Quick serious note before we get into the nonsense of the mid-season premiere. The father of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the showrunner for Riverdale, is missing and presumed to have been captured as a political prisoner by the current Nicaraguan government, whom he was an outspoken critic of. More information and a petition to sign can be found in our Rundown article from the 9th. OK, now back to our regularly scheduled nonsense.
Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! It’s been a hot sec since we last chatted. Four months to be precise, which is more than a month after we were originally told Riverdale would be back. I guess this means we’re going to be getting a very short break between seasons. But that’s a worry for later Elias. Right now, we gotta worry about convicts running amok, a missing Jughead and, like, ten other small plots that kinda sorta follow up from “The Pincushion Man.” Should be a fun time.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Product goes the Placement
I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a thought to touch on another glorious piece of unabashed shilling, this time for AERATED CHEESY CRONCH SEEDS™. It’s like the triangles, but you can pretend these are healthy.
2. The Bread is His Flesh and the Wine is his Maple Syrup
Penelope Blossom is a character that’s too chaotic to let go, it seems. I was pretty content to see her fade into the background but it seems that Riverdale really hates letting their villains disappear for long so it seems like she’s here to stay, again, and Cheryl just kinda…lets her back into her life? Because she’s found the Big J in prison? And by Big J, I mean Penelope’s dead son Jason. Whom Cheryl then sees a vision of, in a steller red suit, during Penelope’s gothic but actually pretty normal seeming cult religion service during a musical number synched with Tabitha & Betty having a trip in the bunker. Fucking what?
I…I know this show really likes to give the Blossoms the Weird Shit™ but this is even more out there than when Cheryl decided that she needed to talk to the corpse of her brother whom she’s keeping in the basement. In fact, it’s EVEN MORE messed up because Cheryl saved Jason’s charred corpse from the funeral she gave him and is now keeping him in a trunk??????????? It’s been SEVEN YEARS and she still has this dead body despite her having moved on. I just…
Fucking what?
3. Oh It’s These Assholes Again
I could take or leave the “prisoners loose in Riverdale” development. It worked in the mid-season finale because it was part of the chaos but in “Strange Bedfellows” it’s just kinda…here. I mean, it’s fine, it’s a nice excuse to see a bunch of familiar faces like the Dickensons – you remember the Dickensons – but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really add much to any of the narratives they interrupt. It merely delays having to deal with Chad’s ultimatum re: his shitty investments, makes Hiram feel a little unsafe but ultimately reinforces his stranglehold on Sodale and the palladium, and…yeah, that’s about it. I guess it gives Archie something to do since the school is in remote learning mode after being destroyed at the end of the big prison break, which works as a clever explanation to avoid school crowds for Covid reasons, and it gives Reggie an excuse to fill us in on his heel turn and get some cool moments in on behalf of Veronica.
You know, I think I would’ve been less lukewarm on this if it was just Archie, Fangs, Kevin, Uncle Frank, and Sheriff Keller playing bounty hunter and watching Hiram have to pay them to round up the people he let out. That was a promise Riverdale made me and did not fulfill! Come on y’all. I wanted bounty hunting and all I got was this lousy safe. And a really funny scene of the crew rappelling down through a skylight set against, again, the scene of Betty & Tabitha tripping on shroom fries. I really want to hammer home how weird that whole scene was. It was AN ENTIRE MUSICAL NUMBER. This show y’all…
Continued below4. Two Exes Converge in a Local Diner
For some reason, I called Jessica “Sue” in the “Pincushion Man” episode but let the record show that I’ve corrected that here. Why did I need to correct it? Well, because for some reason, the show decided that she was integral to the plot and made a trip all the way from New York again to pair up with Betty & Tabitha in their hunt for Jughead. Kinda. She really just wanted his manuscript for…reasons that don’t actually matter other than she wanted it. She gives us a reason but it’s hard to tell if that’s all true, kinda true, or complete bullshit. I’m inclined to believe the middle one.
Despite my flippancy, I actually ended up digging her presence here. We got to see her as a more fully realized character than “toxic NY writer girlfriend” without negating any of the descriptors in those quote marks. Jessica kinda sucks but she, just like Jughead, has her reasons for sucking. It’s nothing super deep but I like to see that in a character who could’ve been a simple throwaway, one-dimensional stand-in.
She still did spike the fries and for that unforgivable offence to fry kind (and, you know, consent of the consumers,) I exile her to Riverdale side-character limbo. Long may she remain.
5. Lost in a Sea of Douchebags
So where was Jughead throughout this whole thing? He wandered into Sketch alley, high as balls but also feverish and definitely tripping on something more than a shroomburger, and just kinda lies around for the whole episode. OK, he does stand by a fire for a bit before getting beat up by a bunch of Sodale jackasses – think Wall Street bros and hedge fund managers – who do the “pretends to give money to someone who looks like they need it but actually throws it on the ground and laughs.” It’s gross and probably the least exaggerated thing in this episode. By episode’s end, the one with lines, credited as Alpha Banker, gets his shit kicked by a completely out of it Jughead before Jug falls on his face again.
After this excursion, it seems like he’s going to confront his NY demons by hitching a ride with ANOTHER spooky truck. Will he survive? Will the truck killer or TBK get him? Eh, probably not. It is a Riverdale cliffhanger after all.
That about does it for now! What did you all think of the return? Was it everything you hoped it would be? Did you miss your weekly dose of absolute nonsense like I did? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you all in a week for the secret history of Hiram Lodge. Until then, keep eating your AERATED CHEESY CRONCH SEEDS™ Riverdale.
Best Line of the Night:
(I GOT DISTRACTED BY THE EVERYTHING TO WRITE ONE DOWN SO HAVE THE MOST RIDICULOUS LINE I CAN REMEMBER COMPLETELY)
Cheryl: “Who’s sweetwater is it, exactly?”
