Good Girls - A View from the Top - Review + Poll: Liar, Liar

This episode of Good Girls exposed some Liars. Some moments were satisfying and one broke my heart. Shall we discuss?

Overwhelmed

I keep telling myself as this series progresses that Dean will hit rock bottom on what he is willing to do to try and reconcile with Beth and get his comfortable life back, but I feel he still has a long way to go to get there and it is disturbing to watch. You see, Dean has hired a doctor to go along with his cancer ruse and even has an appointment for which Beth is present and hears he has prostate cancer. She is unmoved by the diagnosis and wants the brass tacks regarding how much it will cost and abruptly leaves the appointment leaving Dean baffled as to why his wife has no reaction. He blames the doc's matter of fact delivery of the diagnosis but still pays him in the form of a new/used Buick. I mean Dean really is just the worst right? There are so many people suffering from cancer and he is using it to get what he wants, I need karma to make this right.

Meanwhile, the jeep that our gals used on their jaunt to Canada has been recovered by none other than Agent Turner and their first BIG mistake has finally happened. They have made some small ones along the way, but this is a doozy. Along with this, the cuts from the money washing is becoming smaller leaving Ruby wondering why they are even doing this if there is barely any benefit. She wants out because she is risking her family for this and it is no longer paying off. Beth stayed pretty silent through all of this and I still contend it is because she likes this life and wasn't ready to throw in the towel, so while Annie pondered if they even could get out and Ruby said she wanted out, Beth had come up with a way to keep the con on unbeknownst to her partners.

Beth's grand idea is revealed when Rio meets the ladies at a park to collect and demands to expand their partnership by cleaning up to 500k. Ruby and Annie are shocked but Rio agrees to these new terms. Oh Beth, you gotta at least give your girls a heads up! This means more risk and bringing in more people, which also means a much bigger chance of being caught.... Oh my!

Secret Shopper

As with any new expansion, there is no way your starter pack of employees can carry the load of increased demands, so this means that Annie, Beth and Ruby are going to have to bring more people in. Now you can't exactly put, 'looking for motivated suburban housewives who are fed up with the day-to-day struggle, and want to expand their horizons by committing several felonies' on Craigslist so the gals decided to pull take a page out of the Mary Kay handbook and bring these women (and Tyler the Security guard) in under the guise of being self-employed secret shoppers. Several of these women are reluctant at first because of what little information our girls have to offer. Things get fun when one announces she must talk to her husband and leads to Beth makes a passionate speech about remembering who they are as women and taking charge without asking for permission.... Now I wish I could say that worked, but it was Annie's fake promise of a Corvette for the highest shopper that finally got them all on board. Things seem to be going swimmingly now that they have more 'employees' on board, right? Wrong! The lies are about to catch up with all three in very different ways.

First there is Beth, Agent Turner shows up to Dean's work and says Beth might know a thing or two about that stolen car. When Beth returns from a hard day of illegal activity (more on that later), Dean confronts her and let's her know he covered for her with a story about his affair driving Beth over the edge, but he wants to know why she took the car. At first, Beth is defensive but quickly realizes she should just let Dean spin his own story of her getting taken advantage of by bad people for money to get him off her back, and it works. I loved the non-verbal acting of Christina Hendricks here, she was saying everything about what Dean was assuming without saying anything at all. Dean thinks he now has the upper hand and that his wounded wife fell into something horrible for which he would be the white knight, but he couldn't be more wrong. Also, I really hate his line about her getting a real job at Panera instead of what she's doing because it is his fault she found this lifestyle and when he yelled at her to sit down, my blood boiled.

