarmed her into doing what she wouldn't in not just letting him handle Boomer, but delivering him to him, and business seems to be functional again.

While there are certainly backslides in those last couple of episodes (3.10 being a big one as I mentioned above), I think the ground is firmer beneath both of their feet than it has been really since Turner's raid on Boland Motors in 2.10. Their professional relationship still has its issues, but it's more solid at that point than it perhaps ever has been, even with Beth still trying to kill him and Rio framing her for Lucy's murder. They've simultaneously got a knife at each other's throat while they're grasping at each other's hands.

It's what makes the Boland Bubbles collapse sort of incidental overall – it presented as a fun opportunity for both of them, but it wasn't the foundation of their professional relationship in the way that Boland Motors was in s2. In s2, Boland Motors is all Beth has, in s3, Beth has the printing press, she has her manufacturing operation, and it's that that Rio needs more than any shop front. She has more power in that relationship, and it's a power that means Boland Bubbles offers possibility for growth to both of them, instead of being where her power starts and stops, and something he is solely exploiting.

I think Rio's entering that really feeling that, and not only feeling that there's a future where he can breathe again professionally, but one where he and Beth get to stay in each other's lives and keep doing what they're doing. It's a new reality for them, one where the ground is solid and they feel in-step, and that's something s4 really underlined as something Rio wants. 3.11 ended with the promise of possibility, and that possibility didn't end when Boland Bubbles did, because Beth and Rio's partnership and relationship had finally transcended any one operation, a new reality that it had been building to all sesaon. They were all in, and he knew it.

[missmaxime]

HOW DOES THE LAUNDERING SCHEME WORK?

In 4x14 Dave and Phoebe explained to the girls how Nick and Rio’s system works. Which left the girls looking like:

And maybe some of you too.

Dave already gives the TL;DR explanation. What starts with street crime like drug dealings, petty theft and carjacking, moves up to counterfeiting and extortion. From there it goes to washing, laundering and contracts. Those contracts come from shell companies Nick owns, that get distributed to the legit companies to realize projects he gets approved by the city council. Easy enough right? 1. Stripper Heel: Street crime: Petty theft, drug deals, carjacking. 2. Cutlet: Counterfeit and washing through Sweet P’s. 3. Bills: Counterfeit Canadian money goes to Canada, and comes back clean (Dave uses a physical bill, but that doesn’t have to be the case.) 4. Nipple pasties: Laundering through companies like construction, electrics, materials. So the IRS wont drop by and ask any questions. 5. The Banker: Additional money comes in through those companies paying a monthly fee for protection. - This is where Rio’s work stops and Nick’s begins - 6. Body glitter and thongs: Laundering from point 4 happens because those companies get contracts from shell companies which are owned by Nick (or likely a patsy). 7. These shell companies are hired by the city for projects Nick gets approved. With these projects Nick can make money by undervaluing the construction, or he can bribe someone (say, a politician – likely if he intends to move up his political career) by overvaluing the project. Let’s break that down: 1. Street crimes, drug deals, carjacking, etc. We know Rio deals pills aside from the counterfeit business. Does he still do that? Ehh, lets just assume he does. Maybe he has some other shady businesses running too, we don’t know. Point is, this is the stage where money and goods come in that are needed for the girls to create the counterfeit. For the American money this is the source for the one dollar bills the girls mushed up to create the bigger bills. For the Canadian money this cash is likely used to pay legit suppliers under the table that legally place larger orders than they need for bleach, nail polish, and whatever else they need to make those bills.

2. Counterfeiting and washing through Sweet P’s. These are two different things that happen in the same physical place. We know that the girls use the back room to create counterfeit, I don’t think any of us need any explanation for that. Supplies are delivered by Rio and his boys, the girls create the counterfeit, and they exchange these and their cuts on set times during their drops. And, finally, finally, bless us all, the girls own a service-based business. Unlike Boland Motors and Boland Bubbles, that work with buying in goods and selling those directly to customers – Sweet P’s delivers a service to a customer. The big difference is that in both BM and BB there is a physical trail for law enforcement to follow (cars and hot tubs), while in Sweet P’s one cannot suddenly uncover a fake lap dance, because those are obviously intangible. There’s a reason a lot of real life washing goes through massage salons, barbers, phone repair stores, tanning salons, car repair shops – service-based with lots of cash payments. Those stores should be legit, because they act like a front. Sweet P’s is a legit business; it has employees, taxes are paid, all the works. But because it delivers a service there’s a few loop holes, I’ll get back to that in a sec. Because, what is the money that they are washing and how do they do it? First of all, it’s not the counterfeit Canadian money. But The Banker receives a lot of unexplainable money every month from extortion, money that one can’t deposit on a bank account, because what will the IRS think of that? In comes a business like Sweet P’s. One that can easily say that on a night they had 10 private rooms booked, even if in reality it was only five. It’s all paid in cash, so there’s no trace. So now the dirty crime money sits all white and clean on Sweet P’s bank account. That’s of no use to Nick as it is, because he can’t hire Sweet P’s to get back his money, that’s the opposite cashflow that he wants. In this case Sweet P’s will need to get a contract from one of Nick’s shell companies from point 6, so they pay him the money. Judging by Dave’s examples these shell companies are likely building constructors, so in theory the girls would “hire” one of those to “remodel” the bathroom. But the construction never happens, only they still pay the bill. Washing can obviously not go through Sweet P’s alone, I can imagine Nick and Rio manage a lot of different businesses that work through a similar construction. 3. Counterfeit Canadian money goes to Canada, and comes back clean. Okay, so we’ve seen one way this goes down: The girls drive the money over the border themselves, delivering (or, well, intending to) it to some kinds of middle-man over there. For the sake of that episode it looks like a lot of trouble, but I can imagine if you have customs officer in your pocket it will go a whole lot easier. Lets not pretend there’s no one working there that could use a bit of extra cash to let them pass without a search. We know how Rio had the American cash washed from how it went at Fine & Frugal. His boys delivered Boomer with a bag of fake cash (and a fee for Boomer himself for his troubles), and he switched out the real cash that came in for fake cash. The fake cash goes to the bank, the real cash goes back to Rio. It’s a swap, easy as that. Whoever receives the counterfeit from the girls must run a similar scheme in Canada, so the fake cash becomes real cash. Now we made real Canadian money, but it’s still across the border, so how does it come back? There’s three ways the money can come back: cash, digital or exchanged for materials. If it’s cash the legit Canadian money must be exchanged for legit American money. Which, honestly, sounds like a lot of labor. I doubt this is how it comes back because it takes a lot of time, people, various exchange points, and is the most liable from all the options. If it’s digital Nick must have shell companies and/or legit companies based in Canada to hire his American shell companies so they can digitally transfer the money. The cash will get washed like the example I gave for Sweet P’s, wiring that cash ‘legally’ to the Canadian companies account. So they can safely pay the contract they have with the American shell company. If it’s goods I can imagine Nick uses his shell companies, or more likely legit companies. For example, if Nick owns a tile-store in America, and washes trough a Kitchen & Bathroom store in Canada – he can have the latter overpay the former (The worth of the tiles he sends is below the worth on the contract) so the cash flows back to him. But! There’s also another option. If he buys property in Canada with cash, and resells that for digital money, it can flow back to the shell company too. And if he doesn’t need the money right away he could buy property in cash, rent it out, and wash the money like that – this even creates a steady cash flow. !! 5. The Banker: Additional money comes in through those companies paying a monthly fee for protection. I’ll tackle this point first before I start 4, 6 and 7. So, from the episode The Banker we can get a good impression what kind of businesses pay for protection. Many if not all are warehouses, looking like they are companies like in point 4 (see below). Or, like the one Penny’s mom owns, an electrical company. All kinds of companies Nick’s shell companies might use for various projects (point 6). Another thing that might be going on is that these companies are involved with other parts of the crime system. Like Boland Motors wasn’t just a way to launder money, but they also received the cars with the drugs. Paying the protection secures the warehouse from retaliating from law enforcement or other gangs that might try to steal this (both Nick and Rio can put their network on that). And secures them contracts for doing work tied to the City. 4. Laundering through companies like construction, electrics, materials. So the IRS won’t drop by and ask any questions. 6. Body glitter and thongs: Laundering from point 4 happens because those companies get contracts from shell companies* which are owned by Nick (or likely a patsy). 7. These shell companies are hired by the city for projects Nick gets approved. With these projects Nick can make money by undervaluing the construction, or he can bribe someone (say, a politician – likely if he intends to move up his political career) by overvaluing the project. Point 4, 6 and 7 are very closely connected, so I will try to explain this for the outcome of Nick earning money himself. For example, say Nick proposes a new project to the council: Building a new school. (He needs at least four votes in favor, including his own. Having Beth on the council obviously increases his chances of getting a project through, because he assumes she’ll sway towards his choices.) If the project gets a go the City of Detroit will need to hire a company to do the building plans and construction – Nick will make it happen that this goes through his shell company. And the shell company will hand out contracts to the companies listed under point 4. From what we know from Dave’s examples these companies are all ties to construction: electrics, plumbing, materials, and so on. As long as Nick is on the council getting his projects, these businesses have a work guarantee – it’s another reason they pay The Banker. How does Nick make money from that? His shell company will have to present the City with a quotation for the work (before the vote). Lets say this school would cost 30 million to built if it was legit. But that’s not what the shell company will say, they will say it costs 35 million. While 30 million from the city will flow back to all the contracted legit businesses, 5 million will stay with the shell company. Although, it won’t exactly stay there. Nick will have ways to move the money around, invest it, bounce between money mules etc. until it will get lost or find its way back to another shell company. What matters is that he’s using this whole system to rob the city to fund his own career (which, if he has the ambition to maybe become senator or more, which I think is a dead given, he will need a lot of money for in terms of campaigning and whatnot).

