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riverdale-retread · 2 years ago

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Riverdale s7 e1

There is a lot of commentary about whether the show is bad or good, and among those who hold that it's bad, a debate about whether said badness is intentional (It's camp! It's satire! It's commentary on culture and/or our times!) or brought about from a lack of talent or planning by the producers, writers and/or actors.

What I say is this - I love the care with which Riverdale is made. Starting with the S7 opening sequence!!

Archie’s painted hot rod is shown, then as the song plays Archie spins into view, his face framed in a little circle. He's doing something with his eyebrows. His smile is just a little off. Not a LOT off. Just off. Immediately after that we see him press a kiss to Mary Andrews' cheek. We know it's all wrong because Mary Andrews is wary of the violence of this son that she regrets mothering and can't wait to get rid of. They are not this affectionate.

Next up is Betty Cooper, short hair in the cutest ringlets, smiling sweetly, looking wholesome. Betty Cooper found the pressure to be sweetly wholesome unbearably suffocating all six seasons of this show. Immediately after her is Veronica with the most spectacular bangs, looking pretty and hard and insincere. These are things that Veronica hates to be thought of as.

Then comes Cheryl, severely annoyed to be there, giving an evil eyed false smile. Assuming arguendo that this is Jughead as world-maker as well as narrator, the fact that Cheryl gets to have a do-over of her intro in the montage, a doubling-up if you will, is noteworthy. Everyone else gets the one shot in the juke box, but Cheryl gets a twofer, wearing the Lolita-Grundy sunglasses and pouting over the door of a great looking convertible. Kevin, looking gormless is up next and it makes me feel worried. Toni Topaz is looking ultra heterosexual with her long ponytail up-do. She winks at the audience. This is not edgy Serpent Queen Toni at all. But she and Veronica both look spectacular with bangs. Tabitha in white cats’ eye glasses and white gloves, blows a kiss to the audience, looking sheltered and innocent when we all know she's a weirdo and not above cosplaying a truck stop hooker to catch a killer.

The only person who looks like "himself" is Jughead, who comes last. Worried, frantic, concerned and unhappy - basically, fail-adult Jughead without Tabitha. Poor Jughead.

The year, he says, is 1955 and apparently people didn't mind when couples executed complicated dances involving swirling skirts inside a diner where people are trying to eat. Jughead is narrating as he clatters away on a huge typewriter at the Diner. Apparently the patrons don't mind that either. Does he keep it there? Did he commandeer the one in the office?? Does he haul it around??

As Jughead narrates, speculating about where he is - Not sure if he's in the past or the past of an alternate universe - he speaks faster and more frantically, sounding more and more like Bunker Jughead of Rivervale. He tries to sound unhappy about living in a railcar with Hot Dog (". . . which actually tracks" sighhhh) but we all know he's relieved he's not homeless and couch surfing. Having a dog and a residence of his own is more stability than he's had since graduating high school and before Jabitha began cohabitation.

They're all juniors in high school again! Betty and Kevin holding hands down the hallway, Betty in excellent patterned pants with eyes only for Kevin who won't look at her. Jughead looks at the two of them with an expression of suppressing in indigestion burp but neither notice him. Jughead is worried for Betty, all the time, nonstop, in every universe. Plus Bughead were the horniest little fuckers in any high school on American television ever, and so the fact of Betty dating a gay man worries Jughead. He doesn’t want to have sex with her anymore, yet Jughead wants Betty to have good things. And Jughead has never liked Kevin much, but he’s worried for Kevin too. Betty wasn’t and isn’t a girl who takes not getting her way with grace.

Cheryl still has a twin brother, but she is completely not at all in love with this one. The face she makes is not of a girl dominating the halls of her high school with her soulmate. Jughead feels very similar about this iteration of a Boy Blossom, noting first and foremost that this kiddo is Cheryl’s twin, then second that he is not Jason, before introducing us to his actual name: Julian.

