“These are the moments you can’t miss, right?” a contented fellow mother wistfully remarks as she watches children list what they’re thankful for during the Fall Festival (calling it a Thanksgiving Festival is no longer PC, along with making confections that might have nuts or gluten in them). Although Beth (Christina Hendricks) is there in body, the spirit of her rotely responding, “Right,” after her own daughter cites one of the things she’s thankful for being that her mother is no longer working so much so that she can play with her, is a half-hearted attempt at telling herself she really feels that way. For after recently deciding to quit the rush of working for Detroit crime lord Rio (Manny Montana), Beth is trying her best to return to the more tranquil ways of her pre-FBI investigated existence, when being a housewife (even if an above and beyond one) was enough for her. Yet now, trying to go back to that lifestyle for the sake of her family (or so she would like to believe) feels hollower than it ever did. Which is perhaps why she throws herself head-on into the project of planning out the menu and decorations for the Fall Festival with such gusto: so as to talk herself into her own enthusiasm.
The other two mothers are naturally convinced her passion for the project is genuine, for they themselves couldn’t imagine having avidity for anything else, least of all money laundering and drug smuggling. As for Beth, on the other hand, it’s all she can do to drum up rushes–including at a craft store where she shoplifts some off-brand Chapstick just to feel something. As if the absence of satisfaction from the entire attempt at playing the part of Betty Stepford couldn’t be any more lacking, a glance at the food table reveals that none of the gourmet items she so meticulously decorated are present, but instead, a series of cheap plastic-containers filled with even cheaper dessert fare from Kroger. The affront is damaging to Beth on several levels, for here she had poured her time and talent into something so middling–something the other mothers should have gotten on their hands and knees to thank her for–and all she gets in return is a slap in the face (once more strongly disproving that dharmic theory about what you put out into the universe being returned).
As the other mothers explain to her that, in the end, they simply couldn’t take a chance on little Jimmy or Johnny or any other [insert 1950s name here] child having an allergy to nuts or gluten, Beth walks away wordlessly–though assured that all of her baked goods have been safely packed away in Tupperware for her to take home, which she does. There are no words for the silent suffocation of a Midwestern housewife, after all. Expected to take the abuse and the degradation of it all without at least the benefit of a payday like the one Rio can provide her with.
Setting the last massive stack of Tupperware on her counter, Beth loses any final shred of Stepford wife control, heaving the stacks at the sink as she rips open the lids to shove all of her hard work into the garbage disposal, the same place she’s allowed most of the pieces of her life to go in. As Public Memory’s “The Line” plays (think: major Radiohead vibes), the intensity of her vitriol escalates, with rage turning to tears as she stabs at the disposal with a wooden spoon. It’s all just so fucking dissatisfying without, at the bare minimum, the thrill of committing a crime. The thing, Beth is starting to realize, that she’s best at. Especially since blending in with the other basics of the mother squad resulted in this–she being too rebellious with her devil-may-care attitude about potential allergic reactions. Finally pausing to turn around, a cakey crumb fleck stuck in her hair, she appraises the wreckage and ruin of her kitchen, filled with dismembered Tupperware. Resolve washes over. Damn, that felt good. Just as it will feel even better to detach herself once again from the suburban scene when she goes crawling back to Rio. Would that the other mothers had such an outlet to turn to.
