'Good Girls' Season 3 Finale Review: Do Beth, Ruby and Annie even have a reason to celebrate?
Spoilers for Season 3 Finale Episode 11: 'Synergy'
Murder, mayhem, and madness might be the tagline of Netflix's 'Tiger King' documentary, but the same can be said for 'Good Girls' Season 3. The titular golden trio has been through menacing crimelords coming back from the dead along innocent, unwitting accomplices getting murdered for no reason, lost jobs, fake pregnancies, crumbling marriages, personal growth, and to top it all off, the police on their tail. So after the 11-episode run, as Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks) and her allies — Ruby Hill (Retta) and Annie Marks (Mae Whitman) — sit in the park bench indulging in some much needed hard liquor in paper bags, what we really find ourselves asking is do they even have a reason to celebrate?
The finale, titled 'Synergy', kicks off with Ruby going back to the nail salon, and who would be her first customer but the female cop tailing the money laundering business herself. The previous episode already hinted at her zeroing in on Ruby being the ringmaster of the entire scheme, bandwidth her buying a brand new car with hard cash only confirmed those suspicions. So off goes Phoebe Donnegan (Lauren Lapkus) pretending to be a regular customer for Ruby and manages to steal her phone expertly. Skimming through her phone reveals her obvious tight bonds with Beth and Annie and soon the other two are on the police's list too, but things aren't entirely terrible for them yet.
While this is the first episode in a long time where Annie's desperate thirst for her therapist doesn't take the center stage in her arc, it is the other two accomplices' marriage issues that take the spotlight. For Beth, Dean's infidelity becomes an issue when she goes to buy out the hot tub place from Dean's (Matthew Lillard) former boss and she insinuates she wasn't the only one Dean has cheated on Beth with. Beth asks Dean if he would have slept with his boss when they weren't going well as a couple, and he answers in the affirmative. And if problems with the man she's married to were bad, problems with her past flame-turned-boss are worse. Rio (Manny Montana) isn't ready to give them their cut until Beth's 'system' is up and functioning properly, so she has to seek out Rio's henchman's help to orchestrate a robbery at the hot tub place just to convince Rio of her own allegiance and loyalty. He looks convinced, but it's not entirely a win-win.
For Ruby, it is constant clashes with Stan (Reno Wilson) regarding their morality that almost ruins their marriage. It starts with Ruby using their hard cash to buy a car for the couple whose dead child's kidney they transplanted into Sarah; Stan's problem isn't so much with the stealing, but mostly with Ruby not allowing him to have a say in the matter. Stan claims the person Ruby's become is tearing their relationship apart, but Ruby manages to remind him that selling donuts wouldn't even come close to paying the bills for their daughter's medicines — reminding us once again why she's pretty much the only one with sound reason on the show.
Luckily for the couple, things work out as they reach a middle ground and compromise. The trio even indulges in some risque money exchange to turn their black money into white by replacing Stan's stripper joint earning with their own prints money when it is bagged and sent off to the banks. Beth puts her genius to good use by putting all the reactors from her son's spontaneous combustion science experiment into one of those money bags. They catch fire the moment the truck carrying them takes off and we know who's warning back that compensation soon.
Even with all these little wins and Beth practically buying the hot tub place for much lesser the price after getting Rio's henchman to rob everything from the showroom, fear lingers in the form of a certain Phoebe Donnegan. Right at the end, Buth, Ruby, and Annie are sitting in a park bench and celebrating themselves being small business owners finally. They think the storm has passed with Rio being on board their plans to turn dirty money clean, but what they don't know is the other tornado that's been brewing. It arrives right in front of their eyes when the female cop shows up jogging and sparks a casual conversation about Ruby working her magic on the cop's nails.
She asks what the three women are celebrating, and the scene fades into black with music taking over and Beth staring off into the distance. It's obvious this was never meant to be the finale because ending things here would be too abrupt, but it is semi-conclusive and a solid ground for the action to kick off next season. What really waits to unfold is whether this celebration was timely or did they nail the coffin too soon? With the cops this close on the prowl, maybe Rio isn't the only antagonist they should focus on.
'Good Girls' Season 3 Finale, Episode 11: 'Synergy' aired on Sunday, May 3, at 10 pm only on NBC.