Any questions?  

[lunafeather]

I'm rewatching 2.05 because it's one of my absolute most favorite episodes and I need to see some more current Brio to get back my writing groove, and god is it still just amazing.

Also Dean is a literal piece of shit, in case anyone forgot

[ronni-right]

Cover for

Walk off by oyhumbug

Additional Tags: Baseball, Professional athlete, Detroit Tigers, alternative universe, Drama, Romance, Smut, Fluff, Angst, Infidelity, Divorce, Family, Flirting, celebrity, Playoffs, Private Investigators, Center fielder, Depression, Postpartum Depression

Summary:

There came a point in every professional athlete's career when his or her body started to let them down. It might not be an injury necessarily, but age is the ultimate equalizer. No matter how talented, how skilled, how disciplined, Father Time catches up to everyone. Rio Salazar might not be there quite yet, but he feels retirement nipping at his heels. So, he has his agent/lawyer start setting up local advertisement gigs for him, and he continues to invest in new business opportunities. Rio's expectation is that he's readying himself for the next phase of his life; what he doesn't expect is to completely turn his life upside down and inside out, but that's exactly what happens when he agrees to star in a commercial for Boland Motors. Stepping onto that lot, not only does the asshole owner's wife catch his eye, but she also catches his interest. And she doesn't let go.

AO3

[goodgirlsfanficawards]

Best Author: flashindie / @pynkhues

What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have

It thunders in the night, lapping at the docks, making the wood of the ships atop its surface wheeze and creak. But no, that’s imagined, she thinks. She couldn’t hear the ships from here, couldn’t know the men aboard them, but in her minds eye perhaps she sees them. Not huddled in cabins or in flimsy beds among the steerage. They’ll be in town tonight, re-firming their feet on dry land before they slip their sea legs back on in the morrow.

-

Hey, look, it's a brio pirate au!

To Face Unafraid

“The plan isn’t changing,” she promises, raising her voice a little to be heard over the roaring opening chords of Last Christmas. “We’re still hosting everyone, and the kids are staying with us, it’s just - - something’s just come up which is - - I mean. It’s really not anything you need to worry about. I’ll tell you when I get home.”

-

Beth and Rio host their first Christmas together, only for an unexpected guest to stir up old, unresolved tensions.

Part 5 of The Center and Circumference

Navigate a Broken Path

Look, all Mick’s getting at is that - - y’know. It’s not personal for him. He doesn’t count them, keep them, box them up or display them. Mick’s a professional, and killing people – it’s a part of this line of work. He knew it from the moment Pistol brought him on-side, and he knew it when he watched Rio kill Pistol and take over, and he knew it when he helped Rio take care of the body, and he knew it when Rio looked up at him after, his jaw bruised and his eyes too hard on his too young face and said you know what this makes us?

Yeah.

Mick knew what it made them.

-

Set after 3.08, Rio sends Mick to take out Mary Pat. Then things get complicated.

Playing House

“Well, you did get me this bed too,” Beth says, a little blissfully, letting her eyes slip shut as she falls down into her pillows, making Rio snort, and she feels more than sees the mattress dip beneath his weight, the heat radiating off his body as he crawls up over her. She blinks her eyes back open, looking up at him, and her heart almost stops at the way he’s looking down at her, his face soft and open, his eyes dark, and she exhales, her hand coming up to trace the newly shaved line of his beard.

-

Drabbles and ficlets set in The Center and Circumference universe (mostly based on tumblr prompts).

Part 3 of The Center and Circumference

Nest 

Drabbles and fics set in The Center and Circumference universe.

High school and beyond!

Part 4 of The Center and Circumference

Need a Little Time 

“That’s the thing with havin’ kids,” she’d hummed, smoothing her touch at his clean-shaven cheek. “You wait too long to see them, they’ve done a whole lot of growin’ without you. Not always the good type either.”

And he’d rolled his eyes then, because he was young enough to think that shit was about him, a jab about not swinging round enough, not going to church with her for anything but the holidays, about the fact that Rhea was nursing Marcus out on the back steps without a ring on her finger, or about the cut on his chin nobody had been able to stop eyeballing since he’d gotten out of his car.

But the thing is, he looks at Marcus now and he thinks:

An inch, maybe two.

That’s how much taller he is.

