What’s ghoulish river-bitches? It’s your frightening neighborhood Riverdale reviewer, back with more parables to petrify and stories to skewer. Our tales tonight? The pulpy kind, printed on cheap paper with cheaper ink, populated with blessed blood, glorious guts, and sinful…kissing. Ones that will get the goat of a ghastly group of geriatrics by going…for the Jugular.
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. All Keyed Up
As you may have noticed from my intro, we’ve got ourselves another beautiful vignette episode. My love for Riverdale’s vignette episodes is well-documented. Even when they end up being weak, I am all for this format. I’m especially for it when they totally break away from reality and let each story be 100% fictional within the world, casting the characters into adjacent archetypes and turning the batshit meter up to eleventy-hundred.
So, in that vein, we’re introduced to the Keykeeper, a horror host for a high school themed set of stories. He’s exactly what you want him to be. Gloriously grotesque and gleeful in his narrations as he gives us the low-down on each of the characters who are about to get their lives turned upside down; or, in the case of the first story, “Get Your Head in the Game,” being beheaded and then used as basketballs.
Look, I never said the stories were particularly original or, you know, scary but they are perfect pastiches, or in some cases plain old retellings, of those horror anthology morality plays. It’s all shock, all over-the-top stock characters, and thinks subtlety and restraint is for cowards. Don’t tell me you weren’t cackling with laughter when the Keykeeper described Dilton as being “morbidly claustrophobic?” You watch Riverdale. I know what you like.
2. A Dark and Stormy Nana
Nana Blossom is the absolute best part of the second tale. Barbara Wallace gets it. Everyone else does too but she’s bringing that camp horror energy, oozing charm and stealing every scene she’s in. I mean, did you see the framing of her entrance?? Candles! Long shadows! A thunderclap and lightning strike after every sentence!
Archie being Mr. Horny Boy and also being completely oblivious to the obvious “I wonder why there were so many nails out right in front of your place on this rainy night” was so funny too. Honestly, that might be my favorite throughline on all these stories. Airhead horny Archie is hilarious and I won’t hear any notes.
Interestingly, and before I move on, of the four stories, this was the only one where the ending “got me.” I knew the twists for the rest from the get go – though the next one took me by surprise in its specifics – whereas in this one, I thought Archie would either get torn to bits by Cheryl’s insatiable lust for touch or it would turn out that Cheryl and Nana Blossom were actually the same person. Nope! Turns out it was Leprosy the whole time.
*Shakes fist* DAMN YOU MYSTERIOUS “TROPICAL” LEPROSY THAT ONLY AFFECTS CHERYL AND HOT BOYS
3. Getting Ginchy With It
First off: FUCK. YES. DR. CURDLE. JR. My prayers were answered. He even gets one of my favorite lines of the episode, an episode, mind you, FILLED with golden lines. I hope this bodes well for his continued appearance in the rest of the show.
Second: Never has the slang sounded so fake but also so real then the 1 minute section where Archie says the word “ginchy” no less than 3 times. Apparently it was even old by the 50s!
Third: I was properly unsettled by that image of the spiders coming out of Betty’s beehive hair. I expected bees! I also expected there to be some kind of ironic twist related to the hairspray. Does Betty single-handedly destroying the ozone in Riverdale count?
I’m actually pretty sad that the episode went with the spiders angle. I get that the idea is these are schlocky staples but all the others have their thematic consistency. I do like the reading that this is his hackiest story, showing the cracks of writing four stories in one night, and laying bare the sexism and conservative sexual mores he’s internalized/the ambivalence and aversion to sex he’s working through within.
Continued belowEh, they can’t all be bangers after all, though it was worth it to see the hairstyles and have Ronnie lay into him after.
4. King Solomon Is My Role Model
This was the longest of the stories, I believe. It’s hard to tell with the way the commercial breaks because they tend to get more concentrated in the second half of an episode. It certainly felt like it was the longest, which considering the ending is just fine by me.
They ended STRONG with a horny two-timing Archie that’s a real scumbag, but in that “everyman” way. Like, he’s not Julian Blossom levels of skeevy so his ultimate fate is more tragic than well-deserved even as it is most definitely deserved. He uses the memory of Fred Andrews to lie about spending time with his mom on valentines day, when he’s really taking Cheryl out to Pops!
What a douchecanoe. Or, sorry, ratfink. There we go. And you know what we do with ratfinks? We chop them in half in the shop class while laughing like we’re in a dating montage.
For my money, I think that second to last scene is my favorite of the episode. I was laughing the whole way through. This shit was gold, going whole hog on the lurid twist punctuated by KJ Apa’s ridiculous screams and the unhinged laughter of Lili Reinhart and Camila Mendes as they push the comically large shop saw blade before splattering the camera with copious amounts of (fake) blood.
That’s what you get for drinking too much coffee folks.
5. *Citation Needed
Don’t you just love it when an editorial cites “extensive research” to present some inflammatory idea and then doesn’t actually mention any data or the name of the source? It really shows a commitment to talking out of one’s ass and then pretending to justify it with a veneer of respectability and universality. It’s maybe one of the most insidious ways reactionary and regressive opinions are laundered into the public discourse. It’s right next to “I’m just asking questions” in terms of bullshit framings and arguments.
If you couldn’t tell, this is what Dr. Werthers is doing to get comic books and their creators censored and destroyed in the court of public opinion and in the literal courts. I’d say it’s a pretty thin approach but then again, there’s little difference between the hyper-reality of Riverdale and ours in this case.
Now THAT’S scary.
That about does it for now! Which story was your favorite of the night? Do you like these vignettes as much as I do? Are you as happy as I am that the Veronica/Jughead romance is dead and gone? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you in a week for a return to steamy, sexy Archie. Apparently everyone’s kink this season is exhibitionism? Until then, keep your keys close Riverdale.
Best Lines of the Night:
1. Jughead: “Sports themed, because what’s scarier than gym class.”
2. Keykeeper: “They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. I only need 2. Hubba hubba.”
3. Dr. Curdle Jr.: “Noooooo! Anything but spiiiiiderrssss!”
