Lesbians! Witchcraft! Murder! Milkshakes! It’s Time for the Riverdale/Sabrina Crossover Event

Part four of Riverdale’s five-part television event — otherwise known as Rivervale and furthermore also known as the best fever dream I’ve ever had — arrives like a comet this week. A celestial event blurring the lines between reality and magic. Something to be watched with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. The night sky and Riverdale — two ever-expanding presences full of secrets and wonders. And that’s especially true for this Rivervale series-within-the-series, which pushes the show’s world into strange and topsy-turvy lands. This Riverdale/Sabrina crossover gay extravaganza truly has it all: axe-murder, witchcraft, romance, body swaps, and cosmic phenomenon. And gay kissing! Lots of gay kissing!

If I were to describe “The Witching Hour(s)” in just ten words, they would be this: Gay witches do murders in three different, interconnected timelines — HOT. More specifically, Jughead in his Rod Serling drag sets up the premise at the top, as he has done for all of these Rivervale tales: “The Witching Hour(s)” features three Blossom women, their stories echoing through time. There’s Abigail Blossom of 1892, headmistress of the Thornhill Academy For Girls, a finishing school. There’s Poppy — full name POPPY SEED BLOSSOM — of 1957, a purveyor of herbal potions for the town’s housewives, who she also has over to weekly salons where they discuss topics like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, naturally. And there’s the Cheryl Blossom we know, chaotic queer teen turned chaotic queer adult, who also runs a school for girls of sorts, though I’m not totally sure what exactly it’s a school for. Archery and witchy hijinks? Also, all three of these Blossom women are queer. Mainly because…they’re the same person? More on that later!

I’m a sucker for multi-timeline narratives (as evidenced by my Yellowjackets obsession), and Rivervale pulls out all the stops here in terms of over-the-top wardrobe, set dressing, and aesthetics for each of the three. It’s a triple-layered period piece, really. Because even “present day” Riverdale is ambivalent about its time period (and that has been especially true of the Rivervale episodes, which are folklorish in scope and design, further blurring notions like time and geography). In fact, in the lovely opening sequence that bounces between Blossoms, it took me a second to differentiate Abigail/Poppy/Cheryl, but the hair turned out to be the key (half-up curls for Abigail; a long bob with bangs for Poppy, and the usual soft waves for Cheryl).

The three interwoven tales begin at 8 a.m. on the morning of the day Bailey’s comet is set to pass over town. We watch as Abigail/Poppy/Cheryl ready themselves before their vanities, and assuming their morning routines take about an hour, that means Poppy Blossom’s boozy salon starts at, like, NINE IN THE MORNING? I suppose it was the 50s!

In the present, Cheryl reads Poppy and Abigail’s stories to Nana Rose, who is on her deathbed. Apparently, this is part of some spell. Because yes, this episode officially does establish Cheryl Blossom is a witch, a sentiment that’s presented as if we surely already knew this, and you know what? Even though it has textually been vague, of course I knew this. Even back in season one before magic descended upon Riverdale, I took one look at Cheryl Blossom and said…that’s a witch.

Let’s go through each of their stories then, shall we? In 1892, Abigail is visited by a mysterious and alluring stranger named Thomasina Topaz, played by Vanessa Morgan and presumably an ancestor of Toni. Thomasina is seeking a teaching job at Abigail’s school and also wants to shake things up by teaching the girls about science and other things beyond etiquette. Abigail asks Thomasina if she is married, and Thomasina offers a hesitant no. “Good,” Abigail replies. “I have no need for women with husbands.”

Abigail and Thomasina briefly skirmish over Thomasina’s forward-thinking philosophy about educating the girls, but Abigail rolls over easily, visiting Thomasina who’s casually stargazing through a telescope in the parlor of Thornhill. Astronomy is, in and of itself, gay. And the fact that Thomasina says in a previous episode “a comet is like a poem” ???? Incredible. Abigail tells her she’s right, which is in fact the best form of foreplay. They share my favorite kind of on-screen kiss, which is just a quick peck, a pull back to look deeply into each other eyes, and then going back in for a full-on makeout. The kiss-stare-kiss maneuver! Love it!

Thomasina isn’t technically lying about her marriage. She indeed has no husband. Because she has murdered him. Constable Keller (ancestor of Kevin) comes a-knocking, interrupting Abigail and Thomasina’s post-coitail bliss. He is in search of a MURDERESS (yes, the actual word used) by the name of Thomasina Topaz. Riverdale’s version of u-hauling is when a lesbian starts dating someone and then IMMEDIATELY harbors them as a fugitive no questions asked. That’s exactly what happens here, Abigail faking smallpox to get the constable to leave them alone.

Abigail asks Thomasina for the truth, and it goes like this: Thomasina had an arranged marriage with a cruel man who controlled and abused her, and one day she realized if she didn’t kill him first, he’d kill her. So she murdered the bad man and skipped town, seeking refuge on the steps of Thornhill. “Stay here. Stay with me. Forever,” Abigail says, a very chill and normal thing to say to a woman you’ve been romantically involved with for three seconds.

But this is, as all the other Rivervale chapters have been, a horror story. A horror story brimming with romance and camp but a horror story nonetheless. So something bad must happen. And it does. Fen Fogarty (ancestor of Fangs) shows up to inform Abigail her beloved brother has died at battle. He presents a letter supposedly from her brother stating that his dying wish is for her to marry Fen. Um! Thomasina is like this sounds weird! And indeed, Thomasina and Abigail go snooping and find lots of evidence of forgery as well as occult objects as well as a stack of death portraits, which include Abigail’s brother. “Fen Fogarty is not just a scoundrel. He’s a warlock,” Thomasina observes.

They’re interrupted by the monster himself, wielding an ax that he uses to threaten Thomasina’s life (he calls her a “saucy sapphic witch,” which like, the t-shirts make themselves!) and pressure Abigail into marrying him. DUN DUN DUNNNN.

Over in 1957, Poppy Seed Blossom is just chilling, throwing salons, giving potions to her housewife friends. Velma (1950s-ified Veronica) is bored with vanilla sex with her husband. Poppy’s got a potion for that! Tammy (1950s-ified Tabitha) wants to work the register at Pop’s, but her husband won’t let her. Poppy’s got a potion for that! Bitsy (1950s-ified Betty) wants to leave her marriage to Jack (1950s-ified Jughead), who’s pressuring her to have another child even though her first pregnancy was traumatic. Bitsy’s got a potion for that, too, offering Bitsy birth control but also…a KISS.

We’re all thinking it, right? ARE Bitsy and Poppy cousins? Some liberties are taken when it comes to the whole lineage thing in the sense that both Mädchen Amick and Lili Reinhart appear in these 50s scenes and are seemingly playing contemporaries rather than mother-daughter. Also, the eventual conclusion that Poppy is actually Abigail (again, more on that later!) suggests that even if they are related, it is extremely distant.

But I digress. Jack and Bitsy show up on Poppy’s doorstep, and Jack makes Bitsy tell her she was wrong and that she’s actually quite happy in her marriage and definitely does want to have another child with Jack. It’s very upsetting! Free Bitsy! Jack takes things even further and tells Poppy if she ever interferes with his marriage again, he’ll kill her. He rallies the rest of the men in town, and they all show up on her doorstep to tell her to stop talking to their wives, essentially. But Poppy Blossom will not be told what to do!!!!!!! Unfortunately, Kirk Keller (another one of Kevin’s cop ass ancestors) seizes the opportunity to accuse Poppy of communist sympathizing, seizing Thornhill and locking her up in the single-cell jail in town…indefinitely? Bitsy visits her in a very devastating scene where she reveals she is indeed pregnant and then, brainwashed by Jack, turns on Poppy. “You don’t know anything about me,” she says to Poppy, and it’s like a knife, because if anything, Poppy is the only person who really knows Bitsy and sees her.

i…have…thoughts

At last, the night of the comet. Abigail marries Fen in a red dress and veil. Jack shows up at Poppy’s cell and begs her to help Bitsy, who has gone into labor, is having a complicated delivery, and has insisted the only person who can help is Poppy. If she helps, Jack promises to free her from this cell. Poppy goes to the hospital and delivers Bitsy’s baby, the comet throwing red light over them. But when Jack and Kirk come back, they tell Poppy she might not be going back to her cell but that she’s now on indefinite house arrest, doomed to haunt the halls of Thornhill. Bitsy waits a smooth year and then uses poison — Poppy’s last gift to her — to murder her asshole husband.

Meanwhile, Abigail ax-murders Fen, Borden-style (and in fact outright asks Fen if he has heard of Lizzie Borden mere seconds before hacking him up in bed). When she goes to Thomasina to tell her the good news, she finds a corpse and a death portrait. Fen already killed her. And in another final act of cruelty, he staggers into the room, bleeding out but still slightly alive, using his dying breaths to cast a curse on Abigail. He dooms her to immortality: “May you remain unloved and alone for all your miserable days.”

Cut to the present when a doorbell interrupts storytime with Cheryl and Nana Rose. Ding dong the witch is here! Sabrina Spellman shows up for the final minutes of the episode. “Youknow I’d do anything to help a fellow witch,” she says, hugging Cheryl and also informing us that their covens play in the same SOFTBALL LEAGUE? I’m going to need an entire episode about that (or, at the very least, a 10+ chapter fic). They then perform the ritual the entire episode has been leading up to: a transference spell.

You see, Cheryl Blossom is not actually Cheryl Blossom. She is Abigail Blossom, whose immortality forced her to construct new identities through the years. Earlier in the episode, the scene of Thomasina and Abigail’s first kiss cuts to Poppy zoning out with a little smile on her face while talking to Velma, almost as if she were remembering the kiss herself. BECAUSE SHE WAS. Poppy is Abigail and Cheryl is Abigail, and their curse is finally broken with Sabrina’s help, Abigail’s soul going into Nana Rose’s so she can die and join Thomasina in the afterlife, a reunion we indeed get to see when the two lovebirds frolic in a graveyard together. Which also means…Nana Rose’s soul has entered the body formerly known as Cheryl Blossom?

misty quigley vibes

“Happy-sad endings are the best,” Sabrina says. And I’m like wow, true. But also like…wait what just happened?

Surely this isn’t retconning all of Riverdale. Rivervale has its own internal logic that exists outside of the main show’s (often paradoxical) internal logic…………right? Wrong! Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has been very adamant about the fact that everything that happens in Rivervale is canon. There will be consequences in the main universe. And you know what? Yes. Cheryl Blossom is a witch across time. This I believe whole heartedly. And since Thomasina is also established as a witch, I choose to believe Toni Topaz is a bisexual witch legend in the main story as well. It also means the softball league for witches is CANON.

Besides, this isn’t the first time Cheryl has suggested she might be cursed and, specifically, love-cursed. She says as much, over and over, on regular-style Riverdale. Perhaps other people will have different interpretations, but I actually find the narrative in “The Witching Hour(s)” to be an interesting play on/challenging of a queerness-as-curse trope. Because, really, the character’s queerness is not at all the source of horror or what the curse is rooted in. She was queer long before she was cursed. The curse was placed on her by a vengeful man, and even despite it, she found ways to access queer love even while cursed. She was told she would live life unloved, but haven’t we seen otherwise? Cheryl and Toni might not be together in the present, but they did, at one point, love each other. The ability to subvert a powerful curse in the name of love? Baby, that’s gay!

All in all, the episode views like fanfiction fantasy brought to life tbh. And I think it works as a standalone story as well as fitting into the larger arc of Rivervale, this strange and imo successful experiment Riverdale‘s been running that boils the show’s most basic themes down into little horror-fantasy mythologies. The experiment concludes next week with “The Jughead Paradox,” the series’ 100th episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJLfWCMYV0

On Riverdale, Cheryl Blossom Lives in Her Own Lesbian Gothic Fairytale Now

It’s the season five midseason finale Riverdale recap, and every character is just in a show of their own! Five different scary stories to tell in the dark make up “The Pincushion Man,” and I am left wondering what the hell is going on in this cursed town!!!!!

Cheryl Blossom’s Lesbian Gothic Fairytale

After briefly turning against Hiram last episode, Reggie returns with his tail between his legs, eager to prove his worth. Hiram Lodge’s latest scheme? Mining for palladium. And the Blossom maple groves are supposedly full of it.

Cheryl and Minerva skip through the maple groves, and frankly, it’s a tease! We’re made to believe for all of five seconds that Cheryl could just have a nice day with her new art girlfriend, frollicking in some maple groves. Cheryl tells Minerva that they’re going to “harvest our sweet, sweet sap,” and it’s not a euphemism! They’re literally gonna harvest some sap. But turns out the maple trees are running dry, which Nana Rose attributes to the family curse. She claims that Cheryl cannot be happy because then there will not be any maple. Kinda fucked up, Nana! Let Cheryl be happy!

Cheryl is very unhappy, because Reggie has Nana sign over all the maple groves. She figures they’re cursed so might as well sell them Hiram’s way. But Cheryl informs Hiram and Reggie that the contract is null because she had Nana Rose legally declared senile years ago. My favorite part of this is that Cheryl just walks into Hiram’s office with zero introduction and then marches out? Does he leave all of his home’s doors unlocked? Is there no security at all? Isn’t he, like, an organized crime leader?

Reggie’s next plan is to just burn the maple grove down. And he’s nearly successful in taking down all the trees as well as Thornhill, but at the very last moment, Penelope Blossom returns home. Because there has been a prison break! More specifically, Hiram has orchestrated a prison break at his own for-profit prison in order to further his goals of terrorizing Riverdale. So Penelope returns to the Blossom ancestral manor to warn Cheryl that a blaze has been set upon their maple groves and is encroaching upon Thornhill. Nana Rose says it’s the curse at work again, and she suggests that the only way to break it is by “sacrificing the interloper,” as in Minerva, and Cheryl and Penelope look at her like they will absolutely do exactly that, but she gets out of there before anything can happen.

Next, the Blossom women turn to prayer. It’s a whole occult moment as they call upon a higher power to CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF THE WIND? And it works?! While all of this is unfolding, there’s dramatic organ music, red and black silk and lace, candlelit shadows. It’s aesthetically delightful and narratively nonsensical, and even though I do hope that Cheryl can one day just chill out, her V.C. Andrews-ass life is admittedly very entertaining.

Archie Andrews’ War Drama

This is without a doubt the most boring plotline. As a reminder, Archie Andrews is a military recruiter at a low-income high school now, which is fucked-up, but I’m sure he’ll be onto a new hobby/career path any day now. His old commanding officer shows up to tell Archie that he’s nominating him for a war medal, which Archie thinks is weird because his last mission in the military was pretty disastrous and deadly. A call from a reporter confirms that his CO is being investigated for sending Archie’s men on a dirty mission. Archie seeks guidance from reformed mercenary Uncle Frank, who says it sounds like his CO might be using the medal to further a cover-up. Blah blah blah.

Things pick up steam a bit post-prison break when a bunch of inmates show up to destroy the high school. You see, Hiram is not too happy that Riverdale High is hosting a parent-teacher conference, because if there’s one thing Hiram hates, it’s teenagers living their lives. Perhaps some TV villains would merely sabotage the evening by, idk, setting a small fire at the school or messing with the plumbing or something. But NO, Hiram has paid the escaped inmates of his prison to violently attack the high school. Archie and Uncle Frank have to defend the high school from these attackers. It’s just like war! Or something! Archie also stands up to his former CO. Good for him?

Veronica Lodge’s Divorce-Horror Story

Surprise, surprise: Chadwick does not want to sign divorce papers. Veronica decides to fly back to New York after he blackmails her with pictures of her kissing Archie. But she also admits that she wants closure. On the night that their helicopter went down, Veronica had wished that Chad would die. They fought at a party, she secretly wished him dead, and then they almost died in the accident. She felt guilty, so she stayed with him despite the obvious flaws in their marriage. Now that she’s seeking a divorce, he’s getting in the way, but so is her guilt. It’s like Marriage Story but with more generational wealth and helicopter crashes (I have not seen Marriage Story).

Chad attempts to turn up the charm as soon as she arrives in New York. He’s layering it on real thick, staging a romantic candlelit dinner with Chinese takeout, playing their wedding song, reminiscing on the good ol’ days. There is, of course, a catch. He has no intention of signing the divorce papers at all. And he’s armed with much more leverage than the blackmail photos. He made some bad investments and used Veronica’s jewelry shop to do some shady business deals in an attempt to recoup his losses. Yes, to the surprise of literally no one, Chadwick Gekko is an evil finance bro with a big ego and little to no actual skills. Now he’s effectively holding Veronica hostage.

Jughead Jones’ Writer’s Block Shroom Trip

Jughead’s agent lets him know that “Pop Culture Weekly” (lol) wants to run an excerpt from his latest project. They usually reserve this honor for authors like Stephen King—to which Jughead says “screw you, Stephen King.” But Jughead hasn’t really been writing so much as thinking about writing. His “alien abduction as metaphor for trauma” premise isn’t exactly fun, sexy fodder for a glossy mag. So he decides to do what he did the last time he experienced writer’s block: psychedelic mushrooms.

More specifically, maple mushrooms? He asks Tabitha, who he shares a kiss with at the very start of the episode, to basically babysit him while he trips, and she’s like “ha ha i think you should maybe not do this?” But he moves forward with it anyway, determined to embrace his inner traumas and then turn it into art? It sounds dicey!

His ex Jess shows up, which makes Tabitha finally agree to keep an eye on Jug while he does the mushrooms, because she figures that’s better than him welcoming his chaotic ex back into his life. Jug’s trip is all fun and games until he’s indeed confronted by the ghosts of girlfriends past. He hallucinates about both Betty and Jess, and it’s clear that he never got over Betty cheating on him and then slowly poisoning their relationship over the course of senior year. His relationship with Jess definitely sounds like it was very far from healthy, hinging on binge-drinking and drama. Jughead supposedly gets some writing down amid all these nightmarish hallucinations, but AT WHAT COST? Because also, Tabitha returns to the bunker to find that he has escaped the handcuffs she put him in in an attempt to get him to actually sit at his desk and write, leaving behind a bunch of blood. We’re made to believe that the mothmen got him once again.

Betty Cooper’s Dysfunctional Family Nightmare

I have saved the absolute most terrifying story for last, because wow is there a lot going on here! Betty’s sorta-boyfriend-sorta-boss (like seriously, what is their deal?) is in town, and things get very disturbing when he casually lets slip that he has been studying Betty and her family and WRITING HIS DISSERTATION about the Coopers because he is simply fascinated by the nurture vs. nature implications of Hal, Charles, Chic, and Betty and the supposed “serial killer gene” that runs in the fam. As a reminder, Chic is not actually related to them. He is Betty’s fake brother, but he is in a romantic relationship with Betty’s real brother Charles. And they are both serial killers.

To make things even creepier, Dagwood and Juniper, whose ninth birthday it is in this episode, have been exhibiting some worrisome behavior. They pushed a classmate down the stairs, and he got badly injured, and when Betty points out to the twins that he could have died, they barely react.

Glen should have, uh, maybe mentioned to Betty that he was writing a dissertation on her literal family before pursuing a personal relationship with her—to say the least!!!!! Also, as Betty points out, teen girls are literally dying in Riverdale, and all he seems to care about is his dissertation! Glen is bad.

But he still doesn’t deserve what ends up happening to him later in the episode. While some of the escaped inmates decided to get the hell out of town and others decided to do Hiram’s bidding, Charles and Chic thought this was the perfect time for a family reunion. They show up at the Cooper household with guns and generally threatening auras. “Let’s just get through whatever this is,” Alice tells Betty, as if this is merely an inconvenient situation where, like, a random uncle going through a midlife crisis shows up uninvited to a family birthday party with his third wife. And not, you know, two actual murderers crashing a children’s party!

