#and i do think it tracks actually with greg wanting attention from Tom

[finitevariety]

yeah, you're right, they should have made him gregnant instead

anon turn on your location I just want to talk.

'as evil as Shiv'. be serious. be serious with what you say. 'He wants to love and be loved'...and Shiv doesn't? Her whole arc is wanting to love and be loved, but being unable to understand and perform love properly due to her whole situation. It doesn't make her good by any stretch, but it doesn't make her evil either. And she still tries! She's honest with Tom on her wedding night even though it brings her no advantage, and she begs Logan to save Tom even though it brings her only disadvantage.

[charhatt]

OK HEAR ME OUT!

so i was at work in the triangle shirtwaist factory humming this song that I didnt know the words to and it was pissing me off that I didn’t know the words or the some name or even have an idea who the artist was bc I’m primarily a metalhead and this song was like, what I imagine phoebe bridgers sounds like. so after spending my entire break searching for this song based off hums alone i finally found it and ive been listening to it on repeat for the past 2 days

simultaneously im thinking abt tomgreg and how much this song fits so perfectly with the vibe ive been getting on them based on my opal-powered love-o-meter i have programmed into my brain

[the vibe being this sort of melancholic dance that they partake in together, both understanding the depths and dark coves of their relationship but neither willing to admit this bc if they do then it means that tom really does only “love” greg because he needs a hole to fill in his heart and greg actually hates tom for constantly punching down at him and ruining his already weak spirit and if they say it out loud it becomes true and they so badly need it to not be true bc they feed on each others company and greg lives for toms touches and tom yearns for gregs attention but if they just communicated with each other they’d realise that they don’t actually fully understand their symbiosis bc tom does truly love greg for not only the past life he represents but also his simple one track minded purity and his liddle cupids bow and his stance and the intellect he hides under the lapels of his too-small suit jacket and that greg could love tom if they were equals and when they’re together away from their poisonous company he feels so so in love with the time they share just being their true selves and greg loves toms true self and hates the way the roy circle of hell deforms him ahhhhhhh]

so as a song person i looked up the song on genius to see what it was about and its so tomgreg like so so tomgreg like holy shit

so the songs called andromedra by weyes blood and it’s about “love, mythology, astronomy and technology in a world full of distractions and unrealistic expectations” and after taking a quick glance at the wiki page for andromeda (the person) i wanna write a tomgreg fic based on andromeda and perseus but with a (slightly) more modern and (extremely) more gay twist

ok so like tom is a fisherman and when a light storm takes him north instead of west he docks at some unfamiliar port town where he meets greg, the gangly bartender, whos stuck between feuding families (his grandad and his great uncle). greg tells tom he wants to see the world and tom promises to show him everything thats out there, but although tom can free greg from his metaphorical chains he still has to slay the metaphorical sea beast and he cant do it without some love and from gregs insight except its super emotional and deep and angsty

and i just think the imagery of greg sitting on a barrel and tom dressed suspiciously like a waterborne mr darcy cough cough is so perfect and also gregtom titanic scene uno the one

[partyinsidethetardis]

Some thoughts i wrote down at work about the most recent ep of succession...

so.. i loved this episode

kendall creeping in the shadows behind karl... incredible

connor thinking he's going to get an important role in the company since his father gave the "ok" when he was completely out of it from his UTI

Shiv thinking she's doing MONEY MOVES but completely shitting it all by listening again(!) to Logan "Piss King" Roy

and Roman and his OBVIOUS crush on Gerri and getting recognized on TV by her :')

and don't even get me STARTED on Kendall telling them to feed the rabbit a donut.. and then saying a doctor, a HUMAN doctor, can take care of the rabbit since it (obviously) got sick from the donut.... screaming and crying and throwing up

and Tom and Greg... they.. just.. yeah.

Greg asking his lawyer if he can sue his granddad "affectionately"...

AND him telling Tom that he is thinking about suing Greepeace.... they're insane.. when will the madness end.

and Tom keeping track of Shiv's menstruation cycle thinking she will get pregnant before he goes to prison to "keep her company" IE to make sure she stays married to him when he gets out of prison.. AND him trying to convince her(or himself??) that it's not creepy! "it's not creepy.." LOL

logan not taking his meds and going off the deep end, telling them to cancel the deal, which is crucial for the survival of the company! they did have to give up the PJ's though so who can blame him.. (:

 it's tough because i do feel bad for them, like Shiv just wants Logan's affection and attention, the same goes for all of them actually but he's not that person. He's never been that person. So they always, ALWAYS end up disappointed. Like she's trying to make a toast to them "saving" the company and he yells at her about buzzing in his ear... god..

 Like we can analyze Logan keeping his UTI a secret from his kids and his staff (except for Kerry) til kingdom come..

Him not wanting to show even that much of an inch of "weakness" to them, to show them that he's human (which OF COURSE he's human but he's always been larger than life for his kids, so for them to see him that vulnerable.. it's gotta be very very hard for him, which is why he kept it a secret, which leads to them almost throwing the whole company away, bc of his inability or unwillingness to be vulnerable with his family).

ALSO when he's out of it he calls Shiv Marcia.. Actually being KIND for once, and trying to keep his (dead) sister from seeing a dead cat, him saying he's the only one allowed to be mean to Karl... I mean.. It's so much to think about my guy!! Also him being kind to Tom in the bathroom, like i know that's a very vulnerable position, not even being able to pee by yourself, but still. he let him see that side of him and specifically asking HIM to come with him to the bathroom.. so many implications.. the only one not "in" the family, 'cus Tom is always kinda on the outside, which is a whole 'nother bag of worms to unpack BUT ANYWAYS Tom being the one he asks to help him go to the bathroom.. leaning on him.. god. and lashing out at Greg (who is in the family) when he asks him if he's going to the bathroom.... *britney spears gif* yeah..

Also not to bring that whole thing down but the fucking hilarity of Tom calling him "pops.. Papa.." and offering to hold his "sceptre" LMAOOO i died laughing

 AND THEN ON THE OTHER HAND you have Roman and Gerri... Being soooo goddamn soft with eachother. Her apologizing to him for suggesting offering up Logan (and by proxy him) as a sacrifice, and her feeling so bad she presents him as a leader position in the company ON STAGE in front of everyoneee!! LIKE! imagine anyone else in this show doing this for someone else.. it just wouldn’t happen, and if it DID there would for sure be something else going on, but not with them.. they're in love your honor. god.

do i just have succession brainrot? maybe.. maybe so.

 Kendall especially thinks he's actually doing the right thing and like on the verge of winning it all (meaning the company or just over his dad?)

Like bro.. you've literally killed someone and your dad covered it up. You're done. You're done.

And then, I don't know which Roy sibling is more pathetic after Kendall. Like:

Connor: Has no clue about how ANYTHING works. Thinks he can just start campaigning for the presidency?? Tries to blackmail his dad to make him head of cable in Europe?

Roman: Has absolutely NO self worth at all, clings to Gerri with all his might trying to maintain some semblance of power while getting the attention he clearly craves

Shiv: Thinks she's this #GirlBoss making moves and shit but in reality she's basically just a child doing whatever her dad says, trying to gain his approval by copying his behavior (badly might i add) which just ends up feeling completely forced and cringey

[hardcorehardigan]

[Cover: GREG WILLIAMS/AUGUST IMAGES]

Tom Hardy interview and exclusive David Bailey shot

Tom Hardy interview and exclusive David Bailey shot

By DANIELLE DE WOLFE

02 September 2015

ShortList meets the British actor who took on the Kray twins and won. Plus an exclusive image of the actor taken by the inimitable David Bailey.

Interviewing Tom Hardy is not like interviewing other film stars. From the moment he arrives – alone, dressed down in hiking trousers and black T-shirt, puffing away on a complex-looking digital e-cigarette – it is immediately clear this is not someone who will be exhibiting any kind of on-promotional-duties polish. He is very, very nice (I get a hug at the end of the interview), but there is unmistakably a wired edginess about him. When we sit down, it starts like this:

Me: I’m going to start with an obvious question, which is… Hardy: Have you seen the film? Me: Yes. I… Hardy: Right, well that’s the first question, then. The second one is, “What did you think?” I tell him I loved it, and why, and he is pleased (“That’s a f*cking result!”). When we move on to me asking him questions, his answers – again, in contrast to other film stars, with whom the game is to get them to veer slightly away from prepared, succinct monologues – are smart and eloquent, but long, drawn-out and enjoyably all over the place, veering off into tangents prompted by thoughts that have clearly just formulated. At the end of our allotted time, we are told to wind it up not once but twice, and even then he is still going, launching into theories about American versus British gangster films and life and humanity and such things (“Sorry man, I can talk for f*cking ever!” he laughs). He will be talking with a seriousness and sincerity (“All the risk was taken by [writer and director] Brian [Helgeland], to be fair…”), then will switch without warning into a piercing, mock-hysterical falsetto (“…letting me PLAY BOTH F*CKING ROLES, MAN!”).

In fact, briefly, while we’re on the subject of the way he speaks…

Tom Hardy’s normal speaking voice is not something we have been privy to onscreen. Since he delivered – whatever your opinion of it – the most imitated cinematic voice of the decade in The Dark Knight Rises, we haven’t come close. That thick Welsh accent in Locke, The Drop’s quiet Brooklyn drawl, the Russian twang in Child 44: we just never hear it. And this might be because it doesn’t exist. It’s five years ago, but if you watch his Jonathan Ross appearance in 2010, where he is very well spoken, he confesses he “sometimes picks up accents, and sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to sound until I start speaking”. If you then watch another video of a feature on GMTV, dated just a month previous, while addressing some young people from troubled backgrounds as part of his charity work with the Prince’s Trust, he is speaking to them in a south London street kid drawl. Today, in the flesh, he is about halfway between these two.

A natural-born chameleon.

Tom Hardy shot by David Bailey for ShortList

BEING DOUBLE

The role we are here to discuss today does not, by Tom Hardy’s own standards at least, involve a huge stretch accent-wise. But it is “the hardest thing that I’ve ever done, technically”. This is because, as mentioned, he plays not one role, but two. In the same film. You will likely have seen the posters for Legend by now, depicting Hardy as both of the Kray twins. Which seems an ambitious, almost foolhardy undertaking.

Hardy agrees. “It is one of them situations,” he says. “You get an actor to play two characters, and immediately, it’s pony. It’s gonna be rubbish. Just: no. It’s a bad idea.”

This particular “bad idea” came to him when he first met writer and director Brian Helgeland (who had previously written screenplays for – no biggie – LA Confidential and Mystic River) for dinner. Brian wanted Hardy to play Reggie (the hetero, alpha male, more-straight-down-the-line Kray). Hardy, though, had read the script, and of course, being Tom Hardy, was drawn to the more complex character. “I was like, ‘Well, I feel Ronnie,’” he says. “So which actor am I gonna give up Ronnie to, if I play Reggie? Errrrrggh…. I can’t have that. ’Cos that’s all the fun there! And Reggie’s so straight! But there was a moment when I could have come away just playing Reggie. We could have gone and found a superlative character actor to play Ronnie, and that would have been the best of everything."

But Helgeland sensed the dissatisfaction in his potential leading man. “I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, he wants to play Ron,’” he tells me. “And the paraphrased version is that by the end of the dinner, I said, ‘I’ll give you Ron if you give me Reg.’”

And so began their quest to turn a risky, potentially disastrous idea into something special (as Brian puts it to me, “the movie’s either gone right or gone wrong before anyone even starts working on it”). Hardy found some comfort in Sam Rockwell’s two-interacting-characters performance in Moon. “I’m a big fan of Sam,” he says.

“And Moon gave me reason to go, ‘I know it’s possible to hustle with self, to create a genuine dialogue with self.’ So then it’s the technical minefield: can you authentically create two characters within a piece at all? So that the audience can look past that and engage in the film? It is what it is: it’s two characters played by the same actor. But I think we got to a point where people forget that and are genuinely watching the story."

This was the ‘why I liked the film’ reasoning I gave to him at the beginning of the interview. And it is a remarkable performance, or pair of performances, or triumph of technical direction. The opening shot features both Tom Hardy Krays sitting in the back of a car, and feels strange, but very quickly, within about 10 or 15 minutes, you settle into it, and forget that it is actually the same guy. This was made possible, in part, by Hardy’s stunt double from Mad Max: a New Zealander named Jacob Tomuri.

“He inherited the hardest job of my career,” Hardy grins. “I put on a pair of glasses, played every scene with Ron, then took ’em off and played Reg. And we went through every scene in the film, recording it on the iPhone. So he’s got every scene of me doing both characters, on his iPhone. He actually played both brothers, had to learn all of the lines. He was paying attention twice as hard to keep up. But he superseded that, and was eventually ad-libbing. There’s a line that ended up in the film, where Ronnie goes, ‘I bent him up like a pretzel, I hurt him really f*cking badly.’” “Where did that come from?!” Hardy shrieks, in that falsetto again. “It came from New Zealand."

The wife’s tale

The other big potential pitfall, as Hardy sees it, was contributing to the ongoing glamorisation and eulogising of two brothers who were, to say the least, not very nice. Somehow they have become almost as iconic a piece of the Sixties puzzle as the Beatles or the Stones. But this was not something that Legend would be setting out to reinforce. “One has to approach these things thinking about the families of the victims who were involved in the other end of it,” he says. “Before you find the heart to like somebody, you’ve gotta look at their track record as best as possible: the people who’ve been hurt, the bodies, the suffering, people who were bullied, who lived in terror, who lost significant parts of their lives in the wake of these two men. There’s a lot of sh*t to wade through. And a lot of people who do not, quite rightly, want to see anything to do with these two men. And if I were them, I wouldn’t want to be involved myself, but there’s also part of me that wants to know. That wants to get under the skin.”

So how do you go about doing that? About humanising, to any extent, such people?

“I think the first port of call is, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do and say whatever you wanted to do and say in the world, regardless of the ramifications and the consequences?’ Ultimately, when I – we – go to the cinema or read a book or we go to escape, we respond to certain types of characters that go, ‘F*ck it: I’m gonna do whatever I want.'

And that’s because we can’t. Because most people would feel a responsibility.”

