Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! What a return! Did you miss me? Did you miss our dear cast members? Did you miss the bonkers twists and turns and cliffhangers that always seem to resolve themselves off screen? I sure did. But enough bloviating, let’s jump right into the thoughts and see if we can’t make something coherent out of this very uneven return.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. The Plague
You know, I honestly thought there would be more significant fallout from the quarantine of the town. That felt like it was setting up for a great ‘No Man’s Land’ premise and would offer an interesting counterpart to what Gotham is doing over on Fox. However, it seems that twas not meant to be as within the first two minutes, specifically the first two minutes of Jughead’s narration, we learn that the quarantine was lifted after a while, it’s purpose in unknown and we’re essentially back to square one, only with Jughead back in town, Hiram in control and Arch off in the Canadian(?) hinterlands working as a park ranger.
Much of this week’s brain space was spent filled with questions of why they chose to speed up these particular plot threads. Archie being in the wilderness isn’t explored very much (we’ll get to that later) and Jughead and FP being stuck outside the town is completely glossed over. We get a montage of Veronica’s club thriving while Cheryl and Toni steal shit from different rich people’s homes, another thing we’ll get to later. How many of those are there in Riverdale anyway?
Regardless, it’s a baffling choice that I only kind of understand. The writers obviously wanted to get to other stories faster and this was the best way to make that happen. Veronica’s plot couldn’t move forwards without Jughead or the quarantine lifted, Hiram most likely was just using this to consolidate power and show that he could do whatever he wanted and is almost definitely working with Edgar Evernever — we’ll get to him later too — and we needed that sweet, sweet vision quest from Archie.
But the big question that remains is, why couldn’t we have gotten one more episode before restoring a semi-status quo? How much more is there in this storyline that it requires the fast tracking of all these narratives because, as much as I enjoy all these Hiram centric plots that drag on forever, it feels like we were reaching an inflection point where questions are answered and the trajectory of the season becomes clear. As it stands, that ain’t here and instead of answers, we only have more questions, more teases and a bear mauling. Yeah.
2. Hell is other DMs
Archie’s bear-induced hallucinations were the best parts of this episode . . . right after Josie’s singing and the whole thing with Fangs. Poor Fangs. I feel no such sadness for the claws though.
Archie as park ranger/trail maintenance person genuinely made me giggle because it fits his character so well. I wish we got more of it but, having spent the above 4 paragraphs griping about that, I’m going to instead talk about how G&G literally comes back to haunt Arch in the form of the ghosts of dead guys past and present and then his friends, who represent the future? The metaphor kind of fell apart but you get the idea; all good hauntings come in threes.
The creep factor was dialed up and while the logic of the Shadow Lake goons was absolutely asinine — “If I’m dead, how can I be sitting here?” — allowing Archie to mentally go back to the three moments he identifies as being where he failed himself is an interesting journey. It allows us to see the moments that he attributes to his current predicament. Obviously the Black Hood returns but going back to him threatening Hiram, which I knew was a bad idea, surprised me more than it should’ve.
It’s the moment he sealed his fate in jail and, while there were other, more damning moments for him, literally any of the times he tried to align himself with Hiram, that was the moment that he believed was his own failure. However, the root problem of his whole involvement with Hiram was his own naïveté and thus, we get his final moment, killing himself.
Continued belowI called it early on so that one wasn’t much of a shock. It was a good scene, one that spoke to the character and visualized his turmoil and regrets and his continued failings. Archie is no longer the same guy he was in season one, but he’s still making the same mistakes as Season 2.
3. The Devil and the Good Lorde
Now, this statement may not come as much of a shock to anyone who’s read my previous columns but man, Season 3 really wants us to hate Mrs. Cooper and Cheryl.
Cheryl has always been a bit of a wild card in terms of likability. Season 1, she was conceited and suspicious, always looking down on everyone and wielding her power with an iron fist. Season 2 showed us a different side to her, with more humanity now that her family had fallen apart, and we got more depth of character through her interactions with the main cast. She was still highly snooty but there was genuine caring beneath it all, despite all the mischief and insults and spite. Season 3 has given us . . . a mess of contradictions that come out of nowhere.
