Tex
From Red vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles
- "I wouldn't say I'm mean. I'm just paid to do mean things."
- —Tex
- "But you like it."
- —Tucker
- "I think it's important to like what you do."
- —Tex
| Freelancer Beth Alison "Tex" | |
|---|---|
| |
| Statistics | |
| Name: | Freelancer Beth Alison "Tex" |
| Full Name: | Beth Allison |
| Affiliations: | Blue Team, |
| First Appearance: | Episode 10 |
| Armor Color(s): | Black/Steel |
| Occupation(s): | Freelancer (formerly) |
| Relative(s): | Church (boyfriend) |
| Armor Enhancement: | Cloaking |
| Voice Actor: | Kathleen Zuelch |
Freelancer Texas[1] is a main character in Red vs. Blue. She is voiced by Burnie Burns in her initial appearance, and Kathleen Zuelch thereafter. Of the eight main characters, Tex was the last to appear, not debuting until Episode 10.
Though she is associated with the Blue Team, she is not an official member, but rather a mercenary paid to help them. Her back story and previous affiliation with fellow Blue Team member Church are key elements in the plot. Her common nickname is Tex; according to Church, this is because she is from Texas, and her freelancer codename mirrors this. With her Special Operations training, she is the most competently lethal member of the Blood Gulch cast, with the possible exception of Sheila (who is literally a tank). Although most of her kills can be attributed to O'Malley.
[edit] Role in Plot
Some time before the events of Red vs. Blue, Tex was part of an experimental program that implanted artificial intelligence (AI) constructs into the suits of soldiers to enhance military performance. Other known members of this unit are Wyoming, Washington and York. According to Tex, everyone in the unit was codenamed after one of the 49 then-remaining US states (apparently Florida no longer exists). Her Freelancer code name is Texas (although stating it was Nevada in a sarcastic response to a stupid question ). [1]She is also Church's ex-girlfriend, and were close to being married once, but Tex's unfaithfulness and overall attitude ruined that. It is also apparent that she has known Church since at least high school. In her missions, she uses a voice distorter to make her voice sound like a man's.
Tex first appears in Church's flashback about how she killed all of the Blues on Sidewinder (except for him). When she appears at Blue Base, she terrifies Tucker and Caboose, while using the latter as a target. During her assault on Red Base, she sticks a grenade to Donut, and manages to knock out both Grif and Simmons, but is cornered by Sarge and Lopez, the formed uses the butt of his shotgun to knock her out, thus damaging her voice distorter. The Red are very surprised to find out they were almost defeated by a girl. As she repairs Sheila to attack the Reds, Church and the other Blues make a plan to keep her her to remove the AI from her, but when she completes the repairs and begins her attacks, she is killed by Donut, who throw a grenade at her from halfway across the canyon. Before she dies, she thanks Church for removing the AI.
In the miniseries that was focused on Tex, Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind, it is revealed that the AIs were to be removed after the program was shut down. However, Tex's AI, O'Malley, resisted removal and Tex, with O'Malley still in her system, escaped the facility. Somewhere in the time gap between her escape and Red vs. Blue, Tex became a freelance mercenary. She is hired to assist the Blood Gulch Blue Team after Church is killed, but is captured while staging a one-man offensive. Church's ghost and the other two Blues, Tucker and Caboose, are then forced to break her out, at which point Church reveals that Tex is his former girlfriend. In exchange for breaking her out, she agrees to aid them for the duration of their time in Blood Gulch. It isn't long, however, before she is killed by the Red Team rookie Donut, in revenge for previously injuring him. As she dies, she tells Church her AI is gone.
Unlike Church, she does not reappear immediately after her death. Season Two begins three months after her death, and she does not appear until halfway through. When she does, she reveals that O'Malley has jumped into Caboose, and she is now driven by an urge to destroy him. To do this, she reasons that forcing him out of Caboose's head while everyone in the canyon has their radios off will eliminate him. She enlists Church's aid in driving O'Malley from Caboose's head and sends Tucker to turn off the radios of the Reds, but their plan fails after everyone forgets about a medic named Doc, who was previously abandoned by both teams and knew nothing of the events taking place. Doc then becomes the unwilling host of O'Malley. After forcing the AI out of Caboose's head, Tex disappears until the end of the season, when she possesses the body of a robot built by Sarge as the condition of a surrender. Throughout Season Three, she again devotes herself to eliminating O'Malley, while at the same time protecting Tucker from Wyoming, whom O'Malley has hired. Even when propelled into the future, she is driven to destroy the AI.
In season 4, when the Blue Team is blackmailed to aid a lone Alien on its own quest, she joins his group in the hopes of gaining a reward. However, when the team finds an aircraft which Tex declares as her own, it is shot down by Wyoming, and Tex pursues him in a fury. This is followed up in Out of Mind, where she still pursues him, again to find O'Malley and destroy him. She follows him to O'Malley's fortress and, aided by York, now an infiltration specialist, breaks in, only to find O'Malley absent and Wyoming, with two others, lying in wait. The two foot soldiers are quickly dispatched, but York is killed by Wyoming. Tex then corners Wyoming (with help from York's then-fading AI Delta) to find out details of where O'Malley has gone and who he has jumped into.