Chic and Charles want to get married, right here right now. So the twins’ birthday party quickly becomes a gay wedding? Alice is conveniently already ordained, because she was intending on marrying them at the prison. I am! Losing it! Mid-wedding, Glen shows up, so then the party changes gears once again, as Chic and Charles propose a little game. There really is some Billy Loomis and Stu Macher energy to all these scenes—only instead of homoerotic undertones, it’s all right there at the surface. Chic and Charles introduce the Pincushion Man game, which consists of everyone taking a turn stabbing Glen. Fun stuff! Juniper’s first up as the youngest, and Betty interjects to say that hey maybe asking a nine-year-old to stab a man might cause some permanent damage. Charles agrees, because I guess even these two serial killers have some personal morality rules. In any case, I think Betty only marginally spared Juniper some trauma, because these twins have already been exposed to some very messed-up stuff at THEIR OWN BIRTHDAY PARTY. The kids are not alright!

Betty ends up pulling off a very good horror-action moment where she does indeed stab Glen to go along with Chic and Charles’ deranged game but not enough to kill him and then knifes Chic to death and shoots Charles. RIP to Betty’s fake brother and Betty’s real brother. Long live the serial killer gene.

This is without a doubt the worst and most upsetting family gathering that has ever happened on this show, and I’m including the time Cheryl tricked her family into thinking they had eaten……..a human being. Between the dark-fairytale-esque Blossom curse and the Cooper slasher movie vibes, this episode is indeed steeped in generational trauma and the horror of familial dysfunction. I honestly love when episodes of this show feel like a smashing together of several genres and distinct stories that play around with different aesthetics and vibes. Riverdale’s universe is always its most immersive at its most surreal and campy.

“Riverdale” Episode 509 Recap: Betty Cooper Enters Chaos Mode

This week’s Riverdale is centered on a football game rather than a key party, and football games are inherently less exciting than a key party, but alas, I’m kind of into the Friday Night Lights moment we’re having—even if Archie and Veronica are hardly the Coach and Tami Taylor that they WISH they were!!!

The thing about the Riverdale Bulldogs is that they’re bad. Like really bad. Like haven’t scored all season bad. The cheerleaders would much rather be practicing for their own competitions than cheering for them (fair!) and no one is filling out the stands. Archie’s plan to rejuvenate town spirit via a winning football team is not working out so well. Veronica has one solution: Offer the first Bulldog to score a touchdown $10,000. Personally, I find this to be a very weird incentive—not because I don’t think any of these kids could definitely use $10,000 but because this is just kind of classic asshole rich person shit masquerading as philanthropy? If ten grand is such expendable money for Veronica, then in my humble opinion, she should probably just give ten grand to every Bulldog player regardless of how they perform on the field! Her little offer reminds me so much of that moment from the Succession pilot when Roman offers up a million dollars to a kid if he can make a homerun.

Veronica does have one other solution in addition to teasing these kids with her wealth: a pancake breakfast at Pop’s! Tabitha’s up for it and also agrees to make the diner the team’s official sponsor. Veronica taps Cheryl for some maple syrup, but Cheryl only agrees to help out if she can be the center of attention on game day. Sounds about right. The pancake breakfast draws a crowd, and Archie meets the mother of Derek, the Bulldogs’ sole star player, and she brings up that Derek is being stifled at Riverdale.

Sure enough, Hiram ends up poaching Derek for the Stonewall Prep Stallions, and who can really blame Derek? Archie agrees that playing for the better team probably gives him a better shot at a football scholarship and ticket out of Riverdale. Reggie shows up at the pancake breakfast to threaten that the league wants Riverdale to withdraw itself. This prompts Veronica to make a wager with her father that if the Bulldogs can simply score then they will have to be allowed to stay in the league. If they fail to score, they’re out. Hiram Lodge is practically SALIVATING at the notion of making a bet with his daughter, because this is a man who loves destruction and chaos. He goes so far as to ask Reggie to physically sabotage the Bulldogs, and even though Reggie literally calls a bunch of teens “losers” at the pancake breakfast, there are apparently limits to his henchman identity: He says he won’t break a kid’s legs for no reason. At least that’s something. Hiram benches Reggie for refusing the order, and just like that, Reggie’s back to cheering for the Bulldogs. Alliances change swiftly on this show.

Jughead informs his agent that he is writing about aliens but that what he is REALLY writing about is a town’s collective trauma. Meanwhile, he also has a student inexplicably named Lerman Logan who has written a very disturbing short story about abduction, being locked away, and torture. He makes a meeting with Mr. Weatherbee about it, but Weatherbee insists that he has properly vetted Lerman’s parents and that they don’t seem abusive. Weatherbee does not seem to be doing a very good job here. It’s clear that Lerman is dealing with something dark, and when Jughead approaches him about it, he admits that the story is based on recurring dreams but denies that he has experienced any kind of trauma.

Betty gets the call from Glen that the blood at the phone booth is the same blood type as Polly. She doesn’t know how to break it to Alice, who is gradually unraveling. When Betty suggests that she go back to her support group, Alice just pours more wine. Things are looking very bleak at the Cooper household. So Betty seeks out an expert in familial trauma: her tragic cousin Cheryl Blossom. Betty asks if Cheryl was relieved when she found out that Jason was dead, and Cheryl says that while it was soul-crushing, it was still better than not knowing because it gave her a chance to grieve. Still, Betty makes the split decision to lie to Alice, telling her the blood was a different type than Polly’s. Alice turns around almost immediately, waking up the next day to make a bunch of food for her support group. She’s brighter and lighter. But her hope is based on a lie. And the consequences of that lie do come back to bite Betty, whose reckless and impulsive behavior in this episode suggest that she’s spiraling to a dark side.

Listen, I rarely like therapy scenes on television, but at the same time, I’m simply begging these characters to get a therapist! Cheryl plays grief counselor for Betty and then decides to be a couples therapist for Kevin and Fangs, because she feels like it’s her fault that they’re splitting up. Indeed, her manipulative key party led to their breakup, but it also merely uncovered some ongoing issues between them. In any case, Cheryl gets nowhere with them, because she is not a licensed therapist and because her motive for helping them in the first place is selfish: She feels guilty for her actions last episode, especially because it means Toni’s upset with her. Fangs does bring up that he feels like Kevin is ashamed of being gay, and Kevin denies it before storming off. Again, real therapy might do some work here.

Kevin decides to blow off some steam at the sauna where he sometimes cruises, but he misreads a situation and ends up getting beaten up by a homophobic man. He then finally opens up with his father about what’s going on and why he feels like he had to end things with Fangs. Kevin indeed does struggle with internalized homophobia and shame, but he had to come to that conclusion on his own. He’s able to trace some of it back to a memory with his mother: They were back-to-school shopping, and she made a comment about his body that hurt him, and he found validation from a guy in the woods where he subsequently cruised for casual sex for the following years. His internalized fatphobia and homophobia are interconnected, and he has constructed a narrative for himself that is based on these harmful assumptions. He doesn’t think he deserves what he has with Fangs. It’s all very devastating to watch unfold, and Casey Cott gives a deft performance. But I do sometimes wish Kevin had a storyline that amounted to more than just Homosexual Trauma.

Finally, Jug’s mothmen path crosses with Betty’s serial killer path. Even though she lies to Alice about it, she tells Jug the truth about Polly’s likely fate. He decides to help by introducing her to Old Man Dreyfus, but the meeting’s a bust, because Betty clearly doesn’t buy any of his musings on the mothmen and alien abductions. There’s a vast chasm between Jug and Betty’s current obsessions: Jughead is deep in the well of a conspiracy, and Betty’s trying to save young girls from getting hurt. Jughead’s curiosity about the mothmen is almost exploitive, like he’s approaching it from the perspective of a novelist rather than as someone who is genuinely trying to help people.

Betty’s hardly the hero here though. The stakes are higher for her, but her emotions are also clouding her judgement. She decides to go full chaos mode and shows up at the truck stop to beat up guys for soliciting young sex workers. She’s on some vigilante justice shit. She even goes so far as to tie a guy up and point her gun at him, but just as she’s about to possibly make a choice that will upend her life, she gets a call from Jughead that one of his students is missing. Lerman is somewhere wandering the Lonely Highway by himself. Jughead was already reprimanded by Weatherbee and Lerman’s parents for over-involving himself in and making assumptions about the student’s life, but he’s seemingly onto something by being worried about Lerman. Betty and Jughead find him, and he seems confused and scared. Suddenly, Betty does somewhat believe all this mothmen stuff. She thinks it’s too much of a coincidence that people keep going missing and losing memories along the Lonely Highway.

Lerman’s parents tell Weatherbee, Betty, and Jughead that the boy’s a sleepwalker, which explains the fact that he gets injured a lot. They also admit that they lock his door at night, claiming it’s for his protection. And if all of this is true, shouldn’t they have maybe mentioned it in the first meeting? They also casually mention that he disappeared for a week years ago and has no memories of it, so yeah, something extremely fucked-up is happening along the Lonely Highway, and it probably isn’t aliens, but it IS significantly contributing to the town’s collective trauma.

Betty’s arc in this episode, while both frightening and sad, is the standout storyline. There’s a stunning close-up shot of her as she makes the decision to tap into her dark side, finally pushed to the edge by this wild chase to figure out what happened to Polly. Her actions don’t ultimately line up with her mission. She says she wants to protect these young girls, but all she does is beat up some men for her own personal catharsis. But it’s all a very exhilarating depiction of a character in crisis. Her problems are a lot more real than Veronica’s and even Archie’s. This episode engages with zoomed-in personal trauma—like Kevin’s—but also that collective experience that Jughead’s talking about. Riverdale’s wounds run deep. Both Betty and Jughead are in over their heads. The town has been undone, and what does that mean for the people still left in it? Betty, Archie, Veronica, and Jughead all left the town, but it then called them all back, and now they’re stuck in its web again. The whole town is like a haunted house.

The Bulldogs do score at the big game by the way. Britta makes a touchdown, and I’m embarrassed to say that I CRIED about it?!?!? I really am feeling some Friday Night Lights emotions up in here!

“Riverdale” Episode 508: Let’s Have a Key Party

This week’s episode of Riverdale revolves around a key party. Let me repeat that: This week’s episode of Riverdale revolves around a KEY! PARTY! Specifically, it is a key party organized by Cheryl Blossom—who has, unsurprisingly, a chaotic ulterior motive—and set in the hallowed haunted halls of Thornhill. Because you know what makes perfect sense as a little evening activity between former high school friends who have become near-strangers in the past seven years? A key party in a candlelit mansion built on the blood money of the maple industry. I love this show so much, and this season has been a gem.

There are a few other things going on besides the central key party. There’s the matter of Jughead Jones being interrupted by visions of an alien-like creature—this season’s fabled mothmen—when he’s simply trying to lecture his students about Slaughterhouse-Five (the lengths the writers are going with this depiction of Jughead as a stereotypical lit bro are SENDING ME). The academic who specializes in extraterrestrial phenomena that Tabitha and Jug found last episode shows up only to be informed that the barrel supposedly containing an alien body has gone missing. She suggests that Jug might actually be experiencing repressed trauma rather than an alien abduction, and she offers up a whole ass support group for people whose trauma takes the shape of extraterrestrial encounters, which Jughead initially scoffs at before eventually agreeing to attend.

There’s also the matter of Polly’s continued disappearance. Alice sits the twins down for a little fun family craft time (making posters for their missing mother) and is generally losing it over the course of the episode. She tells Betty that Polly called her and described being trapped in some sort of small metal encasement, which Alice immediately assumes means “spaceship.” Betty’s skeptical though. The chances of Polly being alive are slim, according to her FBI brain. Betty does dream that Polly comes back to them, but it’s just another iteration of her TBK nightmares, which are indeed some of the scariest sequences this show has ever done. I’m not ready to deep-dive into the horrors of Betty’s TBK trauma!

And neither is Betty. Due to her life being an actual slasher movie, she is eager to escape, which she has been managing to do by banging her childhood crush Archie. Honestly I love this arrangement for them? Betty’s just using him from sex, but she’s pretty upfront about it, so it really seems ideal for everyone involved! But Archie’s not feeling it lately, especially since he still has residual feelings for Veronica. And Archie can also see that Betty does need emotional support in addition to a sex-scape from her troubles. Betty doesn’t want Archie to be that person because she worries her darkness will infect him, so everyone’s pretty much on the same page and they agree to revert back to close friendship without the benefits. This all seems like a shockingly healthy communication of boundaries, which is NOT par for the course for any of the characters on this show, so good for them.

Now, THE KEY PARTY! Here’s how it comes about: Toni, Fangs, and Kevin gather everyone to make a very important announcement, which is that Kevin and Fangs are getting married and that the baby is all of theirs. Yes, Toni, Fangs, and Kevin are going to raise a baby as a hot and queer nontraditional family unit. I love it! Cheryl does not. Now, I do understand that it can be difficult to watch an ex move on and make major life changes and decisions that no longer have anything to do with you, but Cheryl’s reaction, even for her, is completely outsized in a way that perplexes me. Mainly because I’ve never fully understood why Cheryl hates Kevin so much???? Is there something I’m forgetting about? I’m still kinda mad at Cheryl for how mean she was about not letting Kevin and Fangs be part of the prom court, and idk, she seems particularly incensed that Toni chose THEM to have a baby with. Kevin and Fangs seem like they could be good parents, and they care about Toni, so why is Cheryl so caught up on the situation to the point of reverting back to her Chaos Queen manipulations?!

When she initially confronts Toni about it, Toni admits that she would have liked to tell Cheryl about it sooner but that given all the tension between them as Vixens co-captains, she hasn’t been sure if they’re even capable of friendship. Fair! Cheryl says that while Toni gets her insta-family, she’ll be withering away at Thornhill by herself. And it’s like, sure, babe, you can feel that way about the situation, but it sounds like something to talk to your (non-existent) therapist or old ass grandma about?! The way in which Cheryl is making this all entirely about her and attempting to guilt-trip Toni for her happiness underscores just how correct Toni was last episode in calling Cheryl out for being selfish.

Do I think it’s possible for exes to be friends? Yes of course. But Toni and Cheryl right now are a perfect example of how it can become very Bad. Cheryl is still viewing all of Toni’s choices as if they all still have something to do with her. She sees Toni starting a new family and thinks it’s yet another person abandoning her. It’s not at all fair, but it does track for this character, whose abandonment issues are deep and bountiful.

And Cheryl once again deals with her hurt feelings in the way she too often does: She decides to inject chaos into everyone’s lives. Hence: KEY PARTY. In an effort to show Toni that Fangs and Kevin are not a suitable pair to raise a child with, she invites the whole gang to her home for some sexy drama, making some callbacks to the spin the bottle party from season one. Cheryl frames the key party as a last hurrah for their youths, because you know, now that they’re all mid-20s they’re practically IN THE GROUND.

Everyone has zero follow-up questions to the key party invitation and, hey, I applaud their willingness to try new things. But things inevitably end up getting pretty awkward pretty fast. Jughead gets way too drunk, so Tabitha has to take him home and not in a sexy way. He recently confessed to her after running out of the support group that when he was partying a lot as a celebrated new author in New York City, he ended up blacking out frequently. Whole swaths of time are lost to him now. That’s frightening and upsetting, and I’m interested in the ways that the show is probing all the consequences of Jughead’s rise to literary fame. He has hurt other people and himself, and he has clearly been using alcohol to dull the effects. There’s a brief moment between him and Betty at the key party where they just kind of say hi, and the lack of familiarity and comfort there is a little funny but mostly sad. They don’t know each other at all anymore, and they can’t help each other. Obviously Cheryl is being over-the-top in stressing how “old” they’re all getting, but I do think this season has been very good at capturing the more negative parts of nostalgia. These characters have all changed so much, and they find themselves butting up against their old selves.

Things also become a little awkward when Kevin encourages Fangs to bring a date to the key party. In the first scene of the episode, we see Kevin hooking up with a trucker, but we’re soon informed that Kevin and Fangs have an open relationship. But now that Fangs isn’t really working as a trucker anymore, he proposes that they close the relationship ahead of their marriage, and Kevin agrees, but he still thinks Fangs should bring one of his trucker hookups to the key party just so they can have one more fun night of nonmonogamy.

The date Fangs brings ends up being the same guy Kevin hooked up with, which isn’t as uncomfortable as the fact that Kevin is working through some major boundary issues. He tells Betty that he isn’t really sure why he wanted Fangs to bring a date, and it seems rooted in jealousy, secrecy, insecurity, and a bunch of other things that Kevin is going to need to work through if he’s going to be a good partner to Fangs. All of this comes to a head after the key party (Fangs gets matched with Reggie by the way, and even though Reggie concludes eventually that he’s straight, he’s willing to try things out with Fangs) when Kevin tells Fangs that he doesn’t think he’s ready to get married. It’s a pretty gutting moment, because Fangs is so caught off guard, and because Fangs points out that their relationship rules have always been dictated by Kevin. If Kevin wants to keep cruising, Fangs is supportive of that. He just wants to start this family with Kevin, but Kevin’s not ready.

This is exactly what Cheryl wanted. Even though it’s probably good that Kevin is articulating this now versus later, it’s a bitter truth that her chaotic masterplan worked, shattering the perfect picture of Toni, Fangs, and Kevin’s queer family bliss. When Cheryl and Toni inevitably end up together at the key party—while I was hoping for a pregnant hookup if I’m being completely honest—she reveals that she had a nursery made for Toni at Thornhill. In addition to the nursery looking like a gothic torture chamber, her presumption that Toni would want to live with her is absurd! Toni points out that this would be like Thistlehouse all over again. Cheryl effectively trapped her there, and now she’s trying to do it again. I do think Cheryl cares about Toni, but I also think that Cheryl wants Toni to be hers in a way that smacks of codependency and control. It never occurs to Cheryl that she could probably be a part of Toni and the baby’s lives if she were to ask and if she were to let it be more on Toni’s terms. Instead, she just further poisons their relationship. And unfortunately, I think Cheryl might once again chalk this up to her “curse,” which if anything, is a curse she has placed on herself by calling it a curse. Cheryl needs to realize that her own actions play a role in the consequences she experiences. But also, now she’s making out with Minerva, and I for one enthusiastically embrace this Art Dyke Power Couple.

Veronica invites CHADWICK to the key party, and everything that is wrong with Chadwick can be discerned from the fact that he uses “females” as a noun to refer to women. When Veronica draws Archie’s keys, Chad promptly flips the fuck out. Earlier in the episode, Katy Keene calls Veronica to tell her that Chad was spotted out and about with the heiress to Spiffany’s in an overt attempt to make V jealous, and V responds with, well, a taste of his own medicine and posts a pic of herself with Archie. So yes, Chad is upset when she draws Archie’s keys. And yes, Veronica is stoking the flames of his jealousy by playing games instead of, you know, advocating for herself. She meets his manipulations with more manipulations, and I guess when that’s your model for romantic love, it can be a hard pattern to break! She and Chad leave the party together, but she tells him she wants to get a divorce and eventually makes her way back to Archie, who tells her about his previous arrangement with Betty, but that’s all fine. Varchie is back together again. Mostly, I’m surprised it took this long for Veronica to leave Chad. I mean early on in this episode, she gets a text from him on her laptop and literally slams it shut and says to herself, in disgust, “not NOW, Chad!” She has clearly hated this dude for a minute. And rightfully so. Here’s to hoping that Veronica can learn that love isn’t a power struggle!

In the end, Jughead agrees to work through his past. Archie and Veronica are going to see where their residual feelings for each other lead. Kevin and Fangs are up in the air, which means that their situation with Toni is, too. And we finally hear from Polly for real. She calls Betty and Alice and asks them to come get her along the Lonely Highway, but when they arrive, all they find is a busted bloodied payphone. Given that and the fact that another body of a young woman (not Polly) has shown up at Swedlow Swamp, Riverdale clearly has another monster on its hands, begging the question: How can one town be such a hotspot for serial killers? And with that horrifying inquiry, I’m off to see if there are already any fanfics about this key party out there.

“Riverdale” Episode 507 Recap: Cheryl and Toni Are Frenemy-Exes Now, and it Rules

As a reminder, last week’s Riverdale ended with Jughead and Archie’s home fully on fire. Between that and the random other fires popping up at the high school and elsewhere in town, there is an arsonist on the loose!!!! And Hiram gutted the fire department as part of his ongoing attempts to wipe out the (newly unincorporated) town of Riverdale so that he can build SoDale. So Archie kicks this episode off with what is instantly one of my favorite pieces of television dialogue in recent memory:

Indeed, Archie spends much of this episode singlehandedly attempting to build a volunteer fire department. His army pal Jackson, who has been struggling to reintegrate to civilian life, shows up to help out. And Fangs and Kevin initially turn down Archie’s request, citing the fact that they do not know anything about fighting fires and therefore should probably not be fighting fires, which checks out. Archie’s solution? TEENS. The students from his RROTC class all eagerly volunteer to fight these rampant fires, and I just gotta say, I actually find it hilarious that our core four are so eager to use their students to serve their own interests. Like Archie is just like yeah okay so long as you get a permission slip, you kids can come help me do the very dangerous work of fighting fires for zero payment. And meanwhile, Veronica is out here teaching teens that money is fake and capitalism is a scam (at least, that’s my takeaway from her lesson) by enlisting them to help build her jewelry store instead of taking a midterm. This is honestly EXACTLY what I expect from Veronica, Archie, Betty, and Jughead deciding to become teachers with zero training.

Veronica’s econ lesson also involves her printing fake money called Riverdale Dollars with her face on it (designed by local reclusive lesbian artist Cheryl Blossom) in order to simulate stimulating the economy. So the kids are (kinda?) paid for their labor with these fake dollars which can then be used at local businesses around town and then eventually converted into real value via the $50,000 investment Veronica makes for this little experiment. I don’t know, it all seems like a lot of work just to basically say THE ECONOMY IS RIGGED. And Veronica is a little too smug about her “valuable teaching moment” when she basically tells her students that by overprinting the fake dollars they are now IN-DEBTED to her. But she is the She-Wolf of Wall Street so I suppose this is to be expected. Anyway, the teens are cleaning up the town now.

Veronica also helps Archie out in his fire department endeavors by flying in her buddy Bernardo Brigsby (from the short-lived Katy Keene) to teach the teens about fires. He is basically like “never run into a burning building alone” so then Archie Andrews naturally seizes his first opportunity to run into a burning building alone. He does it to try to save Earl, a former vet and resident of Sketch Alley who ultimately does not survive. Jackson reacts by grabbing his rifle and attempting to serve some justice to Hiram Lodge, but Archie stops him with a monologue. In the end, Archie does get his fire department. Fangs and Kevin come around to the idea, and the former fire chief is newly inspired to fight back against Hiram’s attempts to pummel the town. We will see how long this pet project of Archie’s lasts. How many clubs/organizations/businesses/hobbies has he started since the beginning of the series? Veronica’s other “economic contribution” to the town is a brand new firetruck, which she says will be paid for with the profits from a Firefighters of Riverdale calendar. Sure!

Jughead is out here spending his Riverdale Dollars on double shots of whiskey, because he is not merely a tortured artist now but a tortured artist who’s also investigating an alien conspiracy theory. Jug and Tabitha sit down with Pop, who tells them about a time fifty years ago when something weird went down at the diner. We flashback to that evening, and WHAT in the Stranger Things?! I was legitimately spooked and delighted by this whole flashback, during which the lights flicker at Pop’s before going out completely and then the jukebox just turns itself on and the gumball machine empties itself and a bright light appears! Pop says, casually, that some people thought it was aliens but that other people thought it could be military testing from a nearby base.

Either way, it’s creepy shit, and he points them toward Nana Rose who was also there that night which leads to even creepier shit. Nana Rose has not historically been a reliable source of information, but Jug and Tabitha interview her anyway, and she tells them, also casually, that she has an unidentified BODY sitting in a maple syrup barrel that she suggests is a mothman/extraterrestrial lifeform. She then ships them said barrel, and Jughead and Tabitha plan to tap a scientist who specializes in the weird to come check it out, but those plans are somewhat thwarted when the barrel goes missing during what is possibly an alien abduction of Jughead OR just a dream. Who can say.

Now, I have some questions about preserving bodies, and if you’re a mortician or a scientist, please weigh in. CAN a body be “preserved” in a barrel of syrup?! My guess is…no. But somehow this episode has forced me to contemplate the logistics of preserving bodies TWICE, because Alice and Betty Cooper also get called into Dr. Curdle’s office where he tells them that the body of a girl found at Swedlow Swamp is from three years ago, so it can’t be Polly. But he also says that the swamp preserved the body, and I have to ask what is in this swamp! Do swamps have preservation qualities?

The swamp, by the way, is Daddy’s Swamp, by which I mean it is Hiram’s swamp. And he doesn’t want anyone nosing around on it because it might interfere with his plans to make the turnpike an essential part of the SoDale development, so he literally kicks the Cooper women off of the grounds even though they are searching for a missing person. They only end up finding Polly’s phone, but Betty learns of another missing girl, whose body also shows up. Three missing girls is a pattern, according to serial killer catcher Betty Cooper, and when she utters those words, her face lights up with what I can only describe as her Serial Killer Catcher Face. It’s a strange and unnerving mix of terror and intrigue.

Betty’s OWN serial killer the Trash Bag Killer aka TBK is back in business according to her FBI boss (who she was also sleeping with), and there have already been two victims. Betty is simply not ready to face down that personal trauma though, so she tells her boss-boyfriend that she’s sticking in Riverdale to handle things with her missing sister and a possible serial killer. The second body found belongs to Margaret, a young girl who Toni had been helping out before she went missing a few years ago. Together, Toni, Alice, and Betty uncover that at least 21 girls have gone missing from Riverdale, which clearly indicates a very big and real problem! I have a feeling that Jughead and Tabitha’s mothmen investigation is eventually going to collide with the Cooper’s serial killer investigation, but at the moment, Jug and Betty are not sharing notes.

I’ve saved the best for last. After years of waiting, I finally have been given a very special gift: ANOTHER RIVERDALE DANCE-OFF. I…can’t tell you how many times I watched the original Cheryl vs. Veronica dance-off from back in the day, but the number is certainly greater than the amount of years I’ve been alive on this planet. In the latest dance-off, Cheryl storms into the gym to seize back her Vixens. Toni very clearly used the Vixens as a way to coax Cheryl out of hiding, and it has worked. Cheryl challenges Toni to a dance-off, but Toni opts to use a proxy (personally, I’m sad we didn’t get to see a pregnant Toni dance because I’m sure it would have been amazing). Just a grown-ass adult having a dance-off with a high school student—very normal stuff here. But the dance-off is truly a Riverdale Moment for the books. It ends in a tie, so Cheryl and Toni plan to share the Vixens, which does not go over very well because Cheryl in general has trouble with sharing, especially when it comes to the Vixens. She plans an extra practice behind Toni’s back, yielding this absolutely perfect line which might beat out the firefighter one from before:

So Toni is successful in luring Cheryl out of her haunted manor, but her plan also kind of backfires, because after all her talk of wanting to undo her family’s villainry in this town, Cheryl’s back to acting like a crimson despot. She’s on a total power trip. Toni confronts her and says that she needs to stop being selfish and needs to start being invested in the town beyond just her thirst for power. I’m kind of loving Cheryl and Toni’s vibe in the post-time jump episodes. There’s more chemistry to their dynamic here, which is not full-on rivalry but still brims with tension, than there was in the later stages of their romantic relationship. Toni sees Cheryl better than anyone else can. She knows that she has suffered greatly, but she also knows that she tends to overcompensate for her own suffering by making others miserable. This is the most fun Cheryl has been in a while. She’s back to speaking like a Shakespearean villain, as seen below. But she also has some more emotional moments. Toni is right to call her out. But Cheryl’s pain is also palpable. Maybe these two simply work better as frenemies-slash-competitive-exes.

Frightening at times and hilarious at others, it’s another chaotic but great episode of Riverdale that absolutely justifies the time-jump this season.

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Riverdale Episode 506 Recap: We’re Far From the Shallow Now

Okay, now that we’re a few episodes into it, I think I can say pretty definitively that Riverdale’s seven-year time jump was exactly what this show needed. I think the show is currently at its best self which, yes, means it’s very chaotic and soap operatic, but the character arcs are interesting and the blend of noir, horror, and gothic themes and aesthetics are ON POINT. It’s sexy; it’s campy; it’s reality-bending in the best way. Riverdale‘s having fun again, and it shows.

Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead start their first day as untrained teachers at their former high school, trading out their beloved student lounge for a teachers lounge because they’re all grown up! Archie’s “teaching” RROTC, but his main mission in this episode is reviving the school’s football team. Reggie’s coaching a successful football team over at Stonewall Prep, elevating the players to county hero status which means they can pretty much do whatever they want including but not limited to operating as Hiram’s henchmen and setting Riverdale High on fire! Because according to Hiram, if the high school thrives, Riverdale as a town might grow back around it like weeds, soiling his SoDale plans. He says this to his right hand man Reggie while the two dramatically eat subs and Doritos—my favorite product placement moment on television in a minute. I love the idea of someone trying to seem imposing and conniving with Dorito dust coating their fingers!

Archie finds the players for his team but not the money, because Toni earmarked a sports budget for the Vixens. Miss Bell—the school’s secretary—calls Cheryl to inform her about this Vixens revival, because apparently both Cheryl and Hiram have Miss Bell on some kind of retainer where she’s supposed to keep them apprised of the goings on at the high school. Cheryl’s busy with her new business venture: counterfeit paintings! An appraiser named Minerva Marble—this week’s Miss Crouton in terms of wild Riverdale names—verifies a painting of Jason that’s apparently worth a lot of money and Cheryl intends to swap it out for her fake. Not really sure where they’re going with this artworld heist plot, but I’m into it.

Cheryl’s very sad about the Vixens existing without her though, and she also throws Archie out of her home in this episode when he attempts to appeal to her grief over Jason in order to get her to sponsor the team (yeah, asshole move on his part!). She’s generally not doing great. But she’s also rejuvenated by the Vixen revival, actually leaving her house for once to go to the school and threaten Toni while wearing lingerie under a blazer. Honestly, Cheryl and Toni as rivals might have more fire to it than a resurgence of their romance? In any case, I’m just happy to see Cheryl with some pep in her step, even if it’s the result of her unhealthy attachment to her high school years.

But whomst amongst these characters ISN’T exhibiting an unhealthy nostalgia for the past? Jughead’s deep into his next novel, which is just a lightly fictionalized oral history of Riverdale I guess? Again, I’m very on the record as being into the new iteration of Jughead, especially since the show is having a lot of fun dragging him through the mud. He’s teaching high school English and having trouble getting his students to care at all. They make fun of him for also working at the diner, which yes is very shitty teen behavior, but Jughead’s still coasting on his hotshot one-book-wonder ego.

Which is why I hope Tabitha doesn’t overlook some of his most annoying behaviors…I smell a Riverdale romance in the air, and even though we’ve only just met her, Tabitha is much too smart and independent to fall for Jughead’s moody artist shit! She links him up with a local named Old Man Dreyfus who tells Jughead a story about a bunch of guys working in a mine getting briefly abducted by…mothmen? We’ve had the Black Hood, we’ve had the Gargoyle King, we’ve had evil nuns and a mom who likes to poison people and a gang called the Ghoulies and a drug called Jingle Jangle, so sure, bring on the mothmen!

Back at the high school, Betty’s teaching shop class, tasking her students with taking apart a classic car and putting it back together again. They’re much more interested in the fact that she’s the Black Hood’s spawn though. She’s got a student named Britta who is seen rocking some welding gear and also eagerly joins the football team and NOT TO STEREOTYPE or anything, but I hope we have another queer character here. Betty’s also worried about Polly, who has been missing after we saw her running away from a truck last episode, and Archie’s got that whole football thing going on, so the two decide that they need to provide distractions for each other, which results in them having sex in the shop class car after school hours. I have decided overnight that I am now very pro-Barchie. Betty Cooper deserves a himbo.

Betty’s also still up to some extrajudicial shenanigans. She’s not even an FBI agent yet, but she sure does love to flash her FBI jacket and badge around! This time, she’s investigating Polly’s disappearance, which leads to a shady truck stop where Polly arranged to meet a trucker using NEDSLIST, the Riverdaleification of Craigslist. They find out Polly disappeared somewhere along the Lonely Highway, which is becoming an increasingly more significant location in town, which reminds me that I have zero concept of how big Riverdale is or where exactly things are in relation to each other? Can someone draw me a map?

Speaking of significant locations, we do return to the new and improved Whyte Wyrm (née Le Bonne Nuit) for karaoke night. As a reminder, the last time Whyte Wyrm karaoke happened, Betty Cooper, as a teenager, did a lite strip tease to “Mad World” in front of a packed audience that included her boyfriend’s father. Absolutely one of the top five most deranged Riverdale moments of all time. This karaoke night is a little less disturbing but still absolutely absurd in a different way, because it entails Veronica and her husband Chadwick (more on this demon in a moment) singing a duet of “Shallow” IN ITS ENTIRETY, which makes Kevin Keller, whose go-to karaoke song is the bold choice of “Defying Gravity,” weep. Also, Toni in this scene rocks the Thistle & Spire Medusa bodysuit, which I also own, so I’m basically the Serpent Queen of Miami.

So…let’s talk about Veronica’s worm of a husband Chadwick. He shows up in the middle of her econ class with flowers and insists on sitting in the back while she teaches, and it’s very creepy and controlling! He clearly does not want her out of his sight, and it’s increasingly looking like Veronica’s marriage is very, very bad. Chad plays the role of the supportive husband all episode and then seizes the first opportunity to lord it over her.

When Archie asks them for the money to fund the football team, Chad proposes that Archie work for it, asking him to renovate their apartment. Veronica calls him out for being a dick, and Chad is all HAVEN’T I BEEN NICE TO YOU THIS WHOLE TRIP? Yikes! That’s some textbook emotional manipulation! It’s difficult to decide what the worst part of Chad is: the fact that he hates karaoke, the fact that he says “awesomesauce” unironically, the fact that he hates diner food, the fact that he’s very clearly colluding with Hiram behind Veronica’s back?! Jk, it’s def that last one plus the fact that he is relentlessly possessive of Veronica. Thankfully, she kicks his ass out of Riverdale and asks for a break.

In the end, Betty and Alice don’t find Polly. Tabitha and Jughead are working together to investigate the mothmen. Veronica’s working on opening a jewelry store in town, which kind of just seems like she’s re-gentrifying a town that was already undone by gentrification, but that’s probably an on-brand choice for her character. Archie gets his funding for the Bulldogs from the Gekkos (although Veronica makes a point to reclaim Lodge as her last name after she kicks Chad out…as a reminder, she was Veronica Lodge and then Veronica Luna and then Veronica Lodge again and then Veronica Gekko and now is Veronica Lodge again). And Jughead makes a reference to one of the most hilarious Archie lines of all time, which prompts the question: Now that Supernatural has ended its 50-year run, is Riverdale the most self-referential show on television?

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“Riverdale” Episode 505 Recap: Toni Topaz, at Last, Is a Main Player

Reuniting with high school friends is awkward. I, personally, hate it. There’s a weird pressure to mimic the person you used to be simply because it is easier that way, relying on familiarity to ease the awkwardness instead of attempting to introduce your new self. The mere premise of Riverdale’s seven-year time-jump is absurd, but it’s also a welcome refresh for the series. And the show isn’t glossing over this narrative device as mere surface-level detail. We’re being re-introduced to these characters, who choices and motives are both inspired by the people they were seven years ago but also by the people they’ve become. They’re a little familiar, but they’re also changed.

Ever-the-wannabe-town-hero, Archie Andrews has given his former friends their marching orders: Save Riverdale. They all agree to the job during that initial talk at the diner, despite not really knowing what that entails. And at episode’s end, they wildly agree to place their lives on pause to become teachers at their former high school. But as wild as that is, they all have their own reasons. Betty’s not making much progress on the FBI agent track after being sidelined for her mess up with the Trash Bag Killer, who is still haunting her nightmares btw. Veronica’s locked in a game of chess with her insecure and punchable-faced husband Chadwick, who instead of divorcing she is playing games with, because well that’s the exact model of marriage/love she grew up witnessing thanks to her parents. Jughead’s suffering Second Book Writer’s Block, spending much of this episode staring at a word document that reads Chapter One and…nothing else. Archie’s probably respressing war trauma. So yes, they all have their reasons to stay in their hometown a little longer.

The Riverdale they’ve returned to is similarly fundamentally changed while still showing signs of the town it has always been. Corruption runs deep, Hiram Lodge’s claws sunk deep beneath the flesh of this once quaint town turned horrorscape. The high school’s the latest victim of Hiram’s gutting of Riverdale’s resources, and the episode hinges on a board meeting that will decide whether the school can reopen at all. Please know that this board meeting involves a woman named MISS CROUTON, who we never meet but whose name I have been whispering to myself in a chant ever since I heard it escape Kevin Keller’s lips during a gathering of the Save Riverdale High league (spearheaded by Alice and Toni) that Kevin also says makes him feel like he’s in an episode of Succession which, sure, I’ll give it to you Kevin. Even though the board meeting drama is the least interesting, most meticulously plotted part of the episode.

Some of the things that the board meeting conflict touches, though, I’m very interested in! First of all, it’s great to see Toni Topaz with storylines of her own but also a bummer that it took Vanessa Morgan advocating for herself for the writers to do anything on that front. It’s long overdue. But now Toni’s running things behind the bar and behind the desk, keeping La Bonne Nuit alive and also serving as Riverdale High’s guidance counselor and clearly caring about the youth of Riverdale deeply. She goes up against Hiram about the high school after he attempts to run a hit piece about her in the local paper. She has expanded her role as Serpent Queen to include making sure this town still takes care of its own, even as Hiram threatens to destroy all that.

But my personal favorite Toni scene is when she sits down with Cheryl after Pop’s retirement party and asks her to consider investing money to save the school. For the first time in a long time, this scene between them does not place Toni at the periphery of Cheryl’s arc. She isn’t just side-support for a Cheryl Blossom storyline. If anything, the roles have switched. Toni has the agency and depth here. Cheryl initially declines, worrying that everything she does—even good things—will eventually turn to poison.

The conviction Cheryl feels about her bloodline’s curse is heartbreaking. But Toni also knows she has to do whatever it takes to save the school and that Cheryl represents an opportunity because of her family fortune. She appeals to her past with Cheryl, asks her to do it for her, not for the town. It’s slightly manipulative—not altogether nefarious by any means—but it also brings Toni’s priorities into sharp focus while also unearthing emotional stakes when it comes to her complicated history with Cheryl. Archie thinks he’s Riverdale’s knight in shining armor, but Toni’s the one who has been here on the ground, doing the work to keep this town from being completely decimated by Hiram’s SoDale plans. Toni is crucial to winning the board meeting vote, which is an important if short-lived victory. It’s followed with a successful vote to disincorporate the town, Hiram one-upping himself from the time he placed the whole town under quarantine.

This tension between those who stayed in Riverdale and those who left is palpable throughout the episode, especially when it comes to the Cooper household. Betty returns to a home perpetually covered in laundry in various stages. Alice is harried and frantic and a little cold toward Betty, obviously pretending like things are fine but also making no attempt to hide any of the mess that has overtaken the house. She and Polly are raising the twins together, but Polly’s rarely home, sneaking in at late hours, which leads Betty to almost SHOOT HER after she wakes up from a TBK night terror and hears rustling downstairs.

Put down the gun, Elizabeth!!!!! Archie spots Polly at his old house that the Ghoulies have taken over during his walk-through with Reggie (Hiram’s right hand these days) that Archie requested under the guise of finding drugs in order to kick the Ghoulies out. But Reggie clearly tipped the Ghoulies off, all of Riverdale’s most corrupt forces (Hiram and his SoDale security force, the Ghoulies, Stonewall Prep) in each other’s pockets. It doesn’t matter, because Archie had another reason for the walk-through, which I’ll get into soon.

