It’s the lead-in to Riverdale‘s mid-season finale as Veronica and Archie take point in the Black Hood mystery. How does it fare? Let’s look.
1. Veronica & Archie: Detectives
You know, with all the death and crime and mayhem, you almost forget for a few moments that this show is also known as “Sexy Archie”. Veronica and Archie have chosen to defy the Black Hood’s threats by going a bit further in their relationship. It’s to the point where Archie pops those three words: “I love you”. Instead of trying to confront that right away, Veronica takes up Betty and Jughead’s request to dig a bit deeper into the potential connection between the Riverdale Reaper and the Black Hood. It is a nice change of pace to have Ronnie and Archie playing the detectives in this case, using it as a backdrop to try and deal with their own relationship problems.
2. Dissention Amongst Snakes
With FP being released from jail, Jughead has an opportunity to make the Serpents into something better. However, it’s not going to be easy, because on top of some within the gang not wanting to along with Jughead’s plans, FP himself has had enough. Deciding that he wants to go completely straight, he gets a job at Pop’s. Further compounding that is Jughead’s debts he owes. It’s providing a powder keg ready to explode.
3. The Devil’s House
So, the titular premise of this episode is the “Devil’s House”, the house where the Riverdale Reaper murders took place. But it’s also about the Serpents, the past’s darkness infecting the present and recurring mistakes that happen from generation to generation. Which is good, because mysteries should be used to examine the characters, even if the whole mystery of this episode turned out to be a red herring. The Black Hood mystery itself doesn’t advance at all in this episode, even though it picked up a few threads that seemed throwaway from last week’s more anthology of an episode.
4. Betty and the Darkness
There’s been an underlying story with Betty flirting with the darkness and shedding that Wholesome Girl image. There seems to be a culmination here, but it does kind of annoy me that it centers around Jughead to a degree? Like, she wants to be part of Jughead’s world, including the Serpents. I get that. But it, and the results by the end of this episode, feel very trite? And this is coming from someone who liked their relationship.
5. A Bit of a Dull Episode
Yeah, that header probably gave my thoughts on this episode away, but I can’t help but feel this episode can be summed up by its use of the song “Mad World” in the karaoke during the Serpent’s party. The “Donnie Darko song” as Archie put it is a song that has been so overused to the point that it has no meaning. This episode had things happening, there were events that impacted characters and their relationships, especially with the last five minutes. And there’s nothing I can point at in this episode and say that was bad. But the same mad spark didn’t feel there, especially this is the lead into the midseason finale next week. I don’t know, maybe it’s because there was the return of something truly insane in another part of my entertainment, but this episode felt like a rare miss for the show.
