Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! Pour one out for the sheer number of dead and/or bloodied bodies we see or are implied to see this week. It is a HIGH number and about half of them shocked me. Oh, and pour yourselves a novelty glass full of your hardest liquor because Chic is back.
. . .If you need me, I’ll be over in the corner crying over some jack.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Dupin the Family
You almost had me Riverdale. For a brief, shining moment, I almost believed that my eyes and intuition around Charles was wrong. Sure, I had my doubts because of him using his lens of creeping to illegally wire-tap Betty’s cell-phone (how? Who knows) but beyond that, we have no proof of any other wrongdoing. . .until we find out he’s still Chic’s lover and EW. Gah!
I have many problems with this, numbers 1-16 being that Chic is still around after going down HARD in the season 3 finale and numbers 17-20 being that Chic is back in a seemingly important way. Both of these are not problems with the show but personal frustrations. That said, this just raises so many questions that I don’t want to ask. When did we get set up that Charles and Chic ran together? I vaguely recall it being mentioned while Chic pretended to be Charles but I would much rather forget.
Moreover, how long is this con? Charles clearly had been with the FBI (if that’s even real) for a good long while and if Chic was pulling his con on the Coopers back in season 2, where was Charles in this picture if they were so in love? What’s his game? To ingratiate himself to them to exonerate Chic or put the Coopers behind bars? I don’t think it’s as much a problem as I’m making it but the whole thing has been dropped on us like a poorly filled lunch tray, leaving watery mashed potatoes sloshing onto our shoes and mystery meat precariously perched above our pants.
Also, if Charles is Chic’s serial killer boyfriend, why is it that there isn’t a single gay character in this show that isn’t in a cult or a serial killer? Toni. Moose maybe, though he’s in the limbo land of missing Stonewall Prep students. Kevin isn’t in the cult anymore but he had a number done on him by it. Then again everyone save Archie and his family are varying levels of murder-y so maybe that’s a poor metric. Still, it stands out and is kinda shitty.
2. Poirot This Book
Jughead, for the first time in his life, has writers block. GASP! HORROR! The truly scariest thing of the season. Get out the blankets and turn on the lights, lest your soul leap from your chest as he continues to stare at . . .a blank page!
This development was not unexpected but the fruit it bore certainly was. For one thing, it was pretty well telegraphed that something was up with DuPont, as all old money, hoity-toity characters like him do, and it was linked to one Forsythe Pendelton Jones the First. I thought it would be, like, that he was why Jughead’s grandpa left Stonewall Prep but stealing an entire book?! Damn DuPont, that’s cold. And it’s implied that maybe he hoped to do that to Jughead too! And, maybe, that’s what happened to Forsythe the first, why he left. He went to sell the book, had it stolen, and, perhaps, was disappeared by DuPont and his cronies. This is a half-baked theory at the moment.
But, BUT, the real kicker here is that after Jughead discovers the evidence in the Riverdale’s Literary Magazine, a wild inclusion for a High School, and confronts DuPont, he turns on a dime and lays out just how powerless Jughead is and how violent and angry the powerful get when accused of not getting there legitimately. Ego, my friends, is a powerful revealer of the person beneath the mask. Jughead is in for a far more challenging, and dangerous, year and if he hadn’t realized it before, he has now.
Continued below3. The Window was Sherlocked, I Tell You That
Y’all. Y’ALL. Y’all! I DID NOT expect this week’s episode to feature Sam Witwer jumping out a fucking window and I certainly did not expect him to be as sympathetic as he was. Like I said when we first met him, I thought he was either going to be a villain or, as he turned out, a litmus test for just how fucked this place was. I didn’t really mention it as we went but each episode, Chipping’s hair was slowly getting more and more frazzled, his demeanor more cagey and nervous so that by the time we saw him this week, it was clear that something was up.
Was he being threatened? What was his deal? He was a graduate but clearly there were things about this institution that didn’t sit right with him and his small, very on the nose comment, about Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” speaks volumes. It also affirms Jughead’s worry that, well, this place is fucked and will devour any who do not fit its privileged image.
