Riverdale s3 ep5 - Featured Television 

Five Thoughts on Riverdale‘s “The Great Escape”

By | November 15th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! It seems that Jughead has finally gone off the deep end and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. It certainly turns his story into something a lot less straightforward than it otherwise would have been. This whole episode flip-flopped between well-paced & clever and batshit insane & awkward in what’s becoming typical of this season. My only hope is this can be ironed out my the midseason finale so strap on your helmets and ride off into the sunset with us. And as always, spoilers ahead.

1. The Getaway

I love how complicated the plan to break Archie out is and just how ridiculous this whole plot line has gotten. At first, I thought they’d be playing it completely seriously, like how they tried to do Hiram’s plotline last season but no, we went straight for a secret fight club, a warden that’s three cards short of a full deck, and a conspiracy to keep Archie in said prison. It stands to reason then that the plan to break him out would be just as wild and complex. I keep forgetting that these are high schoolers. Granted, the events of the show have forced them to grow up a considerable amount but these are some heavy and serious problems for them to be dealing with.

My favorite part of all this is that there are TWO breakout attempts this week, one very ill-fated one and then the sewer one — again, “Shawshank” vibes. Veronica leading the second one is nice but, as Hermione yells later on, I do wish Veronica would have some storylines that have nothing to do with Archie or her father. It’s not that hard! Now that Archie is free, she’s got her speakeasy to deal with, she’s got other things going on in her life, give her something different and then bring it back into the fold. Otherwise, she’s going to continue to be less of a character and more of a plot device.

2. The Magnificent Six

The parallel narratives between the G&G campaign and the full-one escape may have been introduced in a very ham-fisted way via Jughead’s insensitive, cultish, sleep-deprived ramblings but in execution, the decision was an inspired one. Unlike last week’s intrusive framing, Jughead’s narration has always leaned towards the overly dramatic so him applying that to his Game Master narration isn’t out of character AND it allows the show to dial it up to 11. Instead of his reserved, true-crime voice, he breaks out the storyteller in him, building tension and urgency and a complete narrative instead of leading questions meant to pique interest.

It allows both narratives to remain in the forefront without calling us away from one for the other for long stretches of time. The direction in this episode was also noticeably more dynamic than usual, giving us a variety of filmic techniques and interesting transitions. Knowing the way TV works, this most likely won’t remain but this was the right episode for it. Also, now that I think about it, most of those shots were probably call-backs to The Great Escape, the grandfather of many of the escape tropes at play this week so. . .there’s that.

3. The Game Lover

Jughead, buddy, the fuck are you doing! You’re jumping head first into the deep end and you just keep swimming further and further down. How is any of this going to help you solve the mystery of G&G? All you’re doing is enabling the game to continue unfettered. Do a sanity check dude. I say all this but it’s not actually surprising that Jughead would go all in on the game. His character has always been a conspiracy lover. Heck, the whole first season was him trying to tie the shutting down of the drive-thru to something bigger, which the second season proved to be true. He even had the red string cork board!

What shocked me was the wild abandon that they had Cole Sprouse play him with. Jughead might love conspiracies but the full-on obsession with the game hasn’t been properly set up or explained; he just falls into it and is suddenly running his own game to, what, ascend? Maybe if we had seen him diving into the book more beforehand, reading the rules and putting a few patterns together, then this would have felt more earned.

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The other part that bugged me but complicated matters in a good way is his insistence that the game is reflected in the town and that reality is simply a manifestation of G&G. I get what that are going for but Jughead isn’t stupid enough, or (hopefully) sleep deprived enough, to mix up causalities. The town doesn’t reflect the game, the game reflects the town. This revelation, though, combined with the Warden’s involvement in the game, deepens the mystery and makes this a lot more interesting than just a “satanic panic” rip-off. The roots of the game run deep and have spread wide, how much so will be left to future episodes to reveal.

4. Somebody Up There Hates Archie

I wanna talk about the warden real quick since this is the last time I’ll be able to. RIP Warden. He was always a little bit off but I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on his connection to G&G before this episode. The clues were there, at least this week they were, from the suspicious cup to the dialogue lines that were suspiciously similar to the G&G rulebook. I don’t know if I like this development, as it gets back to the large tonal shift in Archie’s plot line, but it is in-line with the pulp insanity of the rest of the season and I’m totally on board with that.

I’ll also never get to call him Warden Zod, which is a shame considering his performance this week was just the right amount of angry Michael Shannon and, well, Warden Norton. It now begs the question, who gave him the quest to kill Archie and for how long he’s been under the spell of the game. This is solidifying my theory that Hiram has something to do with the deaths but, then again, he didn’t want Archie dead and the Warden very much did. This will probably be important later but when and how, I can’t tell. We haven’t seen Ethel or the crazy Farm people in a couple episodes so it could be a while. They’re playing the long game and so far, it’s paying off.

5. An Enemy of the People

There are a few people this title could apply to this week but I’ll stick to the ones who are still alive and aren’t named Hiram: Hermione Lodge and Joaquin. Both had very little to do this week but are heading in interesting directions and I hope, hope, hope they don’t shunt them to the side like they did with Ethel. Hermione’s job as Mayor puts her in an position to push back against Hiram but she doesn’t do it very often, except when it comes to secrets. I wish they’d explore this dynamic from her perspective so that we could see her priorities — family, power, love of her daughter — and see why and how it’s changed from the younger version of her we saw last week.

We know she compromised large parts of herself when she dated and then married Hiram but we haven’t gotten enough time with her to see which parts she regrets losing, which ones she’s glad to have lost, and what she’s trying to reclaim. What does she WANT? It’s unclear and that makes for a weak character where there once was a complicated, strong one. There are glimmers of hope in her outburst at Veronica and Hiram but not nearly enough.

As for Joaquin, his reintroduction and the subsequent revelation that he’s been subsumed into the cult of G&G is huge. I love this character and I want to see more of him, not least because I want more supporting cast members that actually have their own stories. It also gives us ANOTHER angle into the G&G plotline, which is subsuming all the rest, for better or for worse. Kevin’s invested in this one and that draws in more people into the game.

The other questions that have come about from this is why haven’t Jughead and Betty shared their knowledge with the group? What ARE the parents hiding beyond the story Mrs. Cooper told Betty? And where is Mr. Andrews!? I miss him & Molly Ringwald’s Mary. Also, also, does the Gargoyle King just awkwardly stand around in the woods waiting for people to come across him? Regardless, the costume is creepy as shit.

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That about does it for now! Join me again in two weeks (I checked this time) for more G&G shenanigans and maybe some answers? Did I miss something? Was the episode not as mixed as I presented it as? Let me know what you thought of this week in the comments! Until next time, drink a shake and stay out of the woods at night.

Best Line of the Night:

Veronica: “I’d recognize those abs anywhere.”


//TAGS | Riverdale

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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