Wow, recapping this show truly necessitates getting lost down various tangents even when I take very thorough notes! Where was I? Oh yes, Polly. Polly who’s running with the Ghoulies and apparently hasn’t shown up to her server shift in a year. Betty confronts her, but Alice comes swiftly to Polly’s defense, even as it’s clear that Alice knows something’s up. But Polly’s right: Betty doesn’t get to come swooping in and decide all of a sudden to be a sister, to be a part of this family. Betty’s changed and so have Polly and Alice.

Polly and Alice have been forced to change to adapt to their new surroundings, an economically ravaged town with no social services that’s being puppeted by a capitalist monster. Betty is not forged from that same fire, having spent the last seven years in Quantico. She has her own baggage to be sure (being held captive by a serial killer for two weeks takes its toll), but there’s a massive chasm between her and her family, and Riverdale explores this deftly. It actually makes for more compelling drama than the board meeting.

Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and Archie spend much of the episode apart, no longer the core four they once were. They might be working toward a common goal, but they’re doing it for their own reasons. And as a result, the relationship dynamics have shifted. Archie and Veronica share a pleasant but slightly awkward conversation about their new lives, Archie admiring her massive wedding ring and also admitting that he hasn’t been in a relationship since her. Jughead and Betty allude to some voicemail he left her on the night of his book launch that made Betty think he never wanted to hear from her again but that Jughead apparently hadn’t intended as such. Even more so than Archie and Veronica, Jughead and Betty seem almost like strangers to each other now.

And the shifts in the group dynamic opens a new door or should I say opens a new shower curtain? Yes, Betty and Archie have shower sex together in this episode in a way that’s both exciting for anyone who has long shipped these two (couldn’t be me, but I’m happy for y’all) but also sort of hilariously nonchalant. Sure, the sex is stylized with all the indulgent idealization that all Riverdale sex scenes glow with (they have rather seamless, slippery but non fumbly, active and perfectly choreographed shower sex which, even as a fan of the medium, I have to admit is perhaps the facet of this episode that requires the most suspension of disbelief, and I’m including the existence of a woman named Miss Crouton as well as Tom Keller handing police gear over to a group of 20-somethings no questions asked).

But afterward, Betty places it all in the most casual of contexts, saying that they are merely friends, that they’ve acted upon sexual tension that probably existed since they were in high school, that everyone is an adult now and hasn’t been involved with each other in a long time so there’s certainly no point in telling Jughead and Veronica and making it a Thing. I’m not sure where Betty has suddenly found the emotional intelligence to articulate such clear boundaries, but here we are!

Before they get horny for each other, Betty and Archie get horny for violence. The silliest part of the episode involves Archie assembling a vigilante task force—Sweet Pea, Fangs, Kevin, Tom, Betty, and himself—to waltz into the Ghoulies hangout and beat everyone up. Betty and Archie are, like, way too excited to do violence? I am very concerned by this behavior? In any case, it gets the Ghoulies out and also confirms that Betty and Archie indeed still have the bad impulse control of their teens. The Ghoulies are perfectly ghoulish villains, so it’s not that I’m sympathizing with them so much as just wondering what exactly this sneak attack is meant to convey. Betty and Archie meeting Riverdale’s violence with more violence is certainly a statement on where the two characters are at, but I’m not sure the show is actually willing to engage with that, preferring to just make an action montage out of it.

Published Asshole Jughead Jones is still one of my favorite things to come from this time-jump. It is just such a delicious depiction of the brooding, pretentious writer guy who thinks it’s the rest of the world’s fault that he can’t drum up the next great American novel following a debut that did well but was, ultimately, hack. Because as this episode reveals, not only is Jughead struggling to come up with his follow-up, but his debut drew greatly from the lives around him in Riverdale in a way that, well, those people are not too happy with. Toni turns Jug away when he seeks a job at the bar, the rest of the Serpents backing her up and calling him out for depicting their experiences and rituals in a watered-down, polished-up for contemporary literary fiction type of way. He’s dismissive of their complaints, claiming we wrote a work of fiction.

And sure, write what you know, Jones, but do it with a level of respect and don’t be surprised when the people whose lives you’ve mined for contact maybe don’t want to hang out with your moody ass! Jughead’s so caught up pretending to be some great successful novelist that he lies to his former friends and tells them he’s staying at the Five Seasons when he’s really crashing at the old faithful bunker, which is in remarkable condition for an underground, usually vacant single-occupancy hole in the ground that presumably is not temperature controlled???? Does the bunker have a monthly cleaning service? I know the whole point of bunkers is to be structurally sound for long periods of time, but I gotta hand it to Dilton Doiley (RIP), this bunker is practically a time capsule.

I think I have finally come around on Veronica Lodge’s frustratingly inconsistent character choices, because I think I have finally accepted that these inconsistencies as the result of growing up with parents like Hiram and Hermione Lodge, who are terrible role models, terrible advice givers, and terrible communicators. Last episode, Hermione basically told Veronica she needs to stop being better than Chad at business in order to cool him off. This episode, Veronica doesn’t do exactly that but does internalize the message, going about pursuing a sports agent job but behind Chadwick’s back.

That proves difficult to do, because he literally has her followed and freezes their shared credit cards. Veronica has the sense to know that his behavior is possessive, but her version of taking matters into her own hands is not to tell him to stop being this way (though she does eventually get there) but to go to Hiram for help. It is, yes, very frustrating to watch Veronica seek his help once again. She never can quit her daddykins, and I hate that for her. It’s especially hard to watch because Hiram flips the table on her, refuses to assist, and says this is him teaching her a lesson after the lesson she taught him seven years ago. And I think that’s just what Veronica and Hiram are destined to do for the rest of eternity.

In some ways, all these characters are locked into fates that they themselves have nurtured even as they attempt to break free of them. Veronica is always trying to escape the Lodge family name, only to always come back when she needs something, taught by her parents to lust after power. To Veronica, it’s easier—and more satisfying—to engage in this power game with Chadwick than to just leave. Cheryl’s curse exists merely because she believes it to be fact. Betty’s always chasing serial killers and getting herself hurt in the process, losing sight of what’s right in front of her like her family’s struggles. Archie’s always overstepping being a hero, making a violent vigilante of himself. And Jughead’s always looking for the story, reducing people into characters and his town into a setting, performing the role of the observant loner and thus making it impossible for people to be close to him. They’re their own worst enemies.

In conclusion: Riverdale’s capitalist hellscape has reached its final form. The high school, while tuition-free, is now privatized and run by fledgling adults who have not a whiff of teaching experience. Hiram’s still very much winning, SoDale casting a vast shadow on this sucked-dry town. These characters are all going to be very busy undoing such widespread harm as they continue to also unpack their own traumas and emotional baggage. What fun! But also, I need to know more about where Miss Crouton stands in all of this ASAP.

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“Riverdale” Episode 504 Recap: Let’s Time-Jump, Baby!

Ah yes, the moment is finally here. The moment I’ve been waiting for all my life. And by all my life I mean the past week. One week ago, however, does feel like a lifetime ago. Both for the usual pandemic-fucked time continuum reasons but also because I have spent most waking minutes of the past week obsessing over Riverdale’s latest chaotic choice. Perhaps its most chaotic to date?

In “Purgatory,” we meet our characters seven years after graduation. They’re all in their mid-20s now, the traumas of their high school years replaced with fresh new adult traumas. They haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade, and you know what, I commend Riverdale for acknowledging the reality of people not really staying in touch with their high school friends. I mean maybe you have the same friend group now as you did when you were 16, and good for you! But I simply cannot relate.

Still, short of just rebooting with fresh new faces entirely, Riverdale must press on and find a way to keep the narrative going even though these characters have drifted so far apart. I thought that their reunion might be sparked by, well, DEATH. That would seem very Riverdale wouldn’t it? And the show actually playfully leans into those expectations with a cliffhanger that closes out its cold open, making it seem like Pop Tate may have become Riverdale’s latest fallen townmember. But alas, Pop is alive and well. Thank god! Who would feed the children of Riverdale without him?! He’s just retiring. So Archie, back in town after seven years in army, rallies the troops (army!) to return to Riverdale to give Pop a big sendoff. But of course, he wants more than just that from them. The town is in shambles, gutted by Hiram Lodge and looking like a ghost town slash post-apocalyptic society. And Archie, being Archie, believes it’s up to him and his “friends” who he hasn’t seen in s e v e n years to FIX IT.

Honestly? The premise works for me! This almost feels like watching a pilot for a new show entirely, and I tend to embrace whatever the hell Riverdale throws my way, so I say sure, let’s start over.

Since this is not your typical episode, this will be an atypical recap. Much of the episode just brings us up to speed on what the characters have all been doing for the past 2,555 days (I did the actual math!), so let’s go one-by-one shall we?

ARCHIE ANDREWS

As previously mentioned, Archie went to war. And the episode all begins with his surreal nightmare, which places him in combat on his former high school football field. Chilling! He wakes up to his actual life, which is also sorta a nightmare, although it has been much worse. At least he doesn’t have to fight a bear! He wants to keep doing war stuff, but a superior officer says Nope—perhaps because Archie is showing VERY CLEAR signs of PTSD as well as survivor’s guilt. Instead, he’s homeward bound, set to take over Riverdale’s ROTC program. From what I can tell, the attempts to make Archie “age” appear to just be a lil bit of a haircut.

Archie comes home to a very changed Riverdale, wanders into Pops where no one knows who he is, and then makes his way to the speakeasy formerly owned by a teenage Veronica Lodge but now collectively owned by the Southside Serpents, the local gang consisting of—at least in my perception through the years—half teens and half elderly folks. And this brings me to…

TONI TOPAZ

Toni is once again the Serpent Queen, an accomplishment she hoped for last episode at graduation! We love the foreshadowing. But she’s more than a gang leader! She’s also a performer at the speakeasy, a graduate of the fictional Highsmith College, Riverdale High’s new guidance counselor, and PREGNANT. Archie rather rudely asks who the father is, but Toni is gracious and says it’s a secret……for now. In any case, Vanessa Morgan, who plays Toni, really was pregnant during filming, and instead of going the route too many TV shows go when an actor gets pregnant and filming them at weird angles or giving them fewer scenes, it actually seems like Toni’s role on the show is INCREASING post-time jump! Finally/hopefully! I welcome it! She’s living with the still-dating Fangs and Kevin (on, I kid you not, CLOVERFIELD LANE), and Kevin’s the drama teacher at Riverdale High now. It’s pretty cute! Less cute…her run-ins with her ex-girlfriend Cheryl Blossom.

CHERYL BLOSSOM

Cheryl, another one of the characters who has stayed in Riverdale this whole time, has gone full Sarah Winchester, the real-life heiress whose endless construction of the Winchester House is one of the finest true story haunted house tales there is. If you’re unfamiliar with the Winchester Mystery House (I happen to know a lot, because my girlfriend is obsessed), the show uses Cheryl as a mouthpiece to summarize Sarah’s wikipedia page. My summary of her summary: Sarah Winchester believed she had to continue construction on her house forever, so she turned it into a puzzling house of architectural horror. Cheryl’s doing the same thing, obsessed with rehabilitating Thornhill to the point of rarely leaving it. I’m…more worried about Cheryl than usual! Toni basically tells her that her family no longer associates Cheryl with the horrors perpetrated by her family, suggesting that they could finally be together if they want to, and Cheryl is just sort of like “hmmm no I’m dating my easel.” Because, yes, Cheryl is back to making her art, and this time it’s very large paintings. And maybe she’s going to start forging famous paintings as some scheme cooked up by Nana Rose???? Like I said: worried! I think laying Choni to rest for now is the right move, because that relationship was making less and less sense the more it went on. But what’s going on with Cheryl! Where is the chaotic lesbian who has an absurd one-liner for every situation? Someone please get her out of this house! It feels like Cheryl is trapped in a sultry candlelit lesbian gothic, and I’m not necessarily mad at that. Bring on the Sapphic horror!

VERONICA LODGE

Veronica Lodge’s life is also a horror story in that she has been married for a year to a man named CHADWICK who works on WALL STREET. They share a very large apartment on the Upper East Side together, and Chadwick is basically a miniature Hiram, because we all know Veronica has serious daddy issues! Chadwick doesn’t want Veronica working because of an ominous accident they both experienced that they keep referring to as THE ACCIDENT. What was the accident you might ask? THEIR HELICOPTER CRASHED ON THE WAY TO MARTHA’S VINEYARD. Veronica’s secretly working at a jewelry store, flexing her business mogul muscles, and when Chadwick finds out he’s like no it will cause you stress REMEMBER THE ACCIDENT? Veronica seeks some advice from her mother, who has been a Real Housewife of New York for the past seven years, which means she must have made a good impression in her first season, because as we Housewives watchers (Bravo Dykes, unite!) know, if you don’t make magic in your first season, you’re out of there. Hermione says a bunch of bullshit about how Veronica being better at Chadwick’s job than him probably made him a whiny little baby, and instead of Veronica being like you know what you’re right mom I should go dump his ass, Veronica instead returns home and says look I’m gonna work and you’re gonna let me. Low bar for this marriage imo. Veronica says two absolutely absurd things during her segment of the episode: First, she says that the year is 2021. WHAT! This means that prior to now, Riverdale has taken place 7 years behind the current time. This may not seem like that big of a deal/time is irrelevant/this is an obvious retcon much like Cheryl’s grade in school suddenly changed between season one and two but for some reason it is COMPLETELY THROWING ME OFF????? What IS time indeed!!!! The second wild thing Veronica says is that sex with Chadwick used to be AMAZING. Sure, Ronnie.

JUGHEAD JONES

Jughead is a certified asshole!!!!!!!!!!! Now, I’m not sure if this opinion is going to be popular or not, and I hope that any fervent Jughead Heads do not come for me, but I kind of love where they’re going here? Jughead is basically a self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying writer bro who says it’s fine to drink a bunch because a bunch of other writer bros in the past did it and whose first novel did well but whose second novel has hit a big ol’ obstacle known as writers’ block. He’s got a cute writer girlfriend who he takes for granted and who leaves his ass because, hey, she has had writer’s block, too, but she doesn’t take it out on him like he does to her! He’s also got debt collectors knocking on his door, an over-the-top literary agent who is trying to light a fire under his ass to write this next book, an apartment that looks like a dim, damp den where people gather to jack off to Jack Kerouac, and seemingly zero friends. His life is a mess, and he’s absolutely a monster!!!!! Riverdale is speaking a truth here: Sometimes brooding white boys who think they’re smarter than everyone else in high school turn out to be, well, published authors, sure, but also PUBLISHED ASSHOLES. Jug’s ego has gotten the best of him, and I’m living for this arc and also for the noir-esque humor of his segment…in which he hooks up with a pretty grad student because she approaches him at a lonely bar to tell him she loved his book. Like I said, textbook writer bro ASSHOLE! The next morning, she reveals she only hooked up with him so she could ask him to read her manuscript. I was seriously cracking up at all the Jughead scenes. They’re over-the-top and yet TOO REAL.

BETTY COOPER

Betty is fully a Fed now which, ugh, but I do gotta say that Betty Cooper as a run-down, smart but impulsive, determined and slightly unhinged loner serial killer chaser is WORKING. Much like Jughead, this is the perfect trajectory for this character, who reminds us right away that she has been catching serial killers SINCE HIGH SCHOOL. She tells this to a therapist, and hey, good for her for being one of the only characters in some semblance of therapy. But she’s also lying to that therapist, saying that she’s no longer having nightmares and is good to keep doing her job instead of working cold cases even though she is very much so having incredibly violent and realistic nightmares, one of which we’re plunged into. You see, not too long ago, Betty was tracking down a the Trash Bag Killer (aka TBK), a murderer who appears to have chopped up his victims and placed them in trash bags. She got a lead, charged forward instead of waiting for backup, and then was held in captivity by TBK for TWO WEEKS!!!! She got away, but so did he. And he’s definitely her white whale now. Also, I guess the therapy isn’t working because she’s sleeping with her boss (bad in and of itself) and also telling him she’s hanging out with friends when really she’s staying home alone to assemble a murder conspiracy board with her cat and takeout (also not great!). They have made Betty look “older” by having her wear her hair down at shoulders in a soft wave instead of in her signature ponytail.

OTHER STUFF

So, the whole reason Riverdale as a town is a mess (moreso than usual) is because Hiram is running it into the ground in order to bolster SoDale, a high-end development just a ways down from Riverdale following what has become known as The Lonely Highway. Yes, we’re back to exploring the evils of gentrification/exploitative urban planning/real estate empires/etc. Honestly, I love when Riverdale goes here, because so much about this show is about how individual actions can poison a community, and when it shows this on a more grounded level than, say, through a souped-up murder version of Dungeons & Dragons it’s quite effective! Reggie is Hiram’s new right-hand-man. Stonewall Prep is still in play, because SoDale will feed into it while Riverdale High continues to lose funding.

At the very last second, the episode also introduces a character named…Squeaky*…who arrived in Riverdale hoping for a fresh start in life and then leaves when she doesn’t find it. Published Asshole Jughead tells us this in narration (is this his next book?????) and then teases that something terrible happens to Squeaky along the Lonely Highway. So yes, in case you were worried, Riverdale is still the same as it ever was in the sense that the murder rate is alarmingly high for such a small town.

I honestly think this episode is Peak Riverdale in terms of its humor and blending together of noir, mystery, suspense, gothic, etc! While much of the story is just filling in blanks for where these characters have been for seven whole ass years, their arcs have me hooked. Riverdale hasn’t been a high school drama for a very long time, so I’m glad we’re done pretending with all that. Let’s embrace the slightly surreal dark fairytale vibe.

*Squeaky is technically a nickname, but I stand by my belief that most names in the Archieverse are the product of some strange booze-fueled game.

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Riverdale Episode 503 Recap: All The Times We Had Together

It’s graduation day at Riverdale High, and you know what that means! Time to largely forget all the emotional baggage of last episode in favor of fan-servicey nostalgia and then a wild time-jump to compensate for the inconvenience of all the main characters leaving town to pursue their dreams separately from one another. Here we go!

Okay, so it’s not like last episode never happened. But tbh Betty is being pretty chill for someone who just discovered yet another member of her family is a serial killer, and it seems to be forgotten ENTIRELY that Cheryl Blossom helped facilitate the mass poisoning of her extended family???? In any case, we came for the built-in nostalgia not for the narrative consistency!

Throughout the episode, we flashback to previous scenes from early seasons Riverdale to show just how far these teens have come and by just how far these teens have come I mean just how many traumas they have experienced. I’m a sucker for all the nostalgia like, yes, emotionally manipulate me Riverdale! The fact that they replay the scene where Mr. Andrews imagines Archie’s graduation—a fantasy sequence from the first time Fred almost died???? Honestly, perfect. RIP Luke Perry. (But also, where was Mary Andrews’ butch gf all episode?!)

So the episode really is like catnip for those of us who emotionally overinvest in teen dramas and have watched Riverdale from the beginning. Hiram giving Veronica a pearl necklace? Instant conjuring of the brilliantly dramatic slow-mo sequence of her ripping them off in season one. They don’t even show that flashback, because it’s already playing in our brains. Riverdale knows that even when it’s often inconsistent about character histories and motives, it has crafted so many big and indelible dramatic character moments that certain things just stick like maple syrup.

But in addition to offering up globs of sentimentality and Graduation Feels, the episode also fully recognizes the horrors these characters have experienced through the years, and I always love when Riverdale acknowledges its characters’ traumas. There is genuine fallout to the reveal that Jellybean was the Auteur at the end of last episode. On a plot level, it means FP is taking her to Toledo and staying to support her, leaving Alice for now. But it also points to something deeper that Betty pieces together in her graduation speech: The younger kids (Jellybean’s age) in Riverdale have never known this town as anything other than the hellscape it has been ever since Jason Blossom’s murder. In a way, this show has always been about how one horrific act of violence can undo a community, collective trauma spurring a whole slew of disorder. A father shoots his son point blank and suddenly a town can no longer pretend to be quiet and quaint.

