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Five Thoughts on Riverdale‘s “The Midnight Club”

By | November 8th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! It’s back to the past as the whole gang channels their inner Breakfast Club and plays a rousing game of Griffins and Gargoyles. While this week isn’t as jam-packed, or as wild, as two weeks ago — one of these days I’m going to pay more attention to when those skip weeks happens — we still learn a lot and there’s still plenty to yell at the TV about. As always, spoilers ahead.

1. Framing the Past

Having Mrs. Cooper narrate over the entire flashback was a bad decision, plain and simple. Much of her dialogue felt wildly out of character, as it was written in Jughead’s tone, and it was almost entirely useless. It’s there to explain things they could have easily shown or left ambiguous or included in the bookends. The episode would have been much stronger were they to have cut it out. Each time she cut in, I was sucked out of the show and out of the narrative of the past.

On a more speculative note, how much of this story is true? Mrs. Cooper isn’t the most trustworthy character when it comes to telling her daughter things and isn’t afraid to hide things. I don’t think it’ll happen but Mrs. Cooper could be covering for someone now that she’s a part of the farm. I’m still not convinced that Edgar Evernever isn’t the Gargoyle King.

2. Literally Becoming Your Parents

I loved the decision to have the current cast play their parent’s younger selves. We didn’t have to spend an episode trying to place new actors in the roles of the adults and it allowed the current cast to flex some different acting muscles. It didn’t always work, notably with Madeline Pietch and Camila Mendez and Charles Melton who just felt like the same characters, but when it did work, it was fantastic.

3. Supernatural or Nah?

OK, so, is G&G supernaturally evil or is something else going on? It’s super unclear, which could be good, but it’s unclear in a way that doesn’t feel intentional. The cliffhanger where Jughead has been sucked into the game and is in full fanatic mode makes it seem like the game has some kind of a power but that wasn’t apparent at all in the flashbacks. In there, it was just a group of people growing to enjoy a game and were drawn together because of it. They found comradery and escape from the troubles of their lives in it. What I’m trying to get at is that the there isn’t enough consistency between the past and the present G&G’s to really make any solid connections or judgements.

Why’re the adults so worried about this game? Someone died under mysterious circumstances but it was never as bad as the current incarnation of it. The way the show portrayed the past version in the last couple episodes, it seemed like G&G began as a worrying game instead of ending with a death on a night when everyone was high as shit. It doesn’t track which sucks because this could’ve been a great way of introducing the true stakes as well as why everyone else was so worried and not just Alice.

4. Brunch Organization

The highlight of the episode had to be Anthony Michael Hall as the principal and the inclusion of another stupid, stupid drug name: Fizzy Rocks. The Breakfast Club allusions were neither subtle nor minute but they were restrained enough that the episode didn’t feel like a retread of the movie. It didn’t feel particularly 80s outside of the soundtrack but that’s probably because schools always seem to retain their feel throughout the decades.

5. Fall From Grace

Surprisingly, the sharper focus this week made for a much less interesting episode. Maybe it’s because the flashback felt unduly stretched due to that awful narration or maybe it’s because we didn’t actually get to see as much character building for the younger versions of the parents as I would’ve liked. Regardless, my biggest gripe with this is the rushed explanation for how everyone changed between then and now and the reasons why. Well. . .reason.

Yup, turns out the reasons everyone did 180s on who they are and what they wanted was because of Griffins and Gargoyles. More specifically, because the group disbanded because the game is evil and cursed and then decided to stop being friends? A lot of the motivation at the end felt shoved in to provide closure on how the people they set up earlier became the people we’ve seen for two seasons. It was rushed and poorly done but I can’t argue too much because, in the end, all it does is provide a snapshot of a time in these character’s lives when they were still figuring things out and a traumatic event made them reconsider. Was it handled well? Not at all. But at least it’s better than nothing at all.

Continued below

That about does it for now! Let me know in the comments what you thought about this flashback episode. Join me again next week for the return of Oliver Queen, I mean, Archie Andrews fighting for his life in a prison fight club and Jughead fully off his rocker.

Best Line of the Night:

Principal Featherhead: “I’ll be down the hall all day. . .not like I’ve got anything better to do.”


//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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