S02.E10: The Gold Coast

[kelslamu]

Thanks Ganesh.  I missed that point. :)

[Maysie]

Obviously I'm speculating, but the Snells are going to get rich off the deal, which now means Darlene and Zeke if she adopts him, correct? And if Darlene is killed by the cartel, it wouldn't surprise me if the Byrds end up with Zeke, as mentioned earlier. Which means, depending on the timing, that Zeke and his adoptive family could end up with that wealth.

There's a lot of ifs in that scenario, for sure, but if the show goes on long enough, I can see it happening.

And though Ruth is kind of a hot mess, honestly, she's the one in this group I'd want raising my orphaned kid. She's been absolutely dogged in her pursuit of a better life for Wyatt and shielding her cousins from the shitstorm that surrounds them. She's not always successful, but she sure gives it her best and there's never any doubt who comes first. Of course she's not neck-deep in with the cartel (yet), so that does make it a bit easier for her...

[4N6MAL]

On 9/8/2018 at 1:34 AM, Witchz said:

But with that said I don't see how they are going to take her out next season without hurting the baby which you know she is going to wear as a shield - 24 x7. 

The Cartel won't care one bit about the baby. They will take her out if they see fit to do so, baby or no baby.

[ganesh]

If this show actually has a spine I would love to see that. 

[endure]

When Marty delivered the baby to Darlene, wasn’t he carrying him in what looked like a Baby Bjorn carrier, that would not even be likely unless he walked to her house.  Most people would not put a baby in one of those types of carriers to walk from their car into a house.

[topanga]

On 9/2/2018 at 12:35 PM, bentley said:

I wish I liked the daughter more, as the moral compass of the show, but god she's annoying. Still, run Charlotte! Run far away!

This. Charlotte made some great points, but she was so whiny and annoying that I wanted to smack her in the face whenever she opened her mouth. 

This season was dark. Great acting and pretty good writing, but everyone was scared or sad all of the time. Poor Ruth. I really just want to see that kid happy. 

On 9/4/2018 at 4:29 AM, Armchair Critic said:

Good riddance Cade "Slingblade" Langmore.

LOL. And it got worse as the season went on. When Cade met Wendy in the diner, I kept waiting for him to ask the waitress to bring him  some French fried potaters. 

Edited October 5, 2018 by topanga

[Chaos Theory]

I doubt the show will kill off Darlene any time soon.  She makes a good enemy.  Even if Marty and Wendy have to deal with the Cartel there is still Darlene gumming up the works.  Plus she is clever and diabolical.  In other words fun.  

[ganesh]

Clever? Or just in the way? I don't see what she can do on her own when the Snells don't own the land anymore. 

[DrSpaceman73]

On ‎10‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 2:30 PM, ganesh said:

Clever? Or just in the way? I don't see what she can do on her own when the Snells don't own the land anymore. 

I said it before, two or three episodes ago, the sooner she dies the better

Such a horrible antagonist for the show. 

Using the Breaking Bad analogy as a comparison, she is a Tuco, not a Gus Fring.  Emotional, illogical, unbending, does not think things through. 

I don't find her the least bit clever.  She is completely transparent and easily predictable. 

[atlantaloves]

THERE WILL BE A SEASON THREE!!!! YAHOOOOOO......and yes ,please kill off Mrs. Snell and her horrible accent.  

[topanga]

1 hour ago, atlantaloves said:

THERE WILL BE A SEASON THREE!!!! YAHOOOOOO......and yes ,please kill off Mrs. Snell and her horrible accent.  

Yay. But now who’s gonna say, ‘Dar-lene!’ all season?

[ganesh]

Everyone will - aren't you glad Dar-lene is dead? Yes, I am glad Dar-lene is dead. 

[ChromaKelly]

Why didn't Ruth tell the Byrds that her dad killed the FBI agent, and that's how they can get rid of him? Just make an anonymous tip, no more dad for 20+years. If they had waited about 15 minutes for the car to be found, the problem would have taken care of itself. I didn't get leaving the body out in the open either.
I also think the boat looks small, but I don't know anything about riverboat casinos.
I didn't mind Charlotte too much, I get where she was coming from. Marty and Wendy are worried about her, but not worried that their son is perfectly fine with laundering money. That's kind of messed up.
Someone please kill Darlene. I was hoping the Snells would take each other out.

[Chas411]

  Sad to see Rachel leave as she is the only person who can get emotion from Marty

Why do we think she’d leaving? She left last season but was back fairly quickly. The character still owns the blue cat. I predict she’ll be back and having a full blown affair with Marty by next season. 