I kind of love how Riverdale so boldly flies in the face of the lie perpetuated by most film and television that high school marks the best years of one’s lives. I feel like high school being the best years of one’s lives is a distinctly straight person thing to believe, so thank you Riverdale for being like no <3. Listening to Archie sing “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” as they all accept their diplomas is even funnier than most on-the-nose Riverdale music moments, because this has absolutely not been the time of their lives and, frankly, GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE to Riverdale High.

Betty, Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and all of their classmates have had a pretty straight-up terrible time in high school. There were serial killers; there were haunted role-playing games; there were bear attacks; there were abusive nuns; there were full-town quarantines and a for-profit prison scheme and, like, so many murders! And all along, the adults didn’t do much to protect them. They had to do it all themselves. Betty and Jughead were the town’s only competent detectives. Archie was the only one doing anything about the town’s troubled youths. The excitement all these teens have about graduation is probably doubled by the fact that it means an escape hatch from Riverdale. A chance to seize control of their lives.

There’s a heavy dose of interpersonal drama in the episode, too. Betty tells Jughead about the Archie kiss, and the way it plays out is kind of subtle for Riverdale but incredibly believable. Jughead’s face just sort of breaks at the reveal. He looks SO SAD. But then Betty, eager for some validation, starts kissing him and they have sex. It seems like everything might be okay, but of course it’s not. They drift apart. Betty says she’s going to go to New Haven early, and they both admit they love each other but make no moves to keep the relationship going. Heartbreaking!!!! Unfortunately I’m very invested in these two.

Veronica and Archie say farewell, too. Archie up and decides at the very last-minute to join the Army which, sure, that actually tracks with this character. Veronica’s too sad about him going off to basic to be mad at either him or Betty about the kiss, and they all end up chasing down his Army bus for last hugs, and it’s very, very dramatic. Again, this episode is all about emotionally manipulating viewers, and it’s working! I care!

As has been usual lately, I’m perplexed by the story decisions surrounding Cheryl Blossom. It too often feels like the writers room is just spinning a wheel when it comes to Cheryl’s arc. This episode? We’re going to *spins wheel* …make her break up with Toni and commit to rebuilding Thornhill? I would say it does not track with the character’s history, but at this point, the writers have made such a mess of Cheryl’s motives, choices, and emotional stakes that they’ve made it so they can basically plug her in wherever they want. It’s very frustrating! I don’t really understand why we went through that prom drama and the very sudden conflict between Toni’s relationship and her family only for Toni to then be like no it’s okay my Nana is coming around to things only to THEN have Cheryl suggest they go on a break until she can rehabilitate the Blossom family name?

As a related side note, Penelope literally emerges from the bushes at the end of the graduation ceremony to be like I would never have missed your graduation (okay………this woman literally put Cheryl in conversion therapy okay…….) and also say that she’s going to turn herself over to the authorities. This all did take me out of my cloud of teen soap opera nostalgia and remind me that Riverdale’s chaos is not always fun. Sometimes it’s exhausting!

It does make sense that Cheryl wants to change the perception of the Blossom family name, but to the point where she’s breaking up with her girlfriend and also forgoing college? I know that searching for sense on Riverdale is a wild goose chase, but this doesn’t make sense!!!!! The Cheryl/Toni breakup looks a lot like most of Cheryl and Toni’s relationship…mostly servicing the plot rather than being rooted in compelling character stakes and emotion. Hate to say it, but I had to say it.

Now, Riverdale finds itself faced with the problem all high school-set dramas usually do. High school is a finite period of time. What happens after graduation? Does the show follow the characters to college? That only works if everyone magically decides to go to the same college, and that’s not the case for Riverdale. Veronica is Barnard-bound; Betty got into Yale; Cheryl is supposed to go to the fictitious Sapphic wonderland Highsmith College (both a reference to Smith and also Patricia Highsmith?!) although she has cut those plans short; Archie is Army; Jughead is going to the Iowa Writers Workshop, which is an MFA program but Riverdale has never been one for logic.

No, Riverdale shan’t be derailing these characters’ dreams for the sake of plot convenience. Instead, we’re doing something much MUCH more chaotic, which feels absolutely right for this show. We’re jumping seven full years into the future to these characters being in their mid-20s and having a whole NEW slew of emotional baggage and traumas! Betty joined the FBI; Archie went to war; Jughead is a published author; Veronica is engaged to a man named Chadwick. We’re treated to these little tastes of the future by the trailer for next episode, which promises to reflect on the past seven years while charging ahead full speed. I honestly am super for this narrative choice. We long ago passed the point of believability for these characters actually being teenagers. Let’s drop the pretense and let them do things like own a speakeasy and cohabitate and launch a liquor brand with SOME semblance of credibility! The teens are becoming adults from one episode to the next! I feel like a proud parent eager to see what the future holds for my little broken babies. What fresh horrors will this staggeringly large time-jump bring?

“Riverdale” Episode 502 Recap: Is It Just Me Or Were There More Murders Than Usual?

This week on Riverdale, we’re going to kill two preppies with one stone and also solve two mysteries previously thought to be one mystery, so let’s get down to business before another serial killer shows up in town.

I suppose I let the cat out of the bag up top there, so yes, let’s start with the death of two Stonewall Prep students. Moments after Bret calls Jughead and Betty to tell them he’s ready to spill some important information in exchange for them helping him get placed in solitary, Jughead and Betty arrive to the prison to learn that Bret was stabbed to death. Thanks to Dr. Curdle Jr., the mortuary who these wild teen detectives have on retainer, they also learn that Bret’s eyes were gouged out! Yuck! But also, farewell Bret Weston Wallis. You were as much of an asshole as your name implied. Good ol’ deranged Donna phones Betty—from a wharf?—to say she thinks someone’s killing off the preppies, and Betty is kind of like “u tried to kill me so bye” but then another phone call informs us that Joan is also dead, so Donna, while still a “narcissistic psycho” to borrow Betty’s words, was probably right. Someone’s killing the students of Stonewall Prep’s underground literary murder cult. Also, I just remembered that on Riverdale there’s an underground literary murder cult.

Other things I recalled while watching Riverdale this week: THE SERIAL KILLER GENE. I must have tucked this information away deep in the recesses of my brain because every time I remember that this show peddles the idea that being a serial killer is hereditary, I risk losing consciousness. But here we are. Back to talking about the serial killer gene, which Betty has (at least, we think so—here’s a thread of somewhat conflicting opinions but most people say yes she does). Charles once told Betty he also has the gene but that he “joined” “the FBI” in order to “control” his “murderous” “impulses.” Sure, Charles!

This is a full-on angst episode for Archie. In his first scene, he visits his father’s grave on what my girlfriend accurately described as “the set of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. He’s upset! Understandably so. His mother asks him to write a letter to the judge in the case against the man arrested for Fred Andrews’ death in order to lower the sentence. As a reminder: This man is taking the blame for his son, who was actually responsible for the hit-and-run. But later in this episode, the son confesses and Archie’s faced with the decision of helping reduce his sentence or not. As Archie sees it, the kid hitting Fred was an accident, but the decision to drive away was no accident.

Ultimately, Archie does go through with writing an apology letter but only after he has a complete and total breakdown. Mary Andrews finds the tape sent by The Auteur recreating Archie’s run-in with the Black Hood, which of course is all tied up in Archie’s dead dad feelings because it was the first instance where he felt like he could have saved his father but failed. Mary hilariously suggests that they give the tape to the sheriff OR JUGHEAD AND BETTY, who have so firmly established themselves as local teen detectives that even adults are like let’s give them criminal evidence. But there will be no investigation today: Archie rips the tape in half and then beats up the TV with his baseball bat, which 1. Is overkill and 2. Probably could have been prevented if Mary’s butch girlfriend had intervened! Where was she?! Instead, Archie is taught a “lesson” by Uncle Frank, reformed mercenary who has up and decided to turn himself in but not before he lets his nephew beat the crap out of him as a coping mechanism. I’m begging the Andrews to put Archie in actual therapy.

Archie’s dead dad feelings spill over into his breakup with Veronica, which Veronica wants to hide from the rest of school. According to her, if people find out they broke up, questions will be asked and then Jughead will find out that Betty also lied to him about the kiss with Archie. She says it’s better this way and Archie blows up at her, and I do hope this is mostly about his dead dad because Archie has no right to get mad at Veronica after cheating on her and then lying about it until he was, essentially, caught!

On that note, Hiram shows up at Archie’s gym and threatens to beat the shit out of him for breaking his daughter’s heart, and well, we all could have seen that coming. Hiram will jump at any excuse to try to murder Archie Andrews, a literal teen. But Hiram has never been one for a moral compass. And Veronica and Hermosa are finally over it (again?)!!!! Hermosa visits Veronica at the diner and seductively eats what looks like a fruit parfait, but hey, I’m all for chaotic diner orders. It’s a good thing she’s there, because a pack of Malloys catch Veronica in the alley and are about to kill her on account of her daddy killing their daddy (yes these mobsters literally say daddy twice in one line). Hermosa shoots them dead, because this apple doesn’t fall far from the poisonous Lodge tree. Hermosa, Hermione, and Veronica band together for a hostile takeover of Lodge industries, which sounds a lot more exciting than it ends up being. Hiram agrees to step down; Hermosa goes a little too hard on teaching him a lesson; Veronica’s allegiances and motives shift for approximately the billionth time when it comes to her family; Hermione announces that she’s finally divorcing Hiram for good and moving back to the NYC to join the cast of Real Housewives of New York, and I’m not making that up! Turns out that Andy Cohen cameo from a while back has long-term plot implications. Who woulda thunk!

Veronica wins best line of the episode with “Your astrological sign might be the Scorpion, daddy, but in fact you’re more like a dog.”

If you’re merely here because you want to know what our blessedly chaotic cherry-haired lesbian maple maven Cheryl Blossom is up to, here’s the lowdown: First, she gets up to some classic bitchy Cheryl shenanigans, yelling at an adult because she ordered crimson caps and gowns and blue ones showed up. Something I absolutely love about redheads is their commitment to exclusively wearing the color that matches their hair. They take power-clashing to a whole new level. “Fix this or perish,” Cheryl threatens before a dramatic exit. Love this for her.

But I’m a little confused about the rest of Cheryl’s storyline this episode. For the record, Cheryl and Toni did NOT breakup last episode, a development I was a little lost on because Toni choosing her Nana over Cheryl seemed like a big deal and then suddenly seemed like not a big deal at all and I guess it wasn’t really that big of a deal, because they are still dating and even maybe mostly living together???? But they’re both setting out to make things right between their families. Cheryl wants to cleanse the Blossom name, so she hosts a virtual board meeting to suggest that the estate sell land back to the Uktena people. Her family of (probably incestuous?) redheads—including aunt CRICKET, in case you don’t keep a mental family tree of Riverdale character names in your head like I do—are like fuck no we don’t care about our family’s colonialist past. The Blossom bitches also say that blocking Cheryl is revenge for “killing our beloved Bedford” and oh right remember Toni killing Uncle Bedford when he was threatening to kill Cheryl? And then Cheryl possibly FEEDING Uncle Bedford to Aunt Cricket in a MEAT PIE! I have to imagine that a Blossom family reunion would just look like a crimson-colored The Hunger Games.

So Cheryl then pays a visit to her mother seeking help, which is already a red flag because this woman has been her lifelong abuser. And then Penelope gives Cheryl the early graduation gift of POISONING THE ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY—Cricket included—and making it look like a mass suicide?!?!?!?!?! I do NOT think this is what Toni had in mind when she told Cheryl they need to work on getting their respective families. So Cheryl’s still lying to Toni a bunch. And Cheryl’s also kinda chill with mass murder and, like, I don’t exactly like the extended Blossom bunch either but isn’t Cheryl trying to distance herself from the bloody legacy of her two murder-happy parents? Why is she accepting a graduation gift from Penelope at all? Isn’t it time to realize that maaaaybeeee Toni should get out of this toxic relationship?

One thing I unironically love about Riverdale is how the parents have just entirely given up on treating their children like teens and instead give them free reign to operate like full adults. Betty and Jughead are the perfect example of this. Early in this episode, we see them spooning in bed together because they do indeed live together (because their parents are dating! Bless Riverdale for having so much going on that there isn’t even time to unpack this blended family containing TWO couples) like old marrieds. They also work together as teen detectives. Jughead invites his father to the local speakeasy—also run by a teen—because he thinks the conversation calls for drinks. IS HE EVEN 18?

But hark! We have two mysteries to solve: Who is The Auteur and who is killing off preppies and also creepy David from Blue Velvet Videostore. All these deaths happen very casually in this episode btw. The killer made it look like David hung himself, but Betty’s spot-on murder instincts tell her he was killed by the same person who killed Bret. Only ONE person in their lives could have all the information and resources to pull off these killings. Only ONE person in their lives has admitted to them that he would probably do some lite serial killing if given the opportunity. One ONE person in their lives had admitted to being in a romantic relationship with one of the other murderers in their lives. Yep, it’s Charles. Who never stopped dating Chic. Which means that both Betty’s fake brother and her real one are killers. But Charles thinks of himself as Riverdale’s Dexter, only killing people who deserve it, like the preppies who framed Betty for Jughead’s fake-murder and the guy peddling snuff films at the local video store. The only thing surprising about it being Charles is that it took Jughead and Betty this long to figure it out.

Charles, however, does not confess to being The Auteur, just a regular serial killer without much style. Riverdale shows its hand a little too early on this one though, zooming in on Jellybean’s distressed face after Jughead learns that he was accepted to the Iowa Writers Workshop (yes, once again, I’m not making up this detail). Clearly Jellybean doesn’t want her brother to leave. So even though a tape arrives showing The Auteur freely roaming the Cooper-Jones household and holding a knife to Jellybean’s sleeping face, it seems likely that she’s involved. Because also wouldn’t she wake up if a knife caressed her face???? Sure enough, Jellybean confesses right away. In her defense, according to Jughead, she probably didn’t understand “the enormity and the darkness of what she did.” In her mind, she was just creating a murder mystery for her brother to solve so he wouldn’t leave town. She roped a bunch of other kids into it, including bad news Ricky who she used to play G&G with. Together, these lil babies recreated some of the town’s worst horrors, complete with impressive set design, costumes, really some A+ production work here. It would be cute if it wasn’t so incredibly macabre! Jellybean says she’s sorry and, well, I guess that’s the end of a multiple-seasons-long mystery.

“Riverdale” Episode 501 Recap: Cheryl Blossom and Toni Topaz Are Prom Queens But At What Cost

Welcome to the season five recaps of Riverdale! This week, the teens and all of their codependent parents are going to the big dance! It’s prom night, but because this is Riverdale, you can bet on someone getting stabbed and/or indoctrinated into a cult as part of the festivities! Before we get into all the murder and mayhem of “Climax,” let’s get up to speed…

Previously on Riverdale: The latest Big Bad—hilariously dubbed The Auteur née The Voyeur by none other than Future Terrible Novelist Jughead Jones—has been filming people’s homes around town and dropping off the lil tapes on their stoops as a vague warning. Then The Auteur must have decided that was much too subtle and started filming reenactments of all of the characters’ worst traumas and gifting those tapes. There’s a creepy videostore in town that deals in snuff films and sex tapes that is no doubt connected to this villain somehow. Archie’s thinking about going to the naval academy; Jughead wants to go to Iowa; Veronica got into Barnard; Archie and Betty pretended to date and then actually kissed before swearing to each other that they would never tell Veronica and Jughead. Yikes!

We start exactly where we left off, just a few weeks out from graduation and directly in the aftermath of the latest art from The Auteur: a film of people in Betty, Veronica, Archie, Jughead, etc. masks stabbing Mr. Honey to death. A reenactment of the metaphorical killing of Mr. Honey that occurred when the gang got his ass fired. Also an homage to the Jughead Jones short story called, well, “Killing Mr. Honey.” It’s meta, you see. We’ve got a villain with a twisted sense of humor and also an eerie ability to know a lot about these characters and their experiences. The call is very much coming from inside the house.

Archie has a physical coming up for the naval academy, but Veronica takes a balled up piece of paper out of his trashcan and is like HEY I FOUND THIS SONG YOU WROTE! And first of all, it’s a hilarious reminder of how many hobbies Archie has had through the years: Remember when his biggest problem in life was balancing football and music lessons???? Now he balances being an owner of two businesses, boxing, assorted other physical activities, occasional vigilantism, high school musical productions, applying to the naval academy, and oh right I guess he still writes songs or something.

Second of all, Veronica finding this little original tune all wadded up is actually the impetus for one of the best bits of drama in the episode. Because it’s the song Archie wrote for Betty when the two were very briefly like “hm we might be into each other jk we love our significant others too much to give into the Barchie shippers let’s pretend this never happened.” One would think that Archie might have done a better job destroying the only physical evidence of his betrayal, but that Archie isn’t really known for his thinking skills.

Back at the Lodge penthouse, Veronica still apparently suffers from both short-term and long-term memory loss regarding all of her father’s worst behaviors (including but not limited to the time he just sort of left her and her mother for dead and the multiple? times he has tried to kill her boyfriend) simply because she is under the impression that he is dying. But wait! He might not be dying after all, because Hiram’s latest workout routine—beating up low-level criminals in the middle of the night—is somehow a cure and he’s on the up and up. Sure!

As a reminder, the teens got Mr. Honey fired at the end of last season after he used extreme measures to try to cancel prom, which means Riverdale High is in need of a new principal. Lo and behold, Mr. Weatherbee’s back after his brief stint in Chad Michael Murray’s cult, which he informs Betty he still has nightmares about.

Ever the supportive girlfriend, Veronica suggests to the naval academy recruiter that Archie and the other student up for a spot at the school duke it out in an exhibition match. The other student turns out to be KO Kelly, Katy Keene’s boyfriend in the canceled Riverdale spinoff Katy Keene. Archie challenges him to, essentially, a Bro Off, yielding a workout montage that ends with Archie winning. The two have a heart-to-heart sleepover, too, where Archie says that he feels like he’s holding Veronica back, which is an interesting way to say that he cheated on his girlfriend of many years with his best friend and then lied about it but okay Arch.

Cheryl Blossom and Toni Topaz are both determined to become queens. For Cheryl, that means being voted prom co-queens with her sweetheart, and for Toni, that means avowing to become the Serpent Queens again. “I exist in a world where EVERYONE wants me to be prom queen,” Cheryl declares after convincing Kevin not to run against her. And I do have to admire Cheryl’s persistent self-confidence.

Cheryl and Toni’s relationship, however, hits a snag when Toni reveals that even though she’s out as bi to her grandparents, they don’t actually know that she has a girlfriend and also maybe it would be best if Cheryl just pretends to be her friend at graduation. What in the Happiest Season is going on here?!?!?! One would think that this would have come up sooner given the fact that Toni practically lives with Cheryl. Also, on the topic of their teenage cohabitation, I find it absolutely hilarious how Toni and Cheryl are styled whenever they’re in bed together because Toni is always in like a literal flannel and Cheryl is always in full silk lingerie and it just looks like a very specific lesbian fantasy. Anyway, it turns out that Nana Topaz doesn’t approve of the relationship not because it’s a queer one but because the Blossom family is responsible for years and years of colonial destruction and trauma against her family. And it’s like…ok fair.