-

A missing scene from 3.02. Rio reconnects with his son and his ex, but Beth is never far from mind.

Blue Moon 

“Oh, you’re planning a beach wedding now?” Ruby asks with a grin, the thing only faltering when the doors open again but - - no. Just a nurse, brandishing her clipboard. Still no Dean. Typical.

Beth hums, like she hadn’t even noticed, looking back at Ruby, her blue eyes bright, and there’s something that feels like Beth in it again, something warm, impish, as she wrinkles her nose, considering, and Ruby can’t help it, the way it feels like a key that unlocks her.

- 10 times Ruby dances fic.

Cross Your Fingers 

Because the storage unit was empty again, and none of them had been able to make ends meet – not for Sara’s meds or Sadie’s hormone therapy, and not to salvage the husk of Boland Motors nor stop Beth and Dean from slipping further into debt, and so maybe Beth had thought about the fake cash, then maybe she’d done enough research into making it, then maybe - - maybe she’d done it, taking it out of her oven the first time she’d pulled it off with a wide and honest grin.

Because right then it had felt good. To have done it. To remember it. To remember she was good at this, that what he’d seen in her had been right and true, even if he was only ever playing with her, even if the rest of it had all been a lie.

*

A post-season two finale monster baby

Two Shoes

“You’re the one who wanted the second set of eyes for this,” she tells him curtly, louder, and Rio’s languid look quickly morphs into a disbelieving glare. He rocks his jaw, grip tightening on her hip.

“You wanna keep it quiet?”

“You wanna ever talk to me about a job before I’m apparently halfway through it?”

-

Beth and Rio do a job - - badly.

A post-s3 mess.

Congratulations @pynkhues​!

[alicedopey]

Let’s Label It

gif credits to @yemme​

Fandom: Good Girls

Pairing: Beth x Rio

Genre: Smut

Warnings: well it’s smut. Possessive Rio.

Words number: 1466 (I really need to learn how to write a drabble)

Summary: Rio visits Beth one night at Boland Motors.

A/N: Set somewhere between 2.05 and 2.09.

Sleeping was not one of Beth’s usual activities. In fact, it had become an exceptional event during those last two years. She had tried so much…but every time her eyes closed, her mind was swirling with dark thoughts. Being a mother was stressful but dealing with some illegal business induced insomnia. Then, there was Boland Motors now…which explained why she was still taking care of the accounting instead of baking muffins or cupcakes like she used to at two in the morning.

She looked through squinted eyes at all the numbers in front of her and wondered how Dean had not managed to ruin them earlier. He was not really known to be a hard worker and there was also the fact that his long nights at the office had turned into fucking sessions with his younger assistant.

She let out a heavy sigh and rubbed her sore eyes. Her slight had become slightly blurred and all the numbers were blending all together. It was useless to keep working this way.

“Still there, Mama?”

Beth startled on her chair and let out an undignified squeak. Rio was standing at the entrance of her office, hands digging his dark jeans pockets, his usual smirk in place. How she had not heard him come in, she did not know. He was always so sneaky.

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Saw some light on. Figured I’d better check on my investment.”

Beth prevented herself from rolling her eyes and answered as calmly as she could.

“Everything is perfect as you can see.” Leave now, please.

“Right, right…” Rio did not leave. He even stepped into her office, pretending to pay attention to the papers on her desk until he was near her.

Feeling suddenly small, Beth rose from her chair. They stared at each other for a while…maybe seconds, minutes, hours, Beth could not tell. It was always the same battle between the two of them as soon as their eyes met.

Rio took another step towards her and tentatively tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Her breath stopped.

“Rio…what are you doing here?”

He ignored his question. His hand went down her neck, shoulder, arm until it landed on her waist.

“Remember what I said about you on top of that desk?”

Of course, she did. You look good behind that desk. But you’d look so much better on top of it. She remembered his tone, his face, his clothes but she could not possibly admit it to him. At least, not that easily.

“Vaguely”.

Rio chuckled, perfectly aware that she was lying. He knew how to read her like a book. “Wanna see how it looks like?”

The hand on her waist moved on the small of her back and he softly pulled her against his hard body. “Yes or no?”

Beth could feel all of him against her curves, from his taut muscles to his hard on against her pelvis. It was really difficult to process any thought in that case.

“Elizabeth, yes or no?” He asked again, this time in a whisper.

She nodded without even realizing it and tilted her head upwards so that their lips could touch but before they did, Rio put a finger on her lips.

“Nah…you have to say it, Mama.”

He was taunting her, wishing for her to submit. Beth knew she should not but her body was craving his touch so much. He was like a drug running through her veins, addictive and so dangerous. She could not resist.

“Yes.”

Everything happened so fast after that. Their lips crashed, he helped her getting rid of her pants and knickers, bent his knees, grabbed her thighs to lift her and let her lie down on the desk. Papers and folders scattered down the floor as she did.

He took off his hoodie and Beth licked her lips unconsciously when her eyes fell on the muscles of his arms.

As seducing as she could be, she unbuttoned her blouse to reveal her white lacy bra. Rio groaned before attacking her collarbone with nip, bites and kisses. Slowly, ever so slowly, his lips traveled down and he took a clothed nipple between his teeth, tugging at it. Bet gasped. One of her hands pushed against his head so that he would not stop his delicious torture. Rio did not seem to mind, only ceasing his ministrations to yank her bra down and attack the other nipple with no further barrier. Beth moaned this time, arching her back to push her flesh even closer as if her hand still on the back of his skull was not enough. He knew her body dangerously too well, one more power over her he could enjoy. Bet would not complain about this one. It was too pleasurable on her side as well.

She felt her lower belly clench, sending some electricity down her body. Then it was the turn of her sex to clench…around nothing. Desperate, needy, her body started to undulate and slither against his, searching for some kind of friction.

Rio got the message. He straightened up, unzipped his pants and pulled his boxers down. Beth rose her upper body, leaning on her elbows and watched with envy his engorged member, licking her lips against her own will once again. Rio’s eyes met hers and he took his dick in his own hands. Then, he slid it inside her in one smooth thrust. Beth fell back down on the desk the moment he entered her. He pulled back and came back in even more forcefully. Beth’s back arched once more. She whined loudly and enclosed his hips between her legs so that he would not escape this time – not that he wanted to.

Rio grabbed her hips and started a wild rhythm. It was not slow or romantic but passionate and raw. She loved it. Their eyes met again. It was Rio’s turn to lick his lips as he watched her ample breasts bouncing with every move.

“Tell me, Elizabeth…” He rasped. “What would you say or do if car man barged in right this instant and saw me hitting it?”

Beth’s walls tightened around him. Looks like the idea of Dean walking on them fucking wildly on her desk was turning her on.

Rio chuckled huskily. “You would love that!” He gave a sharp thrust. “Guess I would love that too. Your husband watching me making you writhe and cum under me.”

Beth could feel him getting bigger inside of her as the words flew from his mouth one after the other. He was close but definitely determined to make her reach her peak before he did since his hand sneaked a way to her clit and began rubbing it in small circles.

