Riverdale may have celebrated Halloween last week, but the whole town is still dealing with the holiday’s horror movie antics. And its costume party antics as well. Yes, they’re really going all in on this Pureheart the Powerful stuff. Archie had so much fun playing hero in tights that he’s sneaking out at night and playing vigilante now. He really should have picked a better mask than a black hood, though. Bad memories of that kind of thing in this town. We knew Archie was dumb, but this is next level. Let’s hope that faceful of mace knocked some things loose.
Things get a little more complicated for Archie when he stops some people from stealing… the ugliest looking hubcaps I’ve ever seen. OK, fine. Archie chases the rust thieves off and tries to hand-screw the hubcap back on. Which seems like a bad idea, but I’ll admit auto mechanics were never my strong suit. Turns out one of the kids who frequents his community center is running with the local gang leader, Dodger. Archie lays down the law for the kids the next day: Stop working for Dodger, or you’re not welcome at the community center.
Archie’s story doesn’t have a coherent through line here. It starts at vigilante, detours into after school special, then ends with a gangland extortion racket. Archie’s dealing with phony police complaints of noise, drinking and vandalism. He knows that’s all made up, and so does FP. Acting on the sheriff’s advice, he invites the local business owners for a meet-and-greet. That’s where he learns they’re all paying protection money to Dodger. Lately, Dodger’s added a new requirement: Complain about Archie’s community center and get it shut down. Archie’s been taking away workers from Dodger, it seems. Archie puts on his vigilante outfit and tells George to leave town. That’s all we get. I would say it’s setting up an exciting confrontation down the line, but honestly… I couldn’t care less about this story. In no other season has Archie felt this much like the fifth wheel in his own show.
Betty and Kevin are also getting in on the crimefighting game. They take Chip up on his Junior FBI Training offer. This gets stupid in a much less fun way. As Chip presents multiple serial killer cases, Betty is able to intuit the correct suspects instantly. Chip says all the killers have one thing in common: They possess the serial killer gene. Yeeeep, we’re doing this again. Serial killer genes: Not a thing. It’s pseudoscience. I’ll put up with a lot of ridiculous plot devices in Riverdale, but this is just lazy. It’s reusing a plot point that didn’t even work a little bit the first time. But it looks like we’re doing this. Betty takes a DNA test, turns out she’s 100 percent genetically predisposed to be a serial killer. I guess.
The more Betty learns about serial killers, the more unnerved she becomes. She learns that many start by torturing animals and inside her head, her dark alter ego tells her she drowned her cat, caramel. Charles brings up violent drawings some serial killers made early on, and yeah. She also drew some messed up stuff in her diaries. As she digs deeper though, it’s not quite so clear cut. She explains to Kevin that her cat was hit by a car. As it lay suffering on the grass, her dad handed her a rock and made her put it out of its misery. Kevin, not tied to a cult anymore, has resumed his role as the smartest person in Riverdale. He says that all this isn’t proof that Betty’s a serial killer. It is proof, though, that FBI training isn’t having the best effect on her, and maybe she needs to take a break. I like this version of Kevin.
Betty goes to Charles to drop out of the program. He convinces her to stay by saying that having the serial killer genes shouldn’t preclude her from participating. After all, he has them too. That’s when she notices some strange things about Charles. He doesn’t seem to have any reason for being in Riverdale, and he only ever goes to the same three places. We already know he’s listening to all of Betty’s phone conversations. I’m glad that thread wasn’t dropped completely from last week. Even if the videos appear to be. Maybe those will come back later in the season, but right now it feels like that plot had no point.
Mishel Prada as Hermosa Lodge and Camila Mendes as Veronica — Photo: Colin Bentley/The CW
Betty’s story was the strongest this week even with all the serial killer gene stuff. That’s how week this episode was. We spent a lot of time with Veronica and Jughead on stories that either took too long to get where they were going or didn’t go anywhere at all. Veronica’s story was just bad legal drama. She was trying to get her mom out of prison and keep her dad in. They have witnesses on their side, but the prosecution shows that she was the owner of the cabin where the dead body was found. And Hermione didn’t know about that because discovery isn’t a thing in Riverdale.
In the end, Veronica blackmails the governor to pardon Hermione if she pleads guilty, and the show can’t even make that scene fun. The big twist is that her dad also gets out thanks to a private investigator who bugged the speakeasy and recorded all of Veronica’s conversations. It turns out this private investigator is actually Hiram’s other daughter. Veronica has a sister she didn’t know about, whoaaaaa. You know, after an episode where too many characters share too little plot, I’m not all that excited about the prospect of a new one.
Riverdale appears to have gone all out for Halloween last week and didn’t have anything to follow it up. Instead, we just got a series of awkward stumbles to whatever’s happening next. It’s hard to even call this a set-up episode because it didn’t appear to set up anything really exciting. Especially Jughead whose story involves meeting the creator of his favorite book series, getting bullied again, and entering a contest to become the next ghostwriter of the series. Along the way, he learns his grandfather was a mean, abusive drunk, but also supportive so what are you going to do. I know there’s no way to top the buried alive story from last week, but this is just such a boring letdown. The whole episode is, really. But hey, this is Riverdale. It always finds a way to pull some ridiculousness out of a hat the next week.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW
Previously on Riverdale:
- Riverdale Season 4 Episode 4 Recap
- Riverdale Season 4 Episode 3 Recap
- Riverdale Season 4 Episode 2 Recap
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