April Fools. I did, in fact, write five thoughts. No welcome this week, though, because I honestly did consider fulfilling my promise from “Killing Mr. Honey”. I mean, this article goes up on April 1st for the bonkers mid-season finale we just got. That’s a sign.
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. The Only Proper Response to Long Hair Chic
2. It’s Like Poetry. It, uh, Rhymes
Whew. Okay. Got that out of my system. Ahem.
One of the themes of “The Pincushion Man” is that of toxic or broken relationships, be those relationships romantic, platonic, or familial. We open on a montage of idyllic moments between Cheryl & Ms. Marble and Tabitha & Jughead but by the end of the episode, or even sooner, those relationships are torn asunder by Blossom family bullshit or a simple mismatch in personal desires. Now, not every relationship highlighted this week are equal levels of messed up, and some are perfectly normal changes in status, like Tabitha & Jughead. What they have is healthy and I hope it stays as a close friendship. However, many of the others in this episode are certainly not.
We get the reintroduction of Sue, Jug’s ex who enables the worst in him, and the return of Penelope, Charles, and *deep breath, Elias. Deep breaths* Chic. Archie has to deal with a General who wants to buy his loyalty, Ms. Smith continues to win worst Mom of the year award, Cheryl’s Nana is clearly toxic to Cheryl’s mental health, Glen is using Betty in a very underhanded & deceitful, though not malicious, way, and Chad IS THE FUCKING WORST HOLY SHIT.
Side note: I CANNOT BELIEVE there is a character I hate more than Chic and yet, in only 5 episodes they have managed to do that in Chad. I didn’t even hate Brett (and Donna) this much, though maybe that’s because I found their conflict engaging. Chad scares me and I am worried for Veronica. I feel sick when I see him on screen and I know that’s the point but hot damn I cannot wait for him to receive some Riverdale style justice. Well done on constructing an interesting narrative for Veronica when we come back but also fuck you for making it hinge on this garbage entitled douchebag. I need to take a shower after watching the display he put on.
By placing all these relationships next to each other in a single episode and allowing them to unfold, it highlights their similarities and unifies the many, many disparate plots at a level beyond the surface narrative. Is it subtle or particularly profound? Riverdale has a serial killer named the Trash Bag Killer and a drug called Jingle Jangle. Subtle and profound, it is not. It is, however, effective and I appreciate when the show goes out of its way to show not tell like it did here.
3. Palladium? I Barely Know ‘Em
I have no idea what Hiram is up to beyond being a leech on the community and sitting behind his desk like Thanos, promising to get involved at some point but sending his henchman Reggie to do the work, but whatever it is, it involves a bunch of Palladium??? Now, I know this wasn’t mentioned last season but I’m not shocked Hiram’s prison has expanded out from being a horrible private prison that manufactures drugs. It’s well within the realm of possibility and now puts him in conflict with Cheryl and her maple grove.
Who will prove more stubborn? Considering the massive fire & the potential power of a curse on the Blossoms, it’s looking like Hiram just might get the Palladium rich land beneath the Blossom maple grove. That or piss her off enough to dig it up herself.
4. 700 Plots & a Side of Fries, Please
I alluded to this before but “The Pincushion Man” has a lot going on. I don’t think any scene lasted more than a minute or two at most during the episode, which may not seem that bad considering most TV shows jump around a lot but this felt different. Rather than going from scene to scene within the A plot and then jumping to the B or C plot for a scene or two, we go from A to D to F to G to B back to A and then to Q, which is just a sub-plot of D which we won’t know until we jump to C. It’s overwhelming, though each plot is coherent on their own and in relation to the others.
Continued belowI was never lost but I was frustrated by the volume of threads I had to follow, and I wondered if they all needed to be here, or if the episode could be rearranged so that we weren’t constantly bopping from one to the other and could spend the time to sink into one conflict before moving to another. It worked in favor of Jughead & Tabitha’s narrative but against Archie’s. Hopefully this was just because they wanted to leave us with as many cliffhangers as they possibly could, which, uh, they really did.
Archie might be branded a traitor, Veronica is dealing with…chad, Betty is hunting Polly on her own (please tell me Chic was recaptured,) Kevin’s personal traumas are still stirring in the background, Cheryl has the burnt maple farm and her mother’s return to Tree Jesus, Toni is somewhere, and Jughead is, well, abducted. Maybe. It’s a lot and for once, I trust a cliffhanger to deliver. Don’t make me a fool Riverdale.
5. When the Shroomburger Hits
Can we talk about those Bunker scenes and the magic mushroom burger? Now, I’m sure Tabitha just made a mushroom sauce and put it on a cheeseburger but I like to imagine that she instead made a burger out of the shrooms because that’s a funnier image for me. Jughead, burger champion, eating a shroomburger instead of his staple, traditional meat with cheese.
You gotta admit, it’s a much more fun reading of the scene. I am shocked we didn’t get a full reckoning of what happened to him in New York but I’m quite glad they addressed his hangups with his toxic ex and Betty’s cheating on him with Archie that one time and him, you know, ALMOST DYING SENIOR YEAR. It was a weird set of scenes though. Was he naked in the whole time? When did he tear his hand out of the handcuffs and leave all that blood on his printed manuscript????? Where did he even get a printer?!
There are many questions to be had but chief among them is whether or not he ate a piece of an alien and that is why he is being called back to their ship? Or is he completely hallucinating it and suffering from palladium poisoning or something. I could believe either, though I want to believe it’s aliens. That’d be more fun. Unless these magic shrooms were part of Pop’s secret sauce the whole time, in which case, I want that thread please and thank you.
That about does it for now! I would say I’ll see you all in a week but unfortunately, this is the mid-season finale and that means a hiatus. As we’re living in the year of the plague, that hiatus is extended for three months, which is a long time but if it keeps everyone on set safe, then let there be hiatus. As of right now, we’re slated to come back July 7th. Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments and until then, stay full of fire y’all.
Best Line of the Night:
(I was too distracted by that mid-episode curveball to write any good lines down but, as always, Penelope Blossom saying “Nightmare Child” is a blessing and a hilarious highlight.)