“He would watch you cum like you never did before because he’s too much of an ass to make you cum properly. Only I can. Only. Me.”

Beth came like she never did before indeed. Her whole body spasmed, an animalistic cry left her mouth, tears even rolled down her cheeks. Above her, Rio groaned and finally and spilled himself inside of her. Then he fell on her.

They remained like this a moment before Rio pulled out, cleaned himself with some of the papers on her desk and got dressed. Beth fixed her clothing under his smug smile. Once again, he got her where he wanted to.

“Don’t you think we can label it now?”

“What?” Beth asked, frowning.

He gestured between the two of them. “That…thing between you and I.”

“We’re partners.” Beth answered sharply. “End of the story.”

“We are way more than that and you know it.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “Friends, then?”

He laughed. She realized how ridiculous and inappropriate that term was to qualify what was going on between the two of them. They were definitely not friends.

“Sweetheart, we’ve never been friends. Friends don’t do what we just did.”

True. Beth sighed, too tired and annoyed to keep playing with him. She did not know he wanted to talk about this topic again all of sudden but it was clear he was not willing to let go before he got a satisfying answer.

“What about…partners with benefits?”

Rio chuckled but nodded. “Now, that’s better.” He made his way towards the door. “Can’t wait to enjoy more of those benefits with you, partner.”

Beth did not even bother replying. He would not believe her, anyways.

He gave her one last glance. “By the way, I was right. You do look much better on top of that desk.”

[stevebattle]

Moonlight Special MS-I (1978) by Art Boland, Ron Dilbeck, Philip Stover, Roy Kelly, Timothy Harrington, and James Thomas, Battelle Northwest Laboratories, WA. IEEE Spectrum launched the Amazing Micro-Mouse Maze Contest in May 1977, competitors were challenged to design and construct a self-contained "thinking mouse" that could solve a 10′ by 10′ maze. MS-I has four levels of intelligence as shown in the second image above. Level 1 provides basic movement, interfacing with the mouse's two motors and sensors to turn left, turn right, go straight, or turn around. Also included at level 1 is the guidance control necessary to prevent contact with the maze walls. Level 2 interprets lower level sensor readings, keeping track of the mouse's current position in the maze, and controlling motion where there is no choice such as corners. Level 3 processes maze junctions with multiple choices, handling new junctions by choosing a direction at random. In MS-I, level 4 provides the mouse the ability to learn from one pass to the next.

"At the first time trial, MS-I was found to be sensitive to the strong incandescent booth lights and those of the local CBS television videotaping crew, which emit heavily in the infrared region and blinded its optical sensors. The sensors have now been AC coupled and modulated to provide better immunity to such light." – Three amazing micromice: hitherto undisclosed details, by Roger Allan, IEEE spectrum November 1978.

[pynkhues]

I’m sure you’ve already gotten a bunch of asks since Manny’s Crime King interview! I’m just like confused about him saying he’s enamored by her world but honestly like how is his different (besides his obvious commitment to the game) he lives in a nice loft, takes his kid to baseball, drives a fancy car, and plays tennis at the club. It’s not like he’s living the life of a thug. I guess I’m not getting the exact contrast of their worlds.

(Rest of my ask) I’m probably missing some obvious point here which is why I’m asking you lol helllppp

I do think Rio’s enamoured with Beth’s world, yes! I think that really boils down to the fact that while on paper Beth and Rio aren’t living dissimilar lives in terms of their roles as parents, and while they obviously now share parts of the criminal world, I do think the show is actually pretty specific in how it represents those worlds, particularly in terms of the masculine / feminine, and how a part of the curiosity around each other is in viewing one another as a key that both compliments their own world, while also unlocking the other’s one for them.

The gendering of spaces in storytelling – but particularly films and TV is, hilariously, a topic that I’m incredibly passionate about and have both written it a lot in my original work, and written about it a lot for magazines, journals and media sites (I’m actually writing an essay at the moment for a literary journal about LGBTQI cinema and how lesbian romances are highly domesticised [i.e. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Handmaiden, The Favourite, The Kids are Alright] while gay romances are usually very pointedly about keeping away from domestic spaces, moving and traveling [i.e. Brokeback Mountain, The Talented Mr Ripley, Moonlight, Midnight Cowboy, even Call Me By Your Name is heavily focused on being Americans abroad aka away from home] but that all feels like a different story, haha).

Luckily for me, Good Girls is actually about as obsessed with the gendering of spaces as I am. It’s a major, major throughline throughout the show for many of the characters, but particularly Beth and Rio, and their intrigue with the other’s spaces – her interest in his powerful, highly masculine one, and his with her deceptively innocent, strongly feminine one – is really central to their intrigue with each other more broadly.

So to talk about this, we probably need a little bit of context.

(Under a cut because this is literally 4,000 words)

Gendering Spaces in Cinema

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone here, but places and spaces in stories are about as gendered – if not more gendered – as they are in daily life. In particular, cinema’s visual and textual language has historically been very clear:

The inside is female. The outside is male.

This concept has really been around since the beginning of cinema but became very popularised through Westerns in the late 1920s onwards, and really underlined by war films particularly during propaganda cinema in WWII. Men are outside, battling the elements and other men, claiming land, building outwards, while women are at home – either literally or figuratively (if they’re actually out at war, like in the utterly fabulous So Proudly We Hail!, they’re at the ‘home base’ as nurses) – building inwards. Men protect the home while women create it.

Westerns feature these images very potently and very literally. Almost every single western dating back to the 1910s will have some combination of these two shots:

a)       Woman at home, looking out into the wild:

b)      Man leaving home, stepping out into the wild:

(These two stills are from John Ford’s The Searchers which is generally regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time. It’s………very racist and misogynistic, as many were and still are, but in terms of technicality and visual language, it’s a very well-made film, albeit not one I enjoyed).

The purpose at the time, of course, was steeped in historic sexism and invested in maintaining that culture, particularly westerns and war films which are heavily devoted to ‘macho’ narratives. Women were passive, men were active, but these images really set the stage for how the ideas of ‘space’ continues to exist in cinema. A fact that’s bolstered by broader social discourses that still exist today – schools, grocery stores, laundromats are inherently ‘female’ spaces because they are seen as an extension of the home, while police stations, car dealerships, warehouses, are inherently ‘male’ spaces because they’re about work, protecting and providing for a home, and being pointedly outside of that domestic space aka ‘the wild’. It’s not an accident that the girls are robbing grocery stores and day spas, but I’ll get back to that, haha.

These ideas of gendered spaces underpin everything we watch, no matter the genre.

Sure, these ideas can be subverted to varying degrees of effectiveness (often it’s steeped in my least favourite trope – the ‘not like other girls’ heroine), but you can’t subvert a trope without actually acknowledging it exists. Sometimes these subversions are done brilliantly too – like in Legally Blonde which was not just about Elle existing in a space that was quintessentially coded as male, but embracing her femininity and womanhood within that space; and often brutally too in films like Winter’s Bone, Room and The Nightingale which all brutalise women in ‘male spaces’ while simultaneously weaponizing female spaces against them – usually the home. The lead character of Winter’s Bone is going to lose her house unless her absent father shows up in court, the lead character of Room creates a home that is simultaneously a sanctuary and a mockery of a sanctuary to try and protect her son from reality and survive, the lead character of The Nightingale has her home invaded, her husband and baby murdered, and is horrifically raped within that home.

Hometown Horror: a divergence

This is a slight aside to where I’m going with this overall, but please indulge me, haha. I’m a big fan of horrors and thrillers, which explore this in a really stark way. In that, the invasion of a home or a domestic space – whether by ghost, demon or serial killer, is, generally speaking, synonymous with the invasion of a woman’s body and the violation of her as a person.

Films that focus on a female survivor or a ‘final girl’ are very generally focused on the invasion of her home as much as it’s focused on the invasion of her body. Think The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Scream, The Babadook, Hereditary, The Conjuring, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Panic Room. The violation of a woman’s home is the invasion of her, because cinema relies on over 100 years of movies telling us that a house and the woman who lives in it are symbolically the same thing.

Horror films that focus on men are very rarely centred in the home. It’s men travelling, or men visiting a woman’s home, or men who’ve been taken. Think of the first Saw movie which takes place in a mysterious basement, Hostel which is at a hostel, Dawn of the Dead at a shopping mall, An American Werewolf in London while two men are on holiday, The Evil Dead is in a cabin, Get Out is at his girlfriend’s family home.

There are exceptions, of course! Family home invasion films like The Purge, Funny Games and The Strangers are rooted in the violation of that home, but still. You’ll generally find that it manifests differently narratively speaking for men and women. Rear Window too takes place entirely in a man’s apartment – but it’s interesting to note that most of the ‘horror’ comes from him spying on somebody else’s home – notably a woman’s, The Descent too is very much about women and is set during cave diving. Still! These are all exceptions, not the rule.

Good Girls and Gendered Spaces

Every single space in Good Girls is gendered. It’s actually one of the things I seriously love about the show because it’s thoughtfully done, and it is deliberate. We know it is, because they tell us explicitly in the writing multiple times. I mean – hell, think of Ruby telling us (well, telling Rio, haha) way back at the end of 1.04 when they’re selling him on the idea of washing cash through Cloud 9 – “Nobody thinks twice about a woman buying her husband a TV or new tires for the minivan.” A store like that is gendered, and Ruby’s reinforcing it by saying it’s a place women go to build a home. It hasn’t been weaponized yet - - but our girls know how to weaponize it. They’re playing on the fact that people think women’s spaces are effectively impotent, and they’re telling Rio – and us as an audience – that they’re going to exploit it.

This is an idea the show revisits frequently. Women’s spaces are – both in life and in storytelling – spaces that are viewed as passive because they are representative of women, and what the show is – I believe – very invested in, is showing how those spaces are fundamentally active. If you want a house to represent a woman – well, okay. Then you get to see what’s under the rug, y’know?

I’m going to come back to the home thread – because I really do think it’s very important, and I think the way the show depicts people in those spaces (and invading those spaces) is significant – but it’s not just homes that are looked at in this way. The show is very specific about having feminine spaces and masculine spaces, with only a few in between (and usually those in-between spaces are very specifically for Stan and Ruby, showing just how in-sync they are with each other and how much they operate within a shared space). Beyond the women’s homes, there are the kids’ schools, Fine & Frugal (very important here to note that Annie emasculates Boomer in what is an associated female space and that he retaliates by attempting to rape her in her own home aka not only another female space, but a space that is symbolically Annie, something he repeats later with Mary Pat – a violation on essentially every character, narrative and symbolic level, again), the waxing salon, Nancy’s day spa, Jane’s dance recital (and actually the physical object of the dubby – being a highly feminine object lost in a very masculine space), and already what we know of s3, with Ruby being at a nail salon and Beth being at a paper / card store.

The show also has very masculinized places – I’d argue Boland Motors is one of the biggest ones – very much about ‘boys and their toys’, which is why Beth pointedly feminising it when she takes over is so significant and symbolically indicative of Beth’s claiming of that space; but also spaces like the police station, the drug dealer’s house in 2.07, the hotel suite Boomer briefly occupies, even to an extent the church. When the girls are in these spaces, there’s a distinct feeling of encroaching on territory that isn’t theirs, or being in spaces that they don’t belong in. This is often done as a two-hander too – the police station and the church Ruby doesn’t belong in anymore, not necessarily as a woman, but as a criminal.

Nothing though, from a technical standpoint, is more masculine than the spaces that are shown to be Rio’s. From the warehouse spaces to the bar to his loft to his car, Rio’s ‘places’ are distinctly masculine and generally placed in direct contrast with Beth’s femininity. But I’ll come back to that point too.

Home, Identity and Invasion

Almost every female character on this show has a very defined domestic space, from Beth, Ruby and Annie, to Mary Pat, Marion and Nancy. These spaces are representative of not just who they are, but who they are as women, and really comes to routinely represent the interior lives of these characters. This is probably the clearest in 2.09 when Beth is uncharacteristically messy following Dean taking their kids, and in 2.06, when Beth and Dean switch roles, and Dean is incapable of maintaining that domestic space because it’s not his. But let’s not start there.

Let’s start with Annie.

Annie’s apartment is fun, feminine (but not overly so), youthful, sweet, and generally a bit of organized chaos. It’s often underequipped – there are several mentions of the pantry being understocked – but it’ll always do in a pinch. More than anything though, Annie’s apartment comes to life when her son is in it. She’s happiest when he’s there, and when he’s not, her loneliness drives her to pulling people into the space with her, whether that’s the electronics guy, Greg, or Noah.

This is particularly significant when Annie’s forming bonds with people. The show has symbolically relied very heavily on Annie’s moments of vulnerability and connection being grounded in her apartment or an extension of it – usually her car. There was her reconnecting with Greg over YouTube videos in s1, there was Nancy and her talking about pregnancy in 2.02, and there was Noah settling in across season 2. These are all substantial moments in terms of Annie’s interior life that are represented through her home – she lets them all in. Which is why it’s significant what people do when they are in. Particularly the show marrying Noah getting to know Annie while simultaneously rifling through her belongings, trying to know specific things about her.

This is only reiterated by Noah’s scenes with Sadie later in the season – always at home, reiterating just how much Noah’s invaded Annie’s life, how much he’s inside her, how much he’s using everything and everyone who’s important to her, and how much he’s a threat to all of that too.

Ruby and Stan are a little different. Ruby’s house is the only one that’s genuinely shared with somebody, and the show represents this across the board – Ruby and Stan wear similar colours, the house feels like theirs, and the parts of their worlds that are separate are still frequently pretty defined by each other (even when Ruby’s acting away form Stan, the show makes it clear that Stan’s at the forefront of her mind, and vice versa). This indicates their partnership, but the house really still is symbolically tied to Ruby. This is particularly represented by the effect of having Turner in the house, but, more than that, it’s underlined symbolically by Turner arresting Stan at home. If the home symbolically carries the meaning of the woman, Turner arresting Stan there is starkly about Turner taking Stan away from Ruby. That image would not hold the same weight if he was arrested at, say, the park or the police station, because the locations don’t hold the same meaning.