Julian like the possessed doll, the chimera twin that got eaten by Cheryl in the womb, etc, that Julian. Who actually knew this Julian name, other than Toni?

Jughead’s thoughts turn directly from Cheryl to Not-Jason to Reggie then on to Archie. This is the first of several pings back to earlier seasons, which I am sure I’m not going to be able to catch in a perfect way. But! Reggie and Jason were constantly in each other’s company in Jughead’s hallucinatory reminiscences of Jason during S1, even though Reggie barely ever mentioned Jason, and Cheryl has never been shown actually discussing Jason with either Reggie 1.0 or 2.0.

The key thing that Jughead notices about Archie is his body, in the same way the key thing he notices about Julian is that he is not Jason. Archie being wholesome enough to kiss his mom on the cheek goodbye every morning being into body building in 1955 is very progressive (and gay) of him, isn’t it? That sort of muscular build was still sort of a niche thing, I thought.

Jughead has been frowning at all these people for quite a while, long enough to confirm that they have no recollection of their S6 selves. He hasn’t seen Tabitha, who he helpfully explains is chronokinetic and the town’s literal guardian angel AND his girlfriend.

Just in time, Pop Tate announces that the bus from Mississippi has arrived. Tabitha, looking very sad, is accompanied by Toni, equally sad, and a third person, who I assumed was Chuck even though the actor has changed because that wouldn’t be Munroe. Sadness from having to witness an act of racial injustice and hatred makes people move in slow motion into the Diner.

Jughead watches Tabitha slowly walk past him before he calls her name. The way he says “Tabitha” is so cautious, because she might reject any conversation with the guy wearing a bulky sweater with the S stamped on it AND a felt crown making very loud tappity tap noises at her grandfather’s diner, and hopeful, because maybe they’re friends, and maybe hearing Jughead will make this Tabitha remember season 6. The guarded, questioning response he gets from her makes Jughead change tack fast, to discuss the Emmett Till hearing verdict as something he heard “on the radio.” When Jughead says the verdict made him “sick to my stomach” Tabitha frowns slightly, wary of where he might go with this, perhaps. Tabitha saying that she and her friends are trying to figure out what they should do next, Jughead isn’t even breathing. He’s watching her so hard, so hopeful that Tabitha will give him some hint that she knows this is the wrong universe, and so worried she might not.

When she asks him to confirm that his name is Jughead in a way that indicates they aren’t even friends in this universe, Jughead is so hurt that his drops out of his careful, speak-in-full-sentences 1950s speech, and stutters. His eyes get much, much sadder, right before he says it’s overwhelming and heartbreaking. He looks like he might cry. Poor Jughead.

The cruelty of his fate is astounding. He was a kid who was left behind and rejected by his mother, let to live homeless by his father, rejected by Fred Andrews, routinely forgotten by his girlfriend during what he thought of as their shared childhood memories, and now, the singularly stable adult friendship and relationship of his life is like it never existed. Jughead Jones is someone who hasn’t ever been without a girlfriend, it seems since starting one with Betty Cooper, but now when he needs a relationship the most, Tabitha literally doesn’t know him.

Simply because Tabitha Tate doesn’t know him, Jughead hates everything about the 1950s. (Whoever said the 1950s was the greatest decade should have their head examined, he deadpans.)

Archie is trying to skip out of the house when Mary calls to him. Archie grimaces so hard at his mother’s summons that I can see it through the back of his head. This did give me a small twinge of hope that maybe he does remember S1-6, and that Archie is putting on this wholesome teenager act, same as Jughead, until he can figure out what’s going on. He puts on an evidently false face of doe-eyed innocence when he gets it together to go talk to his mother. He’s literally never made that face before in the past six years.

Mary Andrews is very upset about the photos of James Dean’s car accident in the papers, so she confiscates the keys to Archie’s “hotrod” with “fire painted on its sides.” Archie tries to talk his way out of this but fails. He longingly looks at his “barely above a jalopy” vehicle before turning to face the reality of having to take a very old looking bicycle to school.

Archie has never been this cute to me. His little face! Then he’s peddling uphill, getting honked at, and so mad . Just, adorable. I wanna give him a cookie. He gets to school just in time.

Meanwhile, Betty in her very excellent 1950s pants is sitting with Toni in the Blue and Gold room. Her sweater says Betty on it in a curly font. With her short blonde curls framing her sweet face Betty looks picture perfect. She and Toni both have such enormous eyes that I keep getting distracted from the serious topic they are discussing - how to get past the school censors to properly cover the Emmett Till travesty. When Betty says she will throw her weight behind getting the story told, Toni smiles at her in a small cheek scrunching way that she’s never done before. She looks amazing, by the way - the bangs, the big hoop earrings, the scarf /headband thing in her hair, the Southside Serpent Jeans jacket.

Cut to a class where a 1950s tv announcer voice is explaining what a mill is (a souped up hot rod or jalopy) in a film the class are watching when the principal (Warden Norton repurposed as Principal Featherhead!) bursts in to make an announcement. Archie is wearing an R sweater, with Jughead in the S sweater seated nearby.

What do these mean??

Veronica make an iconic entrance, complete with heralding blues horns. Yellow heels, yellow belt, black dress with white polka dots, black purse, sunglasses, big black sunhat trimmed with the same fabric as her dress, and red lips. Lace gloves with little black polka dots.

OMG SHE LOOKS SO HOT.

I want this whole thing. I make a vow to only wear yellow heels with black dresses.

Archie, getting his first look, drops his pencil. (Kevin, right behind him, has no reaction whatsoever.) Jughead, Tabitha-less, looks constipated as he notes: “Damn.”

Girl, that’s what I said!

With everyone else in some sort of sweater or jacket, buttoned up to the neck, Veronica’s plunging neckline and sleeveless dress makes her look practically naked. She’s a Hollywood scion - Hermione and Hiram have “Amercia’s number one rated television program,” and of course they’re going to call it, Oh Mija!

I LOVED this in-joke, because it functions as a tribute to Hiram. Mija was the word he said the most, after, maybe, Archie.

For some reason, this whole situation - Veronica’s appearance, introduction, presence and existence- piss Cheryl off entirely. She is huffing, rolling her eyes, and generally extremely antsy.

Seated right behind her, Archie is just in heaven. Veronica is being very alternative-universe here: her self introduction is very pompous. Real Veronica Lodge actually hates pomposity. Her vocabulary is still very Jughead-huge though (“opportune” and “raven haired.”) Veronica says that she’s trying a method acting type of thing (de rigueur for the age perhaps - another thing she might actually say) of experiencing small town life so she can better portray the “innocent ingenue” in the upcoming production of “Our Town.”

Longtime viewers are meant to know that she is lying about staying with an aunt-and-uncle, mostly because these people have never been introduced in the past six seasons. As far as we’ve ever been told about Hiram in the competing lores of his life, he doesn’t have siblings. We have almost no lore about Hermione, other than FP hit on her almost once in high school and she had the affair with Fred Andrews as an adult.

Both Cheryl and Betty do not like that Veronica called them “small town lifers” basically. Archie is entirely entranced with her, laughing at every little joke that Veronica makes, and even Cheryl pointedly turning in her seat to glare at him can’t make his besotted grin falter even a little bit.

Veronica purrs and preens when she calls herself “the scion of Tinseltown royalty.” I’m surprised she doesn’t roll her Rs. When she winsomely says Thank You, Archie, whose face has been lit up like a christmas tree this whole time, bursts into solitary applause. Cheryl is still very mad, but Archie gets rewarded with an extremely sexy wink by Veronica for being such an immediate fan.

Is that a blush I see on Archie’s face?

I love this Archie. He’s so cute.

The table that Veronica chooses to try to join is Cheryl, Betty, Kevin, Julian and Archie. This is a weird fricking cluster of people. Cheryl and Betty? And what the heck would Kevin and Julian have in common? When Veronica asks to sit, Cheryl wants to say no but she is betrayed by both of the other redheads, who clear the space immediately. Veronica comes to perch gracefully between the two redhead boys.

Veronica says she caught all their names in the class they were just in. Of course, Betty having BETTY embroidered into her sweater probably helps with that too. Remembering that the R wearing Archie is Archie might be more of a feat. Veronica shows that she took Cheryl’s eye rolls to heart by pointedly asking Cheryl what her name was. Cheryl is extremely displeased, yet again. This seems to know exactly what just happened between Veronica and Cheryl- he is trying very hard not to laugh too much.

Cheryl tries to explain that that they’d been discussing James Dean’s death, very self-importantly adding that she is president of his fanclub, when she gets undermined by Julian, who interrupts with a very weak joke about the Oh Mija! show being “high-larious,” to Veronica. He says that the Blossoms “tune in every week” which must be a lie, because Cheryl’s whole face sours. Betty and Kevin seem like they’re on the same wavelength. They project the same calm, almost bovine energy when they ask Veronica where she lived in LA (BelAir) and if she knew James Dean.

Cheryl sharply tells Kevin off for being “so provincial,” then goes off to sideways disparage Veronica by implying that she wasn’t important enough to be a friend of James Dean, a person who was friends with Elizabethe Taylor. Turns out Veronica Lodge was ‘friendly’ with Jimmy, “friendly” enough to go skinny dipping together at the Chateau Marmaduke (standing in for Chateau Marmont).

This makes Archie choke. Literally. He focuses on “skinny dipping” -Veronica! Naked! She does Naked things! - while Betty and Kevin (Bevin? Ketty??) are entranced about being that friendly with James Dean. Julian is more in Archie’s camp - he wants to know if Veronica has done the naked thing once or more than once. I so appreciate the asshole energy that Julian projects nonstop. He reminds me a lot of Bret Weston Wallis that way. You know on sight that he’s a dickhead, which is 180 degrees different from the angelic way that Jughead used to hallucinate Jason.

When Cheryl plays with her hair to sarcastically ask if Veronica will claim that she had dated Jimmy Dean, Veronica says no, but then drops a bombshell. James Dean “played both sides of the net.” In case the small town rubes don’t get her meaning, Veronica clarifies that this means both girls and boys. Kevin has a milder version of Archie’s choking reaction from seconds before at this thought. He’s smiling, and Betty is frowning. Oh? Oh???

When Kevin wants Veronica to name what James Dean was, Archie interrupts. This made me wonder if there was a 1950s term for bisexual, that everyone would’ve known, that you can say on a CW show in 2023? I guess not because Kevin never gets to finish his question.

Archie has a confused reaction, which fits canon so far and why Jarchie hasn’t happened yet even though it should. He finds the concept of regular guys who are almost cowboys (all American? Is that what he means to say?) being anything other than 100% proof heterosexual incomprehensible. Cheryl reacts with homophobic anger - it’s besmirchment, it’s foul, to say Jimmy Dean was not straight. When Veronica calls her provincial, Cheryl slut shames her. Nobody cares that Cheryl has flounced off, so now Kevin wants to know about Sal Mineo.

Kevin is definitely not straight in this universe. Veronica knows it, apparently immediately. Poor Betty.

In science class later that day we see ETHEL is Jughead’s lab desk partner. Jughead is miserable to be back in high school. He has an Asian American science teacher, who wears nerdy round glasses and has a bit of a lisp. The teacher says Bailey Comet is due to arrive in two years. He sounds vaguely Singporean, his teacher.

Cut to Cheryl screaming GUYS as she floats in the air, trying to ice the comet.

