Welcome back to our coverage of Katy Keene! The CW’s newest series is a glitzy, warm, escapist spinoff of Riverdale and with any luck, it’ll be the next big thing on the network. As of episode 3, the show still hasn’t quite lived up to the weightless joy of its pilot, but this late Valentine’s Day celebration is still a perfectly fun outing for our favorite up and coming designer.
1. Katy Keene Introduces Stakes
One of the great joys of this series thus far has been its lack of interest in people experiencing real consequences for their actions. Even when characters mess up, within a couple of scenes, they’re back at the top of their game. In episode 3, Katy Keene takes a bit of a departure from that template, introducing some real stakes for its main cast. It’s a smart inject some genuine conflict into the show- tiny speed bumps wouldn’t have been sustainable as the primary tool for generating tension- and the results are mostly positive.
2. Trouble in Paradise
The A-plot this week follows Katy and KO’s newfound relationship troubles. After years together, KO proposed to Katy only to be turned down; they thought they’d found a happy middle in living together but that isn’t making the difference they thought it would. The small Harlem apartment they share with Josie and Jorge is feeling a lot more tight than usual now that KO is there full time and they want him out ASAP. Worse yet, Katy feels like he’s been pulling away from her emotionally. The weight of all of that bears down as Katy decides whether she wants to spend Valentine’s Day going to KO’s boxing match or working at a Lacy’s event where she can meet some of her favorite designers. The story is relatively strong and feels like a natural step following Katy’s trouble dealing with the proposal last week. Lucy Hale deserves loads of credit for making this feel compelling- she’s grasping at straws trying to make her relationship work but she also deserves to work toward her dream career. Ultimately, Katy makes the decision to lie to KO, telling him she couldn’t get the night off. Hale plays the decision well, making it feel less mean than it does protective. When things inevitably blow up in her face, the couple has a big argument that feels genuinely sad, though not quite as heartbreaking as the show might want us to think.
3. Pepper’s Hustling
Pepper gets a fun, bizarre plot line this week, as she tries to gather the funds to build her artist workspace/club/fashion hub/general cool kid area. She turns to Miss Freesia (Bernadette Peters), who finds men who will pay her to get lunch with them. After spending a day speaking in an American accent, wearing a black wig, Pepper finally reveals her true self to one of them, who’s willing to give her the $20,000 she needs if she spends a night with him at a hotel. Pepper, always five steps ahead of the game, takes him to Lacy’s instead, getting him to spend 20k on clothing, then inviting his wife to the store and returning the clothes the next day. Pepper is the strangest character on this show by far; every scene she’s in is heightened- like a Sex and the City side character got dropped into a CW series and it’s blast. Hopefully when things come together with her art space, her story will hit another level of crazy fun.
4. Jorge and Josie Find Their Voices
Josie’s story is a little all over the place this week, though Ashleigh Murray is so good at playing her that it’s hard not to like her scenes. In one thread of hers, she and Alex Cabot have been continuing their non-relationship and it’s hard to balance that with the fact that they’re working on a single together; he seems to be preoccupied with the former while she’s focused on the latter. The other follows Josie meeting a fellow songwriter named Jimmy who agrees to work with her. The second thread ends with Xandra swooping in and hiring Jimmy as a composer for television. It’s a bit of time-filling nonsense but it’s not offensively bad or boring so we can excuse it. The Alex thread, meanwhile, is relatively strong. Josie asserts herself, telling Alex that music is priority and they can’t be an item anymore. He listens and it’s nice! Josie was always a medium character on Riverdale and it’s great that she’s really gotten a chance to shine on this show. She’s probably the strongest character after Katy and it’s very exciting to see where things are going with her. Jorge continues to be the show’s weakest link this week as he deals with Buzz, a guy who he met on a dating app and sees almost every night but is also incredibly flaky when it comes to going out on real dates. The whole storyline is a bit hard to care about; it’s clear that the episode will end with Jorge dumping Buzz so Jorge being let down doesn’t feel particularly compelling and when he eventually dumps Buzz, it isn’t particularly triumphant. As of right now, Jorge feels too two-dimensional for this show’s own good. The show’s other stories thrive because their silliness is grounded by strong characterization and that’s just lacking when it comes to Jorge.
5. Nothing is Coming Up Katy
For the first time, an episode of Katy Keene ends in heartbreak. While Jorge ends up asking out a hunky firefighter, Pepper gets her coin, and Josie is doing her music, Katy’s storyline wraps up with her barely hanging on. She tries to make a grand gesture for KO, taking him to a downtown apartment they can rent together, but the damage has already been done. They both know that they need different things in life and from one another, so they end things. It’s sad, though I’m not at all confident that this is the end of KO in this show. It’s also not super weighty because, well, it’s only been 3 episodes, and their relationship has been in question for two of them. Most of the sadness comes from watching Hale, who sells how crushed Katy is with gusto. This is a big narrative move on the part of the writers and it’s exciting to see what the show does with its titular character from here. Let’s hope it goes well.