The scene where Chipping dives out a window — I legit can’t believe I’m writing that — starts off rather silly, specifically with the whole running to the window bit, but after Jug runs after him, that’s when the scene became the scariest in the episode. Actually unsettling. Seeing these four students not even blink an EYE as their teacher dives out a window, not even calling for help. . .if that ain’t indicative of their moral character and class solidarity then I don’t know what is.
Poor Sam Witwer. Perhaps his character survived, since we didn’t see the body, but I’m not holding out hope.
4. A Hardy Fuck-You to the Lobelia’s of the World
Cheryl. You knew keeping Jason’s FUCKING CORPSE HOW HAS IT NOT ROTTED YET? would bring you trouble. Toni saw it. Toni said it. Toni knew it wasn’t healthy but in the interest of keeping her relationship, she put up with it. But now you have two corpses to deal with. Who is the other one? Well, quite simply, it’s the awful uncle who broke into the house with their creepy son and the creepy, soul-sucking, old monied aunt. Why the fuck are these people here, now? What purpose did this plot serve?
I genuinely feel like I was wasting my time for every second these people were on screen. Julian’s haunted doll is far more interesting.
Side-bar: Cheryl, you gotta bless the water before you drown the incorporeal being inside a doll.
I think I had to watch a variation on the exact same scene four times, each one lasting under a minute. I think it was meant to be creepy but instead it was maddening in its banality and repetitiousness. What was the point of this all? To give us another body? To watch as Cheryl is pushed, once again, to the brink and to have her anxieties rise to the surface? Whatever it was, it’s another waste of Toni and Cheryl and the potential of Thorn Hill.
5. What Drew You Back?
Hiram can go take a long walk off a short pier and every second he’s on screen boils my blood and thank GOD Veronica is there to be an audience proxy. I think half my notes during his “take off my shirt to ““seduce”” (ew) Hermione back to me” scene were some combination of BAD, NO, and don’t you DARE Riverdale. It didn’t go how I thought it would (breathe a sigh of relief) but it was still a deeply uncomfortable scene for its implications and for the all too real pain underneath the somewhat pulpy portrayal.
To fault Hermione in taking Hiram back would be a poor reading of her character and the situation. Hiram is an abusive, manipulating mobster and husband and every action, every word he speaks reinforces that. Hermione recognizes that but it is hard to escape, to leave, to reject. When you have been diminished as she has these last few months, between jail and Hiram’s own machinations with Hermosa, (and by being sidelined by the writers for two fucking season. Huh? What?) it’s easy to see why she does what she does.
Continued belowBut I can’t say I’m not intrigued to see where this goes. Veronica has, for a long time, been the apple of her father’s eye and afforded the “protections” that comes with it, even as Hiram has been Hiram and screwed over Veronica at every turn so she’ll come back under his power. Now, with Hermosa being the daughter Hiram always wanted Veronica to be — loyal, conniving, an asshole — Veronica has to contend with that as she seeks her emancipation. She’s up against her father, her half-sister, and, most heartbreakingly, her mother.
I did have a nice hearty laugh when Hermosa had that whole speech about seeing Hiram as good because, yeah, sure, he’s got goodness, but only insofar as he has control. A 99-1 split ain’t exactly equitable, is it?
That about does it for now! I know I missed all of Archie & Dodger’s stuff but, you know, it’s pretty standard stuff. . .except for the drive-by on Archie’s house. You know, somehow I forgot about that what with all the rest of the insanity of this show. What did you all think? What do you think is going to happen to Jug? Will he die? Is it a fake-out? Join me again next Jug’s time at Stonewall gets even more fucky and Betty deals with some problems of her own. Until then, stay out of Room 71 at night. That’s the room where the Stonewalley’s practice their dark arts and stock tradings.
Best Line of the Night:
Cheryl: “What. . .what are you doing here?”
Penelope: “Julian needs a body, Cheryl. So, we’re giving him yours!”
