What’s up river-bitches?! RIVERDALE. NO ONE WORD has ever heralded such a heart-pounding experience. BECAUSE no one word ever charged the screen with such Ridiculousness. Idiosyncrasies. Voyeurism. Eeriness. Romance. Daftness. Absurdity. Ludicrousness. Ethereality.
RIVERDALE. Now streaming. Now screaming.
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. They Came From Between the Pages
Now this is more like it. After last week’s mixed bag, we’re back to pure, unadulterated strangeness in the Riverdale way. Far from the full-on nuclear panic I was expecting, the episode splits itself into four plots, each getting their own title card in the 50s B-movie way: “The Mysterious Melting Man,” “Driving Lessons,” “Shipping Out,” and “Project Moloch.” It’s a fun conceit that, sadly, is wasted on this episode.
While I had a lot of fun, I was disappointed that they didn’t go even farther into the pastiches than using a black & white filter. That’s not to say they didn’t do a solid job of weaving in various archetypes and genre conventions into each of the stories, with each having a different tone/flavor: “Melting Man” a noir/sci-fi creature feature, “Moloch” the red scare conspiracy thriller, “Driving Lessons” the family melodrama, and “Shipping Out” the coming-of-age künstlerroman. I was simply hoping for what they seemed to be promising at the top: vignettes.
My passion for the vignette is strong and they had the perfect set up! What I wouldn’t have given for a more focused version of “For a Better Tomorrow.” It could’ve been SO GOOD. Instead, it’s just pretty good.
2. Mr. Melt Man. Melt Me a Man. Make Him the Meltest That I’ve Ever Manned.
Well. I didn’t expect to get so many answers to long-term questions this week. I told you all there was more to ol’ Milky than we were led to believe – I just didn’t expect it to involve a secret wall panel, palladium, and Soviet spies. Riverdale’s really swinging for the fences now. I’m here for it though.
I also wasn’t expecting an appearance by my FAVORITE character: Dr. Curdle! God bless this man and his creepy, creepy mortician voice.
Before all of that, Jughead has to have a proper freak out about the possibility of a nuclear bomb going off over Riverdale. Considering how much discussion there is about that technology, the ethics & justifications of its original use, and the horrors it has wrought right now, it seems pretty pertinent. This being Riverdale, that’s all lumped into a conversation about the ridiculousness of the US’s response to Cold War tensions with “duck & cover” drills period and such drills in areas lacking in strategic importance. Also a quick jab at Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
Like, why would anyone want to attack Riverdale? It’s not like it’s somehow the center of culture and politics while also being a small town that everyone treats like the boonies or something. That would be ridiculous.
You know what’s even more ridiculous? Dilton Doiley showing Jug the bunker his father built – THE bunker, in fact – and then handing him a rock that I 100% thought was going to be uranium but is instead the go-to metal in this series, palladium, because he basically spilled the beans that they suspected something bad was happening by promising to save Jughead even there’s no way a bomb would fall on Riverdale. No way. No how. I mean, what’re the odds of something going boom in Riverdale?
1 in 2.
3. Network Restrictions Prevent Declassification of Project Great Blue Schlong
While Jughead is off learning all he can from Dilton, Cheryl is discovering that not everything is right at Thornhill. I mean, it never was but now there’s even MORE strange goings ons. Clifford bringing home a strange statue and then threatening to kill his kids if they fuck with him again? That’s gonna raise some alarm bells. And that’s not even the weirdest part of Cheryl’s plot!
I was being a bit coy earlier because while Cheryl & Jughead’s stories are coming from different angles, they intersect and intertwine pretty quickly as it’s revealed that not only is Clifford Blossom responsible for ordering the Milkman murders but he’s also been secretly mining palladium to build an even bigger, even more powerful bomb for the US military. OR SO THEY WERE TOLD. He’s actually a double agent for the Soviets and is going to deliver them the bomb.
Continued belowOh and this is all conveyed through Cheryl sneaking around her house with a candelabra and then sneaking into a mine to take glamor shots of the aforementioned bomb.
There’s probably something more I could make of the red-baiting “captain of industry” being a hypocrite but eh. It’s just one more twist in an episode of twists. What I did like is how many call-backs to aspects of the show I’d forgotten about there were. It felt natural.
Almost as natural as Cheryl narcing on her parents and then burning all their shit.
4. In The Navy. You Can Sail the Seven Seas.
I actually really enjoyed this storyline way more than I thought I would. At first it seemed like it would be another small proxy battle between Frank and Archie. Frank would push, Archie would push back a little, Frank would push harder, and something would give. Instead, Archie’s really had it with Frank, who proceeds to be the worst version of himself through the rest of the episode. Seriously. He’s a real piece of shit this week.
This is one of those times when I could see them purposely pushing the characters to fit a genre archetype more than their usual selves. It wasn’t out of place, and worked to the episode’s advantage, but I could feel the construction of the episode in their back and forths. The military father vs the artistic son. Hegemonic, restrictive masculinity vs expansive, egalitarian masculinity.
It’s telling that in the end, Archie is able to stand up to Frank while the person who ultimately shuts him down is Mary. It was so satisfying seeing Frank get taken down a few pegs by Mary. It was also nice to see that it wasn’t a full break because beneath it all was a man hurting and leaning on the only thing that seemed stable, when it was always a phantom.
5. Road Trip to Freedom
Where do I start with this one? Honestly, there’s about as much packed into Betty & Ethel’s plot this week as there is in all the other ones. From the hilarious drivers ed class – shake it out at the stoplight – to the HUGE reveal regarding Ethel, it’s too much. So instead of going point by point, I’m just gonna briefly yell about Alice and then talk about Ethel, because she’s more important.
*Deep breath* Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?! They’ve been teasing some big problem between Alice & Hal as the reason Alice is such a shitty mom and the thing that did it was an affair? GAWD what a crock of shit. I don’t mind the reconciliation with Betty afterwards. It’s not great but it at least tracks with the emotional arc of the episode. But why’d they have to pin literally everything on this one event and have it somehow explain away Alice’s every bad choice AND the patriarchal, puritanical worldview she embraced in one fell swoop?
Ugh. Bad. It’s bad. It can fuck right off.
Ethel, on the other hand, finally gets her day in the sun. She’s moving forward with her life, she’s got a good boyfriend in Ben Button, and by the episode’s end is driving off into the sunset to start a new life far away from the trauma of Riverdale. It was only when she was driving off that it hit me: Riverdale had successfully crafted a happy ending for two characters that had only been through tragedy after tragedy and poor writing decisions after poor writing decisions.
Ethel’s whole story this week is about creating a clean break from the past; a past full of awful things, secrets, and lies; a past that she was unable to face for so long. A past that she has learned about and denied it its power over her. That this coincides with her getting a car is not a coincidence. Cars in our culture are synonymous with freedom and new starts. They’re the quintessential symbol of the 50s for this reason.
And Ethel uses it to finally get out of Riverdale. She’s out! She’s free! And now that she’s free, we can finally begin to wind the series down properly.
Continued belowThat about does it for now! What did you all think of the four stories? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you again in a week for the second to last episode of the series. What could they possibly have left in store? Apparently that war between heaven and hell is actually happening! Who knew? Until then, always light all your creepy hallways with real candelabras Riverdale.
Best Line of the Night:
1. Toni: “How would you get food or water?”
Kevin: “Well, I’d be in a fridge.”
2. Clifford: “Moloch is an ancient pagan deity that could only be appeased by child sacrifice. You should keep Moloch in mind, should you give me any more grief.”
