Five Thoughts on Riverdale‘s “Purgatorio”

Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! After a one week and 6-7 year break, the crew is back in town and ready to have the time of their lives!

Or, well, that’s how a normal show would do things but this is Riverdale. Did you expect tearful reunions, happy antics, and fun moments of levity? Of course not! You’re here for secret fathers, true crime, serial killers, a town being gutted by austerity to line the pockets of the rich, and So. Much. Melodrama. Welcome to the time skip, y’all. It’s about to get freaky.

And as always, spoilers ahead.

1. Whyte Wyrm

There’s a particular brand of earnestness that Riverdale traffics in, one which scoffs at tropes of true crime while unapologetically having a bar called the Whyte Wyrm (yes, it’s spelled that way) with Toni Topaz singing with an aesthetic that is reminiscent of Hollywood Cleopatra and then leaving us on a cliffhanger about the potential death – a sordid death it is implied, and I will not forgive this episode for leaving that thread hanging for 30 fucking minutes – of the best side character this show has: Pop Tate.

It’s a show that wants to tackle very serious topics like corruption and the toxicity of austerity measures that gut public services and send them and the people who use them into a death spiral while also having a completely serious vignette of Veronica complaining she can’’t be the She-Wolf of Wall Street anymore after ~“The Accident”~, and is instead fighting with her pill of a husband because she’s been lying to him about working for, uh, a Jeweler by, uh, working for a different, higher stakes Jeweler? Still not clear on that one but the point stands. It’s a wacky show and I am in awe at the tightrope they walk. Somehow I have fun, week in and week out, despite the utter nonsense this thing throws at me.

I wonder if the residents of Sodale have Fizzle Rocks with their $30 Mimosas.

2. Vignettes

Before getting to the meat of what happened, I wanted to talk about the structure of the episode because it almost recaptures the thematic magic of previous vignette episodes but instead feels just a little off. Rather than having four distinct, unconnected save for the final phone call, vignettes, we have a tiny bit of Archie the Soldier, then a exploration of the people who remained, then the three remaining vignettes broken up by commercial breaks, a lengthy exploration of the town (still focusing on Arch with some Toni mixed in) and finally, the reuniting of the crew. Each vignette was nice on its own but they were all overshadowed by the current plot and the mad-cap nature of trying to establish the season’s driving forces.

It was a mistake to short change our principle four (five if you count Toni and six if you count Cheryl) and it was a bigger mistake to have Archie & Toni’s catalog of Riverdale’s problems take up so much space in this episode. Instead of feeling like something special, which the episode started to do with the opening scene, it feels like another regular episode of Riverdale or another CW show. It would have had more bite, would have been more memorable, if they had leaned into the tones of the movies/genres they were pasticheing more – any war movie, Wolf of Wall Street, Silence of the Lambs, and any “sad writer is sad” literary movie – and allowed that to be the focus for an uninterrupted amount of time. Hell, move Archie to the end of the episode rather than the start and you can keep the mystery of the phone call.

It’s a missed opportunity to elevate the episode beyond what it currently is, which is a serviceable set-up with plenty of missteps. Like the Pop Tate fake out.

3. Emptiness of the Souls

So what actually happened in this episode? Well, we learned that Ronnie is married to Chadwick, a name that is perfect for this onion dip man, Betty was captured by TBK, which stands for, I shit you not Trash Bag Killer, and now has PTSD and is also dating a jar of mayo dressed as an FBI agent whom I recognize from somewhere but can’t place, Jug is a one-hit wonder with writer’s block and a drinking problem, has after him debt collectors who are basically the mob, and now is technically being blackmailed by the best new character Corra to read her novel and I really, really, really hope he doesn’t just straight up steal it because you know that’s exactly how this plot goes, and Arch is a soldier with PTSD….probably. We only get the one scene so who knows.