Tex makes an appearance in Episode 86. Sneaking up behind the Blue Team and launching an attack on them as she isn't sure who exactly O'Malley infected. The Blues manage to convince her that they are aware of the situation, but Tex ends up becoming enraged once more when she realizes that the Blues have a new female recruit.
Sometime thereafter, Tex - along with Church and Tucker - stage an offensive on the Red Team's base after being ordered by Vic to do so. After taking a non-lethal shot (to her ass) from Tucker using Church's sniper rifle (and mistakenly beating up Church in the process), the three capture the empty base. Tex is then radioed by Caboose with information regarding O'Malley's current whereabouts. According to Caboose, the AI had jumped into "the Blue leader," whom Tex mistakes for Church, and holds him at gunpoint. He explains that he was never officially promoted to the position after Captain Butch Flowers' death.
She later planned to work with O'Malley to win the war by controlling Junior and the aliens, but she was presumed dead after Andy detonated and their ship crashed in Valhalla.
Since Washington revealed to Church that he is not a ghost, but the AI Alpha, that probably means Tex is also an AI, possibly modeled after the personality of the woman who was lost by The Director when he was younger, considering Tex's relationship with Church, and the fact that Church is modeled after the Director himself.
In the trailer for Recreation, Tex reappears, although it is unclear if she survived the crash or just took her AI form. At the moment, she appears to helping Church find a way for them to come back to life.
[edit] Kills
On Sidewinder, Tex killed Jimmy and the rest of the blues except for Church. She killed Jimmy specifically by beating him with his own skull. She nearly killed Donut by throwing a grenade at him.
 Jimmy |
 Donut |
 Great Freezing Plains Massacre |
[edit] Relationships
Even though Church states that she has always been "a rotten bitch" even without O'Malley's influence, and she does often insult Church, Tex is somewhat tolerant of the rest of the Blood Gulch cast and their various eccentricities, although Episode 56 suggests that she has a habit of punching them in the head while they sleep. When she first appeared, her presence terrified Tucker and Caboose, but they have since come to regard her as one of the group, and she has referred to Tucker at least as her friend. Tucker has even gone as far as to hit on her like he supposedly does with other girls, though this usually does nothing more than invoke her to hit him. When irritated, however, she will put the offender at risk- when the Blues were searching for the Alien early in Season 4, unsure if it was hostile, she put Tucker at the forefront for making a sex joke followed up by his catchphrase, which Tex finds annoying.
Her most prominent relationship is that with Church. The pair share a love-hate relationship by insulting each other on occasion, yet are constantly aiding each other and dealing with their teammates together. Church apparently still harbors romantic feelings for her as he refers to her as his girlfriend in Episode 33 and Episode 77, even though he has previously claimed she is not a faithful girlfriend; he claims she used to steal money from his wallet and sleep with other men. It seems that Tex also still has feelings for Church, on one of her character profiles on the list of what she likes Church is the only thing on it; he also shows up on the dislikes part of her profile. According to character profiles on the DVDs, it was Tex's influence that led Church to join the armed forces.
When Sister joined the team Tex became angry (and perhaps a little jealous) that the others had gotten a new girl while she was only gone a few weeks. Later Tex took Sister aside and told her that even though the others in Blue Team were idiots and jerks that they were her idiots and jerks and that if she tried to become more popular than her Tex would talk about Sister behind her back and turn everyone against her, though at the time Sister seemed to take this as just girl talk.
One of the most telling parts of Tex relationship with the rest of her team is in the 100th episode of the series when she and O'Malley talk in Caboose's head in order to talk about O'Malley's plan to use Junior to win the war. Tex asks him that she had his word that none of them would be hurt, possibly speaking about the others in Blue Team. And finally her last line in the series is when Church tells her to not work with O'Malley she says in a oddly gentle voice, "Goodbye." In the Recreation trailer Tex was seen talking with Church, convincing him that there was a way to bring them back from the dead. She seems to have patched up her relationship with Church to an astonishing degree, with Church going so far as to thank her for her support.
[edit] Themes
[edit] Attitude
The fact that Tex is generally regarded as mean is played on at various times throughout the series. To cement the issue early on, Tucker asks if, without O'Malley (whose name was unknown at the time), she is just a "sweet, down-home girl", and Church replies that she "was always a rotten bitch". She does not hesitate to do any task, regardless of how brutal it may be, as long as it benefits her. She is the only one who does not regard herself as mean, explaining to Tucker in Season 1, "I wouldn't say I'm mean, just that I'm paid to do mean things". When Tucker presses the issue by saying she enjoys it, she brushes it off, claiming it's important to enjoy what one does. The Blues, having gotten used to her, touch on her mean disposition less and less recently, though it is still evident to them on occasion. The Reds, however, refer to her as "that mean chick from the Blue Team" when she's not around, and the Blue team has admitted to calling her "Bitch-pants McCrabby" except in the case of Caboose who justifies himself by saying that he just calls her "Mrs. McCrabby". Even the AI program touches on her aggressiveness; when she narrates her flashback to the event in "Out of Mind", she claims that the AIs were designed to make the subjects faster or stronger, or in Tex's case, "just plain meaner". By Recreation, though, she seems to have greatly mellowed out, perhaps as a result of her "death".
