'Good Girls' Season 3 Episode 3 Review: Rio's coy threats find their rival in Beth's pregnancy schemes
Spoiler alert for 'Good Girls' Season 3 Episode 3 'Egg Rolls'
If there's one thing we have learned from the ever-twisting plot of NBC's 'Good Girls' it's the sheer certainty that Rio (Manny Montana) will always be ahead of Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks), Ruby (Retta) and Annie Marks' (Mae Whitman) game. Mostly Beth's, to be precise, now that she's running the money-laundering business like a pro minus the snooping eyes of Agent Turner.
But at the same time, within the opening first seconds of Episode 3, Beth once again proves that if there's one person who can take on Rio, it's her. And even with all of his menacing threats and assurances that he'll "take it easy on her", we just know Beth will somehow always be there to find a way out. Her topmost priority on that agenda is a pregnancy.
Beth and her husband, Dean (Matthew Lillard), have enough problems to deal with as it is and let's add to that Rio's malicious presence looming over their lives now that it's established he is very much alive and back to ruin Beth's life — or at least serve her some kind of a payback for shooting him at the end of Season 2.
Rio being Rio ambushes her by showing up at the bar instead of Rhea and totally shocking her to the core. Pulling his really extra stunts, he presents to Beth each of the bullets she put in his body — one in his lung, one in his spleen and a final one from his shoulder. He assures her that he will take it easy on her because she's his girl, but we just know this could mean either of two things: hurt someone really close to Beth or make her do something so totally unredeemable that there's no coming back.
Rio adds "I'll do it myself" at the end of his little sugar-coated threat and that's enough to rattle viewers and people rooting for Beth. Not that she needs a lot of our prayers, as she practically tells Rio she's pregnant — insinuating it's his — just to trick him into actually going easy on her but that's pretty much Beth tricking herself because as we go find out in the next couple of minutes, her attempts at getting pregnant are getting crazier and bizarre by the day. Beth goes on a sex binge with Dean in what he claims "has been more sex since high school" and while that does end up uplifting Dean's spirits, it keeps ending in negative results in the 10 or so pregnancy kit she pees on.
After a long day of extraneous work-out schedule and confidently dying his hair, Dean is met with the disappointing realization that Beth's "mid-life crisis" is just using him as a "sperm bank". He claims he wants another kid even though they can't afford the once they have and storms out of the room, but we know Rio's presence on the horizon won't let the Bolands have whatever happy ending problem-solving miracle they are seeking. And when Rio finds out Beth is actually not pregnant yet, she is going to get a lot more, and expectedly worse from him, than just random appearances leaving her unraveled in the dark.
So Beth does the inevitable and seeks out Rhea's help with a heartfelt apology as their children enjoy a play date. speaking of which, Annie's visits to the marriage therapist's child specialist son Josh is getting more and more frequent. Josh is able to help Annie address her issues with Beth's controlling nature, something that has been persistent since the two were kids. And even though they are on a patient-doctor confidentiality dynamic, it's not hard to deduce that it's definitely developing into something more that neither Annie's equation with her ex-husband can handle, nor can her professional discrepancies allow to continue. This makes for probably one of the most intriguingly disastrous journeys Annie has been on the show ever.
Yet there's a latent undertone of panic prevalent throughout the episode that one can't overlook. Be it Beth's desperation to get pregnant now that she knows she has to or suffer Rio's far-from-merciful consequences or Annie's struggle to adapt to authority without going back to her childish tendencies of lashing out like a kid. Even Ruby and her husband have to go extreme measures to secure the investment of their black money.
And then Beth drops the biggest bombs of all to the rest of her girls. She tells them that Rio is back and he's going to kill her for sure, and she's not wrong as this time Rio shows up at her property in broad daylight, to force her to confirm the pregnancy at a clinic.
Luckily for Beth, she knows the technician Rio pretty much forces to do an ultrasound on her. The technician lies for Beth and claims she's pregnant, but Rio demands a paternity test right away. While the technician sends him away, saying they can do that in about a month, Beth finds unlikely support in her tribulations as Dean ends up turning down his manager's offer to go out on a dinner date. It's not much to hint that their marital problems are anywhere close to being resolved, but it's always a good start. Accountability is what makes the three such good girls, and this time, they have unlikely partners pushing them forward on the journey.
'Good Girls' Season 3 airs on Sundays at 10 pm only on NBC.