[BigBlueMastiff]

Ugghhh, Charlotte, can kick rocks, please leave with Wyatt and never come back. Jonah is the more interesting and multi-faceted sibling, just focus on him. Darlene is an impulsive, out of contro,l act first-think never narcissist. She needs to go, inevitably she will eff things up because she thinks she's being disrespected, and reacts like a thug, bye Felicia.

[Raja]

On 9/3/2018 at 7:32 PM, DoubleUTeeEff said:

 

I was confused as to why they just left Cade there in the road as well. It seems to bring unnecessary heat when they could have just let people believe that he left with the bribe money. Oh, did I just answer my own question? Did Wendy want it that way to send a message to Marty? I guess if there's a season 3, we'll see if Ruth cares or not. She might not like that she won't be in charge like she and Marty were planning.

 

It wasn't a message to Marty in my opinion it was the cartel's message to Wendy just like when Del Rio made Marty an accessory to murder as the first action when the cartel accepted him. Wendy now has passed the point of no return.

I do wonder did the cartel send their A team after the Snell's, or did they just learn from the mistake. Or the replacement killer learned from the mistake of dead others.

On 10/12/2018 at 8:22 PM, ChromaKelly said:

Why didn't Ruth tell the Byrds that her dad killed the FBI agent, and that's how they can get rid of him? Just make an anonymous tip, no more dad for 20+years. If they had waited about 15 minutes for the car to be found, the problem would have taken care of itself. I didn't get leaving the body out in the open either.
I also think the boat looks small, but I don't know anything about riverboat casinos.
I didn't mind Charlotte too much, I get where she was coming from. Marty and Wendy are worried about her, but not worried that their son is perfectly fine with laundering money. That's kind of messed up.
Someone please kill Darlene. I was hoping the Snells would take each other out.

Ruth didn't tell because that is the code, Maybe under water boarding it would be acceptable to give daddy up. Because she held tough under torture the cartel adopted her and trust her even if she is just a local petty criminal who one of their Sergeant's, Marty, vouched for.

I guess Darlene survives because it is a target that the Bryde's actually want to get. Not someone who is just collateral damage arising from their dirty deeds.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Raja

[Blue Plastic]

I do wish Darlene could have been killed off. It's too bad Wendy couldn't have ordered a hit on both her and Cade. Definitely Cade needed to go but so does Darlene! She's a menace.

I don't quite get why the Snells would get any money from the casino if they don't technically own the land anymore because it became part of the river when they flooded it.

Charlotte was so annoying in early season 1 but I warmed to her later on. She seemed like a typical teen who loved her family but also had tiffs with them and was under a lot of stress from the criminal elements of their lives. But I've hated her for all of season 2. She is correct about the bad parenting, but everything she does screams bratty teen. She isn't good with money, doesn't have a job and probably couldn't get one that would support her with basic food and shelter, and stomps to her room when her parents won't immediately sign emancipation papers. Not to mention whatever would come out if the case were taken to court.

I don't get why Ruth would want to deal with the cartel after Marty's planned departure. She knows firsthand now how violent they are.

I still think the writers didn't know what to do with the Rachel character so they had her run off, then for some reason brought her back with a drug problem. She seems to be well into adulthood and would probably be less likely to turn to first-time drug use as a coping mechanism unless she was severely traumatized or injured and got addicted to Rx painkillers maybe. They've never indicated that or hinted that she had a drug problem when she was younger that reared its ugly head again after she ran away.

[AG921]

Regarding Rachel and her drug problem: didn't she tell Marty back in season 1 that she was in recovery? Am I misremembering? Maybe someone that's watched it more recently can chime in.

[SlovakPrincess]

Am I just hate-watching this show now? 

So much of this makes no logical sense.  There's a fine line between having your characters do crazy stuff for dramatic purposes and just making everyone stupid.  This show has crossed it.

Why would Roy go off alone with Cade and turn his back to Cade?  Why would Cade kill a federal agent? Cade is no genius, and a hothead, but this is asinine even for him.    

Why would Ruth tell Wyatt the truth ... Cade has no proof of what she did, and is already acting erratically - Ruth should just claim Cade is telling crazy lies and mad Ruth won't give him Wyatt's college money to go on the run.  

Who inherits the Snell land if Darlene dies?  Seriously, how have Marty and Wendy not gamed this out?  Maybe it wouldn't work to kill Darlene and still get the casino off the ground, but how do you not at least consider that as an option?  