Again though, it’s a little wild that this hasn’t come up for Toni and Cheryl before. I guess I’m technically getting what I have constantly wished for, which is more screen time and narrative weight for Toni and Cheryl, but must their relationship be so constantly mired with traumatic shit?!?! I often struggle to understand exactly why Toni and Cheryl are together other than the fact that they’re both queer and in close proximity to one another. Cheryl’s motives I understand a little better, because Cheryl has only ever wanted unconditional love and family, and Toni provides that. But Cheryl has not been a great partner to Toni—and definitely crossed yet another line by visiting Toni’s grandmother without telling her—and yet Toni stays and hardly exists outside of Cheryl’s plot orbit. I’m a little torn, because while their relationship has been inconsistently developed and often an afterthought on the show, I DON’T THINK I WANTED THEM TO JUST BREAKUP????

I wanted more depth and dimension to these characters, especially for Toni. Suddenly injecting this drama of her grandmother forbidding her from dating Cheryl is, while technically based on backstory that has already been established, very sudden. It does tie into Cheryl’s overall arc of being unable to escape her family and the harm they’ve inflicted on her and others. But it’s too tidy a conflict, and Riverdale continues to try to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to these two: After the very significant drama of Toni being forbidden to see Cheryl, she “chooses” Cheryl over her family and takes her to prom where they’re crowned Riverdale’s first openly queer queens, but then as soon as the dance is over she tells Cheryl that she actually can’t be with her and has to be back home by midnight or else her grandmother will never speak to her again.

Once again, the sweet queer romance of their plotline is abruptly undercut by very serious drama, and no one seems to be reacting in a believable way? I kind of don’t even really understand if this is a breakup or if Toni is just saying they have to live two lives or WHAT, but Cheryl seems weirdly cool with it despite having very well established attachment issues. Sometimes I swear these two act like a 50+ year old married couple rather than teens, and it just doesn’t compute! Also, it is frankly very rude of Cheryl to name Betty, Jughead, Veronica, and Archie as her prom court after forcing Kevin and Fangs—the only other named queer couple at the school—out of the running?!?!

But I’m also getting ahead of myself a little, because before prom, there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Betty and Jughead visit their ol’ nemesis Bret Weston Wallis (will never be over that character name) in prison to try to get dirt on David, who runs the creepy videostore Blue Velvet and is the top suspect for who might be The Auteur. Bret says they have to snag an invite to one of Blue Velvet’s underground parties where snuff films and other horrifying works of cinema are screened. Betty and Jughead then hatch a plan to make a faked snuff film to get in, casting Reggie as a murderer and Cheryl, naturally, as their scream queen.

Ah, yes. A typical date night for Jughead and Betty, who honestly seem a little too into making a fake snuff film. Also people say “snuff film” so much in this episode and are relatively chill about the fact that there seems to be a very large percentage of the town population who are into watching people get fully murdered on screen?????? I suppose it is Riverdale, the town with pep and thematic serial killers.

Also I don’t really know why Betty and Jughead go through the trouble of filming their snuff film, which David easily deciphers is a fake when Betty apparently had a real tape to hand over the whole time. It’s not a snuff film but rather the tape of her father as a young boy being indoctrinated by his mother. The origin of the Black Hood. Betty hands it over, and Creepy David says these exact words: “Could I screen this at a little film festival slash rave?”

Now we’re at the film festival slash rave and we’re at the boxing exhibition match; we’re at the combination film festival slash rave boxing exhibition match. We cut between both scenes, and honestly, the boxing match doesn’t have that much interesting stuff going on other than several shots of Archie’s mom and her GIRLFRIEND in the stands watching Archie gets his ass beat. Over at the film festival slash rave, things are very, very scary.

Again, it’s well attended for a supposedly underground and exclusive event. Betty gets recognized from the Ponytail Playmate sex tape of her and Jug, prompting Jughead to punch someone out. This is yet another example of what honestly feels like a normal date night for Betty and Jughead. The sleuthing duo almost have The Auteur in their grasps but are interrupted suddenly by JELLYBEAN, who is for some reason at this “party” that she should definitely not be at!!!!! Don’t worry, Jughead later makes his baby sister promise him she won’t go to any more film festivals slash raves showing snuff films, ESPECIALLY if he ends up going to Iowa. Good job working that in there, Jug.

I hate to say it because Veronica and Archie are so often the least interesting couple on this show, but the dramatic tension between them in this episode is absolutely a highlight. All the nice things Veronica does for Archie to try to get him into the naval academy and also support his music feel like gut punches since we know that he isn’t being honest with her. Then the biggest gut punch of all comes halfway through the episode when Veronica surprises Archie with a performance of the song he wrote at the speakeasy, not knowing that he wrote it for Betty. Betty looks at Archie; Archie looks at Veronica; it’s a genuinely fraught and heartbreaking.

I always like Riverdale best when it grounds some of its more over-the-top machinations with good old-fashioned high school drama. When Veronica tells Archie that she’s doing to defer Barnard for a year to stay with him in Riverdale while he figures his life out, the guilt is finally too much. He tells her right in the middle of the prom dance floor that he kissed Betty and wrote the song for her. It’s devastating!

As a side note, the soundtrack for the prom scenes slaps. Mazzy Star playing when Cheryl and Toni win prom queens? Awards! Then we jarringly flip to “Psycho Killer” as a video of masked folks stab who we’re led to believe is David to death on screen. “Why does every one of our dances turn into a Jamie Lee Curtis movie?” Jughead asks, and I have to wonder the same and think that maybe Mr. Honey was onto something by trying to cancel prom, but also, I’m very here for the slasher vibes.

It’s a prom night with a lot of murder and heartbreak, which does feel right for Riverdale. Jughead and Betty leave to do what they do best: investigate violent crime. Veronica tells Archie that after graduation they’ll just go their separate ways. Cheryl tells Toni to go home to her grandmother because “family is the most important thing,” and once again, I am not sure if this is a breakup or a break or what! It feels sudden and also emotionally insincere for either character. Archie, newly freed of the weight of his lies, comes home to find the latest horror tape: This time, it’s a reenactment of the time the Black Hood held a gun to his head. Will the teens of Riverdale ever catch a break? Are Toni and Cheryl broken up???? Help.

“Riverdale” Season Finale 4 Recap: The Darkness Within

Another season of Riverdale comes to a close. We started with murder cults, lingered in the middle on a literary death society, and now end here with a town voyeur turned auteur: a shadowy villain who has been quietly filming unsettlingly long footage of people’s houses while they sleep but who harshly pivots to making low-budg reenactments of the townspeople’s worst traumas. The wannabe filmmaker already recreated Jughead’s near-death and Jason Blossom’s actual death. Jughead spells it out for us: This nefarious being wants to blur the line between fact and fiction. And in its season finale, Riverdale indeed plays around with fiction and reality, expertly blending the show’s campier, silly horror side with its more violent and genuinely frightening side.

I gotta say, Riverdale has made for pretty perfect pandemic viewing. The increasingly chaotic and surreal vibe of this show is, for me, an absolute escape. THIS IS A PLACE THAT TRANSCENDS TEMPERATURE. Nothing makes sense on Riverdale, and I love that for it. Remember in season three when Hiram placed the whole town on forced quarantine? Did Riverdale predict the future? Is Riverdale the only show that knows exactly how disorienting and unstable life is? I know a lot of people are rewatching like Mad Men or whatever right now, but I humbly suggest a Rivedale rewatch.

For once, the kids seem almost like regular high school teens for the first stretch of the finale. Upset with Mr. Honey for canceling senior prom and all the other ways he has stifled their fun all year, they hatch a plan for a classic senior prank to mess with him. Along the way, something darker brews beneath the surface though. Namely: Betty repeatedly, casually suggesting that they kill Mr. Honey. Jughead decides to take that premise and run with it, writing a story called “Killing Mr. Honey” so he can get into Iowa for creative writing. The episode flits between the fantastical world of Jughead’s story—a prank gone too far—and real life, where the teens deal with the usual teen dramas of senior year. Over the course of the episode, the transitions become smoother, intentionally blurring lines. It works very well! A horror story within a horror story! Riverdale crafts a world supposedly darker and more exaggerated than its actual narrative, which is already VERY DARK AND EXAGGERATED! It’s a beautiful mind-fuck.

The world of Jughead’s story is meant to be darker than reality. He worries it might be too dark, but Betty assures him it’s just right. Jughead’s strange mix of autofiction and horror actually makes for a pretty good story indeed, and it allows Riverdale to play with genre and also unearth the darkness in its characters actual lives as told by these fictionalized specters of them. It’s easy to believe that a simple prank would go too far in the realm of this world. This is a town where a simple roleplaying game turned into a towns-spanning conspiracy involving drugs, death, and brainwashing. Darkness does exist in all of these characters, because darkness has been sowed in them by years of town trauma that has become increasingly more violent and over-the-top.

“Who here has experience getting rid of a dead body?” a character asks in Jughead’s story, and Betty, Veronica, Archie, Jughead, and Cheryl all raise their hands, leaving Reggie to remark that he apparently is the only one who hasn’t had this special little experience. There are a lot of fun but also unnerving meta moments like this in Jughead’s story. It’s true: ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS HAVE HIDDEN BODIES. Cheryl kept a corpse in her chapel for WEEKS. Betty rolled up a body in a rug with her mother one time!

Speaking of Alice Cooper hiding a body (tbt!), the absolute best shot of this episode happens in the reality timeline when Alice, Mary, Hermione, Hiram, FP, sheriff Keller, and NANA ROSE? all march into the high school in slow-motion to be like WE the PARENTS of RIVERDALE cannot STAND FOR YOU TO CANCEL PROM!!!!!!! It is a moment that definitely requires a heavy dose of disbelief suspension. These parents are pretty much the reason why their kids have a whole slew of issues. But I guess they’ve decided to do something positive for their kids by wielding their individual skills against Honey to get prom reinstated (Hiram’s all I have POLITICAL power and Mary’s all I’ll SUE you and Alice is all I WILL EXPOSE YOU on the NEWS and FP is all I guess I’ll BEAT YOU UP). The parents even throw a whole ass party for their kids to celebrate them getting into college. Again, I’m not sure when these parents suddenly became invested in their kids’ lives in a healthy and not toxic way, but you know what? I’ll let it slide.

Because there truly is something masterful about the way the finale weaves fact and fiction. Jughead’s story and the reality timeline are in playful conversation with one another. And in the end, it’s the reality that goes so much darker than Jughead’s fiction. Mr. Honey says that he received a tape from the voyeur that shows the halls of the school and uses that as a new reason to cancel prom all over again. It’s never really clear why he is so dead-set on canceling prom, but Mr. Honey is basically an exaggerated version of a high school principal stocktype. He’s tyrannical for no reason…from the kids’ perspective. Jughead ruminates on potential motives without landing on anything definitively.

The office secretary Miss Bell “well actuallys” the entire group when she points out all the good things he did as a principal for the student body, and suddenly things come into focus. Maybe Mr. Honey—while not perfect—was not the villainous, vengeful mastermind the teens perceived him as. Maybe because of the ways they’ve all been conditioned to assume the worst. In a town riddled with murderers and death cults, it’s probably pretty hard to suss out who is an actual threat and who is maybe just a little bit of a nuisance.

It turns out Mr. Honey made the footage himself. Betty spots him in the reflection in the video, so his filmmaking skills leave a lot to be desired! He is, after all, NOT the voyeur-auteur who has been slow-burn terrorizing the town. But he does become the first real victim. Jughead and Betty are lured to a cabin to watch a new tape of people wearing masks of the teens’ faces all stabbing the actual Mr. Honey to death. A much more fucked-up version of Jughead’s tale becomes the reality.

“In this town, we’re all monsters,” Jughead says in his story. It’s a more clear-cut rendering of a complicated truth. I mean in real life, these kids faked their own friend’s death to prove a point. They might not be the monsters they are in the story, but the darkness in their reality is undeniable and deep-rooted. Jughead rewrites his story so that the kids save Mr. Honey, but in real life, they cannot. Someone else is writing the story in their real lives. And Riverdale ends its season on that sinister reveal.

Riverdale pretty much doubles its darkness every season, and the note this finale strikes is basically “oh y’all aren’t even ready for how messed up this will get.” We literally end on avatars of all the main characters stabbing someone to death. It is disorienting and disturbing and so extreme. But I’ve said it all along: Riverdale is best at its most deranged.

“Riverdale” Episode 418 Recap: The Teens Are Not OK

This week on Riverdale: Fraught handholding, a tickle empire, a rum rivalry, childhood diaries, and VERY DISTURBING VIDEO TAPES. The episode rather explicitly attempts to evoke David Lynch-level weirdness woven into the everyday (the episode is called “Lynchian”). The episode certainly leans into some of the stranger, more surreal aspects of the show right now. Everyone is trying to shake things up in the episode, and they mostly fail, suggesting that some lines are not meant to be crossed.

Veronica and Cheryl want to break into the college market with their TEEN-RUN RUM BUSINESS, developing a White Claw knockoff called Maple Claw. This upsets the local maple moonshine gang known as the Malloy family. There is no limit on the number of gangs and nefarious groups in this town. Veronica thinks Hiram put the Malloys up to this, but he insists he’s innocent and even goes out of his way to threaten the moonshine family at gunpoint after the Maple Club is ransacked…I guess as a show of good faith toward his daughter/a rare moment of expressing care toward her?

He gets beat up as a result (yay!), and then Veronica has to tend to his wounds (what?), and it’s all very strange indeed! But not in a fun way! More like a Why Are We Trying To Force Veronica To Bond With Her Evil Father way? Fighting factions is something this show does very well, but Hiram and Hermione are an increasingly muddled part of the show. The rum drama is the least compelling part of the episode, even though it gets a lot of screen time. At least Hiram still turns out to be the same old Hiram in the end. Veronica thinks he has turned over a new leaf, but in actuality, he shot one of the Malloys as an act of revenge. Hiram’s gonna Hiram! Don’t fall for this shit Veronica! (Veronica absolutely does fall for this shit.)

Also wondering if they should reconfigure their relationship dynamic: Betty and Archie. You may recall that they kissed during the Hedwig episode or you may have wiped that from your memory like I did. I suppose it’s actually “good writing” that the kiss did not happen in a vacuum and that there are significant emotional consequences. And there’s no denying that this arc is a very big deal for the show’s overall narrative. Some of the only things that remain consistent in the chaos of this show are Betty/Jughead and Veronica/Archie, and you know what? I welcome a dramatic shakeup on that front, even if it doesn’t last for long. Betty decides to process her feelings by…returning to her childhood diaries, which is extremely dumb but also extremely teenaged writer of her. Archie deals with things in his own way, too: Angstily playing guitar about it.

Flashbacks to little Betty and little Archie are sweet, but also a little creepy? There’s a lot about this episode that’s slightly unnerving without being explicitly so, and I suppose that is actually pretty Lynchian of it. The most genuinely Lynchian aspects of the episode are visual details, like the masked Penelope Blossom lurking on the periphery of a scene and the entire look of the Blue Velvet video store.

Reggie wants in on the tickle game, so he persuades Kevin and Fangs to introduce him to Terry. But after their checks get cut, Reggie—ever the businessman these days—convinces them to strike out on their own. Between the rum plotline and the tickle one, competition and business rivalries are the name of the game in this episode. But just like the rum stuff gets out of hand, the illicit teen tickle ring (???) does, too. Reggie’s Bulldogs team up with the Vixens to make new tickle content, and Toni has one rule and one rule only: The Vixens have to do the tickling. I have…a lot of questions. First of all, did anyone consult Cheryl? Because my guess is she wouldn’t be cool with this. And she remains the mama hen of the Vixens. Toni and Cheryl are completely separate in the episode, and listen, I get it: People should have lives outside of their romantic relationships. But I feel like we’re not even pretending like Cheryl and Toni make sense as a couple anymore.

Anyway, Terry and his crew—like the Malloys with the Maple Club—threaten to crush their new competition and literally do crush the crap out of Kevin’s fingers (“40 percent or you’ll never tickle anyone ever again,” Terry hilariously threatens). Mr. Honey also catches wind of the operation and shuts it down…due to COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT since the students are wearing Bulldogs and Vixens uniforms in the videos. And that’s the end of the that, I guess!

Cheryl does snap Betty out of her diary-induced daydreaming, correctly pointing out that she is romanticizing the present by revisiting the past. It works, and she eventually burns her diaries (DRAMA!). Archie writes a song for her (of course he did), but she remains firm. She is merely in love with the idea of Archie. What she has with Jughead is more real. The two pull away from each other again after spending most of the episode considering cheating on their respective long-time partners. There’s an almost-moment early in the episode where they hold hands on the bunker bed (how many hookups have happened in that goddamn bunker?), but they never fully cross the line. And they eventually both decide to look toward their separate futures instead of reveling in the past. All joking aside, this story is told pretty well. I know Riverdale can pull off strong relationship writing, SO WHY ISN’T IT HAPPENING FOR THE QUEER CHARACTERS ON THE SHOW? I digress.

The storyline with the most stakes and suspense to it centers Jughead. He teams up with Charles to try and solve the issue of the town voyeur, who last episode sent Jughead a genuinely disturbing video featuring someone in an Archie Comics-style Jughead mask getting bludgeoned to death. Jughead decides that because the person sent a threat via video they CLEARLY must be a cinephile (sounds like a jump but OK), leading them to a previously unseen creepy ass old-school video store in town and then also leading them to Ethel Muggs.

But the only thing Ethel is guilty of is liking horror movies and also seeking out porn in the restricted secret part of the shop. But that porn turns out to be an actual sex tape…Betty and Jughead’s specifically. Called Ponytail Playmate (oh god), the tape, which as a reminder was filmed by Bret without their consent, the tape ended up in this illegal section of the store alongside a lot of other fucked up stuff, like a recording of Clifford Blossom shooting Jason. Here’s where we also learn that Mr. Honey has a secret life: He shows up hoping to check out some of the tapes from the illegal section. Hmmm the principal who is over-involved in his students’ lives is a bit of a creep? SHOCKER.

Cheryl has a business breakup with Veronica, and it is unclear how this will affect her murderous mother, who has been helping with the social club while wearing a mask because she has to remain underground because of that time she tried to Hunger Games-style kill a bunch of teenagers. But in any case, they hug and part ways, and I guess that’s the end of that, too!

Then we end on the very disturbing reveal that Cheryl has received another tape featuring people in masks. In this one, the anonymous villains reenact Clifford shooting Jason. So essentially, someone is making a series of films reenacting the most traumatic experiences from people’s lives. Honestly, this villain might be scarier than the Black Hood! At this point, it is truly impressive how many different bizarre storylines Riverdale can cram into a single season—even a single episode—of television. Can you believe we are still in the same season as when Betty disarmed a bomb with her bobby pin and took down cult leader Chad Michael Murray before he could take off in his homemade rocket? THAT WAS LITERALLY THIS SEASON. Did I just blow your mind? Is there any show as chaotic and short attention-spanned as this one? Absolutely not. And I mean that as a compliment.

Maybe now that Cheryl’s in the crosshairs of the town voyeur, there will finally be an actual plot line for her again, but also that means her storyline will hinge entirely on her trauma, which has been increasingly frustrating. Let Cheryl be multidimensional again! She is more than her trauma! She is more than her one-liners!

“Riverdale” Episode 417 Recap: A Far Too Hetero “Hedwig”

Riverdale’s back and doing Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and while the show overlays the original’s music rather smoothly onto its characters’ new post-Jughead-death-conspiracy lives and also delivers a truly immersive display of glam-rock aesthetics that pay tribute to the award-winning musical, it unsurprisingly falls woefully short of the queer magic that is Hedwig. It’s a bold episode, but it doesn’t take any real risks outside of slightly shaking up its two central relationships (while keeping them very hetero).

Is it bad? Not entirely! It’s a pretty good episode of Riverdale, although the first half is better than the second. The episode recalibrates the story a bit, focusing in on interpersonal relationships and some of the bigger emotional beats of the season so far (Fred’s death, Jughead’s near-death, etc.). The Stonies drama is over with, and the new threat on the table is the return of the town voyeur, a weird but creepy little thread through this season that has gone largely unresolved. Jughead’s on the case, naturally.

