Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! 100 episodes. Can anyone else believe that Sexy Murder Archie made it to 100 episodes? That’s syndication y’all! I’m so proud. Also kinda horrified. How’d Riverdale choose to celebrate this milestone? Why, with one of the strangest episodes we’ve ever gotten.
Yeah.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Plot Twist Tendency
OK. Maybe my declaration that this is the weirdest episode yet is a bit off the mark. The first episode penned by Aguirre-Sacasa this season definitely had this one beat for concentrated WTF, and it’s really hard to top “Survive the Night”’s wackery but “The Jughead Paradox” still makes the case for having the most out there swerves. Like, half my notes are just OH SHIITTTTT as things happen and trying to make anything cohesive out of them is a fool’s errand.
Those OH SHIIITTTs were done out of both excitement and just a little frustration. The explanation of it being a parallel universe is rad, even if it’s not supernatural. I needed to know what was gonna happen next, how it would be different from what I expected, and who else we’d get to see. Moreover, we get answers to all of the lingering questions as to what Rivervale was, and Aguirre-Sacasa ties it all together rather well, but the intermediate episodes really failed to deliver on, or set up, this ending. I’ll talk about it later, though. For now, suffice it to say that I think Aguirre-Sacasa should have written or co-written all five episodes instead of just the bookend ones.
2. Starcrossed Supporters
One of the ways Riverdale celebrated its 100th episode was by bringing back a number of long-dead and long-gone characters, from Dilton Doiley to Ethel Muggs(!) to Hal Cooper to Jason Blossom to OG REGGIE LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO. It was great getting to see them again, even the villains, though it was a shame they couldn’t bring Moose or Midge or FP back. I’m almost certain that, had this not been in the middle of a pandemic, more of the former cast would have come back for a brief appearance.
Still, what we got was excellent. Ethel got to be the character I’ve always hoped she’d be. Dilton Doiley came back with long ass hair and it was hilarious. And, of course, we got to lampoon the replacement of Ross Butler as Reggie with Charles Melton by…having Ross Butler show back up and be season 1 Reggie all over again. I could not stop laughing and I love how easily he slipped back into the role.
For those who don’t know, Ross Butler left the show between seasons 1 & 2 because he had a starring role in 13 Reasons Why on Netflix and wanted to focus on that. I’m kinda glad he did because it allowed Melton to slide into the role and got me to love the character. But anyway, he was back and the two got to fight and it was every bit as wonderful as one expects.
Eat your heart out Wandavision. Subtlety is for cowards.
3. Golden Fries
One standout moment in this episode full of standout moments has to be Narrator Jughead, after returning from the dead to stop Betty & in-story Jug from making out next to a bomb to save the unvierse, describing what heaven is. Apparently in Rivervale heaven is Pop’s Choc-o-lit shop with all-you-can-eat FREE food & shakes but it’s also full of comics and everyone is dressed up like the original Archie comics characters. Jughead is even sporting the paper crown and bit S long-sleeve shirt! It’s hilarious and I love it.
I seriously think this is my favorite scene all season. It’s just so out there but totally in line with the show’s relationship with the original comics. I kinda wish they’d gotten Veronica Fish or Fiona Staples or Erica Henderson or Derek Charm or anyone who did the big reboot to draw some of the art we got – it would’ve been even funnier – but what’re you gonna do?
4. Archie is Unkillable
Continued belowArchie Andrews as “the big bad” was kinda a brilliant idea? Like, the set-up was VERY weak and I don’t think Aguirre-Sacasa leans in nearly enough but I love the idea that, when Archie found out death means nothing in this universe, he would do anything to protect it just so that he can see his dad again. Couple that with how the slight-offness of Rivervale twists his goodness and it’s easy to see why he’s acting this way. It feels well within the realm of possibility, making him all the more chilling as a foil against Jughead.
It’s also a great way to use the fact that Fred Andrews will never be back because Luke Perry is dead. Unlike everyone else, he’s the one character who CANNOT come back except in very select ways for the briefest of moments. I really wish this episode had leaned into the immortal slasher genre more though. It had all the elements! It just also had to balance the mad science aspects as well. Damn.
5. Phantom Bomb
OK. Let’s address the elephant in the room. The 5-episode Rivervale event is predicated on this taking place in an alternate universe where things are slightly different because Dilton Doiley of Rivervale did some experiment to join the two but then it’s explained that Rivervale is an offshoot made by a confluence of the explosion, love, obsession, imagination, and magic and only came to be because of it but THEN Archie is also the big bad who caused Rivervale to be the way it was? Does this have to do with his sacrifice at the end of “Welcome to Rivervale?” It’s all very unclear and while it’s fine to not really have a good explanation, I would have liked at least a consistent one.
See, I griped about the whole event not committing to either being completely episodic, resetting to a kind-of zero each week, or fully continuing on from the previous one, and that this muddiness hurt the whole experiment, even if I found episodes like “Mr. Cypher” to be delightful. There are ways to have this singular parallel universe idea coexist with an episodic structure OR with a continuous narrative but they didn’t commit to the bit. It’s wishy-washy on whether or not Rivervale is a decaying, twisted version of Riverdale doomed to implode or a constantly resetting and recontextualizing world that’s unraveling but in different ways each time.
“The Jughead Paradox” simply exacerbated this by calling back to all the elements of “Welcome to Rivervale” that SHOULD have acted as recurring elements – the comics, waking up from a dream to negate the big twist of the previous episode, the dead coming back and never having been dead at all. By ignoring or not playing with any of these elements in the preceding three episodes AND by not providing a good reason for why THIS episode reset everything when the last few followed on the same trajectory, the event loses what could have made it one of the strongest (and most out there) sets of episodes in the whole show. It also makes any attempt to tie it in a bow fraught and leaves me feeling like there was a ton of potential left untapped.
Still, I appreciate them taking the swing and allowing the writers to branch out beyond the usual Riverdale oeuvre and to bring in the supernatural in real ways, even if I didn’t always like it – looking at you “The Witching Hour(s)”. Like, we got a literalized Jughead narrator again! And more Ethel! AND an actual way out of the explosive conclusion to season 5. If that’s not to be celebrated in this show, then I don’t know what is.
That about does it for now! Thank you all for joining me for this weird, sometimes amazing, sometimes dull 5-episode event. I, like Riverdale, am going to take a nice long rest and will see you all sometime in 2022. I think in March? We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments and remember to read more comics Riverdale.
Best Line of the Night:
Veronica: “Let’s do it. Let’s make out to save the world.”
