'Good Girls' Season 3 Episode 6 Review: Annie finally gets the redemptive storyline she deserves
Spoilers for Season 3 Episode 6 'Frere Jaques'
Shady, dark, eerily quiet places, shovels and graves — such were the teasers of this episode titled 'Frere Jaques'.
After Beth's striking enlightenment of the path she and her two accomplices Annie and Ruby have chosen sunk in after watching her innocent and unwitting partner in crime fall prey to Rio, things tend to get increasingly difficult for the eponymous trio.
Amid the all-consuming guilt and trauma of Lucy's death, there's also some moiety of redemption in Stan and Ruby's life, while Annie gets her own storyline sans the promiscuous homewrecker stamp.
The episode kicks off with Beth, Ruby and Annie at Beth's house, coping in the aftermath of costing Lucy her life. Among the three, Annie is the only one who watched Rio's henchman shoot Lucy and the images of that keep flashing back to her, haunting her as she becomes increasingly obsessed with how the things Lucy did would continue happening for the people Lucy left behind.
Who will run her social media? Who will water her plants? — these are the questions that plague Annie's mind. Later we see her reach out for an actual therapy session with the real Dr Cohen and talk it all out.
And while he wants her to focus on the issue she is in for — breaking Greg and Nancy's marriage — Annie keeps reverting back to fiddling with thoughts of Lucy's life and all the little things people associated with her.
It's both guilt and trauma, and there's no labeling her as Beth's little dysfunctional mess of a baby sister anymore. Mae Whitman channels Annie's transformation into a traumatized accomplice too brilliantly to overlook, finally bringing out the much needed individual arc of her own on the drama.
With Annie's somewhat milestone achievement comes Beth's all churning guilt that seems to drive her forward. She wakes up to find Lucy's boyfriend Max going to the police and them arriving at the establishment owned by Beth, with the landlady hinting at shutting the place down.
As they consider media coverage and distributing posters for a missing Lucy, Beth goes through flashbacks of Lucy's final moments. For some reason, however, she thinks reaching out to Rio is the best way out.
The women are terrified of Rio, and even after he makes it pretty clear to Beth that her, him, and their whole "us is just business", she somehow doesn't allow the guilt or intimidation to fester or consume her.
Instead, it pushes her towards a staunch faith in Rio's instincts which would somehow never make him kill them all. Even in moments where Rio's man drags them out to a graveyard to dig graves, Christina Hendricks' fumbling stoicism as Beth's air of confidence rivals Manny Montana's smug facade of Rio's heartbreak at having to condemn the love of his life.
When the heartbreaking moments of Beth and Rio aren't taking center stage, this episode also offers a glimmer of redemption through the Ruby and Stan storyline. Stand gets an order of his suspension being up for review.
However, at the same time, the joyous news comes with authorities wishing to speak with Ruby and him about the situation. While it does concern Ruby why they would wish to talk to her, it goes without saying that amid a straining marriage, the news does offer the much-needed hope for the titular women on their road to their downfall.
In the backdrop of their two young, very impressionable young kids being impacted by their parents' life, this is what keeps us looking forward.
'Good Girls' Season 3 airs on Sundays at 10 pm on NBC.
