Good Girls Review: Everything Must Go (Season 2 Episode 5)
The pressure of Leslie’s body being found is weighing on Beth, Annie, and Ruby on Good Girls Season 2 Episode 5, “Everything Must Go,” pushing them to reach out to someone from Dean’s past.
The main point of conflict on “Everything Must Go,” is Leslie’s body. Agent Turner has Mary Pat in custody where he’s asking her about what “they” did.
Good Girls is very good at making me sympathize with characters one episode and really dislike them the next. Mary Pat is falling into that line as she spins a tale about how Ruby, Beth, and Annie ran him over and then chopped him up. However, since we know the truth it is also infuriating to see how quickly she’s willing to sell them out.
Mary Pat is a single mother, and there’s no one to raise her children. I get it, but Ruby, Beth, and Annie are also mothers with just as much to lose. In fact, this was exactly the kind of thing that Stan was trying to point out to Ruby on Good Girls Season 2 Episode 1, “I’d Rather Be Crafting.”
By the end of “Everything Must Go,” the fact that Mary Pat has sent Turner on the trail of Ruby and Stan is unforgivable and unsettling. We know that Stan can be implicated in their crimes since he stole the pen cap from evidence on “I’d Rather Be Crafting,” and Ruby is not comfortable with him being involved anymore.
Ruby and Stan’s relationship has always been on the rocks and it suffers more this episode. While Mary Pat tries to get out of her mess, Stan is trying to understand it entirely. He goes through the scenario trying to focus purely on facts.
I think something can be said for how Stan doesn’t judge Ruby. He’s come a long way from the first episode of the season and the bits that we hear of the conversation are questions that try to discern the possibility of being caught. Even when he does get concerned, he doesn’t worry, he acts.
And it’s Stan that gives the heads up about Mary Pat, which forces Beth to ask Dean for help and uncovers another shortcoming in how he does business.
Amber isn’t a character that we expected to ever see again. Once Beth gave her the money for a plane ticket and sent her to Los Angeles, it felt like a book had closed. Her reappearance is only going to stir up more trouble from the moment that she steps onto the screen.
Amber manages to get herself in a position of power over Dean and in doing so was able to keep him from getting inventory, which he needs in order to sell the cars. That’s personal.
But she also manages to demolish any sympathy that the audience may have had for Dean in about five minutes. Amber has much more information about Dean’s extramarital activities and that forces a confrontation between Beth and Dean.
After Good Girls Season 2 Episode 4, “Pick Your Poison,” there is no doubt that Dean really doesn’t respect Beth. As Beth says:
It was just a warm body. Anyone but me. That makes it so much worse.
Going back to the very first episode, it was finding out about Dean’s affair with Amber that causes them to hatch the plan to rob the store. It’s fitting Amber’s presence would reawaken that and cause an even bigger rift to form between them.
The fight that takes place between them is really quiet and rational. I was expecting a screaming match but that’s really not how Beth operates.
We’ve learned a lot about Beth over the last season and a half. Chief among them, she has a head for business and she’s not reactionary in the face of bad news. The way she turns the tables on Dean after the sell all the cars in the dealership is very gratifying to see.
I remarked in my review of “Pick Your Poison” that Good Girls did a good job of calling out the car buying experience for women. The ideas that Beth presented over dinner with Dean were good, strong ideas, that would help the business grow.
Dean dismissed her, but when it came down to it on this episode, he needed her. Watching her take the reigns may have been a little bit shocking for him, but it’s essential for Beth’s character and I think she’s going to go far.
However, it also looks like Rio is ready to hold Leslie’s body over her head, so maybe she walked right into another situation where she’s going to be in a cage.
We’ll have to wait for the next episode to see where this takes our characters, but it’s certainly made the Dean/Beth/Rio triangle a little more complicated. (Then again, can we really call those three a triangle?)
Stray Thoughts
- Can we all have a friend like Ruby who, after hearing your friend got laid, processes it and asks, “How was it?” in that same tone of voice?
- Spelling out certain words was a nice little gag, as Mary Pat recounts her lie to Agent Turner especially with her children present. Considering one of them blew her story it would make sense that she would try to cover her tracks in other ways.
- Dean and Beth’s marriage feels like it’s been through a lot, and I don’t know that it can be saved. The cheating is just the tip of the iceberg. I am still waiting for the blow-up about his fake cancer personally.
- The scene where Beth’s masturbating and imagining Rio walking through her bedroom smashing things gives us some insight into her character and who she’s becoming and the kind of person she wants to be with. It felt slightly awkward until Dean walked in and interrupted her, but the pacing and the actions flow very well. Even the way the audio is scored calls attention to it.
- I actually want to bring attention to the audio mix for this entire episode, especially where Beth is concerned. Between her bedroom scene and the scene where she’s pounding on her meat, there was some great use of sound to create tension.
- I’m a little worried about why Annie would choose to tell Sadie that she slept with Gregg. I applaud her for being honest, but at the same time, did Sadie really need to know that? Did Annie have to tell Sadie this way? Annie’s a very messy person, and I think this fits her, but it is also not great for Sadie.
What did you think of this episode of Good Girls? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Good Girls airs Sundays at 10/9c on NBC.
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Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.