‘Good Girls’ Recap: Beth Starts to Enjoy Her Life of Crime

Good Girls takes things to a deeper level in the latest episode, titled “Borderline,” as the hijinks-of-the-week give way to some interesting insights into our leads and their motivations going forward.

Beth

This is definitely the most intriguing story line this week. After making the “drug run” for Rio (Manny Montana), which turns out to be a run to Canada for the wrapping paper he prints his counterfeit money on, Beth (Christina Hendricks) is clearly depressed about returning to her old life. She is obviously a little bored with it and not yet willing to try to fix things with her ex, so she needs both money and something to do that keeps her busy and puts a little excitement in her life.

Enter Rio. When Beth returns to his counterfeit operation warehouse and finds it empty, she hangs a strand of pearls on the doorknob in what might be the sexiest non-sexy thing I’ve seen on TV in a while. Rio finds the signal and shows up at her house, and frankly, it’s surprising they don’t just do it on the kitchen island — that’s how crackling the two of them are on screen together.

Instead, Beth wants the partnership to continue. How, we do not know — that’s next week. But suffice to say that it’s obviously not just the mortgage payment driving Beth to continue her life of crime.

Annie

Annie (Mae Whitman) has a social worker custody visit for her daughter that she, of course, is late to because she was busy sinking a stolen car in a lake since the ladies can’t figure out how to un-sync Annie’s phone from its computer.

Now, the stuff with the cars (from stealing it to the pond) is really funny. But anyone can see how Annie’s custody visit is going to go, and it plays out nearly exactly how I expected it to. The only really solid moment is when a brokenhearted Sadie asks Annie what could be more important than her that would make Annie late to the custody meeting. The actress playing Sadie, Izzy Stannard, absolutely killed that scene, as did Whitman. Really good stuff there.

But overall, I hope the show finds a little more for Annie to do when it comes to her home life. She’s terrific when she’s with the other ladies — Whitman has top-notch chemistry with both Hendricks and Retta — but her other stuff is generally a little lacking. Perhaps they can mine something from Boomer (David Hornsby) knowing the ladies stole a car from Beth’s husband Dean’s car dealership? But him blackmailing her would be a huge repeat of what just happened with the store robbery, so I’m not sure where they’re going with that, to be honest.

Ruby

Last but certainly not least, we have my favorite story line of the week. Ruby is already playing for much higher stakes than the other two, what with her daughter having a debilitating, possibly fatal kidney disease and Ruby not having the money to pay for her life-saving medicine. But now some woman at church is taking credit for giving Ruby and Stan (Reno Wilson) the money for Sara’s (Lidya Jewett) first month of treatment. And Ruby can’t deny it because then Stan would make her tell him where the money came from. Plus, this woman — Sheila (Christine Horn) — has had a thing for Stan since high school, and she relishes his hugs and thank-yous after she takes credit for the money.

OH NO, SHE DID NOT. What a piece of work. Tremendous credit to Ruby for not taking that woman down right there in church.

Instead, Ruby lets it get to her. It causes a temporary rift in her marriage because Stan can’t understand why she’s not more grateful. He is obviously clueless that Sheila is making a play for him, but he does realize it makes Ruby uncomfortable and he shows her that she’s the only woman for him.

Which gives Ruby the gumption to go to church and publicly thank Sheila for the money… and the babysitting… and picking the kids up from school… and now Sheila has to do all of those things because everyone thinks she already offered to. Wa-BAM. Well done, Ruby. Bravo.

Odds and Ends

I’m glad they made Rio’s operation a counterfeit business rather than drugs. There’s a higher degree of danger with drugs, and having the women work for him would have started to get pretty unrealistic, I think.

The three women on this show continue to just slay their scenes together. The entire “drug run” to Canada was hilarious. Retta screaming when she accidentally shot the pick-up guy in the foot was especially priceless.

I’ll be interested to watch how the women interact if their motivations start to change. At first, they all needed money for different yet still desperate situations. But now, even though Beth still needs to avoid losing her house, she is also dipping her toe back in the water of crime because she likes it. I don’t get the sense that either Ruby or Annie feels the same way, so it’ll be interesting to watch how the group dynamic evolves if Beth starts to get a little too “into” being a criminal.

(photos via NBC)