The answer to how Legend would do this came in the shape of a person who did feel some responsibility, namely Frances Shea: the troubled wife of Reggie, who died in 1967. Played by Emily Browning, she became the centre of the film when Helgeland met Krays associate Chris Lambrianou, who told him that “Frances was the reason we all went to prison”.

“We could have put more of the carnage and the crimes in that film,” says Hardy. “Not to say that it is not there, but what you do see, really, is Reggie, Ronnie and Frances. That’s the dynamic we focused on, that space, which hasn’t been seen before. What was that dynamic like? I don’t know if we came anywhere near the truth, because we weren’t there. But that was the playing field, if you like: Frances Shea, future ahead of her, caught up in something, and no one with her, the suicide. That sits with me in a way as the lead. She’s who we forgot. Ronnie, Reggie, they’ve done their bit. Frances was forgotten. And that kind of all ties it together for me."

FUTURE LEGENDS

The initial praise for Legend has been plentiful, but the mindset of Tom Hardy right now is such that he does not have the time to bask in it. There are other quite ludicrously challenging projects to be pressing ahead with. Coming in autumn is The Revenant, starring his good friend Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu of Birdman fame. Its trailer, as well as doing the not-going-anywhere trend for big beards no harm whatsoever, suggests that it will also match Mad Max in terms of an unrelenting barrage of intensity. Further into the future there’s the Elton John biopic Rocketman (initial challenge? Hardy “can’t sing”) and another foray into comic-book adaptation with 100 Bullets (news of which broke just after our interview).

And right now, as in this week, he’s working on a BBC series called Taboo, which is set in 1813 and stars Hardy as an adventurer who comes back from Africa and builds a shipping empire. The story has been developed by his production company Hardy Son & Baker (formed with his father, Chips) and has been written and directed by Locke/Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, with Ridley Scott also exec producing.

“We’re sat on something really awesome,” says Hardy. “And it’s trying to piece it together. I’ve never produced anything before, so I basically don’t know what I’m doing. But I’ve got some options and solutions: if you say something is not working, you better come up with at least four other options. But it’s good. It’s just different.”

Another day, another big challenge. Another chance to do something different. It isn’t an easy life being Tom Hardy. But neither will it ever a boring one, and that’s good news for us.

Legend is at cinemas from 9 September

Words: Hamish MacBain. Images: David Bailey, Studio Canal

You can also read the Hardy interview in this week's ShortList Magazine. It'd be a crime to miss it.

Source: https://www.shortlist.com/news/tom-hardy-interview-and-exclusive-david-bailey-shot

[cartoonjazzlover]

FOX Animation Week of 10/15/17

Bob’s Burgers The Silence of the Louise: (Greg Thompson/Chris Song) I don’ know why but that title kind of gave it away. For a second, I thought it was going to be a Halloween themed episode, but it’s just a Silence of the Lamb parody, plot wise. And Greg Thompson managed to excel at this spoof. They actually made Millie an even more creepier character, although at one point, she got upset at Louise for accusing her. The main plot kept me more interested. But the subplot was pretty funny as well.

The Simpsons: Whistler’s Father (Tom Gammill & Max Pross/Matthew Faughan) To my surprise, this was actually a good episode, with a rather fresh plot imo. Simpsons fans didn’t enjoyed this (from NoHomers, apparently), but I thought it was still watchable aside from a few crappy jokes. The Trey Parker part really grabbed my attention, because Lisa actually mentioned one of the creators of South Park. Maggie plots are usually good and this is no expectation. The episode was promising at first but eventually it started to get dragged down by the rather letdown ending. All in all, it’s still a surprisingly enjoyable episode. This season might be nice to me.

Family Guy: Nanny Goats (Tom Devanney/Steve Robertson) Sigh...where to begin??? This was such a mediocre episode. Even though the plot was cliched since we seen a nanny plot so many times in sitcoms (including a few shows that nanny-focused), I thought it was going to be a funny one. But nope, it didn’t reach my expectation, and instead, it ended up being such a cluttered mess. Goat puns were amusing, I guess, but they weren’t too laugh out loud worthy. Act 1 was way too short, and I didn’t really liked how it ended (Peter and Chris shoving each other, complete with the weird falling out animation, didn’t help either). Act 2 is a slight improvements, but some jokes like the Jews one (Mickey Mouse one and Mort liking The Goldbergs just because he’s Jewish) were just unfunny and predictable. Thankfully it ended on better and less abrupt note with the Cleveland Copter. Also, Peter said “and again” like 10 times but I’m glad they cut off the possible 100 times he said it for a minute cause I would be yelling “END IT END IT!” the writers are doing a good job at avoiding this problem, cause it will wear people’s patience thin easily if they continues to drag on scenes. Act 3 is just a mess, unfortunately. What I didn’t want the episode to had sadly happened. You thought Peter and Lois would get along on their trip. But sadly, we get another one of their fights we’ve been seeing a lot in later seasons and it wasn’t pleasant to watch. The car chase climax was cool to watch, but it’s ruined by Brian getting shot and a possible incest joke (I hope Chris and Meg were practicing kissing and not really doing it). Of course, we get another abrupt ending, cause it doesn’t surprise me. Look, I might be looking forward to this season, like a lot, but this one is just even worse than the previous episode, which was just okay. I think if the episodes this season doesn’t has any major flaws, then we’d be smooth sailing. Just no more duds like this because Family Guy had been so good in the past two years in my opinion, I don’t want it to become another seasonal rot era. Who knows, the season might get back to their roots somehow, but I’m really nervous on how the next two episodes will be handled after watching this.

Tonight’s winner was Bob’s Burgers, while Simpsons sits in the middle ranking. Tonight’s loser, and I really hate to say it second week in a row, but it’s Family Guy. Come on FG writers, get your head on the games. I want you to beat Simpsons since you’re not running out of idea like they’re painfully are.

SO FAR

All shows had 1 winning point.

Simpsons had 1 losing point.

Family Guy sadly had 2 losing points. No negative points, though, just keeping tracks of the best and worst episode of the week.

[americanahighways]

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The 2020 Virtual Woody Guthrie Festival came to a close this past Sunday, putting a wrap on a bold journey into unknown territory for the Woody Guthrie Coalition and the annual fest. Following an impressive all-star line-up of songwriters on Tuesday and Saturday’s broadcasts, the invaluable Terry “Buffalo” Ware got the Sunday show underway with his rollicking “Plain As Day” and some extra fun picking. Next up, Melissa Hembree joined by her pals, Michael Hurd on mandolin and Bruce Metcalf on acoustic bass, performed a great poignant new song, “Okfuskee” down in front of the Woody statue in downtown Okemah. It doesn’t get more fitting than that. Or does it?