Even more pressing is the threat of censorship and suppression at the hands of Mr. Honey who absolutely does not want Kevin or any student for that matter to perform any musical numbers from Hedwig and the Angry Inch due to the “explicit” content at the school’s upcoming variety show. Honestly, even though it doesn’t involve murder or faked murder or literary death clubs, this is one of the more thrilling conflicts the show has tackled recently, because it feels simultaneously distinctly grounded in its clash of teens vs. authority but is still dialed up several notches in the camp and drama department in signature Riverdale form. The hair and makeup budget for this episode alone is a breathtaking thing to behold.

Unfortunately, the most urgent themes of Hedwig get a little lost in translation once the musical is mapped onto the narrative of the show. Riverdale’s musical episodes have always been a strange but satisfying manipulation of reality, and the content and stories of the original works don’t always perfectly line up with what’s happening on the show. Riverdale likes to borrow the aesthetics more than anything else but also the emotions.

In its previous tributes to Carrie and Heathers, certain feelings from the songs do translate well to the feelings of Riverdale’s central characters. And in some ways, that happens in “Wicked Little Town,” too. But Hedwig is a striking and radical musical with a genderqueer protagonist, and there’s little by way of contemplation of gender or questioning of gender binaries or constructs outside of Kevin defiantly dressing in drag when Mr. Honey tries to censor him and subsequently convincing the rest of the school to don Hedwig-esque looks.

If Kevin is experiencing any kind of genderfeels during all of this, it goes pretty under-explored. There are no openly genderqueer characters on Riverdale, and the queer characters it has have been largely shafted this season. Hedwig is a pretty direct and wrenching story about identity and sacrifice and a challenging of gender norms in rock and society at large. Seeing this story mapped onto the lives of majority straight and cis characters is, uh, a disorienting experience in a not-so-great way.

In any case, here’s how the episode plays out, broken down by song.

“Wicked Little Town”
We open with the song perhaps most thematically suited for Riverdale, which is indeed about a wicked little town. All the characters chip in for this number, which features more of the stalker footage from the unknown town voyeur and immediately pulls us into the world of this episode, which is in turns goofy and angry but always very glamorous. Riverdale knows how to deliver the spectacle.

“Random Number Generation”
This is Kevin’s response to Mr. Honey telling him he can’t sing Hedwig songs at the variety show. There is DESK CHOREOGRAPHY. The students are MAD. And they are ACTING OUT. I love a good group number—and did I mention DESK CHOREOGRAPHY—and the lyrics here do map pretty well onto Riverdale’s teens, who have had to shoulder some pretty intense inherited trauma and town crisis after town crisis.

“Tear Me Down”
Kevin shows up to school in drag, but first: Archie asks his friends to all be in a band with him called…the Archies. Perhaps because everyone still feels bad for him losing his dad, no one really points out how bonkers this sudden plan is outside of a slight dig from Jughead about the name. So: BACK TO KEVIN. Who does look amazing. His kiss with Archie feels a little too played-for-laughs, but at least it looks like Archie is having fun. Mr. Honey is not having fun, and he bans Kevin from the variety show, because Mr. Honey is the absolute worst.

“Wig In A Box”
Here’s where the cracks in Riverdale’s Hedwig interpretation really start to show. It’s a song all about the power of using makeup, hair, and clothes to confidently be one’s self. And while I love whenever Riverdale does an aesthetics-driven sleepover scene, a lot of the layers of this song are pretty stripped away in this rendition starring Cheryl, Toni, Betty, Veronica, and Kevin. Some of the hard edges of Hedwig’s rock sound are softened by the Riverdale arrangements for more of a strawberry milkshake pop sound, and it just doesn’t entirely do it for me!

“Sugar Daddy”
What…is happening here. This is Toni and Cheryl’s big number, which they perform with their Pretty Poisons, a gang of mostly queer women. And it’s all rather uncomfortably directed at Mr. Honey. Riverdale has three out queer characters in its main cast—Kevin, Toni, and Cheryl—and while the episode is a radiant showcase for Kevin, Cheryl and Toni are relegated to side roles yet again. They don’t get a real emotional arc in the episode, and THIS IS THEIR BIG NUMBER? DIRECTED AT THEIR STRAIGHT SCHOOL PRINCIPAL? Idk, I’m not really sure how to read this one. Again, I’m living for the aesthetics! But I can’t believe we’re doing a whole ass Hedwig tribute and the only romantic relationships we really focus on are the very vanilla main ships of the show (Veronica and Archie and Jughead and Betty).

“Exquisite Corpse”
This song works better through the lens of Betty and Jughead’s argument than it does through the lens of Veronica and Archie’s argument. Betty and Jughead’s argument, after all, is much more convincing and deep-rooted. The two have been fractured all season, and Jughead doesn’t slot so neatly back into his old life. He and Betty are on different tracks, but they’re also just on different wavelengths. Jughead’s former classmates tried to kill him. He is different than he was before, and the emotions between Jughead and Betty are appropriately heightened to make way for the angry, intense performance of “Exquisite Corpse.” But then Archie and Veronica get awkwardly wedged in, because they’re fighting about the fact that Archie has been letting Hiram work out at the gym without telling Veronica. …BORING.

“The Origin Of Love”
HELLO. This should have been Cheryl and Toni’s song!!!!!! A very wasted opportunity to explore queer love! Instead, it’s the song Archie and Betty sing once they’re the only ones who show up to rehearsal for the Archies. It’s at this point that I became the most frustrated with Riverdale’s very hetero Hedwig tribute. The biggest swing the episode takes is having Betty and Archie kiss—for real this time, not as part of an elaborate murder scheme. This. Should. Have. Been. Cheryl. And. Toni. Anyway, Veronica and Jughead both apologize, making Betty and Archie look like real jerks.

“Wicked Little Town (Reprise)”
Alas, we’re not done with the Archie and Betty stuff. We delve into a fantasy sequence of the two of them together. In reality, they’re gazing longingly at each other through their bedroom windows, as they’ve both done before. But in their MINDS? In their minds, they’re sharing a romantic and intimate dance together. Look, despite my tendency to tune out super straight romances on television, I understand the appeal of Archie and Betty. There’s a base layer of intimacy and understanding between them as long-time friends. There’s always something a little scintillating about a long-brewing romance between best friends (hello, I’m gay). But this is far from the kind of radical romance that Hedwig celebrates, and I really just think the heart of the musical is completely lost.

“Midnight Radio”
The closing number is appropriately big and boisterous, performed by the Archies on the roof of Pop’s. Somehow, this is not the first time there has been a group performance on the roof of Pop’s over the course of this series. This final number is a lot like the episode itself: fun but surface-level. The episode is a visually appealing but ultimately safe interpretation of the original’s music. Because there’s no way in hell I’m counting a Barchie kiss as something even remotely revolutionary.

“Riverdale” Episode 416 Recap: A Literary Society That Also Does Murders

“The Locked Room,” in which we learn why and how Jughead Jones almost died and then subsequently faked his own death in order to solve his own murder, is exactly what makes Riverdale extremely Good. This is excellent television. This is beautiful chaos. This is the movie Clue on poppers.

It’s not a whodunnit; it’s a WHYDUNNIT, as Jughead helpfully explains. We do indeed already know that it was the Stonies who conspired to kill Jughead and then framed Betty for it. That much has been clear since the beginning of this mystery, because the Stonies are stone cold demons in prep school uniforms. But WHY! The answer…is even better than I could have imagined.

“The Locked Room” plays out like a locked room mystery, Betty and Jughead trapping Mr. Dupont and the members of the literary society in a room so they can walk us all through the murder conspiracy they’ve uncovered. We flashback to things from throughout the entire season, Riverdale quite literally showing us all the threads of this mystery web. Somehow, it isn’t tedious. It’s thrilling (and absolutely absurd, but thrilling nonetheless). We’re watching Jughead solve HIS OWN MURDER. We’re watching Jughead explain to HIS MURDERERS how and why they MURDERED HIM. Riverdale, I love you.

Essentially, the Stonies decided to kill Jughead as part of a time honored tradition where whoever ghostwrites the Baxter Brothers book series has to prove their skills at writing murder mystery BY COMMITTING MURDER! Yes, this season of Riverdale hinges on a literary society that has been casually murdering people for decades. It all started with Mr. Dupont, who is a masterful serial killer in the sense that he has never instructed his pupils to murder and yet has still instilled this deranged tradition in the minds of these young writers. The Baxter Brothers series must be a lot more lucrative than I initially realized if people are willing to kill for it but you know what let’s not get too deep into any issues of believability here because honestly? Riverdale sells the shit out of this thriller. The whole episode is like a living, breathing murder board.

Can we talk about the fact that there is a character named Charles Chickens on this show? Can we talk about the fact that instead of Nancy Drew, there is a teen female detective in the Baxter Brothers universe named TRACY TRUE??????

Speaking of Tracy True, there’s actually another layer to Jughead’s murder case. Mr. Dupont (who btw jumps out a window after he’s caught) thinks he’s the mastermind, but there’s a mastermind above him. Donna!!! As an act of revenge on the behalf of her grandmother, who Dupont stole the idea of Tracy True from, Donna was all along plotting on securing the Baxter Brothers contract and revamping it as a Tracy True series. It doesn’t matter how many people had to die. She wanted that writing contract that badly. I love a literary scandal, and Riverdale has crafted the greatest literary scandal of all time.

I’ve been mixed on Donna as a character along the way, but it does all come together with her in “The Locked Room.” Donna vs. Betty makes for a glorious dynamic. They’re both incredibly smart and conniving in their own ways, perfect foils to each other. Honestly? Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes found dead in a ditch. Donna and Betty are the new ultimate adversaries.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and Toni are eating popcorn while watching the local news. And that’s pretty much it!

And now, I know this is not how I traditionally do these recaps, but I do think this episode of Riverdale is very special. So here is just a list of actual verbatim quotes from “The Locked Room” that deserve to be honored. Pure poetry.

• Jughead: The weirdest thing about pretending to be dead is that after a while, you actually start feeling like you’re dead.
• Jughead: To solve my own murder, I needed the illusion to be perfect to buy myself time.
• Hermosa: Because that’s the kind of thing that secret girlfriends do: They kill each other’s boyfriends so they can be together.
• Veronica: I don’t know what kind of crypto lesbian pulp fiction you’re conjuring, Hermosa, but Betty and I are just friends.
• Jughead: Because in all your plotting, all of your lurid conspiring and your brilliance, you didn’t kill me. I mean, whose job was it to check my pulse?
• Jughead: As they say in Lord Of The Flies, I have the conch.
• Betty: Use the beanie to stop the bleeding.
• Betty: Specifically, the three members of your original literary society… who you murdered.
• Donna: Are you really so delusional you would believe I would mastermind some elaborate conspiracy that caused the deaths of multiple people just to win a YA book contract?

“Riverdale” Episode 415 Recap: No One Does Revenge Quite Like Betty Cooper

“Life’s not an Agatha Christie novel, it’s a lot messier.” Riverdale’s “To Die For” starts with this EXTREMELY JUGHEAD quote from Jughead. Indeed, the saga of Jughead’s fate this season HAS been messier than an Agatha Christie novel, and that’s probably not a great thing. But alas, much like last week’s “How To Get Away With Murder,” “To Die For” crafts a fun and twisty thriller with such conviction that it’s easy to forget about some of the character inconsistencies and plot holes it took to get here.

The quote at the beginning also introduces us to “Murder In A Small Town,” a documentary that Alice Cooper is making about Jughead’s disappearance. It’s a great device within the episode, Alice’s footage breaking up scenes. I almost wish Riverdale just committed to the bit all the way with this and told the entire episode in documentary form, but the back and forth does work well and also allows us to work through the meticulous plotting of the fallout following Jughead’s “death.”

Which indeed involves Archie, Veronica, and Betty getting arrested by Jughead’s dad for Jughead’s murder! This is a play from Donna, one that Betty saw coming. They’re released when the murder weapon comes back and tests negative for blood (reminder: Betty swapped out the real one last episode). They’re eventually let go, but the tension between the friends and the Stonies persist, especially since Donna and Brett become convinced that Jughead isn’t really dead and that Betty orchestrated some elaborate fiction to pressure them. That would be wild, wouldn’t it? MORE ON THIS LATER.

Instead of being a plot contribution, Alice’s documentary functions more like an intimate look at the town’s history of violence, told through its residents. People like Nana Rose, Pop Tate, characters who are mostly set dressing for the town. “Riverdale is a town born in blood, and it’s bathed in it ever since,” Nana Rose says. She delivers it in her usual dramatic drawl, and it stabs right at the heart of this show, in which so many characters are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents, in which class tension and power hunger have created an ongoing cycle of violence. Yes, Riverdale dresses its darker parts up with a lot of camp and pep, but the darkness is unmistakably there and an important cornerstone for the

Toni and Cheryl appear as interview subjects in Alice’s interview, and it really underscores how loose of a grasp the writers have on these characters at the moment. It’s a good reminder that Toni did used to actually be close to Jughead, something that seems to have been dropped for a while. It also awkwardly reminds us that they did indeed hook up, which doesn’t really seem necessary in this context, especially when it shifts focus to Cheryl’s defensive reaction. Then Cheryl gives a callous answer as to how she feels about Jughead’s death…after earlier in the episode, when she tells Betty with great sincerity that she knows all too well what it’s like to lose one’s other half. Cheryl has always been a character of contradictions, but the attempts at blending her more serious “teen queen of tragedy” side with her sharp-tongued queen bitch side have been off lately. I love that Cheryl can be a lot of things at once, but lately she’s been more disjointed than complex.

In any case, Jughead isn’t dead lol. Betty, Veronica, and Archie — with the help of Charles, FP, Jellybean, Dr. Curdle Jr., and Mrs. Andrews — created an elaborate hoax. This helps explain the fact that they have seemed intermittently chill about the fact that their friend is dead. But for everyone other than those characters, this death was real. So the inconsistencies in Cheryl’s reaction to it still stand.

All episode, I was waiting for Riverdale to show its hand here. I didn’t see how it could convincingly pull off Jughead being alive. It does plant a pretty big clue that we’re watching isn’t all that meets the eye when Betty reads a passage from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem,” the Sherlock Holmes story that similarly messes with perception and reader/viewer expectations. Riverdale’s ruse sharply comes into focus once Archie and Betty kiss. It’s the first moment in the episode that feels distinctly wrong, a huge indicator that we’re being fucked with. (It also allows a pretty funny meta contemplation of the show’s ships from none other than Kevin Keller, who does often feel like a Riverdale fan within Riverdale’s universe.) But that kiss is the moment where things turn toward the uncanny, which does speak to the strength of the show’s writing when it comes to its central relationships. Betty and Jughead’s bond is so cemented that it seems fully demented that Betty would pivot to dating Archie in the wake of his death.

Alice’s documentary suddenly shifts to be about the hoax, a story of friendship and EXTREMELY DETAILED DECEPTION. Because boy do these kids commit to their plot! Riverdale IS ultimately pretty convincing in the way it unspools all this as a psychological war between the Stonies and Betty. But it also asks us to believe that Archie, Betty, and Veronica have all become supremely masterful actors/liars. Alice asks the important question, which essentially boils down to: WHY DO ALL THIS? And as it turns out, Betty did find a bloodied Jughead in the woods that night. She knew it would be difficult to point the finger at his assaulters given how masterful the Stonies have been at cover-ups, deception, and torturing Jughead with little consequence all school year. So yes, she crafted this elaborate fiction in order to pressure-cook the Stonies—Donna in particular.

Betty’s plan is, yes, a little deranged. Okay, a lot deranged. It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors all to fuck with some rich kids. But these rich kids are truly demons. Lest we not forget them locking Jughead in an actual coffin that one time just for fun. Betty knows that to really win against these privileged ghouls she has to go all out. And watching her pull this all off is honestly breathtaking!!!!! I love how much Betty leans into all this, and her rivalry with Donna, who increasingly loses it over the course of the episode, is delicious. There is that shadowy darkness at the edges of “To Die For,” but it’s also having a whole lot of fun. Betty Cooper’s thirst for vengeance is unparalleled, and this whole story, while absurd, is exactly what draws me to Riverdale. A group of teens stage their friend’s death in order to freak out and expose a bunch of violent prep school bullies? That’s god-tier storytelling, and Riverdale is especially poised to pull it off.

“Riverdale” Episode 414 Recap: Archie’s Mom Gets a Girlfriend (Meanwhile, Everyone is Framed for Murder)

Okay before we get into the obviously pertinent question of IS JUGHEAD REALLY DEAD, let’s talk about a very important development shoved in halfway through Riverdale’s “How To Get Away With Murder:” Mary Andrews has a girlfriend!!!!!!!!

Brooke Rivers, a recruiter for the Naval Academy who appeared last season, returns to do Mary a little favor by offering Archie a spot at the school. Mary later informs Archie that this woman is “not just her friend” — a line that caused my girlfriend to fully spin around in her chair and tune in, even though she is seasons behind on the show and was fully working on something else. She, like me, knew what was coming next: Mary declaring Brooke her official girlfriend! A late-in-life queer relationship for Mary Andrews! Molly Ringwald playing queer! A QUEER MOM ON RIVERDALE! I am personally very thankful for this, even though Mary Andrews is without a doubt the most confusingly written parent character on this show and even though I am still holding out for Alice Cooper to also eventually get a girlfriend. In any case, it’s a nice moment! It’s very casual and grounded, and Archie is surprised but supportive. I do love to see it.

It almost makes up for the fact that the show’s only main character who is a lesbian (Cheryl Blossom) doesn’t appear at all in this episode. Ha ha just kidding! I am extremely bitter whenever Cheryl and Toni get shafted! Sure, this is a prime example of an episode where it wouldn’t make much sense for them to be involved and when there’s simply too much happening in the A plot to have a bunch of extraneous side plots going on, but when you zoom out, my larger frustration is with the fact that when Cheryl and Toni DO get storylines on the show, they’re kept in pretty tight boxes! I said it last recap, and I’ll say it again: It increasingly feels like they’re only allowed to be hot or traumatized!

Choni rant aside, this is an extremely good episode of Riverdale. It’s got all the best Riverdale ingredients: camp, horror, psychological fuckery, mystery, immersive stylization, exaggerated stakes, tropes, and a slow-motion dramatic moment set to haunting music (in this case, “Kettering” by The Antlers).

It all begins with that scene that has been foreshadowed ever since the season three finale: “a night in the woods, three friends in their underwear, covered in blood.” The scene is set by Jughead’s narration, which is at the moment the strongest indicator that Jughead is alive. Otherwise, how would he be narrating this story still?

Then again, I’m truly stumped as to how the show could pull off Jughead being alive at this point. We see his lifeless body multiple times, including in an actual morgue. I will say that his his best friends are acting a little too casual considering the fact that he has DIED, seeming more concerned with the fact that they might be being framed with murder than, again, THEIR BEST FRIEND’S ACTUAL DEATH. But they’re also not really acting like they’re up to some scheme together, plotting some sort of elaborate trick on the Stonies. Maybe Jughead is the one playing the trick and didn’t let his best friends in on it in order to really sell his own murder, but if that’s true, they should absolutely stop being friends with him because wtf.

Operating under the assumption that Jughead is really dead, this really is an excellent episode. Psychotic prep school demons crafting some elaborate murder game just for kicks? It seems like the plot to a 90s slasher movie, and I am all in! There has, admittedly, been some wobbly plotting to get to this point, but the payoff is magnificent. Lili Reinhart is a crackling star. The camerawork used to capture Betty’s fractured memory is chef’s kiss. And the stakes are legitimately high throughout!

The episode borrows its name from another television series that — pardon the self-plug — I have written about upwards of 80 times, and that is not an exaggeration. How To Get Away With Murder has, over the years, become less about how to actually get away with murder and more about who gets away with murder as well as the more psychological question of who is capable of murder. Betty spends much of this episode fearing that she really could be capable of murder, and Veronica wonders about her ride-or-die, too. Veronica recalls the Dark Betty of season one, a moment that Betty claims to have no recollection of.

