'Good Girls' Season 3 Episode 9 Review: How long will Beth's allies comply with the police catching on?
Spoilers for Season 3 Episode 9: 'Incentive'
After expressing her earnest wish to get back into Rio's (Manny Montana) good books, Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks) is finally given the titular 'Incentive' she needs for the same. It was expected that everything would involve a hitman, thanks to the official promos from two weeks ago, but after a long fortnight of wait, racking our brains to wonder what it is exactly that Rio will task Beth with, we finally find out that Rio has managed to reel her in deep — beyond all the threats we could have imagined.
However, even with Rio's thirst for vengeance to make Beth really pay for what she did to him, and with the police already catching on to the faint whiffs of nail polish tint in the fake notes Beth's been printing, her biggest trouble might turn out to be the drifting faith of her accomplices. Not so much in case of Annie Marks (Mae Whitman), who is on her unnecessarily intrusive path of healing, but when it comes to Ruby Hill (Retta), her recent behavior has us considering is she still is all the way in.
Right at the beginning of the episode, Beth's indiscretion is lined up parallelly as she gets ready to deliver the freshly printed money to Rio. As Beth gets ready to drop off the money to Rio, her morning routine is paralleled with the female cop's who is on to the fake money laundering going on. And the moment Beth takes their commission from Rio and returns home under the assumption that she's excelling at tricking him, the cop tells her colleague how she pulled strings to recall the particular nail polish brand to zero in on the suspects. But with that door closing, the one that finally opens is Beth's brilliant realization that they finally have the kind of money to hire a hitman to wipe out Rio — something that is wishful thinking, but slid in so matter-of-factly that one must commend the writing.
Even with the prospect of a hitman around the horizon, their biggest concern is continuing printing as they run out of nail paint supplies, and even with Ruby trying her hardest to create the same color and formula as the recently unavailable nail polish, there's no escaping Rio's eagle eyes when he lays his hand on the differently tinted fresh batch. Sat in a discreet, quiet, and empty Chinese eatery, Rio confronts Beth about the money and the only way for her to get out of this mess is to do a new task he has for her. Rio's henchman hands Beth a paper bag, and she is forced to pull out the gun inside. It is in this scene that Hendricks' panic seen via Beth realizing she might be tasked with killing someone rivals Montana's articulating Rio's glee upon realizing how he has finally gotten the better of the woman he can't keep being in love with.
It is only after Beth pulls the gun out that Rio tells her it was the same weapon they had used to kill Lucy, and Beth's prints getting all over it is her new 'incentive' to do better at making it up to Rio. And this isn't the only love she has lost in the recent past; with her prints all over the gun, the girls decide they need to put their game face on and rob one of the salons where they had first spotted the nail color. Considering they have seen both Beth and Annie's faces, Ruby volunteers to rob the store — going against all her principles once again, especially after calling out her husband's recent splurges from money earned not in the cleanest of ways. Ruby's dilemma is made clear in a heartbreaking moment between her and her daughter Sarah, whom she had tagged along while robbing the salon.
Sarah gets self-righteous, trying to chastise Ruby for being a hypocrite, and Retta pours out all the command she can into her character's turmoil in those moments as she is being accused by her own daughter for trying to save their family. When Ruby finally returns with the newer bottles to the press and Beth compliments her resolve, applauding how she 'did good', she doesn't utter a word. It's getting clearer by each passing week that Ruby is losing her faith in what her best friend of years has landed them into — specifically Beth's command over the whole operation which has earned her her own daughter's distaste, along with a bullet wound in the leg.
With Rio acting as a menacing boss, and Dean kissing his boss after Beth cancels their date for a rendezvous with the hitman, all Beth really has left are her allies. But Annie is too busy trying to psychoanalyst her therapist's relationship issues, and all of her inputs boil down to crazy plans surrounding robbery anyway. So with Ruby's faith simmering, things, in the long run, don't look good at all for Beth.
'Good Girls' Season 3 airs on Sundays at 10 pm only on NBC.