Andy Adams made his case, by delivering a stunning version of Jimmy LaFave’s “Music From the Motorcourt,” that does a fine job of capturing the after-hours hotel parking lot scene that really inspires so many. I really enjoyed Adams’ albeit brief performance at the Old Church here in Perkins, OK just a few months back, and have tuned into several of his own livestreams since. Keeping with the LaFave theme, Adams closed out his segment with another of the beloved songwriter and mentor, the aptly titled, “Woody Guthrie.” Up next, the multi-talented, Ali Harter with an older song she indicated she had recently dug out, “Anti-Political, Unpolitical Song.” Not only a gifted songwriter, Harter also designed this year’s logo and merch via her Pigs Fly Shop, and all her endeavors certainly deserve your attention. OKCs K.C. Clifford performed next, straight from her home’s staircase with a really great song that I believe to be titled, “Remember When.” I haven’t taken the opportunity to catch Clifford live yet, but now I certainly know I need to. You probably need to as well. Tell her I sent you. Robert Williams came next, with a nice sing-a-long on Woody’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh” and was followed by the wonderful, Susan Herndon performing her take of the traditional, “This Train is Bound For Glory.” Need a pick-me-up? Williams and Herdon’s songs should do the trick. Following up on their duo performance on the opening night, Travis Fite and Monica Taylor returned with Fite on vocals for Woody’s “Dust Pneumonia Blues,” which has always been a personal favorite of mine from the vast Guthrie catalog. Great, fun version.

Also returning from Saturday’s show, was another song from Betty Soo. This time, a stunning rendition of her own “Henry & Me,” which just stopped me in my tracks and was one of my favorite songs of the festival. I’ll definitely be digging more into this gifted songwriter’s songs soon. With a perfect Terilingua backdrop, good ol’ Butch Hancock was back with well wishes, a bit of hope and a Flatlander’s cut, “One Road More.” Next, Nellie Clay served as our Okenah tour guide in a great production type clip accompanying a soundtrack of Clay performing Woody’s “Ranger’s Command.” Nellie’s choice of song while visiting the Crystal Theatre, the Pastures of Plenty stage and Guthrie’s homestead for the clip, was just exactly perfect. Jared Deck followed, with his soulful “Mountain Valley Road” that had me wishing for at least one more. Instead, Jaimee Harris was back with “On The Surface,” and a short tale detailing the travels that took her from Terilingua, to Okemah to Taos and Eliza Gilkyson’s home. Harris’ stripped down performances were a highlight throughout the festival, and this version was no different. Definitely take the time to listen. Joel Rafael also returned again, this time with a nice version of “Glory Bound,” followed by the sounds of the Red Dirt Rangers and “Strawberries and Watermelon.” Bristow, Oklahoma’s Cassie Latshaw next performed, what I think is titled, “Hide Away” with her friends Steven and Paul and gave me yet another Okie songwriter I really need to catch soon. Annie Guthrie was back with a new song, one she indicated was still being worked out, and well, she doesn’t really care if you have an opinion about it. Keep it to yourself friend. Right there, the spirit of the Guthrie family was perfectly represented, and despite her likely disregard for this writer’s opinion, it’s a damn fine song.

Gypsy Twang comprised of Sarah Barker Huhn, and Steve Huhn, as well as John Williams and Craig Skinner, added a beautiful version of Woody’s “Ramblin’ Round.” Next, Larry Spears’ “Puppeteer” and it’s Dylan-esque cadence, proceeded to blow me away. Just a great song, look it up. Leading us into the closing stretch, Ken Pomeroy presented her inspired tale of Dylan and Baez, titled, “Joan.” It’s been so much fun watching Pomeroy develop as a songwriter, and even when she covers a song, as she did next with “Deportees,” she unmistakably leaves her fingerprints all of it. I can’t recommend her Horton Records debut release, “Hallways” enough, so be sure to look it up. Jacob Tovar returned from his barn for Tom Skinner’s “Crystal,” while R.T. Valine, with birds accompanying delivered a timely take on “Wish This World (Would Settle Down), while his good boy, Wino, kept watch. In the Oklahoma music scene, I doubt there;s a more valuable asset than Kyle Reid. Besides fronting his own endeavors, Reid has played a part in countless local shows and recordings. Reid’s tent set last year with his Low Swinging Chariots was a highlight, and I always look forward to any opportunity to hear his contributions, which thankfully happens quite frequently here in the OKC area. For this year’s fest, Reid recorded a great original, “Dance Alone” and followed it up with Woody’s Hobo’s Lullaby.”

Throughout the pandemic, Carter Sampson has been right there, doing her part to help keep us sane, and maybe herself too. I’ve probably tuned into more Carter livestreams this year than anyone elses, and there’s a couple of reasons. First, she’s performed nearly 60 of her “Happy Hour w/Carter & Bubba,”, and second, each one has been outstanding. Along with her faithful, canine rescue, Bubba, Sampson provides great songs, stories, Shel Silverstein and well, hope. Hope that all this will someday end. Here, Sampson and Bubba perform a great version of “Queen of Oklahoma” and her more recent, “Rattlesnake Kate” from “Lucky” on Horton Records. Next, Peggy Johnson performed a pair of songs that always hit me hard, “One of the Ones” and “Dustbowl Lullaby.” I just discovered Johnson at last year’s fest, and I’m so glad I did. Closing in on the end, Michigan’s Chris Buhalis dropped in again with another brilliant song for the “Working People,” and introduced himself as a new favorite that I must become more familiar with. Any songwriter that can include a line about Bob Gibson’s fastball high and tight, is on to something. The great Greg Jacobs came up next from Greg Johnson’s Blue Door in Oklahoma City for a loving take on “Do Re Mi,” and a poignant version of his own, “Footprints” before our host Terry Ware wrapped up this years recorded performances for the year with the traditionally played Hoot for Huntington’s, sing-along take of Bob Childer’s “Woody’s Road.”

Like everything else in this crazy world right now, this year’s festival was different, and not quite what any of us wanted. Thankfully though, it did happen. I know I needed it, our community needed it and undoubtedly the performers needed it. Any sense of normalcy has to be grasped, and thank goodness the Woody Guthrie Coalition came through for us, because it really helped. Throughout the broadcasts, performer after performer mentioned how much they missed, and how much they look forward to actually sweating it out at the festival next year. Count me in. Next year’s Woody Guthrie Festival will hopefully return with live performances from Okemah on July 14th -18th. A huge thank you to all the 2020 festival artists, supporters, contributors, Friends of the Festival and Coalition members. The fact that together, all of these people were able to convey the sense of family and spirit over a livestream process, is nothing short of amazing. It really shows the depth of dedication and the love of the music that each one of these beautiful people possesses. I really missed seeing everyone this year, and eagerly look forward to the next time we can all get together. As always, an extra loud thank you to all the members of the Festival Board of Directors: President Randy Norman, Vice-President Gary Hart, Dana Gunn, Miranda Huff, Fred Ellert, Cheyenne Felker, Lindsey Flowers, Maddie Gregory, Roger Hostenbach, Roger Osburn, Dennis Whiteman and Guy Zahller, and lastly, of course, the Guthrie Family. Special people, each and every one.

The 2020 WoodyFest stream can still  be viewed until the end of the month on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=woodyfest+2020 and the Coalition would definitely appreciate any support via donations and 2020 fest merchandise. All the information can be found here: https://www.woodyfest.com.

Show Review: Woody Guthrie Festival 2020 (Virtually) Celebration Continues (Pt. 3) @woodyfest #andyadams @mhembreemusic @terry-ware @jaimeeharris @alihartermusic @KCClifford @cartersampson @kenpomeroy @gypsytwang @joelrafaelmusic @reddirtrangers The 2020 Virtual Woody Guthrie Festival came to a close this past Sunday, putting a wrap on a bold journey into unknown territory for the Woody Guthrie Coalition and the annual fest.

[junker-town]

Sosa-McGwire home run chase tracker

What was it like in 1998, during the nail-biting race to beat Roger Maris’ home run record? We track the big headlines and the dingers as the world watched.

Welcome to the spring of 1998: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are coming off seasons of 58 and 36 home runs, respectively, and it’s McGwire’s first full season in St. Louis. Predictions of him breaking Roger Maris’ single-season home run mark of 61 are already flying. Six short months from now, McGwire and Sosa will both have accomplished the feat with the former edging the latter by four home runs to set a new record of 70.

Before that finish line, though, both men would hit more than 130 combined dingers throughout the year, and there would be magazine covers, commercials, and late-night shows tracking them the whole way. The home run race would captivate baseball fans, as well as people who wouldn’t otherwise care about the sport, and it would stay lodged in the mind of kids everywhere — some of whom grew up to be today’s stars of the game, and can still articulate how they felt during that summer.

So, whether you’re someone who remembers the McGwire-Sosa home run chase in all of its enthralling detail, or a future MLB fan who wasn’t yet old enough to recall all of the specifics of the season-long battle (hi, hello, it’s me), either way, it’s been 20 years since that race and its can’t-miss action brought fans back to baseball. Let the dingers fly!

[Note: Our tracker took into account all available recorded dates, field positions, and distances for McGwire and Sosa home runs in the 1998 season.]

CARLO ALLEGRI/AFP/Getty Images

McGwire steps in, wins homer contest

McGwire’s home runs were already meriting column space in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in early March, but not because of a game situation. In a batting practice home run derby against Blue Jays players, he hit all of the Cardinals’ seven homers to win. That March 8, 1998, anecdote would be a prelude of what was to come, and he even did it without his usual bat.

Sammy time: “Sosa predicted last spring he would hit 50 home runs. Now he’s out of the prognostication business”

Sosa took a step back from the confident position he had with his 1997 home run totals in the March 9 edition of the Chicago Tribune. He should have stayed with it though, since even though he wasn’t “out there to hit 40 home runs” he did that, and more. It’s safe to say he did accomplish his goal of hurting teams every day.

McGwire’s chances of breaking homer mark is among topics discussed with Reds’ minor leaguers

Someone was making predictions though, at least for McGwire. Pete Rose, joining a trend that would be a big feature of that season’s Spring Training coverage, appeared in the March 15 Post-Dispatch confidently predicting McGwire could top Maris’ mark, and offering managers advice they wouldn’t quite follow: walk him a bunch. McGwire would end the season with 162 walks, but even that many free trips to first didn’t keep him from setting the record.

While McGwire was getting all the prediction coverage, Sosa had headlines following him during Spring Training.

RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images

“Sosa’s No. 1 need: Discipline at plate”

He struck out three fewer times in 1998 than in 1997 (171 to 174) but hit 30 more home runs than the previous year. So this March 22 Tribune headline isn’t necessarily wrong, but it turns out his plate discipline didn’t matter when it came to crushing as much as everyone thought. Hey, not every preseason prediction was going to land.

Over in McGwireville that same day, the Sunday edition of the Post-Dispatch fills us in on McGwire’s opinion on all his publicity with the most 1998 reference, saying, “He has graced the cover of The Sporting News Baseball Yearbook and the Sports Illustrated special baseball issue and the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated. He is on the cover of the Cardinals’ media guid. He’s been on more covers than Monica Lewinsky. And McGwire, predictably, isn’t wild about it.”

Lewinsky name drop aside, McGwire admits he would rather not be on covers and only be written about for his feats rather than constantly having to take photos and be the center of attention. “I would rather do the articles and that’s about it.” McGwire said. “I don’t like publicity.”

That is … not a wish that will come true.

Twin towers of power

In the March 25 edition of the Tribune, with the season almost underway, a prediction of 75 or 80 homers for Sosa and teammate Henry Rodriguez gets space in the sports section. They’d combine for 97 home runs, with Sosa accomplishing the bulk of that, of course. Rodriguez did end up notching 31 of his own bombs, only five away from his career high.

In response to Cubs’ first baseman Mark Grace being tagged as the cleanup hitter and Sosa slotting in third in the batting order, Grace said in the March 27 Tribune that he’s happy with that setup because, “I want to see Sammy get as many pitches as he possibly can. Because when Sammy puts the bat on the ball, good things happen.” If you only knew, Mark Grace. If you only knew.

Players: 61 HRs before .400

Also on the 27th, a small item in the Moline, Illinois, Dispatch noted that Grace said McGwire, Sosa, or anyone on the Rockies would have a chance at reaching Maris’ threshold and then passing it, which is a pretty close prediction considering Sosa didn’t break 40 the year before. Cubs GM Ed Lynch did Grace one better and named McGwire or Ken Griffey Jr. as players who could hit 70 home runs, specifically. Hit the nail right on the head there. Hopefully he bought some lottery tickets after media availability that day.

All eyes are on McGwire as he aims at homer mark

Two days from Opening Day, McGwire still wasn’t comfortable with being the center of attention while his teammates failed to garner the same close analysis and predictions. He told the Post-Dispatch: “I know there’s a lot of eyes on me. There should be a lot of eyes on everybody else.”

Hopefully he got used to it. Because once the season began, these confident preseason predictions would look like a middle-of-the-paper footnote compared to the home run race fervor. Covers and attention, ahoy.

Everyone [remembers] right? As a kid growing up that was amazing. Sosa was just so electrifying, so fun-loving. McGwire was that classic, stoic Cardinal Way just dropping bombs into Big Mac land. Every time we play in St. Louis it says Big Mac up on the third deck and you can’t help but remember that summer. What a great time for baseball. —Gerrit Cole, Houston Astros

It was very significant. You’d wake up every day and see if they hit one. I was just rooting for excitement, for homers. I wasn’t team Sosa or Team McGwire, I was just team excitement. —Jed Lowrie, Oakland A’s

“Get Ready for a Slugfest: Why Maris’ record and a lot of others could fall”

McGwire’s first cover of the season came eight days before he would hit his first home run. Sports Illustrated’s March 23 cover was all Big Mac with the exception of a brief mention of NCAA Tournament upsets happening that week (10-seed West Virginia had beaten 2-seed Cincinnati, 6-seed UCLA beat 3-seed Michigan, and 8-seed Rhode Island pulled off the upset over 1-seed Kansas).

I might have been in fourth or fifth grade? But I remember watching it every night. ...I think I was going for Sosa. I really liked the way he hopped. Plus I’m from North Alabama so Chicago, St. Louis, they’re right there. —Craig Kimbrel, Boston Red Sox

You know things are legitimate when the brands get involved. A trip for two to the World Series from Pepsi just for guessing the home run champion’s dinger total was a sure sign the race was top of everyone’s mind, instead of just the baseball world’s.

In May, McGwire and Sosa combined for 12 home runs in a single week.