Betty really doesn’t have a history of blacking out. Evelyn and Donna play games with her, but there is no trigger word that could make her kill her boyfriend. Instead, Betty recurrently has to deal with the pathologization of herself by others. She does struggle with mental health issues, but people (including her own mother!) have historically used that to discredit and manipulate her and make her doubt her own self. Donna literally drugs her and then tries to convince her she blacked out. She wants to frame her as “the crazy girlfriend with a history of mental illness.” Evelyn compares Betty to the other locked-up “boyfriend killers.” Betty’s mirror in her bedroom remains cracked. When she looks in it, a distorted version of herself looks back. But it isn’t what’s real.

In this sense, Donna and the other Stonies are, if not the best developed villains, certainly terrifying ones. They were so threatened by an outsider like Jughead disturbing their status quo that they have launched an all out war on his entire circle, framing Betty for murder, potentially getting Veronica kicked out of Barnard before she could even begin. Betty, Archie, and Veronica spend much of the episode playing defense, but the Stonies are always one step ahead, because they really are the ones dictating this game. So Betty throws them for a loop by orchestrating a search party so that FP Jones will find the body that they previously hid.

On that note, Betty’s FBI brother Charles is the one who helped them initially hide the body and cover up the crime which, lol, I have approximately a million questions about! Charles’ moral code seems to be either nonexistent or just kinda change from episode to episode. I don’t care so much that he’s wildly bad at his job. But it’s harder to swallow the fact that I just don’t really understand his motivations at all. He’s literally helping teens cover up a murder, tampering with evidence, and casually performing a hypnosis treatment on his sister, and it’s all just wildly convenient. Charles is mere device, which distracts a bit from an episode that otherwise strongly binds character and plot.

There’s a thrill in watching Betty attempt to outmaneuver the privileged Stonies, on both character and plot levels. Some of the few subplots wedged in, like a tender moment between Veronica and Hiram as they bond in the face of his illness feel precisely like that… wedged-in. (The Mary girlfriend reveal is an exception!) The central questions of whether Betty could kill Jughead and then, since that’s not what happened, what really did happen that night in the woods are more than enough to fuel the fire of this episode. Reinhart is absolutely doing a lot of the heavy-lifting, further solidifying Betty Cooper as the most compelling character on this show.

“How To Get Away With Murder” has a lot of the same story and character holes that have plagued most of this season, but it slaps a huge temporary piece of duct tape on those by way of crafting a genuinely exciting and suspenseful psychological thriller.

At this point… I kinda hope Jughead is really dead????? Is it possible??????? I have almost Googled “is Jughead dead” 17 times today but can’t quite bring myself to actually ask the question because it seems both preposterous that the show would kill off one of its most popular characters but also impossible that it could reasonably pull off a convincing explanation that he’s still alive. A conundrum!

Anyway, Archie Andrews has two moms now.

“Riverdale” Episode 413 Recap: Stonewall Prep as Theater of Horrors

“This game is fixed,” Jughead tells his dad and Betty moments after he gives up in his fight against plagiarism accusations rather than defending himself. “It’s been fixed from the beginning.”

That much has certainly been true of Stonewall Prep, whose hellish walls have contained an ever-intensifying game of class warfare ever since Jughead ended up there at the beginning of the season. The Stonewall kids want Jughead gone simply because he is not like them. Pack mentality, bloodthirst, and entitlement have turned them into a gang of predators, determined to stamp out Jughead by any means necessary. They even seem to have the backing of adults like Mr. Dupont, who Betty now thinks is the real mastermind behind the plot to oust Mr. Chipping and spin a web of conspiracies to cover the tracks.

A storyline that involves an oppressive group called the Brotherhood that literally oversees a syndicated pulp fiction series about boy detectives is without a doubt something that only really works in the context of Riverdale, and the more I think about “Ides Of March,” the more I believe that this writing seminar setting for Jug’s arc this season—despite being extremely eye-rolly at times—really does work as an excellent backdrop for this heightened class tension. The Stonewall kids want Jughead gone because he’s different but also because they’re bored. Their lives are boring. Their fiction is boring. Jughead’s stories standout time again because there’s a realness to them that the other students can’t really replicate. Instead, they’re all trying to craft a thriller in real life, putting Jughead through the ringer because they derive sick pleasure from it, want their lives to be the stuff of twisted horror. Jughead’s manuscript is doctored up by the Brotherhood, which deems it not dark enough, not sociopathic enough. It’s too real (literally, considering Jughead and his friends lived it), and Stonewall doesn’t want real. It wants a game.

I’ve been back and forth on the stakes of this storyline, namely because Bret as the central villain, the typical golden boy hellbent on crushing his enemies, feels so one-note most of the time. This is, though, a show that often employs over-the-top villains that seem plucked out of pulp fiction, and sometimes that cartoonishness actually works quite well, especially when those characters can represent some sort of larger idea. Bret no doubt represents the extremes of privilege, which he wields as a weapon. What if entitled rich boy but MAGNIFIED BY 100? Riverdale asks with Bret. Stonewall has become its own theater of horrors, its villains relentless and easy to hate, Jughead always one step behind everyone in this twisted game.

And while his motive is as simple as wanting to preserve his place at the top, that clarity in some ways makes Bret a more compelling villain at the moment than Hiram Lodge, who is DYING, a fact that this episode likes to remind us over and over again and also roots a pretty major Veronica moment in despite the fact that this development was crammed into just last week’s episode. It almost feels like Riverdale had lost its grasp on how Hiram functions in this story and then just boom gave him a terminal disease in order to mechanically create new conflict. Veronica does decide to defy/challenge her father in “Ides Of March”…but merely as a way to help him? She knows Hiram thrives on competition, and she pulls him out of his grief over his diagnosis by baiting him.

Veronica HAS figured out how to have her cake and eat it too! She can stand up to her father in the name of supporting him. I’m just…does no one remember when he took out a literal hit on her boyfriend? Does ARCHIE even remember? He welcomes Hiram into his gym and also takes advice from him, and there has been no reckoning of the past at all. Does Hiram just get a billion passes because he’s sick now? That’s a bad message and a frustrating plot development, one that really loses sense of these characters. Archie is truly all over the place in “Ides Of March,” making the emotional decision to sell the construction company and then the emotional decision NOT to sell the company. The dude can’t decide what he wants, and Riverdale can’t decide quite what to do with him from episode to episode.

That said, part of Veronica and Archie’s arc in this episode does work quite well and dig into some genuine character-driven tension instead of getting too caught up in plot. Archie and Veronica are pulled in different directions because of their divergent opportunities. For Veronica, there’s a whole life waiting for her outside of Riverdale, and both characters know that. Archie, meanwhile, is more bound to this town, partially by choice (he does want to fix the town up and seems to get genuine pleasure from running the community center) but mostly by circumstance. He doesn’t have the same access that Veronica has to college, and the wedge this drives between them is becoming more and more visible. There’s a lot left unspoken, and Veronica copes with it all by insisting that they have to maximize fun, which for them means having sex in the woods.

Back in the Jughead and Betty side of things, there also seems to be some short-term memory loss for these characters, because after Betty learned that Jug lied to her multiple times in the past couple episodes, she’s just back to solving mysteries alongside him like nothing has happened. Sure, Betty loves a mystery so maybe she’s just putting aside all tension in their relationship to throw herself into another murder conspiracy, but “Ides Of March” really flattens Betty, making her an accessory in this Jug-centric storyline. He quits Stonewall to supposedly protect her honor (Bret has a sex tape of the two of them that he uses at leverage), but Betty never asked for that.

In very important news: HERMOSA IS BACK. Mishel Prada guest stars in a silvery wig, which Hermosa wears as a disguise in order to weasel her way into The Maple Club, which as a reminder is the social-club-slash-secret-rum-bar that Veronica, Cheryl and Toni are running together (in addition to Veronica’s existing duties as a teen speakeasy owner). Riverdale sets up a bait and switch here, first using Hermosa’s arrival as an excuse for a sexy and homoerotic dance montage between Hermosa, Cheryl, and Toni that admittedly verges on fetishizing them, especially since Cheryl and Toni only seem to be allowed to be Hot or Traumatized lately. But instead of a threesome, this all leads to an ambush (hot in its own way tbh!), Toni clocking who Hermosa really is from the get. (Side note: Cheryl clues Veronica in by sending a HANDWRITTEN NOTE on a TINY CARD to the speakeasy, and I just have so many questions like do they have an on-call page that shuffles messages between the two businesses?!) Prada is an excellent guest star. Hermosa mostly just exists to raise the stakes of Hiram and Veronica’s ongoing warfare, but it works. Hermosa is the idealized version of what Hiram expects of a daughter. She reflects him, while Veronica certainly shares some of his qualities but uses them to go up against him rather than just being loyal. Here, Riverdale asks what if competitive sisters but MAGNIFIED BY 100? Riverdale loves to take a trope and ramp it to the nth degree.

At last, we arrive at the cliffhanger that has been teased all season: Betty standing with a bloodied rock over Jughead’s limp body, which Archie pronounces dead. We’re led to believe that Donna whispered some trigger word to Betty provided by Evelyn Evernever that snapped Betty into killer mode. No, not the old trigger word “tangerine,” which made OTHER people attack Betty. This is a NEW trigger word! Chad Michael Murray’s cult farm was apparently very thorough in their attempts to program people into killers!!!! That said, we don’t actually see Betty strike Jughead, just the aftermath. And Jughead also arrived at the party with some sort of plan. So the mystery is still very much afoot, and that suspense is much more invigorating than the idea of Betty actually killing Jughead because of some sort of secret codeword. Next week’s episode is titled “How To Get Away With Murder,” the title of another show that has tested my limits when it comes to plotting out convoluted murder mysteries but sometimes sticks the landing magnificently. Let’s hope Riverdale can do the latter here!

“Riverdale” Episode 412 Recap: In Which There Are Approximately Five Episodes In One

Once again, Riverdale finds its core four in distinctly different stories, a choice that sometimes yields something quite lovely, like a series of loosely interconnected short stories working toward a common theme or message. Other times, it just seems like incoherent chaos. “Men Of Honor” leans toward the latter. It’s not a complete mess necessarily, but it does cause tonal whiplash and also reiterates just how fractured the narrative sprawl of season four is right now.

In one corner, we have Jughead, locked in a real ass duel with Brett Weston Wallace because he “invoked arcane Stonewall tradition” and I for one find it endlessly hilarious how adults on this show indulge teens’ ludicrous actions in the name of tradition!!!!! I mean, there’s actually something to be said of the way this show reveals how tradition and structures within communities are upheld despite causing immense harm to the community, but maybe that’s an essay for another day because today? TODAY WE ARE DUELING.

And the duel doesn’t even end up being that interesting. Brett wins the first round (fencing), Jughead wins the second (actual fist fight in school! sanctioned by the principal!), and then the tiebreaker (chess match) is interrupted briefly by Betty and Alice setting off a silent alarm in the secret society’s dungeon (they’re looking for Brett’s supposed collection of sex tapes but end up finding the induction confession tapes instead) before Jughead just lets Brett win. The stakes are never that high in the first place, and then everything is clipped by Jug’s newfound sense of being above this ludicrous performance of masculinity. The duel was his idea in the first place!!!! Would love if these characters’ choices could remain even a little bit consistent.

Over in Veronica Land, V heads to New York City for a crossover event/promotion of the new Riverdaleverse series Katy Keene, which premieres tonight on the CW tonight and stars Lucy Hale as the titular aspiring designer in NYC (it’s set a few years after the events of Riverdale but also features Josie McCoy so it’s more tethered to Riverdale than Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina is). Veronica and Katy go on a shopping spree at “Lacy’s” and it’s all fashion fun montage time. Aesthetically, it’s very fun! On a story level, it’s mostly filler.

The only real plot development we get for Veronica is Hermione telling her that Hiram has a RARE DISEASE. This is enough information for Veronica to snatch back the Lodge family name, and I do have to concede that this is indeed Very Veronica. She’s almost always willing to let her parents back into her life even after she swears she’s done with them. This does get at the crux of who Veronica is. The Lodge name affords her immense privilege, and it’s difficult for her to give up that privilege. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too bb! And yet that’s Veronica’s whole thing. Also, isn’t it pretty plausible that this is yet again a manipulation of Hiram and Hermione’s? Like, where are the receipts??????

This is gonna sound fake but also maybe it won’t since a previous Archie storyline literally involves him fist-fighting a bear…but Archie Andrews’ storyline this week involves him accidentally getting tangled up with a SECRET PARAMILITARY TROOP OF MERCENARIES!!!! It’s not COMPLETELY random, because Uncle Frank used to be one of the said mercenaries, and the group is tying up lose ends so sends an old friend to kill him. But then again, Uncle Frank is kinda random to begin with so yes indeed this storyline is way too bonkers even for Riverdale standards and also doesn’t even say much?? Uncle Frank says he was just following orders and “did some things” and Archie has p much zero follow up questions for the fact that his uncle maybe killed innocent people because, you know, who has the time to get into that moral quandary really!

Betty and Alice have some cute mother-daughter bonding time AKA try to solve a murder together. Just cute little Cooper things! In the aftermath of Alice stealing the quiz team answers, Betty gets kicked off the Blue and Gold and also has a restraining order taken out against her by Brett, which confuses them both at first until Betty is like oh right yes I did club him over the head that one time. Alice seems unfazed by this. She also seems unfazed when, upon entering the Blue and Gold offices and seeing Betty’s murder board, Betty says “that’s my latest murder board.” The fact that Betty has had so many murder boards that she has to specify that this is indeed just the latest should be of concern, especially for Alice, who is usually concerned when Betty so much as looks at her funny, but alas! The journalistic instinct must have taken over her parental ones.

So Alice and Betty set out to solve Mr. Chipping’s case, which brings us back to the unfortunate part of this narrative where we’re expected to disbelieve a teen accusing her teacher of sexual assault. In fact, the end of the episode insists that Donna is Not To Be Trusted, because she’s seen in her induction tape confessing the exact details of an illicit student-teacher affair that she initially gives to Betty about Chipping in an earlier episode but this time saying a different man’s name. Betty assumes this means Donna is definitely lying and hiding something, but honestly, this could be a genuine trauma response, a way for Donna to tell the truth of what happened to her without naming Mr. Chipping and suffering potential consequences of that. But Betty—and the writers, it seems—really just want us to not believe Donna, and that’s a bad story choice. I don’t really see how to salvage any of this at this point.

I have similar qualms with the Toni/Cheryl storyline in “Men Of Honor.” Well, I do get what I wanted: an actual storyline for these two that doesn’t just seem like filler or doesn’t just make them supporting devices in other characters’ arcs. But hmmm I guess be careful what you wish for! Nick St. Claire returns to town looking for a place to party with his “chums” after they all get into Harvard, and Toni doesn’t yet know that he’s a rapist, so Cheryl shares with her what happened sophomore year. On the one hand, Cheryl and Toni both confiding in each other about their assaults feels real, and there’s sometimes healing power in the trust and vulnerability that comes with disclosing trauma with a loved one. But! Toni and Cheryl’s storylines are almost always exactly this! Rooted in trauma! And again, I would potentially find this more interesting if the show were actually engaging with it in a meaningful way, actually naming it for what it is. But that never happens? I don’t think queer couples need to have happy romanticized storylines all the time, but if they’re going to be so steeped in darkness and trauma and abuse, then that needs to be something that the writing is really digging into. Otherwise, it just starts to feel like weird trauma porn.

And then there’s the major issue of how Toni decides to deal with Nick. She and Fangs and Kevin—who are both now DEEP in the world of lite fetish porn?—drug Nick and non-consensually film him getting tickled. Do I love to see Toni look a rapist in his face and say “I will ruin you” ? Absolutely. Do I hate that her revenge plan is executed in this specific way? ABSOLUTELY. Violating Nick’s consent to teach him a lesson about consent is, uh, not the way. And yet it’s sold as this empowering moment and also one that brings Toni and Cheryl closer: “I am, as always, one lucky lady,” Cheryl says, which is just such an unearned sentiment, because the relationship between these two still does not feel completely lived-in. They’re bound by all sorts of horrible things, but the emotional chemistry just isn’t there, and it doesn’t help that Toni remains underdeveloped and often is just the set dressing of Cheryl’s storylines.

There are, essentially, five episodes crammed into “Men Of Honor,” which of course means that none really find their legs. The most interesting thematic throughline concerns the title, because none of the men here have honor, even as they claim to do the things they do in the name of it. It’s a tongue-in-cheek title that does provide some semblance of clarity for what the whole episode is trying to do. But it still lacks real weight, each storyline sinking a bit from too many weak spots.

“Riverdale” Episode 411 Recap: Does Anyone Remember That Cheryl and Toni Exist?

Welcome to Riverdale! This week, everyone has joined a quiz team for no reason other than it being convenient for the plot and Betty’s quest to bring down Stonewall. For some reason, the quiz team competes on a set that looks ripped from the 1950s but I love Riverdale’s anachronistic aesthetics so I’ll allow!!

Uncle Frank is still in town and while he does not give any teens drugs this week he does shake things up at the construction site including stealing money from the business and this is also how I learned Archie is fully running his dead dad’s construction business? I mean this was probably previously established but Archie has like 8,000 jobs and hobbies right now, so it’s a lot to keep track of! Archie’s storyline here is mostly boring, and Uncle Frank really does feel like someone who has been crammed into a story that already has a lot of characters to keep track of.

In a small subplot, Fangs apologizes to Kevin for that time he manipulated him under orders from cult leader Chad Michael Murray. But then we quickly depart this meaningful character moment to see Kevin being manipulated into recording a tickling video with a stranger.

The best storyline of the episode digs into Jughead and Betty’s relationship, which hits a serious snag when Jughead decides to write a YA mystery novel about her serial killer father. Yes, he’s technically pressured into writing this story. But is he really?! Isn’t this probably the story he wanted to tell all along? It’s even implied that the thought had occurred to him when he’s talking to Charles and says he “couldn’t do that to Betty.” If we’re to take Jughead’s voiceovers on this show literally, it does sound like Jughead mines his friends’ lives for his writing. Betty is right to be mad, especially since he didn’t talk to her about it and also told her about the Yale thing in a weird way. Stonewall has driven a wedge between Betty and Jughead, and while the Stonewall storylines sometimes seem like unneeded interjections, I’m genuinely interested in the tension between Betty and Jughead who have long had the most convincing and complex relationship on this show. Betty Cooper in general has the most consistently engaging arc on this show, and the few scenes between her and Alice in “Quiz Show” are strong, needling back into Betty’s trauma, anger, and confusion about her father.

I wish the relationship writing for Cheryl and Toni had an equal depth and dimension to it, but nay. They sort of just exist together these days. At least Cheryl is in more scenes in this episode, but it’s all as a function of Veronica’s arc. Cheryl and Veronica team up against Daddy Lodge to craft a recipe for rum that involves maple in order to be different enough that they don’t infringe on Hiram’s patent on molasses-based rum, and I cannot believe that is a sentence I just typed but also Teen Rum Business honestly ranks pretty low on the list of bizarrely unbelievable storylines Riverdale has taken on. We do get to see Cheryl and Veronica dance in slow-motion at the teen-run club, quickly followed by Hiram sledgehammering a bunch of bottles of rum in slow-motion. The stakes! Are! High! Eventually, Veronica and Cheryl decide to convert Penelope’s former brothel into a social club where they can shill their run without Hiram interfering. They hire Penelope to manage it, and this is how I was reminded that Penelope has been living in the bunker this whole time!!!!

“Why are we even here?” Cheryl asks Toni during the quiz show finals, and it’s an accidentally very meta moment, because indeed, what role do Cheryl and Toni even play in the story right now? We’re getting so much Brett and Uncle Steve and other characters who didn’t enter until this season, and Riverdale is losing track of some of its main characters.