#like that shirt above when she turns herself in to turner in 2.13 being the same she speaks in front of city council to in 4.14

[pynkhues]

what do you think was the symbolism of the "they like you on red" line? i didn't really get that part but saw someone saying that "it was a nice touch". i just thought it meant that women liked beth in red and nothing else but i guess i was wrong.

Hi hi! I think it's one of those lines that can mean whatever you want it to mean, anons, but there's definitely a lot that can be read into it as cinema has what we tend to call a 'colour language'. In that, colours have certain meanings that years of visual storytelling has effectively canonised, and it means that shows and movies use those colours to tell us things about the characters, themes, relationships and story overall.

There's a really good, short, introductory article about it here on No Film School, and I'd really recommend watching the video there too as it's a lot of fun, but for the colour red, it boils down to this:

RED – anger, passion, rage, desire, excitement, energy, speed, strength, power, heat, love, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence

All of the core six characters have worn red at varying points in the series, and I'd say it has a different meaning in each of the characters. For Ruby and Stan for instance, they very frequently wear red at the same time, which, in my reading, gives those scenes a strong thematic throughline of strength, unity and love and shows them as partners in their relationship.

Beth's relationship with the colour red though is, I think, a really defined one across the series, and the show drawing attention to it through that exchange with Beth and Nick was interesting, because it was rooted in Nick trying to control Beth's image, and Beth rebuking that by saying she doesn't wear red, which is a lie. Red is probably the colour she wears third most after black and blue, and it's a colour that's had significance for her since the start.

Namely, it's a colour heavily associated with Beth's relationship to power – both the loss and the gain of it, and frequently as a one-two punch in the same sequence.

As the series has progressed, it's gotten more nuanced with how it utilises red on Beth, moving from feature to trimmings as her wardrobe increasingly darkens as she further emulates Rio, but it's meaning I think is fundamentally the same. Beth has a complicated relationship with power, and that's realised through the way she wears red.

This has actually been there since 1.02, and has been a regular touchstone, so hey, let's take a look at that a bit:

In s1, the colour is much more the focal point because I think Beth's relationship to power was a lot simpler. She either had some, or she had none, and so the boldness of the red was really about encapsulating these moments when she felt powerful or powerless. We see that I think especially in the scenes where she's both – like how Rio's arrival in both 1.02 and 1.07 shifts the balance away from her.

In a lot of ways, s2 is an extension of that dynamic, but as the power plays between Beth, Rio, Turner and Dean all escalate, the use of red in the costume team is even more defined. This becomes particularly clear in moments like 2.03 when Beth gets the key from Rio, the entirety of 2.04 where the pendulum swings between her and Rio and her and Dean, and especially in 2.10, where Beth wears red almost the entire episode. Notably, it's an episode where she has almost no power at all, and she chafes against that until her showdown with Turner at the end of the episode.

S3 meanwhile massively pulls back on the red. It features in a few pivotal moments, particularly in the middle of the season, but otherwise is pretty absent from Beth's wardrobe overall. Again though, the outfits that incorporate red are tied to not just power, but control as well. Her red floral sweater in 3.01 is something she wears across the episode as she tries to build her operation and, successfully, maintain the balance in her life, and when the colour comes back into her wardrobe in 3.07 and 3.08, it's when she's starting to regain a degree of control.

And then s4! Red's back! And interestingly, with the exception of the dream sequence, it's always paired with black – with black as a base colour, a blazer, or the pyjamas underneath her robe.

Red in s4 I think evolves to not just be about power, but the way the line has blurred between the personal and the public, the criminal and the domestic. The maroon robe in particular is frequently worn by Beth at really pivotal moments where this happens – when she thinks she's about to be arrested only for Dean to be, when Rio delivers her the new plates, when she finds out Annie's been kidnapped, when Rio returns to her what he stole.

This blurring of lines is more than just the blurring of these spaces, it's the blurring of how one impacts her power in the other. Her getting rid of the Canadian money professionally led to a loss of power in her personal life by Rio taking Annie, just like how her personal conflict with Stan led to her leaning into her personal power over Phoebe to get the fake cash back for Rio, which in return led to him giving her more professional power again with the plates.

Red is a power colour, and it's considered one as much in real life as it is in cinematic language, and it's one the show often leans into (gosh, even look at Beth and Stan's fight in 4.09 where he's wearing red as he holds the power, and Beth black with only the smallest trimmings of it as she loses it).

The scene with Nick and Beth, like I said above, was sort of encapsulating all of this. Nick wants Beth to dress a certain way as a means to demonstrate his own influence (even if he does it through the constituents), and Beth balks because she doesn't like being told what to do anymore. I think it can be read just on that level, but I think the show has consciously and purposefully built a thematic narrative for Beth through the colour red too, and I think that's pretty fun to pick apart, especially given she, in true Beth form, rebels and wears pink instead.