Why would social services agree to give the baby to Darlene?  That's asinine -- we saw her angrily flounce out of there when they told her she was too old to raise a baby.  Not only would she not be on their list of homes, she certainly wouldn't be first on the list to care for a baby.  Or is Marty just lying that social services is involved at all, and he's basically abandoning the baby into the care of a psychotic old woman without social services' knowledge??   Does he think the agency just won't find out about it until he's in Australia??  

[paramitch]

I thought this was pretty satisfying, although such a downer, as always with this show. I hate that poisonous Darlene got Zeke, and to Marty's credit, you can see the visible horror he feels at himself as he hands the baby over to her (I loved his whispered "I'm so sorry" to the baby). Ruth broke my heart, again, some more (and Wyatt too). And I admit I was happy to at least see the end of Petty and Cade, two absolutely loathsome human beings. And it was fun watching Laura Linney get her "Lady Macbeth" on here.

On 9/3/2018 at 5:06 PM, Pike Ludwell said:

Ruth clinging to her father after repeated abuse with more likely to come - ridiculous. She should have shot him when she could have claimed self defense, and be done with that problem. Then she kisses his dead body on the lips at the end. She should have been happy he was gone. What was there to like about him? Yeah he was her father, but too bad writers made her so weak in that regard.  She should have said something like: "Bye daddy. Too bad you weren't fit for this world."

Ruth clung to her father because that's what abused people do. Ruth loved her father and hated her father in equal measure. And even when she hated him, she was conditioned by him to certain responses -- see also the absolutely devastating scene in S2E7 ("One Way Out") when she absolutely loses her shit and starts sobbing, apologizing, and begging him to forgive her for letting him down. That's the Ruth that's always in there with her Dad, and that's who she has to struggle against (as she did again here so bravely) every time she faces down her father.

It's some of the best writing on the show, it's hard to watch, and it's absolutely accurate to human nature. And yeah, I was so happy to see him go. Just sorry Darlene didn't exit as well. (Ugh, both are horrible people.)

On 9/2/2018 at 9:35 AM, bentley said:

I wish they'd devoted more attention to the Ruth/Marty relationship. I think it's the most interesting one on the show, with dynamics similar to Rick/Daryl/Merle on The Walking Dead. Marty treats her like an adult and recognizes her abilities, but at the same time, he can be annoyingly abrupt and dismissive of her, just at the moments she needs the most reassurance. Unless I missed it, they told us he would be teaching her how to manage the books this season without ever showing us. I would have liked to see more of that.

I agree, and am really hoping we see more of that next season. Marty is basically a surrogate Dad to Ruth at this point (as horrible as that is in some ways -- poor kid), and their bond is one of my favorites on the show.

On 9/7/2018 at 10:04 PM, Rap541 said:

The thing about casinos is getting the casino *in*. Once you have a legal casino on a tiny paddleboat, you have an established casino business and can expend to a larger boat while the first boat still functions as "the casino". Three years later, you've got a private island built in the middle of the lake with the real casino and the tiny paddleboat becomes the quaint bar. 

This is so smart, and I definitely think was the plan.

On 9/9/2018 at 2:26 PM, TV1 said:

I like the realism of their marriage not ever really recovering from the already screwed up situation combined with her affair. It's an endlessly entertaining character study of slowly being corrupted in the process of trying to protect your family.

Can I just say that I want to adopt Ruth? Her cute little crying face broke my heart about 400 times.

I agree -- part of my fascination with the show is of its portrait of a marriage and family, and how those two things can subtly warp when thrown directly into a criminal/cartel situation. I mean, the whole family is actively complicit (and even Charlotte now shows zero moral compass -- as when she stole the book and then threw it away).

I feel the same way about Ruth that I did about Aaron in "Breaking Bad" -- I love her and she breaks my heart constantly. I just want her to survive all this. And Julia Garner's face when Ruth confessed to Wyatt, and why she had done it, and how he was "the only thing she fucking loved" -- seriously, just all the awards for Garner (which I know she got, since I'm watching this late). What a wonderful and fantastic actor.

On 9/10/2018 at 1:13 PM, iMonrey said:

I really didn't understand how this went down either. They dug up some bones from the family plot then planted them where the FBI was digging. But . . . the FBI had already unearthed another skeleton that belonged to the preacher's wife (presumably), so there must have been a switcheroo in the crime lab and they never explained how they pulled that off.

