#I just really really love KJ in pin curls and lipstick

[tabbyofwisdom]

She was stronger than steel, smoother than whiskey, a suductive danger that you just could not ignore.

[floggingink]

Riverdale: Chapter One, The River’s Edge

the “WELCOME TO Riverdale / THE TOWN WITH PEP!” sign is so beautifully sad and simultaneously saturated and grimy, like high school

the cinematography of the Blossoms’ Fourth of July date is like……astounding……the tracking, the close-ups…..the vintage muscle car driving through the wet forest…..the perfect coil hidden in Cheryl’s hair…..her gloriously inappropriate heels…..

I love the trope when the lady is stepping out of the car and the shot is framed of the ground with the car door opening from above and into the shot comes POP. the woman’s shoe. and it’s always a sexy, sexy heel.

WHY are Jason and Cheryl Blossom going out on Sweetwater River for an early morning boat ride, like he is Ryan Gosling and she is Rachel McAdams and there are geese? WHY is Cheryl dressed like she’s going to the Derby? WHY are they holding hands? WHY do their lips look exactly the same?

Dilton Doiley is canonically an “amazing” dancer: the red lenses of Dilton’s birdwatching binoculars are much appreciated, in keeping with the insertion of red into strange places

anytime a person in pastels says “I wish X burns in hell,” watch that person wearing pastels closely

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Jughead is very Brick-ly lit. I don’t think he’s seen sunlight all summer. I think he steps outside to walk over to crime scenes and the clouds just come and he turns blue.

@jugheadjonas

is the Jughead writing in the diner in the future, like his narration? I hope it’s just real-time Jughead, who tromped over through the woods towards the commotion with his nice camera and instinctively was like, This is going to be epic, and went straight to his booth and opened a Doc.

GOD BLESS THAT BEANIE HE’S WEARING IT

it’s called a whoopie cap. I love Jughead Jones.

“new mystery” Veronica Lodge rolls her window down to look up at the apartment building and then….opens the door. you don’t need to roll down the window, just open the door, you have to go in anyway, my sweet. points for her quick teensy smile before following her mother in

it’s so we could see her eyebrows better, okay. everyone’s eyebrows are incredible, but Camila Mendes’ eyebrows are especially good

Betty’s little pink lacy bra is sooooooooooo sweeeeeeeeeet. she also has a lovely white antler necklace-holder on her lovely white vanity table

KJ Apa’s abs, check

Betty organized a book release party at her internship for Toni Morrison, her literary hero. Betty had an internship after her freshman year of high school where she organized a book release party for Toni Morrison, who is her literary hero. Betty could gut me with her white antler necklace-holder and I’d just be like, “Thank you for organizing a book release party for Toni Morrison, your literary hero”

the look on Archie’s face while he watches Betty talk about doing something that made her so happy, how easily he nods along with her, he’s sat at this diner many a night before listening to her talk about her literary hero (Toni Morrison)

“They weren’t poems. They were song lyrics” …..oh, Archie.

“Are you going to have Ms. Grundy tutor you?” Archie looks to the side. “Uh, I dunno…”

“You’re the only person I’m telling”

Betty is legit drinking a strawberry milkshake BETTY

Best costume bit: Veronica’s cape

Archie has no idea what In Cold Blood is about but he knows Veronica just made a wicked reference so he laughs. Betty has read all of Truman Capote’s work and read Too Brief a Treat and knows he was the inspiration for Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird, which she has also read, despite none of them being written by her literary hero, Toni Morrison

let me be clear on this: KJ Apa in a white Henley

Certified pedigree: Luke Perry of 1990’s 90210 as Fred Andrews, with a respectably manicured beard

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: “And stay. Focused.”

Betty has lots of little deer things around her room! and her lamps are long-stemmed tulips? Betty is a princess.

Betty takes Adderall.

Archie’s fifteen-year-old boy-handwriting is just as shitty as it should be

Reggie Mantle. “Bro. You taking some T? Ginseng?” REGGIE.

Veronica’s plaid first-day dress is not a dress but is in fact a matching skirt and blouse.

