[Header Image: Christina Hendricks as Beth Boland, Mae Whitman as Annie Marks, and Retta as Ruby Hill | NBC]

This episode opens with Dean going about his day only to stumble upon Beth meeting with Rio in the back room of Paper Porcupine to discuss their latest business venture. Something I’ll say about this trio is that there aren’t nearly enough scenes of them together. Every time they have interacted — no matter how brief — have allowed for some pretty interesting and fun scenes. Still, this moment results in a reaction from Dean that isn’t as loud or as angry as he’s previously has been in regards to Rio (and his connection with Beth).

[Header Image: Ignacio Serricchio as Nick | NBC]

There’s been a lot of mistakes and unwanted results for Beth, Annie, and Ruby lately but this time around, we see a pretty big one for Rio.

[Header Image: Jonathan Silverman as Dave and Lauren Lapkus as Phoebe Donnegan | NBC]

While Beth is still stuck in the middle during this episode, things do take a bit of a turn. One one side, she has Rio who wants her to start printing again and on the other side, she still has the Secret Service. She knows she has to give them something and so she comes up with an idea that will hopefully keep them busy and buy her some more time.

If anything could make the events of last week’s episode any better, it’s the opening of this episode. Carolyn with a Y starts with Dave confronting Beth about what she got up to with Rio at his Grandma’s house. Her denial despite being caught on tape was wonderful and completely in character. That along with how Dave phrased the whole thing and approached the situation made for some hilarious content. Comedy that was intensified by the fact that Ruby and Annie were also there. We’ve seen their shocked reaction to Beth and Rio before but it really never gets old and their contributions during this scene were truly amazing.

[Header Image: Manny Montana as Rio and Christina Hendricks as Beth Boland | NBC]

In the last episode, Rio had mentioned that the people he answers to would want to meet Beth. With Good Girls now on its fourth season, it makes sense for the story to step a little further into the criminal world within the show, therefore, exposing Beth, Annie, and Ruby (along with the audience) to much more highs and lows of committing crimes.

While those steps do seem to be small, they are happening. In this episode, Beth is invited to have dinner with Rio’s family and we discover that for him, family and business is the same thing. While the actual dinner is casual and fairly relaxed to being with, there is some tension between Rio and Nick (Ignacio Serricchio), the latter who insists on calling Beth “Elizabeth” even when she corrects him and that’s on top of his questioning of her relationship with Rio. It seems he’ll be showing up in future episodes so no doubt there’ll be more to unpack. While Nick declares he and Rio are brothers, Rio doesn’t agree, saying they’re cousins instead. It could be entertaining not just to see the two of them interact and direct that relationship a little more but to see Beth thrown into the mix as well.