Next, Annie is manning her register when Boomer's grandmother Marion comes through his line. You remember Marion right? The woman who the girls tried to rob unsuccessfully and is somewhat racist? Well she recognizes Annie right away in front of Boomer (or is it Nelson?) and tells her disgusting grandson that Annie is the nice girl who cleaned her house a few weeks back. Boomer and Annie are now in a chess match over who has the upper hand with her bringing up his 'fiancé' Jessica Alba and him bringing up why she was there and what she was doing, Marion meanwhile is none the wiser. Things also go from bad to worse when Tyler shows up and informs Annie that his secret shopping went awry when all his stuff was stolen from his crappy car. I would put this issue as the least of their problems at this point as the girls don't panic, and instead of robbing a store again like Annie suggested, they come up with a different solution pretty quickly. They act like seasoned MVPs of the game and just steal the merchandise Tyler lost with an elaborate sequence involving wigs and confusing a door checker at a warehouse store. I know it is wrong, but in that moment I was proud of how far they've come.

The ladies make good on their increased demand from Rio and he pays them. Beth also wants to bend Rio's ear about how he flies below the radar of authorities. He tells them he 'flips the game' with a story about small time drug dealers and how it relates to him. I am not going to lie and say I completely understood and neither did our girls, but I took it to mean that he lets the morons get caught and that keeps the cops busy while he meticulously keeps his game under wraps.

A tale of two Husbands

Throughout this episode, we watched Ruby continue to lie to an unsuspecting Stan and take care of Sara who is at home on dialysis. Out of our three women, Ruby hates the life but needs it the most, her child's life depends on it. This makes what happens next so heartbreaking. While I relish in Beth continually sticking it to Dean without him knowing, my heart hurts with what Ruby is putting Stan through without his knowledge. Ruby's lie about her job has finally come back to bite her when Uncle Tony shows up to check on Sara. Tony is Ruby's former boss and told Stan that Ruby had been fired because he assumed that he knew. When Tony leaves, Stan goes about fixing the dinner that Tony brought over and Ruby desperately wants him to say something. He finally does by saying he is not sure who Ruby is at the moment and that he doesn't believe her. Ruby does smooth it over by the end of the ep with yet another lie to her doting husband when she piggybacks the secret shopper angle telling him she's the secret shopper and shows him three stacks of big bills. I was surprised Stan bought this initially but when thinking about it, he loves his wife, he wants to believe her so it makes sense that he would buy what Ruby is selling.

Another lie that was more satisfying to watch unravel was Boomer's about his 'fiancé'. While having dinner with Marion in which she will not stop praising Annie, Boomer tries to dissuade his grams from thinking so highly of her. It is then that he finds out that Grams isn't as easy to fool as he thinks because she saw a magazine with Jessica Alba in it with her children and actual husband and knows he has been lying. She also tells him that Annie is not a loser like he said and that she seems like a good person, which as you guessed enraged him. Speaking of Annie, she takes a big step towards growth here and visits Marion to come clean about their intentions when they cleaned her house and that she is sorry. She also tracked down one of the figurines they stole to apologize. Marion isn't mad and asks Annie to stay and chat with her to which Annie agrees. Who else loved Annie being mature and doing the right thing? Because I did, way to go Miss. Marks.

In the closing moments of the episode two things happen that are quite intense. Firstly, Beth arrives home with grocery bags and finds the locks changed and Dean on the couch sipping a beer wondering if she picked up some milk. She questions why he is there and he tells her that a subordinate of his that just welcomed twins with his wife will be closing from now on so he can be home to protect his wife from bounce house guy. Beth finally pulls the facade away and shows what a bad ass she has become by dumping the contents of those grocery bags, which do not contain any sort of food but are actually fat stacks of cash from her latest job. She lets Dean know she doesn't need saving or being guarded because she is doing just fine and can take care of her damn self without him. Dean is stunned by this and doesn't know what to do, but Beth drops the mic and tells him to go back to work and let the poor new father have time with his babies. I don't see this as Rio's influence or anything of the sort, I saw this moment of Beth finally flexing her independence towards a man that never respected that she had any. I cannot wait to see what will happen when Beth finds out he's lying about the cancer. Finally Boomer is so infuriated that Annie now has won over his Grams and that Agent Turner will no longer see him that he takes matters into his own hands and it could derail everything for Annie. He chats up one of his employees named Darren who apparently is the small time drug supplier and cleans his inventory out and plants the drugs in Annie's locker.

So what did you think? Do you find Dean the worst? Is Ruby going to lose Stan and the kids eventually? Let me know!