Beth was a jerk.

I agree with you completely. I can't imagine anything more bitchy than sending a baby announcement to your husband's ex-girlfriend (that you don't keep in contact with) who also happened to miscarry your husband's baby years before. If you're so concerned about someone's well-being, a simple "Hi, how are you?" would have made sense. But then, it is a movie, and in movies women invite ex-girlfriends to their baby-naming ceremonies out of the blue because they are kind. Doesn't happen much in real life.

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Beth and Mavis are the exact opposite

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The beauty of Beth is we don't get to know who she really is. She may have been messing with Mavis or it could just be part of Mavis' delusion, it wasn't clear. If she was a saint then so be it. In any case, it didn't really matter because Mavis never had a chance against her.

You're correct, of course, but the writers demonstrated no understanding of the tacit irony they created, no suggestion that they intended to portray Beth Incorporated as anything other than an emblem of enviable whitebread respectability.

Oh whisky, leave me alone.

I definitely love this thread for at least thinking it possible that Beth knew what she was doing. At least a nice attempt at thinking of another possibility.

I personally believe that the movie would be far more likely to show that at the end of the day both Beth and Mavis are two sides of the same coin. They both want to stay/or in Mavis' case return in the small-town bubble because for Mavis it was her glory days where she was the queen bee, the big fish and for Beth it is were she knows that she has a community behind her, friends to relive their glory days as they move on (what else would the band be but that?). The difference is that Mavis cannot move on and Beth is moving on but not in the way that previous generational adults would have: she still wants to rock out, pump and dump etc. They are probably both jerks in their own right but the difference between the two is that Mavis it stems from her inability to grow out of her "glory days", her self-centeredness, selfishness and for Beth it comes from feeling vindictive because she wants to stick it to the "queen bee" not only for herself but those who were screwed over by Mavis.

But then I think for me all I think is that who wouldn't want to stick it back to the person who made your life hell in high school, who made your friends' life hell in high school? I think most people would definitely have had that thought running through their head. I believe in Beth's case she simply knows how to keep it as inward thoughts as opposed to actually lashing out, scheming etc.

However I do believe that the film leaves it ambiguous enough so that a person brings whatever they want to the film and leave with whatever they want. If people want to believe that this is a story of good versus evil, or saint versus sinner then the story is that of a pious, innocent Beth who only did what she did as what was expected her in small town civility to show how down-trodden, horrible, selfish, self-centered Mavis was in high school and her inability to "grow" up hence her writing Young Adult novels. I think that people are shades of gray, everyone has an agenda, everyone has deep down thoughts of selfishness, vindictiveness etc however most people know how to keep it as mere thoughts or move on and some like Mavis clearly have problems.

Basically regarding the baby announcement I personally see Beth typing the emails as a person would because of civility but I can imagine her having inward thoughts maybe a small smirk of victory to know that she got Buddy and Mavis didn't. However because she has a life, has moved on yet still wants to live out her glory days it does not fester much more than that... the way it goes for most people.

Inviting her to make fun of her seems like a paranoid theory but it explains the biggest open questions:

Why does the wife sends the photo of the baby to the ex? IIRC the email also read sth like "come to see it"...

Why is first concert song (which she dedicates to his husband) "the song" of him and his ex?

The actress who played in 'Observe and Report' said it- people in small towns are jealous of those in the big city (Minneapple). I can somewhat relate to Mavis. I left a small town and I hardly speak to anyone who's still there. They don't call, email, inquire- nothing. They're so jealous that the only news that would be interesting is if I died. Sometimes the city is glamorous because it's unknown- but everyone in the city wants to leave on the weekend. Checkout downtown Chicago on a Sunday afternoon. All tourists, mostly. Conversely, the folks in the country want to go to the city once in awhile. Humans tend to covet what they don't have or at the very least 'check-in' to make sure the other side isn't living better. It's cruel and pathetic, but that's how people are.

Mavis had to go home, however, to realize how short-sighted she was for being so shallow and esp how she has chosen to deal with the miscarriage by self-destructive behaviors.

I did NOT like that she gave Patton Oswalt's character a 'mercy lay'- that was too predictable and Cody must have been running into a case of writer's block at that point. Maybe it was the studio to make it racy by showing Theron naked, I dunno. It was in the poorest of taste and did nothing to advance the story.

"There's no body to batter when your mind is your might" -Fiona Apple “When the Pawn Hits”