Fifth period is AP English: Veronica’s “the lost epilogue of Our Town” diss re: RHS, which Betty seems to quietly not appreciate. Josh Lyman also used an Our Town reference in a dig at the President for expecting Zoey and Charlie to “go out for malteds or something” on their first date. I might not be reading this play.

Sixth period is Intro to Film: Blue Jasmine is that Cate Blanchett movie where she’s broke that we didn’t watch because it’s by Woody Allen. Veronica makes a lot of references!

the 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie, Valerie, and Melody are not only wearing cat-ear headbands, but their hair has little puffs like cat ears

Josie is really, really done with people walking in on their rehearsals and she’s got a little speech planned for when it happens now, complete with hand gestures

the SHOT of VALERIE, BACKLIT, while Josie is educating Archie, her PROFILE, her CURLS, her little SMIRK, her little NOSE PIERCING, she too can gut me with Betty’s necklace-holder

she’s fantastic but again just inserting that shot of her watching and smiling while Josie off-screen is talking is like ingeniously cool

@kevinkeller

God bless Kevin for IMMEDIATELY “clarifying” the Betty-Archie situation instead of there being some stupid hijinks thing where Betty simmers next to a Veronica who can pretend not to notice her crush

God bless Veronica for IMMEDIATELY backing away from it and telling Betty to ask him out

Betty’s eyes are filled with tears of some sort while Cheryl is pontificating

What damn high school in America: would let Jughead sit with an open laptop at a school assembly?

Jughead is like physically uncomfortable with Cheryl saying she knows Jason wouldn’t want the school to spend the year mourning

Cheryl loves nothing in this episode so much as she loves speaking at a microphone to an audience. I think she killed Jason just so she could hold an assembly announcing at a microphone to the audience that he wouldn’t want the school to spend the year mourning

The female gaze: Archie walking home in “this heat,” using the tried-and-true all-American method of wiping your face off with your sweaty, dirt-tracked T-shirt

These students are legally children: …having said that, onscreen, the female in question gazing at him is his 30-something music teacher, sporting Lolita-worthy heart-shaped sunglasses (what a truly great beautifully-packaged pedophilic cinematic reference, no? ffffffffffff). the messy-teen-TV-show trope of student/teacher affairs is….complicated. they have very cathartic, very illegal sex in the back of her VW Bug

the title doesn’t come up until NOW. already there has been a murder and statutory rape.

did Miss Grundy give Archie leave to call her Geraldine or is that just his emotional trump card?

Fred’s “guy” is on paternity leave, which makes me feel good for whatever reason, I’m not going to unpack it

is Fred bitchy to tell Hermione he won’t hire her as an accountant because her name is too linked to her husband’s fraud? let us remember that Will Gardner hired Alicia Florrick as a lawyer despite her name being linked to her husband’s corruption

and prostitutes

the day after Archie told Betty he demoed his songs, he apparently felt confident enough to share them with Kevin. Kevin is also in the trust circle.

Kevin’s aggressively styled hair cracks me up.

Archie flees as Cheryl approaches

Lili Reinhart’s incredible, boiling “anddon’ttalkaboutArchie—” that gets cut off as Cheryl stops

Cheryl’s pins: the cherries!!!

“So? What are you three hens gossiping about? Archie’s Efron-esque emergence from the chrysalis of puberty?”

“Is being the gay best friend still a thing?”

Cheryl’s hair: Cheryl tucks her hair back around one shoulder while plugging herself as the cheertator

Cheryl’s non-assembly lip gloss is a nice dark neutral

Cheryl’s backpack

“too season-five-Betty-Draper” is a horrendous, phantasmagorical thing to say

were Miss Grundy’s sunglasses prescription? because she wears real glasses.

Gay?!: the kiss?! let me say this. I love it because Cheryl immediately calls it out, which promptly desexualizes it and makes it just a nice, slightly incongruous thing that happened between them. and the “just trust me” line must mean Veronica made a habit of kissing her girlfriends to get things.

You’re wearing lipstick? Right now?: Veronica’s red lip at the tryouts

“Thanks for asking.” Betty’s innate politeness in the face of her family’s monster is unbearably sad and lovely

Cheryl’s a psychopath: laying it out like a businesswoman to Betty’s potential friend that Polly is in a group home

Cheryl is literally sitting in a wooden armchair

Cheryl’s very interesting “Finally.”