Gone are the gothic overtones and horror tinges to her narratives. Gone are the messed up family dramas. Gone is any sense of who this person is, mostly because we get very little of her here. Why did she become a cat burglar with Toni? Was it the thrill? Was it the stuff? Was it because she was bored? We don’t know and there’s no real attempt to illuminate it.
And then there’s all the stuff with the serpents. What is her angle? Why is she so against Jughead and why has she returned to being the same, stuck-up, distrustful Cheryl from season 1? From one of the best parts of the show to one of the most maddening, it’s apparent that the writers had no idea what to do about Cheryl and Toni so they made them the antagonists of the serpents in order to get Fangs into the Gargoyles. It feels forced and shallow and it is forced and shallow and that really sucks.
As far as Mrs. Cooper goes, I won’t waste the words detailing why her behavior continues to baffle and infuriate. Her obsession with the farm and total disregard for Betty is par for the course now. What got me was how 1) Betty doesn’t find this weird at all, 2) that line about how we JUST missed Edgar while Mrs. Cooper did her best “oh shucks” and 3) the kids from the sisters of quiet mercy are so totally distrustful of Betty all because two strangers to them show up and start undermining her. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense work; I get that many would relapse into the drugs and that they wouldn’t fully trust her with information, but the presentation of it all isn’t right.
The kids act with righteous indignation and don’t trust the woman who saved them from the drug den/torture pit with anything. It’s all just so frustrating to watch and not in an interesting or intriguing way. I was waiting, all episode, for them to just be sent to the farm and after 3 or 4 predicable moves, they finally were. Betty acts shocked, we’re all numb to it at this point, and I just want them to finally bring us to the damn farm already.
4. The Second Sex
Reggie and Veronica as a pairing was teased by the mid-season trailer. At first, I thought this was a bit silly but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t earned. The writers did a top notch job of showing how this could conceivably come about, how Veronica and Reggie have grown close throughout the season via the club and all it’s tribulations, AND how Reggie has grown as a person.
He’s still Reggie but he’s a far cry from the comics version (aren’t they all?) and from his season 1 self. He’s still smug but no longer is he a giant tool bag. Also, the two of them have a genuine chemistry on screen, which really helps to sell the whole thing. It’s nothing more than a moment so far but I’m glad Veronica is moving on after Archie pulled that shitty stunt of running away.
Continued belowI felt bad for Arch during the singing scene but only for a second or two. He screwed up big time and I think the fallout from that will make for great drama . . . if it ever happens.
4.5. All Men are Mortal
One quick thought before I get to the last one. I still don’t believe Hiram is the Gargoyle King. It’s too telegraphed and shoved in our faces. He’s a squirmy man but that’s not his type of bullshit. He’s involved somehow, and maybe so are his drugs in the seizures, but as for him being the GK, it’s about as true as Mr. Svenson being the Black Hood.
5. A Happy Death
Archie has bit the fucking bullet!? After that whole ordeal, and the whole soul searching guilt trip, he’s gonna be done in by a bear in mid-season?
Show of hands, how many people think this is going to stick? OK. I see, um, oh. Zero hands?
Yeah, me neither. If this season has taught me anything, it’s that cliffhangers can’t be trusted and if last season has taught me anything, it’s that deaths are rare and oftentimes BS. That said, I really, really want this to stick. No knock to KJ Apa, he’s fantastic and I love his portrayal of Archie, but if they want these kinds of things to have real impact in the future, they’ll pull a “The Body” from Buffy. Not to that caliber, I don’t think the writing team as is has it in them, but I want this death to mean something and not to be a shock-value fake out.
Do I think the show could last without him? Probably. They’d be losing the soul of the gang but after what we saw, it seems like Archie already killed that part of him. Only time will tell if it’s true or not.
That about does it for now! What did you think of the return? Was it everything you wanted or were you as frustrated as I was at times? There’s a lot to love and a lot to go WHYYYYYY at so let me know what you all thought in the comments. I make sure to read them all every week (it’s been pretty easy these last few weeks.) And once you’ve done that, join me again next week for the fallout of Archie’s “death” and hopefully, hopefully some damn answers or at least less weird tangents. Until then, stay strange.
Best (heavily paraphrased) Line of the Night:
Cheryl: “And how do I know that? Because Fangs told Sweetpea who told Toni who told me.”