Just a lot of home runs. I actually remember on ESPN they had a count and it seemed like every other day one of them was hitting a homer so it’s just cool to look back on that, to remember that. —Trevor Story, Colorado Rockies

It was amazing. Every time you watched a game when they were on the TV it was a home run and it was pretty interesting and electric to see two guys go at it for a home run title. —Aaron Nola, Philadelphia Phillies

Nike’s “Chicks Dig the Long Ball” commercial, in which Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux train to hit home runs to impress fans (including Heather Locklear!!), who are more captivated with McGwire’s prowess at the plate. One of the best things to come out of the 1998 season.

I thank Sammy and McGwire for doing what they did because that brought baseball back. The fans came back to paying attention to baseball, because it was a little cold until they came in and did the home run challenge, which is almost impossible to do. Every baseball player should thank them for doing what they did, that’s why we are where we are right now. Everybody’s having a career right now because of it. —David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox (ret.)

As a kid, it was something that really drew you into the game of baseball and watching it every night. Not just those two guys, but all the fans and all the teams, you know it was definitely one of my early baseball memories. —Paul Goldschmidt, Arizona Diamondbacks

I was pretty young, but I just remember every day there was something. I didn’t know really how special that was until looking back on it and seeing how many people haven’t even reached 60 homers, some of the best power hitters ever. I’m glad those guys are out of the game now so I don’t have to face them. —Patrick Corbin, Arizona Diamondbacks

“Slammin’ Sammy: Sammy Sosa is on a record home run binge”

The next big cover featuring either Sosa or McGwire didn’t come until June 29, when Sports Illustrated put Sosa on a cover of his own. At this point, Sosa had 32 homers to McGwire’s 36, and the race was well on its way to the top of Hype Mountain. This cover just about marks the point where the race actually turned into a race and not “just” McGwire chasing Maris.

I think I was 12 maybe. So playing little league baseball, that was really exciting to follow. I remember no matter what we were doing, if we were at somebody else’s house or I even remember times when my dad was making me mow the yard, someone from inside the house would yell, “Hey, McGwire’s gonna come up” and I would run inside real quick and watch his at-bat and then have to go finish my chores. I appreciate that part of it, it got me out of doing some extra yard work. That might have been the summer where I fell in love with the game and it became my most favorite sport. —Sean Doolittle, Washington Nationals

I always watched SportsCenter when I was laying in bed going to sleep. Obviously, being able to watch that race was unbelievable. I was a McGwire guy. I liked the Cardinals a little more because they were closer to home, so I’d always watch the Cardinals. —J.T. Realmuto, Miami Marlins

“Outta Here!”

With McGwire at 44 home runs and Sosa at 40, TIME issued the first cover to feature them both. Neither of them posed for this one, and based on both of their reluctance at the beginning of the season to be the absolute center of attention, it’s notable TIME went the route of having an artist draw them rather than setting up a photo shoot or using wire photos.

The eventual World Series champions get a mention here, but it’s a small one. The Yankees’ even came after the note on stadium food. But the most important part of this subhead is the phrase “baseball is back.”

The predictions and the hope of a home run spike may have been one thing, but the actual race did something better than being exciting: it gave baseball a second life that wasn’t guaranteed after the 1994 strike.

I remember it was awesome feeling. Especially when they played each other. The way that they’d go at each other. I think that baseball really grew a lot after the strike and baseball got back on top after that. —Kenley Jansen, Los Angeles Dodgers

“The Great Home Run Chase: In pursuit of Mac, Junior and Sammy. A remarkable 72-hour odyssey”

Oh look, a Ken Griffey, Jr. reference on the August 3 edition of Sports Illustrated. Griffey would end the season with 56 home runs, a full 10 behind Sosa and a total that in most other years would have gotten him all of these covers. Instead he got this brief mention before the two main men in the race uncorked things and went on their August and September tears. At the time of this cover, he was one behind Sosa and four behind McGwire.

I just remember how much fun baseball was. Obviously, when you have two big names like that going at it with the home run race, two iconic organizations too … as a kid you can’t ask for anything better than that. —Jon Lester, Chicago Cubs

I remember how far and how long they were hitting them, how excited everybody was. The Home Run Derby was something I always watched growing up as a kid and that was a special event. It was Home Run Derby every day for them. —Michael Brantley, Cleveland Indians

Not every current player remembers the home run race. Whether because of youth or growing up in another country, their introductions to what McGwire and Sosa did came late.

I was in Brazil so I don’t want to say I barely watched baseball, but it was hard. When I moved here, to see that. Still to this day, 60’s and 70’s? It’s like, geez. I think I might have just gotten past that career-wise and those guys were doing it in one year. It’s really cool. You heard it a little bit on ESPN Brasil but at that time, I was playing baseball but wasn’t really following baseball as much. I was more following NPB, Japanese baseball. —Yan Gomes, Cleveland Indians

I didn’t have the opportunity to watch that in Cuba, we didn’t have the stations. But I heard about it and when I came here I watched videos of that. It was very special. —Jose Abreu, Chicago White Sox

As McGwire’s record-breaking home run neared, pop culture made room for No. 62. Including Hank Hill from King of the Hill asking him to please hit the big one so their season could start. Hill’s 1998 season was delayed so FOX could make sure they aired McGwire passing Maris.

“One Cool Daddy: How Mark McGwire is beating the pressure”

There’s a lot of things about the September 7 Sports Illustrated cover that wouldn’t happen 20 years later: the pose that looks like McGwire is breastfeeding his son; the headline “One Cool Daddy” for a piece authored by Rick Reilly; and an article about golfers’ sex lives. Or at least you’d hope that all of those things are relics.

There it is, No. 62 and assured immortality in the record books. A 341-foot left field shot that just snuck over the left field wall a few feet from the foul pole. In any other context, a normal home run. But not here.

McDonald’s took advantage of the “Big Mac” nickname connection, promoting their line of baseballs with McGwire’s face on them for $3.99, and congratulating him for the achievement with that year’s “Big Mac getting a Big Mac” commercial.

It’s mid-September, both men had cracked 60 home runs and McGwire has officially passed Maris with a September 8 shot to left. So the covers are really picking up.

“The Record: What it means to Mark McGwire and to America”

McGwire, unsurprisingly, gets the cover of Sports Illustrated for breaking the record. But over on Newsweek it’s both Sosa and McGwire smiling and grinning with their arms around each other as the season nears its end.

In case you haven’t realized by now how big a deal the race was at the time, both the Swissair Flight 111 crash that killed 229 people and that summer’s market crash were demoted to the top bar with baseball getting the rest. On Newsweek!

I actually watched a little of the Sammy Sosa thing, I think it was E60. I watched that and it was showing some of the clips from that year. How they were hugging and doing that fist handshake and stuff, and it brought back some memories. Obviously being in the southeast, back then TV was WGN I think carried the Cubs and then TBS carried the Braves so that was kind of who we got. So I remembered a lot of it. It was something you probably won’t see again. —Mitch Moreland, Boston Red Sox

“Suddenly it’s This Close: Sammy Sosa jumps right back into the home run race”

Just because the record was McGwire’s doesn’t mean that the race was over, and a pair of covers from September 21 celebrate both things. Sosa stood at 63 home runs to McGwire’s 65 at the time so Sports Illustrated went with “Suddenly it’s THIS CLOSE” and ESPN the Magazine, still in the first months of its existence, dubbed McGwire’s 62 “the greatest sports moment of our time.”

