Halloween is not for another couple weeks, but that’s joy of Riverdale. It’ll go all horror movie on us no matter what time of year it is. It’s a very emotional time in Riverdale, because it always is. Now, Betty has to say goodbye to Jughead as he goes to live at the private literature school. It’s a tough goodbye, but she’s sure it’s where Jughead belongs. Besides they’ll still be able to see each other outside of school, right? Right? Already, the cracks in the school’s perfect facade are starting to show. Jughead’s roommate is Moose, which is cool at first, but becomes more of a warning. Moose makes a very serious request to keep all that Season 2 stuff a secret. And also to watch out for Brett, the guy who sold Jughead on Stonewall Prep in the first place.
Last week’s tour seems a little creepier now that we’ve seen how far away the reality is from Jughead’s perfect experience. Whereas on orientation day, he was appreciated for his insight into Moby Dick (which honestly should have been a red flag right there), the school is slowly becoming hostile. Brett throws Jughead into a seminar knowing he wasn’t told about the reading. He lashes out at Jughead, calling him trailer trash, after a minor criticism of a story. Later, once again, someone warns him to watch out for Brett. That’s two times now. He’s gonna do something real awful before the episode’s over, huh?
Predictably, he does, but not to Jughead. Their literature teacher devises a contest. He gives them most of a mystery story and asks each student to finish it. Whoever writes the best ending wins. Brett tries to start a fight with him, and Jughead tells him off. “Write a good drama instead of starting it” is a pretty great line, I have to say. In the end though, the drama proved to be too distracting for both of them. Their stories tied for last place. Brett blames Jughead, but doesn’t take it out on him. Instead, he exposes Moose’s entire past life. Including his connection to the black hood. Moose came to this school looking for a fresh start. Brett ruined that for him to get at Jughead. We all knew this school wouldn’t turn out to be the paradise Brett sold it as last week. Now, I just wonder how much worse it will get. The likelihood that the school has something to do with Jughead’s later disappearance just went way up.
Brett’s not the only one willing to use family and friends as collateral this episode. Betty and Chip’s investigation into The Farm takes a real wild turn. Yes, even wilder than it existing in the first place. I expected this story to take a lot of weird turns, but Polly showing up with a bomb strapped to her was so blunt and cartoony I couldn’t help but laugh. They even did the thing where cutting one wire makes the clock tick down faster. Betty ends up diffusing the thing with a bobby pin, which is a fun ending to a scene that’s impossible to take seriously. Honestly, more than anything, this scene reminded me how fun Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is. I should get a group together to play that again. Anyway…
Lili Reinhart as Betty. (Photo Credit: Colin Bentley / The CW)
After the Polly gambit fails, Edgar makes a few demands directly to Betty. He kidnaps her mother and demands she get him $250,000, passports for his whole flock, and transport out of town. You know, basic cult leader stuff. Chip says they can’t negotiate with the cult, even though Edgar has shown he will kill people if he doesn’t get what he wants. Betty gets everything together and brings it inside the Farm’s compound personally, which is probably the dumbest thing she’s done all series. Turns out cult leaders can’t be trusted. Who knew?
She gets captured and wakes up next to her mom. So good news: Alice is still alive. Bad news: They’re about to be strapped to the front of a bus full of farmies and driven off a cliff. Meanwhile, Edgar is going to take off in the rocket he’s been building…Yeah, that detail came out of nowhere. Where he hopes to take it is never explained. Even sillier, the rocket looks like one of those kids’ rides outside convenience stores. You know the ones where you pay a quarter to shake the hell out of your children? Really undercuts the drama of the final confrontation.
Betty and Alice escape and knockout Evelyn Evernever, then load everyone onto the bus to make an escape. Alice sees Edgar watching the whole thing and runs off for a showdown. Chad Michael Murray as Edgar was incredible casting from the beginning, but he really went for it this episode. He hit that edge between creepy and silly so well, I was almost sad to see him go. There’s a nice tense moment where both he and Alice have guns pointed at each other, and we don’t know who shot whom. Fortunately, Betty arrives in time to see her mother still standing and Edgar dead on the stairs. After seeing his ridiculous rocket though, I’m a little sad we didn’t get to see it take off.
Betty and Jughead end the episode talking about their respective rough days. The show tries to give them a final cliffhanger, but it doesn’t land the way the show wants it to. There’s a knock on Betty’s door and Jughead finds a package with a VHS tape on it. First of all, we don’t see the label on the VHS tape, so its significance is a complete mystery. Second of all, it’s 2019. I know anachronisms are part of Riverdale’s charm, but a VHS tape? Does this show’s target audience even know what that is anymore? And how are they going to play it? I haven’t had a VCR for well over a decade at this point. If someone tried to threaten me with a VHS tape, I’d laugh in their face.
That moment undercut what would have been a much better cliffhanger in the scene before it. Through the whole episode, Cheryl’s attempts to keep people out of the basement chapel grew more desperate. Toni hired a nurse for Cheryl’s grandma after they found her wandering around at night. Cheryl’s immediately suspicious. She doesn’t want this guy snooping around too much. Soon, he discovers that there are rats living in the walls of Cheryl’s house. That’s all the set up we need for Cheryl’s straight horrifying final scene. As she’s spending time with her brother’s corpse, a rat chews its way out of his stomach. Cheryl lays him on the floor and is about to sew him back up when Toni walks in. All the secrets are out in the open now. I don’t know about Toni, but finding a girlfriend talking to the corpse of her dead brother is generally a relationship ender.
For the most part, this episode was fun, cheesy, and just a little ghoulish. That’s exactly what I come to Riverdale for. Though when an episode has three great stories like that, it makes any others feel extra unnecessary. Veronica has some drama with her father over changing her name. She learns that he took the name Lodge because it gave him power. Veronica decides to spite him and take his old name instead: Luna. It makes for some fun confrontations between the two of them, but really Veronica’s story hasn’t advanced since last week.
Camila Mendes as Veronica, KJ Apa as Archie, Casey Cott as Kevin , and Eli Goree as Munroe. (Photo Credit: Colin Bentley / The CW)
It’s Archie’s story that really feels small and insignificant compared to everything else that’s going on. While his friends are dealing with vindictive diplo-brats and murderous cults, Archie wants to turn his gym into a community center. His mom doesn’t want anything tying him to Riverdale, and he wants to make it a better place. I guess we have to fill our teen angst quota even though the story has largely moved beyond that. It feels lame because, though Archie’s mom is maybe giving up on a whole town a little too early, she isn’t some horrible monster. The other parents in Riverdale were generally awful to their kids. Archie’s parents have never been. Again, compared to what everyone else is going though, it’s really hard to care about Archie’s problems.
Archie lets Veronica invest in his community center and his mom eventually comes around. She helps him with the legal stuff, getting him set up as a non-profit. Fine. Even Archie dressing up as a superhero and beating up drug dealers for money (that he ends up possibly burning anyway) can’t make me care about this arc. It’s a good thing the rest of the show is so much fun, because Archie’s scenes are barely above the ad breaks at this point.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
Previously on Riverdale:
- ‘Riverdale’ Season 4 Episode 2 Recap
- ‘Riverdale’ Season 4 Premiere Recap
- ‘Riverdale’ Season 3 Finale Recap
from Geek.com https://ift.tt/35Zx16G
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment