What’s up river-bitches? It’s time to get freaky and fucky in the most chaste, and TV-14 friendly, ways possible. Sexy Archie is reborn for a new generation. A Boomerier generation. Before I get too ahead of myself, we should get into it. No, not like that. Get your head out of the Kinsley studies.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. The Milkman Knocks Off Twice
Color me surprised. We actually followed up on a Riverdale cliffhanger! Does it go anywhere substantial yet? No, but who cares? This is the kind of mystery you need to milk. Let the theories simmer and stew. Speculation is half the fun and it’ll keep the season from flaring up too early.
DID Ethel kill her shitty father and (to a lesser extent due to, you know, the deeply broken power dynamics) mother or was it truly a Milkman? If so, was it a manifestation of the comic, a real life recreation, or something else? Is magic back?? If not, what was the final straw? Does Ethel even know?
I also love how the episode continues the cavalcade of thematic references to influential pieces of media of that era, and slightly before. Like last week there was a shot of Veronica reading “Peyton Place,” which is basically the Ur-text for the “regular small town bursting with salacious secrets” idea. It’s a fascinating book with a fascinating history. People would literally hide it above their toilets so no one would find out they were reading it.
This week we have a combination of the horror comic moral panic and the adulterous seductive postman from “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” The novel’s from 1934, and the first American movie is from 1946, but the idea has lived on and was a staple of 50s anxiety. Who’s got money on the milkman being Percival Pickens? I wouldn’t be shocked!
2. Pitcher Planting A Tent
I don’t know about you, but I died when Dr. Werther was giving his sex ed speech and pulled down a diagram of plants. The delivery and the lead up were just so perfect. I knew that the “useful diagram” was going to be even more useless than a bucket with no bottom. I knew! And yet it still got me.
The scene that preceded it helped for sure. Werther proclaiming with 100% conviction that the best person to teach sex ed, to keep things “business as usual” of course, is him, a fuddy duddy, stick-in-the-mud prude.
Sure bud. You keep telling yourself that.
3. A Tall Drink of Archie
How many people get to bonk Archie in their fantasies in this episode? It’s more than you think! And there’s more than one person who gets to have intimate moments with him in reality too. One even tries to inhale him, one tries to seduce him, and the other pins him down. Be still our throbbing…hearts.
That was bad. I’m sorry. It’s this episode y’all! It’s just so horny in the weirdest ways. Don’t believe me? Not only is there an Archie gets a boner and runs away gag, and a “make-out party” to learn about sex that is clearly NOT an orgy, there’s an entire dream sequence where everyone’s having their fantasies in “jungles” while “primal” music plays. I don’t really have the energy or the expertise to get into the YIKES of that sentence or the connotations of its symbology so instead I’m going to dwell on the ridiculousness of it all.
What’s especially funny is how Dream Archie contrasts with the Oh Gee Whiz reality of him. He’s a sweet bumbler who’s not sure what to do with horny thoughts so he just kinda stops thinking whereas someone like Betty knows what to do with her horny thoughts, she just can’t get anyone to help her act on them. Poor Betty.
4. Shower Power Bicep Hour
You know who else is getting a visit from the horn this week and unable to act on it? Kevin and Cheryl. Both are trying to figure out their sexuality in this notoriously unfriendly time and it’s sweet, even as I’m deeply afraid of what the show might try to do. Not to mention how both Toni & Clay are black while Kevin & Cheryl are white which would get into the can of worms of anti-miscegenation laws and oh no, I’m back in the “our country was, and is, fucked up” again. The sex episode is not the time for this!
Continued belowLet’s instead appreciate Toni’s master plan to slowly seduce Cheryl from afar by sexily dancing in a black turtleneck at a beatnik coffee house – again, a masterpiece of a bait and switch for the old bar – and her constant “you’ll fuck me someday” eyes to her. She knows what she’s doing and it’s the most active we’ve seen the character in a long while. Sucks that it took a universe reset to get all these characters to that point but hey, I’ll take it.
Same with Kevin being an absolute GOOBER when around Clay and his fumbling when Betty’s like “just grab a tit, Kev!” Clay’s smoother about it than Toni but he’s clearly also testing boundaries with Kevin and walking him to being in a place where he can accept his sexuality and his attraction to Clay. Again, it’s good stuff and a nice use of the new setting to parallel season 1 while improving on many of its shortfalls. And also a way to highlight those pecs and biceps.
They really oiled him and Archie up this week, didn’t they?
5. Vughead For NEVER
Can we not have Veronica and Jughead get together? I’d like that. Let them be friends. Their conversation here was sweet and great. More of that please without it being a way to pair them off as they push for Betty & Archie to get together once the whole “Archie is Cheryl’s beard she doesn’t quite realize she has” thing wears off.
Let Jughead be Ace you cowards! Cole was pushing for it early on and this is the perfect time to reintroduce it. You’ve got him back to his burger eating, loner ways. Keep him romance free, even if that does mean Ethel’s pining for nothing.
That about does it for now! What did you all think of our foray into the land of ~sexual education~? Was there less of it than you expected? Leave a comment below and I’ll see you again in a week for the moral panic to truly begin and for an elopement?? Until then, keep symbolically eating papayas and painting semi-nude ladies Riverdale.
Best Line of the Night:
