'Good Behavior' Season Finale Preview: 'Will the World's Best Liar Have to Tell the Truth?'
Good Behavior‘s first season comes to an end tonight on TNT as we find out what happens now that Letty has accepted he FBI’s offer to reveal Javier’s handle in exchange for the promise that custody of Jacob would be awarded to her. Co-creator Chad Hodge talked with Yahoo TV about last week’s penultimate episode and teased what we can expect in the season finale.
Juan Diego Botto told us that you were able to share Javier’s backstory about his younger brother Santino with him when you were filming the pilot. Did you know from the start that Letty would eventually ask Javier to kill Jacob’s biological father, Sean, which he would refuse to do?
Chad Hodge: Yes. By the time we were shooting the second episode, we had really planned out the entire season. We had almost eight weeks in the writer’s room before we started shooting the second episode, after the pilot. We really broke the whole story of the season as one big story rather than going episode by episode. So yes, I knew the whole thing, which really helps for laying in setups and payoffs and things like that.
Letty slept with Sean as she went on a bender after talking to Javier on her phone in the motel room. Why? Was that just her self-destructive behavior?
It’s sort of a callback really to the end of the pilot when she’s in a motel room. Basically, she spends a lot of the pilot in a motel room with booze and meth. So at the end of the pilot, at her lowest points in life, Letty can be found in a motel room, drinking. She’s self-destructive, drunk, angry, [wants] revenge in a way, like, f–k you to Javier. And it’s also that there is a spark there. You can sort of see why she was with Sean at one point, you get that there was an attraction there, this destructive attraction. There’s something about this man that she’s helpless around and she’s attracted to.
One thing that was very important to me with the Letty/Sean relationship is that you believe she was with him at some point. Obviously, it’s a very different chemistry from her chemistry with Javier. It was very worrisome for me, actually, because as we were filming the show and the fantastic chemistry between Michelle [Dockery] and Juan [Diego Botto] was so clear, I thought like, “Well, what guy are we going to cast for Sean that we’re going to believe that she was with him, because how can you beat the chemistry Letty had with Javier?”
I loved how calm Javier was when he called her to say goodbye when she was in the diner. He didn’t call her out on catching her in bed with Sean. He didn’t feel the need to be vindictive and cruel.
He absolutely has real feelings for her. He’s heartbroken. If this whole story were told from Javier’s point of view, it’s like, he has to look out for himself. He’s like, “What am I doing with this hot mess of a person?” And not that he’s not a hot mess, I mean, come on, he’s a hit man. If you looked at all the elements of being with Letty, it’s not easy. To then walk in and find that she’s slept with the very guy that she asked him to kill the day before… He’s like, “I’m out.” There’s no point in arguing with her. “I’m out.”
What can you tease about the finale? I assume we all know Letty well enough to guess that she’s not going to let Javier go down without a fight.
The thing for Letty is that she does whatever she needs to do to get what she wants. Literally, she takes things, she just steals them if she wants them. If she decides that she still wants Javier, which she does, she’s going to try to get all the things — which is why the last episode is called “All The Things.” She’s going to get her son, but she’s also going to try to get Javier.
The problem is, that would, in the end, probably require her telling him the truth, which Letty is not that great at. She’s really great at lying, but she’s not great at telling the truth. Really what the last episode thematically is about is: Will the world’s best liar have to tell the truth?
The Good Behavior Season 1 finale airs Jan. 10 at 9 p.m. on TNT.