As for the rest, Fangs and Kevin are together and teachers at Riverdale high and probably will be less than side-characters as has been their trajectory, Cheryl has finally gone full Gothic, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” heroine, Toni is, as said before, leader of the serpents and preganernant, Sweet Pea is doing serpent stuff I think, and Reggie is working for Satan I MEAN Hiram Lodge, who has absolutely fucked the town in the years since being elected mayor and, presumably, rigging every election after?

Did I miss anything? Oh, right, and there’s a spooky truck that may or may not be murdering people, Archie wants five rando 25 year olds to take back and save the town, the Ghoulies live in Archie’s house now, the El Royale has been trashed like everything else in town, and for some unholy reason they made think Pop had died or was murdered for half the episode and just…didn’t resolve it until the final few minutes where he shows up and there’s an offhand comment about him retiring.

No I will not shut up about this, I’m very mad. We just had a heartfelt ending with Pop finally getting his shop’s deed back. I didn’t need this scare y’all.

4. Real Househusbands of Mont Blanc

Honestly, I don’t have that much to say about this episode, at least none that split into five thoughts easily. I do have to say, why are both of the new men introduced in this episode so…lackluster. Like, damn son, how much more milquetoast can they get? Betty’s beau is basically her brother (ew) but slightly less creepy and with brown hair while Ronnie’s husband is controlling, selfish, and reminds me of literally every other rich douche Riverdale has ever introduced. Can we just skip to the parts where they realize their relationships are garbage and go back to being single or just get together already? I like to not have to deal with this drama later on in the season.

I do want to deal with Cheryl’s drama though because her and Toni present a great opportunity for a complex arc, especially since it seems that Toni is joining the series regulars (I think) and will play a bigger part after being unceremoniously shunted to the side last season. I also hope we get to see clips of Hermione as a Real Housewife of New York because that sounds like a ton of fun and any reason to keep her in the show is a win for me. I’m sick and fucking tired of seeing Hiram lodge as the big bad. Stop trying to make Hiram happen, Riverdale.

5. Framing is Key

I know the narration returned last week but I got inordinately excited when Jughead’s voice cut in again with that perfect Investigation Discovery, 20/20, Dateline lurid teasing of horrible events to come. It’s that pulpy goodness that Riverdale does well, rather than the pulpy badness of ~“The Accident”~. I think every time someone said that, I expected them to put their hand to their head and turn away from the camera as if they had the vapors or thought their heretofore unknown half-sister crime-boss from Miami was about to walk in with the impostor boyfriend of a previously thought dead half-brother.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Jughead’s book. The series opened with a conceit: Jughead is narrating from his true crime book about the town of Riverdale and its sordid history, much of which he experienced firsthand. This conceit drives the narration of the series. It was how I knew there was something hinky about Jug’s “death” at the end of season 3 and is an effective tool for not breaking the fiction of the world and still providing an all important frame for the series, allowing for more foreshadowing, revealing information we couldn’t know, and cluing us into important details.

It also helps position Jug in his life as a writer. I thought the narration the book was from would have been his debut novel but it’s not and that adds an interesting wrinkle to his tale. He’s not really a fiction writer at heart; he’s a true crime novelist. That’s what he excelled at and the only reason his other stuff worked is because they were just pulpier versions of reality: see Killing Mr. Honey. I hope they explore this more later but they probably won’t.

Hopefully Corra shows up again. Also, if she’s TBK, I will laugh so hard. Calling it here folks with absolutely zero evidence other than the things we saw in each vignette are gonna play some important role in this season. It can’t just be about fighting Hiram again, can it?

That about does it for now! What did you all think of this new, post-time skip era? Is it all it’s cracked up to be? Do you think COVID happened in this reality? It’s all I can think about with TV right now. Anyway, let me know in the comments and I’ll see you all in a week for…whatever the fuck happened in the previews. Fighting? Punching? Hiram? Lots of nightmares, for sure. Until then, stay strange y’all.

Best Line of the Night:

Sal, the Agent: “You’re past your sell by date. You’re spoiled goods!”