Please protect Betty: her bloody palms

Veronica was rich: “Maybe I am that reckoning,” like she’s Selene

Summer + Blair = Veronica: “I’m ice.”

Archie wearing Jason’s number on varsity will surely only increase whatever animosity is between himself and Cheryl

Veronica “spoiled rich bitch ice princess” Lodge has been self-awarely self-absorbed but 95% the greatest friend ever, right away, and has not done a single bitchy thing yet

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: in an effort not to give every hair award to Jughead, I will force myself to branch out and recognize that particular kind of hair-fanning of a sweaty short cut’s bangs when you styled it this morning and it’s starting to uncoif and just float around as Archie’s pretty red hair after football practice does

Betty’s anxiety sabotaging her at the last moment and co-inviting Veronica to the semi-formal

Camila’s blinking when she says “What?” is Emmy-worthy

Veronica calling him Archikins, like she has in the comics for the past 100 years

did she have that blue headband on all day or was she just packing it in case she got a blue outfit later?

“What did you say to me?”

the ROCK on Hermione’s hand!

dads who call their sons “son” fatigue me

Betty’s pink dress with the little cutouts on the side!!!

God bless Moose: football star Moose Mason is shyly bisexual and has a huge dick.

he calls her Geraldine again

Cheryl’s sheaths: her dropped-strap red dress

Cheryl being confident enough (that microphone) to tell the world what song her parents were fucking to when she and Jason were conceived

I like a lot her saying “turtledoves” instead of “lovebirds”

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: Seven minutes in heaven! Classic! The blue reflection of Archie’s phone in Veronica’s eyes! Archie’s Chucks! Veronica going for it in the privacy of the walk-in!

Reggie, thrilled Archie “nailed it”

“You shady bitch.”

Veronica is so good at seeing the big picture

WHOOP THERE’S THE DINER. Jughead did not even attempt to do the semi-formal.

Jughead eats: all Jughead visibly consumes in this episode is Pop’s coffee. is this even real? but on second viewing, I can almost see a Twin Peaks throwback to the first time Bobby Briggs is onscreen at the Double R Diner, dressed in a dark jacket with his dark hair swooshed back, drinking a cup of diner coffee served by Mädchen Amick.

Jughead doubts it: “…considering how he died? Probably not.”

@dailycwriverdale

this tiny exchange, Archie’s earnestness and Jughead’s smiley snideness, is like reeeeally good for me, how easily they can slip back into their old rhythm of best friends talking. comfort, riffing, KJ Apa doing these very sweet things with his brow and Cole Sprouse fidgeting around with his shoulders as he talks about the Aquaholics

…so it’s just like three lines, but Jughead was not in this episode very much

and Jughead knows at once what Archie is talking around, re: Jason “doing everything he wanted,” and gently goads him about becoming the popular varsity football god if that’s what Archie wants to talk about

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: “Would’ve gone a long way with me.”

I like that we’ve seen everyone’s houses: Veronica’s apartment, Archie’s suburban two-story with a porch, Cheryl’s mansion, Betty’s townhouse, the…diner.

Archie > Dawson: this is the FIRST EPISODE, where Archie is telling Betty no, not the fifth episode, where it would have been dragged out beyond endurance of him being too polite or scared to tell her he doesn’t feel the same way about her after saying “Uh yeah, sure” at the dance. TAKE NOTES.

however, Betty does not want another person telling her she’s perfect. perfection for her is exhausting. she just wants to eat and be a cheerleader

Gay.: “But if you were gay….what would you like to do?”

the Blossom corpse: Jason was NOT drowned but shot between the eyes, like Archie heard. Cheryl LIED to us, WITH her microphone.

“Damn good coffee”: oh lots and lots, the grungy “Welcome to Riverdale” sign with the two mountains in the background and the debilitatingly peppy font of PEP!; water corpses; plaid; people standing around by the water in nice clothes looking at the police bring up the body

“SOMEONE IS WATCHING, SOMEONE IS WATCHING”