It’s also why there’s significance in Stan and Turner’s showdown narratively speaking happening at the police station. It needs to, because symbolically it should occupy a masculine-coded space, because that showdown isn’t just about who they are as people, but who they are as men.

Beth and Beth’s house is very, very different to Annie and Ruby’s, and holds a more substantial narrative and symbolic function. From the very first episode, the potential of losing her house is key to her arc, and key to her identity as a character.

Beth is a lot of things, but a recurring image with her as a character is that she is invested in projecting a dated idea of ‘perfect womanhood’, and, within that, actually pretty perfectly creates parts of it for herself. For Beth – as somebody who was a housewife for roughly twenty years – her house really is her in every sense of the word. Every threat to that house, every disruption, every wrinkle, every intrusion, every theft, every invitation is personal. Dean might have at least two rooms in the Boland House, but that space is Beth’s on almost every symbolic level. When people pop into it, it’s a direct invasion of her.

This is something that the show has revisited time and time again, particularly when it comes to Beth’s bedroom. When people want to be close to Beth, that’s where they go. Annie slept there across season one when she was vulnerable and lonely, despite Beth telling her to go home, Jane broke into Beth’s closet there when she felt she was being neglected, Dean’s constantly trying to sidle into it (and – pointedly – only really in it when they’re fighting and Beth is revealing something / letting him in on something – that they’re out of money, that she has Rio’s money, that she knows about his affairs). When Beth has been at her most vulnerable, she lets Ruby and Annie into it. That said, the only character who’s been explicitly invited into it has been Rio – significantly both in fantasy, and in the show’s reality.

It’s not just about inviting people in though – when she kicks somebody out of it, the act is loaded.

She’s not just pushing somebody out of a space, she’s pushing them out of her.

It’s not just her bedroom of course (although I do think that’s the most significant space on perhaps the whole show). Rio and Turner between them have regularly invaded Beth’s living room, dining room, her kitchen, her yard. These are often distinctly tied with her doing something domestic and / or distinctly feminine. She’s bringing groceries home, she’s baking, she’s trying on jewellery, she’s mothering her children. Symbolically, this is often when Rio and Turner both are at their most masculine and their most threatening, which just serves to underline the invasion of Beth’s space.

It’s not just the girls though, as I said above. Female domestic spaces on this show are significantly coded as belonging to women, even if they share those spaces. Think about Nancy and Greg’s house – which is Nancy’s space, not Greg’s, and throughout season 1, Annie was pitted as the outsider to that. She’s a smear of hair oil on Nancy’s perfect couch. It’s made all the starker when Nancy kicks Greg out, and when Annie helps Nancy give birth in that house – a distinctly female, intimate act, that not only operates as a significant feminization of that space, but also about Annie fighting for Nancy to let her in again.

These spaces all keep secrets for the women they belong to too – Mary Pat’s husband’s dead body, Boomer’s very much alive one – because, again, symbolically, they are these women.

Rio’s loft is a really interesting one to look at in this context, because not only is it hyper masculine, but the show underlines that it does not hold the same significance that the girls’ places have for them. Beth does not learn Rio by being inside him – something made stark through their game of twenty questions. In fact, being in Rio’s loft, in his space, only serves to point out how much Beth doesn’t know him. Not only that, but Beth’s inability to lose her house (which is really central to her arc) is paralleled exactly with how easily Rio can separate from his.

The domestic space is not male.

Rio exists outside of it.

Beth x Rio and the Feminine x Masculine

Rio and Beth are basically at polar opposites of the masculine / feminine spectrum, and it’s something that this show often casts in a really stark light through dialogue, visual language, character coding and symbolism.

Beth epitomizes the old archetype of femininity and the female world in a way that I don’t think Annie and Ruby do (although I do think Ruby does in some respects). This is coded into almost every part of her character – from her long history of domestic servitude and marital submission (letting Dean control their finances, not working, keeping the house, etc.) to her fertility (four children!) to the way she dresses in floral, bakes, to certain traits, namely her nurturing tendencies, overt empathy and guilt (not being able to kill Boomer). Even in terms of the casting – Christina is somebody who has a very distinctly feminine body.  

On the other hand, Rio, in many ways, epitomizes the old idea of masculinity and the masculine world. He’s coded that way almost as much as Beth is coded as feminine – he’s physically strong (beating up Dean, holding Beth up while they were having sex), assertive, dominant, capable and collected. That’s not even touching on the fact that the golden gun is incredibly phallic, haha.

The show loves to place Beth’s femininity in direct contrast with Rio’s masculinity in a way that it doesn’t do with the other girls or – in fact perhaps more notably – with Beth and Dean (if anything, Dean’s frequently emasculated around Beth, but that feels like a whole other thing, haha), and it does this frequently, and often even in the same shot.

Most notably, think of her pearls on the warehouse door handle:

Their cars parked side-by-side:

Her necklace, his gun:

Her light, his darkness:

Her floral, his solid colours:

Interestingly though, these things are very rarely in competition or combative (although occasionally they are – Rio trying to use her femaleness and his maleness / their sexuality to literally bend her over a table in 2.06 being the clearest example of that). Generally speaking, the show’s visual language though shows us how these things compliment each other. They occupy different gendered spaces, so they can ‘crime’ in different ways – Beth using the big box stores, the secret shoppers, robbing the day spa, are all things that are highly feminised, and give Rio by proxy access to a world he ordinarily wouldn’t (albeit it’s not always a world he’s interested in – like it wasn’t with the botox), and the reverse of that is that Rio gives Beth access to spaces that are highly masculinised and that she ordinarily wouldn’t have access to (again, not always a world she’s interested in either). It’s why when they’re working together, and acknowledging they have different departments, they actually become something really whole, comprehensive and effective.

It’s the exploration of this that I find really intriguing generally, and particularly a thread that I think is reiterated where Beth’s usually at her worst and her most ineffective when she’s trying to emulate Rio’s masculinity. We saw that at the end of 1.10 and the start of 2.01, and I think we saw it at the tail end of season 2 too. When Beth’s succeeding, she’s typically doing something that revels in the strength and power and the underestimation of femininity and female spaces, and turns places that are typically viewed as passive into active ones.

The Secret Shoppers (which worked briefly! And fell apart because she couldn’t handle Mary Pat. Notably almost every scene with them was inside Beth’s house):

The day spa heist:

The Boland Motors takeover / reclamation that focused on feminising the place:

Pretending to be somebody’s mum to get into the kids’ space (which would’ve worked if Beth and Ruby hadn’t started fighting):

Breaking into Rio’s loft:

Again, this is something that seems to be being teased out already in s3 with the paper store and the nail salon, and I’m sure we’ll see it coming up again and again beyond that.

