Television 

Five Thoughts on Riverdale‘s “Venomous”

By | May 16th, 2022
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back all you Riverdale fans! One of these days I’m going to have to read Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” and various responses to it cause I don’t know if Riverdale does “camp” but it definitely feels cut from the same cloth. *sigh* Why do I always give myself more work?

As always, spoilers ahead.

1. Pretty Palladium

If you would have told me a serious plot point this week would be “Archie microdoses Palladium, the metal that shuts down his magic healing powers, to restore said powers” I would have told you that it’s not the silliest thing Riverdale has done. It’s not even the silliest thing that happens in this episode. However, it is still rather silly. I also had a whole bit about how dangerous ingesting Palladium (element 46) is, comparing it to the other examples, but I was getting it confused for Cadmium (48,) a source of heavy metal poisoning in humans, and Promethium (61,) which is mildly radioactive.

Fun fact: On the other side of Palladium on the periodic table from Promethium is Technetium (43,) the smallest radioactive element. Second fun fact: This means I was even more wrong for an entire season about the Palladium poisoning the town’s water supply than I thought.

Anyway, Archie may not have been slowly killing himself because Palladium is inherently terrible for humans but him deciding that chugging what amounts to a silver solution to cure what ails him was still pretty foolish. Tolerance takes time and tiny doses, not slightly diluted metals in water or a huge hunt of kryptonite tied to your chest as you over-exert yourself. Archie’s toxic masculinity reared its ugly head this week and it nearly killed him.

Thank goodness for ominous Italian chanting in an abandoned mine surrounded by torches and a pyrokinetic Cheryl that made him nut the vulnerability out of him.

2. Let There Be Curdle

We got more Dr. Curdle Jr.!! Oh how I love this character. Every episode he’s in is a treat and you cannot convince me otherwise. Yes, I’m wasting an entire thought on him and my constantly changing spelling of his last name. Nikolai Witschl continues to bring his A game to this character, striking the perfect mix of grave robber, Universal Frankenstein, and co-conspirator. He’s always serious, which preserves the atmosphere, and he has eyes that stare right into your soul. I don’t think he’s ever blinked in a scene either. He probably has but it’s funnier to think he hasn’t.

I’m so glad he’s the one who tries to help Veronica first instead of everyone going to Cheryl, who would probably have sent her to soak in a tub of spiders to try to transfer the venom to them. Oh. Yeah. Veronica’s “Kiss of the Spider-Woman” powers are here to stay and she didn’t try to kiss Percival to death as I predicted. Oh well. I’m just happy Dr. Curdle Jr. made it out of his couple encounters with Veronica unscathed.

3. Family Affair

FINALLY. Good lord has this confrontation been way too long coming. Betty’s fought with her mom before, she’s almost come to the realization that she’s been emotionally abusive and manipulative her entire life, and yet with each new layer of bullshit, she somehow convinces herself it’s a new discovery. Hopefully she stops walking her perception back and letting Alice fall back into her familiar patterns.

Ultimately, this has been a failure of the writing team to effectively develop the two character’s relationships in a way that was anything but a holding pattern. Yes, a holding pattern may be potentially truer to life in these kinds of fraught relationships, however the show has done nothing to establish the numerous backslides as backslides.

Instead, it treats each new revelation as, well, new to sell the dramatic stakes rather than as another illustration of Alice’s inability to be honest with Betty and treat her like a person who she loves and cares about rather than controls. It then tries to get us to forgive, not just sympathize, with Alice without doing the work to show why it should happen right then and there. Thankfully, this time it doesn’t take.

I sound like a broken record, I know. I’ve said it all before but it bears repeating: the show does a disservice to Alice Smith and to her actress, Mädchen Amick.

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The only thing that tempers my frustration, the only thing, is one can argue this is because of Percival’s machinations bringing out the worst in Alice again. It’s a compelling read and one I agree with and I hope that this incident is the catalyst for Alice doing the work and breakin free. I doubt it but one can hope.

4. You’ve Got Heather

I haven’t seen Chilling Adventures of Sabrina so I don’t know if Heather ever showed up as a character there; her entrance being nearly identical to Kiernan Shipka’s in “The Witching Hours” certainly made me think she was though. Does this mean we’re never getting Sabrina again? Is Heather her stand in? Dang it. Now I’ve made myself sad.

Even if she is, there’s not much to say about Heather yet. We know she’s a librarian from Greendale, which clearly means she’s a witch, and who better to help fight the magician who abused the library system than a librarian witch. I genuinely didn’t know what they were doing with Heather. I suspected they’d introduce her after they made it a point to bring her name up over and over again but I did not expect her to just show up as the stinger after ghosting Cheryl the whole episode.

Wait. Do you think she’s the reason Cheryl’s magic eight ball kept giving inconclusive answers? Or is it because those things are $5 pieces of junk?

5. Visual Kombat

I could spend this whole thought talking about Jughead getting hung up on Betty again, the deep dive they did into their minds together, or even the hostile takeover attempt by Reggie but instead I wanted to list all the random little details that caught my eye. “Venomous” had a ton of them and I couldn’t in good conscience end without pointing them out. I also gotta give it up to the writer, Tessa Leigh Williams, who has now written a number of my favorite episodes as well as most of the musical episodes.

First up is the deep cut of Mighty Mouse’s weakness of Limburg Cheese. I laughed way harder at this inclusion than I should’ve. Next was Nana Rose casually dunking on Cheryl’s mooning over Heather while staring at a painting of Cheryl’s hands with a giant spider over them. Always fun getting to hear them spar.

Then there was the whole explanation of how Archie is going to be cured of his Palladium weakness by using an alchemical “gold to iron spell” and Cheryl’s hot hands to temper and forge Archie to purify him of his toxins and impurities. I couldn’t stop laughing. I guess Cheryl is an alchemical blacksmith now and Archie is a fucked up sword or something. Think his sword-sona would be Guts’ sword?

The next one isn’t a funny moment but rather a great example of how much fun the direction was this week. When Betty first confronts Alice about what she knew with regards to Hal, the evening light shines through the door and window, lighting their faces in this beautiful mosaic of colors. The direction in the scene was also not the usual shot, reverse shot, but it wasn’t all over the place either. Great job Lisa Soper. Seriously.

Then there was this sight gag I actually missed – thanks Riverdale After Dark for screenshotting it.

Sorry it's so hard to see the text. Darn you compression!

The emails on the side are hilarious but what I love most is how excited Britta is in her email to Cheryl and how she even WRITES OUT “Mistress Cheryl.” What a good egg.

Finally, there are the many outfits Veronica wears throughout the episode. It is fitting that Cheryl gives her broach over because Veronica out gothics her this week. I would have said this even if the episode didn’t end with Veronica in a black widow-themed, sequined leotard singing the Earth classic “Toxic” with a full spider-themed production behind her while we occasionally cut to Jug and Cheryl in these really fun split-screen cuts.

If anyone wants to know what Riverdale is like, I think this episode, or even that one scene, serves as a good primer.

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That about does it for now! What did you all think of this absolutely unhinged but amazing episode? Are you having as much fun as I am? Did I miss anything important like a body under the floor? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you in a week for Heather’s full introduction and Archie maybe finally getting to punch Percival? Until then, remember: black lipstick will always be in fashion.

Best Line of the Night:

Betty: “You ready for round two of ‘So Your Dad is a Serial Killer and Tried to Make You One Too?’”


//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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