Only a week has passed since the big football game and Riverdale is already preparing for another big game. This time, it’s a big quiz show. Despite the incredibly short amount of time between Betty getting permission to start the quiz club and now, she’s already got a crew. More than that, she, Veronica, Cheryl, and Toni have already won the semifinals. Next, they go on to face Stonewall Prep and Brett Weston Wallace. God, Riverdale has had bad puns before, but that one gets under my skin in a special way. So. Stupid.
Betty has another reason to want to beat Brett now. More than just him intentionally injuring football opponents or his general dickery. She finds out that he got into Yale too, right after Jughead lets his admission slip. So Betty’s jealous and looking for a fight. Last week’s flashback, where Betty appears to have killed Jughead to go to the school, is looking slightly more likely. Still totally ridiculous, but it’s not hard to see Riverdale logic getting us there.
Cole Sprouse as Jughead and Lili Reinhart as Betty — Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW
Especially once Jughead, unable to come up with a mystery dark enough for the Baxter Brothers collective, blurts out the Black Hood plot without asking Betty beforehand. It doesn’t take long before that blows up in his face. Betty finds out that Brett’s father bought his way into Stonewall and probably Yale. When she confronts him, Brett spills the beans on Jughead’s book. Because he’s a dick like that. Jughead and Betty fight, and she implies that he doesn’t deserve to go to Yale. Ooh, that’s gonna be hard to take back. Also, sidenote here, but it bugs me: Brett’s dad hired someone to take his PSATs? Not the SAT, the Practice SAT? The one that doesn’t count for anything. This show breaks my brain.
Fortunately, Betty and Jughead’s relationship isn’t as rocky as it may appear. Not yet, at least. Betty finds out that Yale denied her because she’s the Black Hood’s daughter. They’re afraid of the potential bad press that could bring. The news sends her into a rage and she destroys her dad’s grave with a sledgehammer. Jughead hears about this and rushes to her side. She apologizes for what she says and he promises to help her. Not in the quiz show, but in the “bigger game they’re playing.” OK, but I guess the Black Hood novel’s still on? Thought that’d be more of a sore spot.
Lili Reinhart as Betty and Madchen Amick as Alice Cooper — Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW
In any case, Jughead invites a recruiter to see Betty in action during the quiz show finals. Which are televised, for some reason. Betty’s mom leaves her the answers to the questions in her green room, and the show tries to make us think she used them. She buzzes in super quick, and Veronica mentions it seeming like she knows the answers before the questions are asked. After she wins the trophy though, she tells her mom she didn’t use them. She tore up the paper and threw them away… The minute she said that, I knew where this was going. She didn’t stop to think of how it might look if the quiz answers were found in her green room’s garbage can. Which is exactly what happened. She may be smart, but Riverdale writes its characters so dumb. Betty gets suspended, and her mom gets put on unpaid leave from her job at the station for putting the answers there. At least Riverdale’s consistent in making the parents the absolute worst.
Betty and Jughead figure out that Brett’s the one who went through Betty’s trash and found the answers. Jughead tells him off and challenges him to a duel under the rules of their secret society. Sure, why not? Any other show, this might be a jumping the shark moment, but Riverdale has done pirouettes around all manner of sharks since Season One. So yeah, next week we get a fight to the death between literary pretty boys. That’ll be fun. And in four in-show weeks, it appears Jughead will actually be dead. Is this fight what causes it? I’m almost entirely sure that it’s not. But the flash forward threw in one more little tease: Is something going on between Betty and Archie after Jughead’s death? I’m not super OK with that, guys.
Camila Mendes as Veronica, Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl and Vanessa Morgan as Toni — Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW
Veronica and Cheryl, meanwhile, decide to taunt Hiram after confirming that their rum is chemically different enough to get around the patent. They then turn Veronica’s speakeasy into a dance club, selling mocktails at the bar, but also secretly rum. In response, Hiram leads a raid on the place and destroys all the rum with a sledgehammer. You’d be forgiven for forgetting that Hiram was mayor. After all, the show certainly did. Needing another place to make and sell their rum, Cheryl suggests her mom’s old brothel. They remodel it into a social club, using its contact sheet of Riverdale’s richest scumbags to seek out new rum customers. They still need to keep the speakeasy open as a cover though. Not to mention school. That’s when Cheryl gets another idea: Force her mom to be free labor for them and run the social club while they’re at school. These are the heroes.
Riverdale’s definitely gotten better at juggling all its different plot threads. Each main character has something wildly different going on, and this episode made each of them significant and interesting. Even Archie got a good story. The workers at his dad’s construction company have been growing restless. I guess that’s understandable because even the show didn’t remember Archie was still running that place until just now. He goes over Mr. Keller’s head and installs his uncle Frank as the new foreman. Immediately, that looks to be a bad idea. Even though he’s not foreman anymore, Keller stays behind and tries to balance the books while Frank brings everyone home for drinks. He also mentions that the workers are worried because they didn’t get Christmas bonuses. Archie’s dad never missed a year.
Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl and Vanessa Morgan as Toni — Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW
Things get worse as Frank starts to throw his weight around. Archie turns down a job repairing Hiram Lodge’s old prison. (Remember that storyline?) While that was probably the right thing to do, guys living paycheck to paycheck aren’t fans of turning down work. The final straw for Keller is when Frank takes $200 out of petty cash. The two fight, and Keller quits. He refuses to come back as long as Frank’s still there. Frank says he took the money to gamble with and win enough to pay everyone their bonus. Archie’s angry, though slightly less so when Frank comes through with the money. The outcome is still promising, as Archie stands up to Frank and lets him know in no uncertain terms that they aren’t cool just yet. Archie’s the boss, and Frank can’t be rooting around the cash drawer anymore. Hey, some real character growth for this bag of red hair. You know an episode’s good when even Archie’s story is satisfying.
The first half of Riverdale’s fourth season was rocky. It started and stopped a ton of plot threads and never seemed to know where it’s going. Now that we’re in the second half, it’s starting to figure the season out. The flashbacks have started to work for me, and the plots are the fun kind of ridiculous again. The show will never have the momentum of the first season again, but I have no doubt it will still hit the same wild highs we come to expect. I just hope they outnumber the duds from here on out.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
Previously on Riverdale:
- Riverdale Season 4 Episode 10 recap
- Riverdale Season 4 Episode 9 recap
- Riverdale Season 4 Episode 8 recap
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