McGwire answers the “Where do I go from here?” question posed on this SI cover in an exclusive piece from his own pen that reflects on the night of the record, how things have changed after unseating Maris, and what his priorities are now that people look at him differently and ask more of him as the single-season home run record holder. It’s a snapshot of one man’s mind in the days immediately after his life changed — for the better, at least at that point — and re-reading can be strange knowing what we know now, but also bring forth an appreciation of McGwire doing a piece this honest.

September 26 saw Will Ferrell do a Mark McGwire impression on Saturday Night Live, the only time he would portray the athlete on the show. If getting spoofed on SNL when it was at one of the peaks of its powers isn’t a sign that this home run race was consuming all, nothing was.

What A Season!

Sometimes, the numbers do all the talking. McGwire finished with 70 homers. Sosa won the RBI battle, even though McGwire jacked more home runs. Kerry Wood had a 20-strikeout game. Cal Ripken, Jr.’s consecutive games streak ended at 2,632. Alex Rodriguez had 42 home runs and 46 stolen bases. And oh yeah, besides all of that, the Yankees set an American League record for wins in a season.

But sometimes, talking does the talking. McGwire followed up his Season of Many Covers by appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, and later spoke with Barbara Walters for her yearly Most Fascinating People special. McGwire’s Letterman appearance included guests who were very of-the-time, like “Life Is Beautiful” actor/director Roberto Benigni and singer Bruce Hornsby.

McGwire cracks jokes in an all-black, oversized 90’s suit that would make any tailor today cringe. He’s comfortable in the chair and brags a little, Hollywood style, but also veers into “aw shucks” territory with things like shouting out friends and family, and continually saying he can hit anything that’s over the “white part of the plate.” Letterman, for his part, does the Lord’s work by asking whether McGwire calls home runs dingers, taters, or something else. The semi-disappointing answer? “Homers.”

Letterman also points out that this race was what baseball needed and McGwire answers that he and Sosa did it “for the country,” not just baseball. That it doesn’t seem like hyperbole in that context is the most incredible part.

I always get on Big Mac, because he’s our bench coach, to get him to take BP one time but he won’t do it. He can still hit bombs for sure — he just won’t do it. He’s pretty quiet about it, but he’s awesome. —Brad Hand, Cleveland Indians

Sportsmen of the Year

On December 21, a pair of covers came out that featured both men but couldn’t have been more different. In one, McGwire and Sosa are named Sportsmen of the Year by Sporting News, and look like they’re going to a baseball-themed prom.

In the other, they’re named Sportsmen of the Year by Sports Illustrated and … the rest will live in infamy.

McGwire capped off his year with the Barbara Walters interview, once again taking the spotlight while Sammy preferred not to (or didn’t receive any offers to) appear on the top late-night or news magazine shows.

Walters refers to McGwire as “a gracious man” and the 1998 season as “a time we’ll all remember,” and neither description could be phrased better than that. Leave it to Barbara Walters to wrap up a season that simultaneously brought baseball back, and set baseball on a path to questioning many of its recent heroes in such an apt way.

[metawitches]

Riverdale is the new CW Twin Peaks lite teen mystery drama from Greg Berlanti, of the DC Berlantiverse, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, writer for Glee, Big Love, Supergirl, Marvel Comics, and Chief Creative Officer of Archie Comics. The adult cast is stocked with veterans of teen and science fiction shows, such as Molly Ringwald, Skeet Ulrich, Luke Perry, Robin Givens, and Tom McBeath. One, Mädchen Amick, is an actual Twin Peaks cast member. So, the show starts with a great resume and critics have given the pilot great reviews. For myself, I’m a little burned out on high school dramas after five years of The Vampire Diaries and having been one of the few who stuck with Glee until the bitter, bitter end. I loved Twin Peaks way back when, though, and I do still love a good twisted, quirky, potential cult show in the making. So, what the heck, let’s give it a shot.

They start right off with their homage to Twin Peaks. This not a coincidence:

The settings for both shows are very similar, small towns in the Pacific Northwest where nature is still rugged and wild. The rivers rush, the mist creeps, the mountains loom, and the forests are dark and dense with towering, dripping evergreens. This is not a place where man has tamed nature. The outdoors is a character, and potentially a villain.

In fact, Jughead, our narrator, begins by telling us about the mysterious death of Jason Blossom, the Laura Palmer of Riverdale. Kudos to everyone involved for not making him a blonde female. The Blossom twins, Jason and his sister Cheryl, who are both redheads, drive out to Sweet Water River dressed in white and holding hands, to take an early morning boat ride on July 4th. Nothing unusual in that, right? Before they get in the boat, Cheryl asks Jason if he’s scared. Jason shakes his head no. They get into the boat, and Jason rows them out into the middle of the water, while Cheryl sits with her gloved hands primly in her lap. Moments later, a gunshot fireworks thunder loud sound is heard.

Later that morning, Dilton Doiley, who was leading a bird watching expedition in full Boy Scout regalia, found Cheryl soaked and cowering on the side of the river. The police dragged the river, but his body was never found. Cheryl claimed that she’d dropped one of her gloves in the water. Jason had reached in to get it, but had panicked and fallen in when the boat tipped. He had drowned. The Blossoms buried an empty casket.

Fast forward to the beginning of the school year. Everyone is still talking about what happened to the Blossom twins, but other changes are happening, as well, because this is high school!

Hermione and Veronica Lodge arrive in town, fresh from NYC. Their husband and father, Hiram Lodge, has been involved in an embezzling scandal, so they’ve returned to Riverdale, Hermione’s hometown, for a fresh start. Veronica stands by her father, and is defensive with anyone who brings it up.

Betty is the fresh-faced, smart, but awkward, literal girl next door. She and her close gay friend Kevin watch Archie change his shirt through their bedroom windows and discover that working construction all summer has done wonders for Archie’s abs.

Though Betty has a crush on Archie, he’s firmly friend-zoned her. She’s trying to make a move as they’re eating at Pop’s, the local malt shoppe, when Veronica walks in and immediately draws Archie’s attention. Veronica shows an equal amount of interest in Archie and Betty.

Betty’s under pressure from her mom to be successful, unlike her older sister Polly, who was ruined in some way by that horrible Jason Blossom. Mom practically sounds like she’s out of a 19th century novel. At least she didn’t tell Betty to guard her virginity. Maybe that was implied in the “character” part of the speech. Alice Cooper pressures Betty to excel in all areas, including keeping up her grades, athletics, extracurriculars and maintaining a decent character. She’s refilled Betty’s Adderall prescription to help Betty stay focused and on track. (Betty keeps forgetting!) The modern moms of Riverdale believe in better living through chemicals. But only with a doctor’s prescription. It’s very important that you only get your chemical aids from the right kinds of people.

Archie’s father, Fred Andrews, owns and runs a local construction company. Archie worked for him over the summer, which is where he acquired the abs everyone is so excited about. Those muscles will come in handy on the football team. The other players, Reggie and Moose, want to know his workout secrets. Archie also had a brief summer affair with his young high school music teacher, Geraldine Grundy (major dramatic license taken here, compared to her comic version). He’s started writing songs, and is looking for someone to teach him songwriting. He approaches Josie, leader of the band Josie and the Pussycats, first. She seems to think his approach is a come on to either take over the band or get in her pants, and is dismissive of him. He moves on to Miss Grundy, who doesn’t want to have any close dealings with Archie that might end up looking suspicious. Miss Grundy doesn’t want to take the chance. Especially since they are hiding the fact that they were at the river together the morning of July 4th, and heard the loud noise that occurred near the time of Jason Blossom’s death, but didn’t come forward to the police. Archie eventually wears her down/blackmails her into agreeing to lessons three mornings a week before school. There definitely shouldn’t be any problem with those two being alone together in a small room three times a week. No similarities to the seven minutes in heaven game the teenagers play later.

Meanwhile, Archie makes the Varsity football team thanks to his abs, even though he’s young for it. It’s a bigger time commitment than he was expecting, so he has to figure out how to juggle working for his dad, football, music, and friends. A bit of lying happens, but he gets caught quickly. Fred and Archie have a serious talk about making good choices, growing up into a man, choices will affect the rest of your life, and the usual Very Important Words of Wisdom for Teens. By the end of the episode, Archie’s figured out a schedule that should allow him to juggle his commitments and interests. He’s happy, his dad’s happy, everyone’s happy. Chances are he didn’t irrevocably harm his future with a couple of minor decisions made when he was 15. No one died or got pregnant. At least not because of Archie. At least not in this episode.

Betty and Veronica get to know each other while they tour the school and introduce Veronica to the rest of the cast students. Veronica is a sharp judge of character who comes from a much more sophisticated, much more vicious social circle than Riverdale could ever hope to be. She decides to take Betty under her wing, since she was burned by her friends in NY when her dad’s scandal broke. Betty seems like the kind of honest, loyal person who won’t let her down. In return, Veronica brings Betty along with her when she joins the cheerleading squad. They both stand up to Cheryl Blossom, queen bee in mourning with a personal dislike of Betty.

Cheryl won’t let it end there, of course. Betty, Veronica, and Archie end up going to the fall dance together. Betty confesses her feelings to Archie, but he doesn’t return them. Cheryl watches from a distance, and tells her minions to make sure the threesome are at her after party. At the party, she maneuvers them into the game  of seven minutes in heaven, then makes sure that Veronica and Archie end up in the closet together. Betty escapes from the party while her dates are in the closet, giving Cheryl exactly what she wanted. Veronica and Archie give in to temptation and make out, but Veronica seems to regret jeopardizing her friendship with Betty afterwards. She sends Archie to talk to Betty.

Archie tells Betty that she’s too good for him, which has got to be one of the most obnoxious, infuriating excuses for why one person doesn’t want to date another, ever. Nobody wants to be put up on a pedestal where they are viewed as some perfect ideal, and not allowed to be a real person with flaws, needs, and problems of their own. It means that Archie, who she thought was her best friend, doesn’t even really see her. Sadly, I’ve seen this exact excuse and situation in real life, too. I wish it were just a trope. I can only hope that she doesn’t spend the rest of the series pining for him and following him around like an attention-seeking puppy. He already has two other love interests. If Archie and Betty are end game, let him woo her back. There are a lot of other cute kids of all genders and types running around the school for Betty to choose from. (Yeah, I know, she’s going to pine. It was a nice fantasy for a moment.)

Archie runs into Jughead at Pop’s while he’s looking for Betty. They seem to have been close friends, maybe more, who had a falling out. They have a bit of an existential crisis over Jason Blossom, how he’ll be remembered, and what that means for their own lives. Jughead gets in a resentful comment or two that makes it sound like Archie left him behind in some way, or maybe refused to come out of the closet. Then he tells Archie to go talk to Betty, that talking helps, and would have helped with Jughead.

Jughead is an introverted, intense novelist/writer, not the type who’d typically be best friends with a popular member of the football team. He has an air of sadness and mystery around him. He’s the narrator for the episode, but is only onscreen for the one brief scene. It makes him that much more compelling, someone with secrets that you want to know more about.

Veronica’s mother, Hermione, ended up broke when she left NY. She asks Fred for a job at his company, hoping he’ll give her a break because they dated before she left town. He married her rich rival instead, but that marriage has also broken up. He tells Hermione he can’t hire her because his clients wouldn’t approve of the wife of an embezzler working with the money. Later, Veronica discovers that her husband, Hiram, has arranged for a duffel bag of cash to be delivered to their apartment.

But we need to go back to the outdoors before we end the episode. Kevin is hooking up with Moose, a closeted gay football player. They’re going to skinny dip before the main event. Kevin heads down to the water’s edge, dark and forboding in the middle of the night, lit only by their car headlights. He stumbles, and finds the body of Jason Blossom washed up on the shore, muddy, bloated, and with a bullet through his forehead.

Jughead tells us that soon an autopsy will be done, arrests will begin, and the small town will have to face its secrets.

There was a lot to like in this pilot, including the cast. I love the look and the atmosphere. I’m not a huge fan of getting bogged down in teen romance and petty rivalries, so I hope the show focusses as much on the adults as on the teens in that respect. The pilot dragged for me when it got to the point of following Archie and his three love interests around through trysts and heartbreak. The party scene in particular didn’t add much that couldn’t have been done in a more interesting way. We already knew Cheryl is conniving and Archie and Veronica are attracted to each other and would act on it eventually.

But most of the characters are interesting and have the potential to be complex, with complex relationships connecting them. There’s the promise of Molly Ringwald and Skeet Ulrich showing up in a few episodes. Lots to analyze and meta about.

And there’s the central mystery to solve. What were Jason and Cheryl up to? Suicide pact? Did Cheryl chicken out? Or did Jason fall overboard with the gun, and she couldn’t bring herself to drown instead? Or was it a murder/suicide pact? Did she shoot him with her white gloves on, but didn’t go through with killing herself? Or did she just murder him? Was he hit by a sniper from a distance? Hired assasin or someone he knew? But she asked him if he was afraid, which suggests they were planning something. They were dressed in inappropriate, white clothing, perfect for a funeral tableau of two innocents taken too soon.

I didn’t talk about Cheryl Blossom much. She’s brittle. It’s no mistake that her name sounds like cherry blossom. Beautiful, fragile, easily destroyed, mourning a lost loved one. But Cheryl is hiding things as well. Some or all of that fragility is a front. She’s manipulative, perceptive, dramatic, intelligent and ruthless. She may also be mentally ill. She may have been in an incestuous relationship with her brother. There may have been abuse involved, in either direction. We don’t know much about the Blossom family yet. They are part of the mystery to be unraveled.

Riverdale Season 1 Chapter One: The River’s Edge Riverdale is the new CW Twin Peaks lite teen mystery drama from Greg Berlanti, of the DC Berlantiverse, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, writer for Glee, Big Love, Supergirl, Marvel Comics, and Chief Creative Officer of Archie Comics.