Riverdale Chp. 48 - Featured Television 

Five Thoughts on Riverdale‘s “Requiem for a Welterweight”

By | February 28th, 2019
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! After a couple weeks off, here we are, ready to drown in the sheer volume of plots that Riverdale has seen fit to grace the return. Were they any good? Did anyone die? Was there ANOTHER stupid drug name created? You’ll just have to read on to find out. . .or just listen to the frustrated screams.

And as always, spoilers ahead.

1. Toxic, I’m Slipping Under

I should be more excited for the creation of the Pretty Poisons than I am. It’s the perfect storm: Toni & Cheryl return to the forefront, doing something rather than standing around like extras, it provides a new dynamic and opens up the characters for development in ways that could not have happened while they were Serpents, and it forces Jughead to have to humble himself and admit that his decision to evict Toni from the Serpents was a poor one, reflecting badly on his leadership, while getting him to grow a little.

Instead, aside from Toni’s power struggle with Cheryl — something that was deeply rushed — the creation and execution of the Pretty Poisons is disingenuous and frustrating. This goes back to the mid-season premiere and while I know this episode is trying to position us to see Jughead’s “vanity project” comment as the slight it is, he’s right.

Her rage is totally unjustified based on what the show has chosen to show us and the way they’ve framed it. Cheryl is the WHOLE reason Toni gets booted from the Serpents and sees the gang as her personal army that also happens to be Toni’s. It’s not that she wants the power but that she refuses to see anyone other than herself; she is still very self-centered and the show doesn’t feel the need to grapple with that in any meaningful way nor does it do enough to show us why she is right.

Moreover, Toni’s motivations have been wildly inconsistent in the three episodes we’ve seen her in, going from “I wanna steal shit with Cheryl” to “I miss my family, the serpents” to “I want to lead a gang.” None of these would be out of character on their own but the lack of set up for any of them or connections between the three in such a short amount of time makes them infuriating.

I have to chalk much of this up to the writing. They were so concerned with getting to this point, with weakening the Serpents to the point they needed the Gargoyles (under the control of Gladys Jones) and of sidelining the women of the serpents, that they were unconcerned with how they got here. Also, yes, I do think that this is what they’re doing with this gang instead of allowing them to operate in parallel with the others. I’m hoping I am proven wrong and that the rocky path here was to simply get things moving and not to get them moved. But with the testosterone-filled previews of Jughead & Co. v. Gargoyle Gang, I’m not holding my breath.

2. Just Hear that Drug Lab Jingling. Jing, Jang, Jangling Too

The whole gang war brewing between Gladys and Hiram should be tense and worrying but I find myself laughing at the whole thing. Hiram’s empire has collapsed around him because of his wife and daughter, who are still inexplicably on his side? And then there’s gang leader Gladys Jones, who was hinted at being a big threat only as she was being reintroduced instead of when she was up in Toldeo with Archie. She was a gang leader, sure, but nothing to the scale we’re seeing here.

Riverdale is best when it is a mystery, when it is horror, when it is pulpy noir, not when it is trying to do gangster stories. It doesn’t know how to set it up properly or make the stakes feel meaningful. For the record, I love Gladys Jones and I am on Team Jones here in the turf war. However, why she wants Riverdale is still unclear and how she became super crime boss is also unclear. It’s not a deal breaker but it does make it harder to get a grasp on the shape of the narrative.

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It also brings up the question again: Why the fuck wasn’t Hermione a variation on this character the whole time? Seriously. Gah!

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox, I’ve harped on this for two seasons already. At least we got something.

3. Drowning in my Own Tears

And it all comes back to The Farm.

Everything having to do with The Farm is the scariest part of the show. For all it’s hamminess, I get genuine chills anytime The Farm is operating in full swing. It’s perhaps the only genuine fear I feel while watching this show. Maybe it’s just watching these characters succumb to a worldview that asks you to reject your family and everything else and then allow yourself to be drowned in the service of the mysterious leader that scares me. Maybe it’s Chloe Grace Moretz’ acting. Maybe it was that final scene where we just held on Betty as she sobbed and good god did that break my heart. Did I cry? No, the show hasn’t done enough to earn those tears. Did it finally justify Mrs. Cooper’s descent into the cult? Yes.

By having Betty finally acknowledge, in full, that this is a cult and actually DOING SOMETHING about it and by having Kevin just as quickly become ensorcelled by The Farm in his grief. It gave us the benchmark to say, something is wrong, while having the character’s acknowledge the strange circumstances. Whether it’ll lead to anything soon is still up in the air. I also still have a bone to pick with Betty’s inaction for the entirety of the season thus far but that’s a rant for another time.

It’s clear that The Farm is going to finally become a more integral part of the season, driving connections instead of being an offshoot of Betty’s issues, now that we have a definite connection between them and G&G that the characters have noticed.

Good stuff. Maybe now we’ll find out what was up with the floating babies. (I don’t believe it was the drugs in the water.)

4. Eye of the Pussycat

My favorite parts of this season have been the simpler moments that hearken back to the high school drama of season 1. Archie and Josie have a wonderful chemistry together and, while I was really hoping it’d remain a platonic one, it’s impossible to deny that the show didn’t set this up well. I can pick apart Archie’s whole fit plot but, honestly, it was standard levels of Archie stupidity that we’ve seen before and will undoubtedly see again.

Archie is starting to find some level of normalcy is spite of all the insanity going on elsewhere in the show, which is a nice change of pace, offering a breather for the otherwise hectic pace. Give me more small moments and let Archie be free from his burdens dang it!

5. Plots in the Fast Lane

There was SO MUCH going on this week that I couldn’t touch on it all and all those moving pieces really hurt the flow of the episode. We jumped from one story to another without a minute to breathe or to let the episode construct a decent flow. It didn’t make it hard to follow but trying to hold all those different threads in my head at once was annoying, especially because they failed to cohere thematically.

Hopefully the writers did this to do another “state of the show” and will slow things down again, focusing on two or three plots instead of the five or six here.

That about does it for now! What did you all think about the return? You ready to learn some more about The Farm next week? Or do you think it’ll be all focused on Jughead’s fight with the Gargoyles? Leave a comment below and I’ll see you all again in a week. Until then, stay strange Riverdale.

Best Line of the Night:

Josie: “Oh, wow. Five Grand? So, that’s what you think you’re worth?”


//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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