Good Girls Review: We’re Even / Nevada (Season 4 Episodes 15 and 16)

The sun has set on Good Girls, and the story seems to finally feel like it was getting on its feet again.

Good Girls Season 4 Episode 15, “We’re Even,” is where the show starts to desperately claw back some of its character development. We have Annie starting to figure out what she wants with Kevin, Ruby, and Beth trying to figure out how to repair their married friend quartet.

It’s good to see them try to repair this part of their relationship, and it’s essential to the story. 

However, “We’re Even,” drags in comparison to Good Girls Season 4 Episode 16, “Nevada.” Nevada succeeds at doing what I have wanted Good Girls to do all season, and that’s force these characters to make a choice. 

On “Nevada,” Beth gets elected, and they finally have enough money to flee. I have expected this to be a massive exit that would force these women to make choices along the way. Instead, we get a dream sequence brought on a bullet to the shoulder.

Beth’s death is one of the ways I expected the series to end. As these women got further and further into the world and as things kept not changed, I just assumed that either someone on Rio’s side or a rival would kill her.

I didn’t want it to happen, but I could see it. 

The way the sequence gives the impression that we’re stepping into an uncanny valley scenario. While everything looks great, the problems still converge to put these women in similar tight spots. 

Beth’s calm facade when a thug holds up the market gives it away. It plays out so bleak that it can’t be anything but a dream. The fact that Beth can see this in her daydream is the perfect wake-up call, but it also starts a series of events that deserves to be finished. 

While I can sit with the ending of “Nevada,” and be somewhat content with it, the one place where I am hungry for more is with Annie’s arrest. That sequence does not feel right to me.

Annie has spent a lot of time over the last couple of seasons working on herself. She got her GED, and she was starting to think about finding a purpose. She got into a serious relationship finally and was making a plan to travel. 

These were all positive steps for Annie, but now Annie is now to Beth as Rio is to Nick. She’s the family member that takes the fall. 

Annie got the short end of the stick, and that’s something she didn’t deserve. It’s most certainly one of the reasons that I wish there would be a fifth season because if anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s Annie. 

Ruby’s decision to choose her family over Beth has been a long time coming too. Yes, Ruby is Beth’s bestie, but she is also a wife and mother and she loves her family. When the chips are down she’ll choose them. 

It feels like a betrayal. It is a betrayal, but when you consider all the other things that have happened this season and some of the other people who almost sent them to jail it’s easy to see why she’d choose her family. Especially since it’s time she chose her family.

Season 4 definitely dragged as a whole, and while this end was rewarding, it isn’t enough to keep the tension that drove the show in its early days. The changing power dynamics were exactly what the show needed, but it didn’t come fast enough.

At the end of “We’re Even” and “Nevada” I am left wondering exactly what could have been if this is where we were taken in Season 3. The show needed this change and it could have provided a much more dynamic story with a bigger effect on the plot.

Stray Thoughts

• In the end, Vance is a completely pointless character. He’s hungry for power and that’s about it. He’s a plot device, and it would have been better if Dean and Stan had murdered him in the garage, cos he’s basically a plot device anyway.
• Dean leaving Beth also feels like a moot point. When the series first started I wasn’t a fan of him. He kept digging a deeper and deeper grave for himself with every decision he made. Having his last appearance be a moment where he tells Beth that he just can’t do this anymore like she’s the problem feels like an interesting reversal, but he’s also one to talk!
• I dig the idea of Stan and Ruby starting a nail salon together! Please let this actually become a thing. 
• Is it just me, or was Nick taken down way too easily? 

What did you think of this episode of Good Girls? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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