[edit] Payment
As a freelancer, she will jump at any task if the price is right, no matter how simplistic the task may be or how small the cost (she was eager to rip off Grif's arms and pummel him to death with them when Tucker offered her 10 dollars to do so). Not all of her payments have to be monetary; Tucker explains to the Reds, during their truce, that she will exchange favors instead of money, as she did for the Blues in Season One. However, money is her primary motivation to get tasks done. When the Alien's team depart the fortress, Church and Tex remain behind, until Church explains that quests usually result in a reward of some kind, at which point he turns around and finds her gone. Church then says to himself, "I should have seen that coming..."
When she catches up to the team, she strikes a bargain with the Alien, agreeing to aid him in exchange for the quest's reward; he promises her Tucker's sword, which she had previously coveted. She agrees to this and joins the team. Soon after, however, it is revealed that the Alien has not been entirely honest, as it becomes apparent that the sword is primarily a key, to Tex's chagrin. Moreover, the Alien takes possession of an aircraft which no one else was informed of, and Tex decides that, because of their deal, the ship is, by right, hers. When this, too, is deprived of her, thanks to a rocket from Wyoming, she flies into a rage and pursues him.
[edit] Sexuality
Despite being in a heterosexual relationship with Church, several of the other characters in the series have intimated that Tex is a lesbian. This slight has either been unintentional or as an insult. When Donut returned to the Reds in pink armor Tucker and Caboose believed that the other team had a girl and were jealous. When reminded that Tex is female Tucker replied that they wanted a "girl-girl." The bomb Andy also insulted her in this manner. He would make sarcastic quips about her supposedly butch characteristics, annoying her to the point where Tex threatened to detonate the bomb if he did not shut up.
[edit] Inconsistencies
In the song played at the end of episode 33, the lyrics state that Tex's name is Beth.
- "Have you heard the story of a girl named Beth, now known as Tex? Her life's tale is a bloody trail and her name fits like a glove. Her daddy sighed as she slammed the door, she'd said to him, I'm Beth no more, my life's dream is too kill for green, but first I'll join the corps. Her daddy said, you're just a girl, what makes you think that you won't sink? My name is Tex and like a hex, my playground is the world." This could also mean that the complete name of Tex is Beth Alison or Alison Beth, which also state the poor naming ability of her parents.
- There has been much debate over Tex's codename being either Nevada or Texas, due to Tex initially declaring herself to being Agent Nevada being contradicted numerous times later in the series by other Freelancers. In the sponsor-only forum on the Rooster Teeth site, it was stated that,
| Checked with Burnie on this issue, here's the official word: Tex is not Agent Nevada, she is Agent Texas. Tex's line in Episode 41 was meant to be sarcastic. - Ben[1] | 
|
- In the beginning of the series Tex was able to flip Sheila over so she was back on her tracks. Yet later when they were assaulting O’Malley’s base she was unable to lift the bomb (Andy). This may be because at this point Tex was in possession of a robot body. Maybe Sarge made the robot only as strong as a normal human to try to give the Reds an additional Advantage over the Blues... or Andy was really heavy.
- Tex was in possession of Omega at the time, who was responsible for running some of her equipment, possibly her strength. This could be why the Meta was able to perform such ridiculous feats of strength once having acquired it (such as lifting a Warthog and hurling it at Grif along with a whole lot of other objects, including multiple containers and a comm tower).
- In the beginning of the series Tex was able to flip Sheila over so she was back on her tracks. Yet later when they were assaulting O’Malley’s base she was unable to lift the bomb (Andy). This may be because at this point Tex was in possession of a robot body. Maybe Sarge made the robot only as strong as a normal human to try to give the Reds an additional Advantage over the Blues... or Andy was really heavy.
- When Tex was alive, her armor gave her the ability to turn invisible. Yet when Sarge builds her a new robot body she still has the ability as shown when attacking the Zealots while trying to help the alien on its "sacred quest". She also had this ability when fighting Wyoming, and trying to stealthily take him out. It is possible that she made sure to recover the upgrade sometime after her death, or that Church might have taken it, then later given it back to her. She does not have this ability from Reconstruction and after because the Meta had taken her cloaking. (Maybe when Sarge was building her a new body he grabbed the the Invisibility part from her old armor and put it in her new one)
[edit] References
| Blue Team |
|---|
| Leonard L. Church · Lavernius Tucker · Michael J. Caboose · Tex · Frank DuFresne · Butch Flowers · Sheila · Junior · Kaikaina Grif · Andy |
| Freelancer |
|---|
| Carolina · Maine · New York · North Dakota · South Dakota · Texas · Washington · Wyoming · Recovery Six · Recovery Nine |