Yeah, there really wasn't any hint that she had a drug problem last season. It kind of felt like the show was really reaching just to return the character to the story. 

The bones situation was relatively easy because all they had to do was get the ancestor bones and then bribe the crime lab person to switch them -- and the results -- with what they had unearthed at the first site (Mason's wife's).

On 9/11/2018 at 5:36 AM, Jersey Guy 87 said:

Rachel seemed interested in having some drinks and a good time with a guy last season.  That's a far cry from being hooked on opiates which seemed to be her first reaction after stealing the money.

Rachel already seemed like a functioning alcoholic last season. Then as she was stealing six figures in cartel money, she walked right into Del, who accurately gauged that she was shaking (and appropriately terrified). It makes sense to me that without an anchor, perpetually on the run and terrified, that she fell into opiates to "calm" herself more than the drinks were able to do -- and then just kept falling. We saw that she didn't normally do heroin, for instance, then shrugged and went "what the hell." 

On 9/14/2018 at 9:49 PM, AuntiePam said:

It's always more complicated than that.  There had to have been times when Cade was someone Ruth could admire.  And even if a parent isn't admirable, a sign of affection will go a long way -- we saw that in one of the earlier episodes, when Cade showed Ruth some respect.  She ate that up, it was what she'd been looking for.  Kids can be like dogs -- abuse them and they'll still wag their tails when they see you.  And Ruth is basically still a kid.

This is exactly the thing. Ruth may have hated her father but she loved him too -- and he (like all abusers) used that love against her.

On 9/16/2018 at 9:14 AM, Maysie said:

It made me nuts when Marty basically laid all this at her feet when he was planning to take off to the gold coast with his family. I know it's a vote of confidence that she can handle the business side, but does anyone seriously think that the cartel would be all "well, it's okay if Ruth is running the money laundering operation now - we don't care where the Byrds are!" Hell no! They will torture her again, or even kill her or her family because there's no way they won't think she's not in on it. There's a reason why Marty wants to be untraceable and to put Ruth in that position was really irresponsible and, I thought, showed how little consideration he really gives Ruth.

I'm okay with Wyatt's anger about Ruth's confession. At first I was kind of annoyed by the "ghost of Wyatt's dad" making appearances to Wyatt, but it gave some insight into how he saw his relationship with his dad. And like Ruth's situation, it's the family he had and it's the family he loved. He knew parts were fucked up, but when you look at things like the situation at school (Wyatt being underestimated because he's a Langmore - Mizzou is out of reach for him simply for that reason) it underscores how isolated they were from everyone else, so I get that you love the ones you're with (especially when no one else will give you the chance). I feel badly for Wyatt because the most important person in his life was killed by the second most important person in his life (and the only one who really has his back).

Great points on both Ruth/Marty and Wyatt.

I felt like with Ruth, Marty truly wasn't actively setting her up -- he was showing a vote of confidence. But he also was running on pure adrenalin and fear, and he was just like, "Ruth can handle it for us," while not thinking of what this would actually do to Ruth. For that reason, I admit I was doubly glad when Wendy both put her foot down on the family staying and when she took out Cade (although I agree with those who felt that it was done too clumsily -- he should have been 'disappeared').

On Wyatt, it's so heartbreaking because he, like Ruth, was desperately trying to lie to himself about who his father was, and at a certain point in his 'visions' he of course couldn't do that anymore. Yes, Russ was a complex person (and I thought the actor was fantastic), but he was also almost as bad as Cade -- constantly involving the family in hare-brained schemes, screaming at, neglecting, and punching the kids, etc. Ruth's speech to Wyatt about him being the only person she ever loved broke me so much -- for both of them.

On 9/17/2018 at 1:10 PM, AuntiePam said:

I don't think so.  I didn't see their relationship as 'close' at all, physically or emotionally.  

Do we know how long he was in prison? 

I'll grant that the kiss on the lips looks weird if you're not the kind of family who kiss on the lips -- but many families do.  It was also weird that one time that he lay next to her on the bed, and she seemed uncomfortable, but he was never sexually inappropriate with her.

I feel like it was pretty clearly spelled out that Cade 100% abused Ruth sexually as well as mentally and physically. She flinched every time he asked her to come close to him, he wanted a blonde prostitute not a brunette (and said so to her suggestively), the scene where he got in bed with her in the middle of the night demonstrated all the classic signs -- him walking in silently (no permission given), her waking and freezing in fear as she waited for him, him getting into bed without commenting (so this was something fairly frequent). And then her giving him the long kiss on the lips after his death.