Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! Three months sure do fly by. It feels like it was just yesterday when we learned that Rivervale was a parallel universe to Riverdale and Rivervale Jughead warned Riverdale Betty to avoid the Hiram planted ACMETM bomb. Now we get to see the fallout I expected to see during the special event and, well, “Unbelievable” makes that all look sensible.
This show, y’all. It’s like living in a house with a ghost that’s constantly fucking with the thermostat. Some days it’s hot, some days it’s cold, and others you have to go from 7 layers to just your underwear in the span of forty-two and a half minutes.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Asking All the Right Questions, Getting All The Riverdale Answers
I must remind myself, every week, that one should never trust a Riverdale cliffhanger to deliver in the way one would expect, or even in a moderately reasonable way. Of course we knew Betty & Archie would survive the explosion, that wasn’t even in doubt, but “The Jughead Paradox” made it seem like there would be more repercussions. Instead, the house is blown up, Betty has a couple broken ribs and Archie is perfectly fine. Oh, and they both have new superpowers.
They also had the GALL to injure Bingo! FOUR BROKEN LEGS! HOW DARE?!…Is what I would be saying if they hadn’t used this to, at the end of the episode, punctuate just how weird it is that everyone who was in the house proper was fine within a couple days. I was genuinely shocked that Riverdale would lampshade its internal illogic like this and then codify the usual hand-wavy Riverdale-isms into an honest-to-goodness plot point.
Flabbergasted, that’s what I am! Also excited to see how they will weasel out of this one like every other “supernatural” element before it. Although…
2. Which Witch is Which?
It’s looking more and more likely that Riverdale has finally gotten over its aversion to indulging in the legitimate supernatural. I know. I’m as shocked as all of you are. My theory is that the writers used the 5-episode special to do a pseudo-reboot of the internal logic of the world and infuse it with, at the very least, a low level of supernatural bullshit. This is a development I am 100% on board with.
That said, this was not the best episode to showcase this new status-quo. It didn’t have the right atmosphere, weaving the weird into the usual rather than using the weird to heighten the extra-normal feel of the show. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Cheryl’s plotline.
Poor, poor Cheryl. She’s really been given the short end of the stick in the last couple seasons. Every time we get something meaty and compelling and absolutely bonkers – like her turn as the Bee Queen – we suddenly revert to the bad kind of bonkers. Well, it seems the writers seemed to know they did Cheryl dirty and so they do a complete 180 this episode.
Yeah! The old Cheryl is back. No longer is she on her crusade against her friends for…reasons. Now she’s actively trying to save them from the curse she unleashed. A curse, we learn, she didn’t even believe was real and that she was pushed into using by an increasingly suspicious Nana Rose. What a ballsy retcon that I’m more than willing to accept, even if the end result of this retcon is that the messiest parts of the 5-part special turn out to be canon. Sorta.
We’ll get to that another week.
3. Commander Screw Up
What’re we gonna do with you Archie? It seems like at every turn you’re making all the wrong decisions. I appreciate the drama of him struggling with the anger and impulsiveness he’s had ever since season 2 when he started the Red Circle and went around beating people up with a bat but dude, it’s been a DECADE of in-universe time. You gotta learn to chill. Actions have consequences, despite what seven seasons of Riverdale may say to the contrary.
What’m I talking about? Well, once Archie figured out he was invulnerable BY PUSHING RUSTY NAILS INTO HIS PALMS, and that Hiram hired the Ghoulies to plant the bomb, he went to beat the shit out of said Ghoulies, lead by new season baddie Twyla Twist. This, inevitably, made the Ghoulies think the Serpents were responsible and declared war, meaning we’ve got a war of the T.T.’s brewing.
Continued belowTHEN when Archie heard about Glenn, who is suddenly a full on, subtlety is for cowards incel creeper, “getting handsy” with Betty, he goes to beat the shit out of him. Oh and he buys the burnt out shell of a house from his mom (hi Molly Ringwald!) in order to prevent one of the most suspicious randos we’ve met in the show from buying it.
I don’t know what to make of it all, honestly. It feels like Archie’s regressed as a character in some ways and in other ways, it’s an intriguing development that, if explored correctly, could be used to build him into the person he wants to be rather than the person he is. Maybe this was the “bad luck” of the curse Cheryl put on him, Betty and Jughead? Because if not, then only Jughead really got directly harmed by the curse.
4. Click Clack Who?
Yeah, of the three “cursed” individuals, the only one who’s really been harmed beyond the trauma of one’s house blowing up is Jughead. Betty ousted the men of the FBI office and took control while also having the ability to detect “dangerous auras,” Bingo has rapid healing, and Archie is invulnerable and heavy. Jughead, on the other hand, can no longer hear out of one of his ears and has mostly lost it in the other as well. Betty and Archie, who I must remind you were literally on top of the thing, were just fine.
No hearing damage. No broken bones (save the two ribs that seemed to heal really fast.) No concussion. No nothing. It seems like a pretty shoddy curse if the bomb and its after-effects were it’s only consequences. Clearly this won’t be the case – TBK’s appearance in Riverdale to merc Glen is just one indication of this – but you’d think we’d have at least spent some of this episode with Betty & Archie suffering some ill-effect from the bomb itself instead of developing powers.
Poor Jughead. He won’t be able to hear the tap tap tapping of his newest masterpiece: All Work and No Play Makes Jughead a Member of the Gig Economy.
5. Goodbye to Hiram
I never thought I’d see the day. Hiram Lodge is finally, truly gone. Never again will we see him grace our screens except in flashbacks and visions. I’m guessing Mark Consuelos wanted to move on from the show, or the writers finally realized they’d done all they could with Hiram 4 seasons ago. Either way, bon voyage Hiram.
Seriously, this was a shock. The whole episode was setting up a hunt for him by the FBI and I thought the sub-plot of Veronica hiring a hit-man to take him out once and for all was going to be a red-herring. Nope! She tried to call it off too late and he’s been killed. The guilt she feels, the enemy she’s made of Hermosa, the lie she tells to Reggie, that’s good shit for V.
Will it go anywhere? We’ll have to wait and see. We’ll also have to see if he’s faking his death because we haven’t seen a body yet. Don’t trust those Riverdale deaths until we see the corpse!
That about does it for now! What did you all think of the return of Riverdale? Are you excited to see where we go from here? Let me know in the comments. I know I’m ready to let the weird and wacky and utterly nonsensical wash over me for the next 7 weeks. Until next time, stay far, far away from Nana Rose, Riverdale.
Best Line of the Night:
Cheryl: “Does this mean we’re going to have to perform an exorcism?”
Nana Rose: “Oh no. No no no. We must perform…a BANISHMENT!”