But yes! Your question, haha. I think Rio is enamoured with the strong, feminine space and the untapped female world that Beth exists in, and the ways that she is actively capable of utilising her femininity and her womanness in a way that is completely impossible for him. She can manipulate these spaces – either those already female, or those she makes female aka Boland Motors – in ways that he can’t, and in a way that, at the end of the day, lines his pocket, in the same way that giving her access to his powerful, masculine world lines hers. It’s market development, y’know? But it’s also something that could be a true and successful partnership if they could stop, y’know, playing games and trying to kill each other, haha.

I think it’s worth noting here too that the show has shown us explicitly that Beth absolutely gets off on Rio being highly masculine, and while I think Rio absolutely gets off on Beth being a boss bitch too, it’s also important to note how he responds to her when she’s displaying vulnerability in a way often defined as very feminine – namely crying – and how that display of femininity not only affects him, but often makes him want to touch her (and more and more, follow through on touching her).

Basically I think they’re as obsessed with the contrast between the two of them as we are, haha.  

[moonlit-void-to-the-far-unknown]

“You’d look so much better on top of me” (a gang girlfriend drabble)

His eyes move over you, sat behind the desk between you both, he tucks his bottom lip into his mouth, nodding as you talk about something to do with the new process of washing through boland motors. He forgets how sexy you sound talking business, your eyes trained on the paperwork in front of you, simple written notes you have on Elizabeth and her dumbass husband.

He shakes his head when you clear your throat, eyebrows raised at him, you asked him something? But he couldn’t give a damn what. His tongue teases his bottom lip.

“Sorry mama, I wasn’t listening” your face falls into a frown, one eyebrow raising in frustration

“Nah I was too busy thinking how good you look behind that desk. But how good you would look riding me on top of it” your eyebrows go up, your mouth falling open slightly

“Oh...” a simple breathy sound.

He stands, moving closer to the desk, laying his hand right on top of the desk. Caging yours in. His head leaning down to your ear.

“Oh mama, you don’t know how bad I want to make you cum all over this desk, make sure soccer mom and the husband knows that we own all of this.” He can feel your breathing pick up, his lips go to your neck kissing right under your ear. The tip of his tongue sliding along the soft skin.

“So why don’t we do that then....daddy”

That’s all he needs, your on the desk before you can breath fully, your skirt pushed up around your hips, legs hooked over his waist. He’s buried in you in one smooth thrust, chuckling at your gasped moan.

He fucks you fast and hard, his hands holding your hips, his mouth on your neck, your fingers dig into the back of his neck, mouth open in gasped moans.

It doesn’t take long, oh know he knows your sweet spots, he knows your body better then he knows his own it seems. Before long your falling over the edge, him following. His gasping grunts in your ear knowing how it makes you shiver and whimper against him.

You both don’t clean up the desk top as you readjust your clothing. His hand takes yours. And you walk out to his car. Him opening your door.

He turns towards the back parking area and sees the van, waving his fingers at Elizabeth slightly. Before hopping in to drive you home.

“I hope she enjoyed the show” he laughs at your voice, tired and slow.

“Oh I know she did. Just wait tomorrow I’ll be getting phone calls....worth it mama, oh it was worth it”

You nod, he takes your hand in his kissing the back of your hand. His queen. His only queen.

Tag list:

@smooooore @cathwritestragediesnotsins @breanime @thickemadame @hibiscuswrites @ateliefloresdaprimavera @feelingsandemotionsnotexplored @fairygardenss @gemini0410 @juul4jesus @cassie12435 @amethyst09 @browngirldominion @woahitslucyylu @cherieann-2001

[missmaxime]

Pool Scene Analysis

Ah, yes. The already famous pool scene! I’ve rewatched it too, and I can only say that I still love it as much as I did on first watch – but I understand how people can have mixed feelings about it. Overall this episode is a lot about parallels, as we could see with flashbacks and the now of Beth and Dean. And the pool scene is part of a sets of parallels when I look at it: Two parallels: - Pool Scene vs past Beth/Rio scenes. [Most notably the bathroom Break in 2x04 – yes with pictures included, I’m not a monster] - Beth/Rio vs Beth/Fitzpatrick vs Beth/Dean (I was going to break it into those two parallels, but I decided to go chronologically, it makes more sense) Dean + Beth So, what happens just before? Dean just figuratively threw the door in Beth’s face, because he learned that he isn’t just in jail because of Beth. He now knows that Rio was a part of this scheme since the very beginning. From the past seasons we know that Dean doesn’t have that much of a problem with the whole crime aspect, he bribes the doctor himself when he fakes the cancer, hires the baby hitmen to off Rio, and handles the books at Boland Motors (Beth asks Dean where the books are, when Turner is about to raid them). Dean’s problem is not with crime, it’s with Rio. Beth + Rio / Pool Scene Beth drops by Rio at his (empty) bar, and tells him she needs a loan. Now, she’s never been shy to ask for money or time or jobs with Rio, but in a way most of those times were directly of indirectly beneficial to Rio in the end. There’s obviously times he refused, like when she wanted him to participate in the Botox scheme in 1x08 – because that was an instance where it once benefited her. And, like now, law enforcement is on them. And we know Rio ain’t doing any time because some bitches need their pocket money.

It’s the episode Ruby and Annie called Beth out for not NOT wanting to do crime – hell, how she’s crawling out of her skin living ‘the normal life’. In the same episode Rio tells her she’s not going to be any kind of boss until she gets her house in order, while both her business and her actual house in 4x03 are in shambles again. In 1x08 Ruby also learns that Eddie is talking to the feds, putting the girls up for an important decision: Who’s going to be the fall guy, Eddie or them? It’s not going to be them. Back to pool. Beth tells him it’s for bail, but Rio immediately nah’s her. She needs a fall guy if she ever wants to make money again. Which is what Rio did to Beth before 4x04, he left all the fake money in her name. Presumably so he could go and make a fresh start for himself. But when she prove her worth again he took it all away. Beth tells Rio that at ‘it’s not his fault’. But Rio reminds her that he told her to be smart:

Which is what he told her when he send her to watch Lucy, someone else who got spiraled into crime due to Beth’s scheme. Another innocent who took a fall for her, albeit it not directly her doing. Dean’s arrest, by also not letting him in on the crime, but who she set up form the beginning by putting both the store and accounts on his name – is her doing. As much as she might not want to see that.

“Look they’ll cut a deal. Three years, club Fed.” Beth jumps on how it’ll affect her kids and her, but ignores the thing I’m latching on to: That Rio assumes Dean will cut a deal with the Secret Service. But that would mean Dean can offer them something in exchange for him to cut years of his sentence. And we already know that Dean knows nothing about how the business works – Phoebe knows by now that Dean knows nothing about how the business works, because she found Beth’s handwritten instructions herself – so the only substantial thing Dean has to offer is Beth. I’m not entirely sure Beth’s talking crime implications, or personal when she asks ‘What about me?’ but Rio is very keen to focus entirely on the marriage part. Telling her that ‘her boy’ will come out in better shape than when he went in. ‘Maybe she’ll even wanna hit that again’. Beth’s briefly looking at him with a look of ‘I can’t believe you brought that up’, but barrels forward with a ‘There’s gotta be a way to get him out’.

This moment parallels with the first non-flashback scene we see, of Beth and Dean, that I talked about before. Dean’s issues with Beth’s crime life are with Rio. And Rio’s throwing it out there that can’t grasp why she has such an issue with Dean talking the fall. He might not know everything about their marriage, but he knows it’s broken enough for her to have sex with him, for her to get into crime and choosing to stay, and to even set him up and keep him in the dark for Boland Bubbles. Hell, the first time they fucked her husband was sitting three feet away waiting for the bill, and the second time was in her marital bed. But I’ll get back to that.

Rio throws back that if you ‘Do the crime, you do the time.’ To which this piece of convo follows:

In 2x13 (and please lets not get into discourse how poorly this was built up) Rio made sure everything was on Beth, even oopsing the dead body buried under her lawn to Turner as a cherry on top of all the funny money and the dealership. Rio knows he needs a fall guy – and in 2x13 it was Beth – she could make it all go away if she murdered Turner.

Rio talks about how he got luck on his side. Surviving the shooting could be considered lucky, and the opportunity it gave him to wipe the streets from his competition gave him more space and opportunity to built something up after he organized the drive by on Turner. But he also say ‘Maybe you do to.’ Which could indicate their immediate game, but I’m thinking it might be more. I think this might be a reference to Rio’s mystery boss we have yet to meet. When you think about it, Turner took a lot of people down probably in the span of like two months, and Rio was AWOL for all that time – he’d be the first one people look at to be a snitch. Yet he remains unscathed for the whole of season three up ‘til now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some wort of protection. And perhaps he’s offering Beth to be in on that too. Speaking of 2x04’s bathroom break, hello bail deal! We all know there some more ambiguity surrounding this scene, but all choreography of this scene seems so deliberately close to 2x04 I cannot unsee. Look:

Beth seals the deal back in the bar, and Rio allows her to take it from his cut she still owes him. That is, obviously, not what she was looking for. But who’s surprised, really? In 1x08 he was shut down, not taking on new business and not continuing the running ones. He even stole all Beth’s money – she could have known that everybody still feels the pain.

Once again Beth will have to solve things herself, but Rio can’t help but look at her as she storms out. Beth + Fitzpatrick I already touched on the 2x13 parallel from when Beth says that nothing ever sticks on Rio, but there’s more callback in this scene as well. Beth now has been turned down by Dean from even talking to her, and by Rio from help with money for bail. She’s kind of fed up at this point, and at the end of her rope. And now this infatuated dick who refuses to do the job she hired him fore is lounging in her kitchen like her owes the place – owes her.

Beth has a tendency to copy Rio when she really needs something, but also doesn’t really know how to get it – like when she and the girls went into the crack house to retrieve the Dubby. I can’t say I’m surprised she explodes her, changing her tactic to ‘giving him what he wants’. Like the crack house this could have ended horribly, but fortunately it works (well, for now, we don’t know yet how this is going to play out). But Beth’s visibly weighted by the choice she just made to handle this – even if it worked. So that’s folks! What do you guys think? Did you notice a parallel I missed?

[ronni-right]

Suits AU

Christopher Harvey Moralez is a corporate attorney, one of the name partners at Moralez Blanco Salazar and a former Assistant District Attorney for the Detroit County District Attorney's Office.

Elizabeth Irene "Beth" Marks is Christopher's legal secretary for over nine years. She adores Christopher. She is extremely loyal to him. And Christopher, for his part, loves her quick wit, her strength, and her sense of humor.

They have an affair in past but they end it because of working policy.

Enter Dean Boland who is a owner of Boland Motors, prosperous business. He becomes a client of Moralez Blanco Salazar. And Dean likes Beth and decides to get her. Rio is not happy about this and he will do everything for Beth to choose him, not Boland.

[bensonstablers]

okay i’m just saying but rio showing up to the grand opening of boland bubbles and watching beth across the showroom while she’s wearing that dress and making sales would be a good parallel to when he watched her make the car commercial for boland motors 🥰🙏

[hypermania]

i know deep in my heart that mick would’ve been on board with beth’s plans for boland motors

[stevebattle]

Moonlight Express (1979) by Art Boland and Ron Dilbeck of Battelle Northwest Laboratories, Richland, Wash., and Phil Stover of WED Enterprises, Glendale, Calif. Moonlight Express is "an improved version of the Moonlight Special, a smart micromouse that had demonstrated its learning prowess at previous time trials of the contest as well as at the finals. The major difference between the Express and the Special was in their forward speeds: the Express had stepping motors with four times the torque used on the Special. Top motor speeds of 52.07 cm/s for the Express vs 20.32 cm/s for the Special were made possible. In addition the motor-drive circuitry for the Express was strengthened to handle the increased load of the new motors, and the Special's gear train was entirely eliminated. Some of the hardware used in the Special - for example, interrupt logic was eliminated by the use of IC devices that were exclusively from the Z-80A family of components (the Express was based on the Z-80A microprocessor, as was the Special). This represented only a slight modification of the earlier electronic circuitry in the Special." – The amazing micromice: see how they won, by Roger Allan, IEEE spectrum September 1979.

[pynkhues]

Hey, so I’m sitting home watching episode 2x11 and I’m at the scene where Dean is questioning how Beth knew about the FBI raid. During his little speech, was I the only wanting to scream at the screen saying “IT’S YOUR FAULT, YOU IDIOT!” Saying “they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Rio.” I’m like boy byeeeeeeee, you know damn well that’s a whole LIE, but I digress 😌

Hey! You absolutely were not the only one, anon, haha. 

I’ve talked about it a bit on here before, but I really think Dean was his absolute worst self across 2.09 - 2.11, because it just makes it so clear how little he cares about Beth’s interior life in a way that extends beyond his cheating and their relationship lapsing.

Between taking the kids at the end of 2.08/start of 2.09, to the delayed invitation to Emma’s birthday party he’s hosting at his mother’s place in the same episode, to the smugly flippant way he handles, well, everything, after he’s wrestled Beth back into her old life in 2.10 (Will I ever recover from him asking her if she misses it, and shrugging and stealing a cookie when Beth replies with “Would it matter if I did?” Popular opinion says no!), and just like you said – how he then is so accusatory about the raid like Beth’s arrangement with Rio hasn’t saved them financially like, twelve times over at this point. 

And then! He has the audacity! To tell Beth how long the dealership has been in his family! Like the entire crux of this show hasn���t hinged on the fact that Dean was about to lose not just the business, but the roof over those children-he-just-held-hostage’s heads. 

Male ego is such a pervasive theme on this show (and I love it for it, honestly), and it’s never more obvious than it is with Dean (and Turner, but I’ve talked about that here plenty too, haha). How Dean’s posited to being completely ignorant to his own failings and how that only amplifies when he feels another man have any sort of relationship with Beth, is pretty staggering and tragically pretty true to many people’s lives, I think. It makes me weirdly excited to see what the fallout with Boland Bubbles is going to be, because this is really the first time Beth’s actually invited Rio into one of her own schemes (even with dubious intentions) as opposed to pitching it to him or him forcing his way in, and I think the repurcussions of that are going to be felt in more ways than one for all of them.