Cut to the end of school, where Archie winsomely offers Veronica an escort home. He has no ride, however, and Veronica isn’t the type of girl to walk. (She also just can’t, not in those high heels.) Julian has offered Veronica a ride, ditching his sister wholesale. JASON WOULD NEVER. Archie and Cheryl can’t bear to look at each other in the face of this rejection they’ve suffered.

In the waning light, Betty and Veronica are trying to talk to two old white men. Dupont from Stonewall is here in Riverdale now as Werther a ‘child psychiatrist’ who fully backs Warden, I mean Principal, Featherhead that the Emmett Till murder and trial are not suitable subject matter for the school paper.

Toni tries to advocate for publication by saying that people need to know what happened “so that it doesn’t happen again.” That is so adorable and incorrect. Knowing something terrible happened again does not in any way ensure that it doesn’t keep happening. I think the better way to think about it is, We owe it to the wronged to mark their stories. Featherhead shoots her down by saying that “these sorts of things don’t happen in Riverdale.” He also says a wrong thing - that “change doesn’t happen overnight.” Actually all change happens overnight. That’s where there’s always a backlash to any progress, because those who can’t keep up want to turn it back. A lot of the time, they succeed. In any case, Featherstone patronizes Toni by telling her take satisfaction in how ‘well written’ in article is.

Later, at family dinner in which Polly and Charles don’t exist, Betty tries to push her parents into reading Toni’s article on the air at their nightly broadcast on RIVW. 15 minutes is what they get, of which Toni’s article would take a whole minute. Hal’s 50s persona is very hilarious. He looks extremely shifty and chipunky, reminding me quite a lot of Peter Pettigrew of all things. Alice has absolutely killer eyebrows, sharp enough to slice your face open. They both repeat Featherstone’s line about the article being ‘well written’ but have no intention of rocking the boat. Betty is angry but she is overruled by the power of the Blossom money and her parents not wanting to upset their only sponsor.

1950s Archie is still the cutest. He is working his car, underneath it, as he breathlessly narrates his ove for Veronica Lodge. He actually says SHAZAM! persuasively. Hit with a thunderbolt indeed. He’s so 1950s in fact that the things he says and the way he says them feel suspicious too perfect. “How’s a guy like me gonna get anywhere with a girl like Veronica Lodge” and so forth. Jughead is perched like a depressed crow in his S sweater that seems to get darker and darker as the day goes on, looking off to the side and not listening to this earnest puppy love talk.

Jughead’s narration takes over. He is just so anxious. He’s talking so fast, thinking about Bailey’s Comet, trying to harness that to get back to the future. “But I needed [ pause ] help.” He sounds increasingly like the wigged out Bunker Jug of Rivervale. Archie asks for his dad’s hammer, which sets off Jughead’s memory - that Archie buried the hammer in the time capsule.

The capsule they buried in the year 2020 when they graduated from high school, not to be confused with the year 2020 when they were 6 years after graduating from high school, might still be in existence in 1955 even though they were sent ‘back’ to this time from the first but not the second 2020.

Jughead seems to think this is a logical leap and I am very tickled. I kind of find it annoying (sorry, anti-intellectualism incoming, mea culpa in advance) when time travel stories get too precious about theoretical physics, so this made me very pleased with the wild swings they take in narrative on Riverdale.

So! Jughead asks for a shovel to Archie, who gives him an odd look. Is it because Archie thinks “Can I borrow a shovel?” is a really weird response to “Have you seen my dad’s hammer?” or is it because Archie knows something?

Later that night, Jughead is digging something out of the ground again. Grave robbery is one of his leitmotifs, I suppose? He hits something hard, and guess what! It’s the time capsule. Jughead is out of breath as he says “Thank God” but he seems just as frantic and scared as before. And dun dun!! Someone is watching him do all this from the shadows! The hairline looks vaguely like Tabitha.

Veronica is going to school the next day, wearing more modest neckline and weather appropriate warm clothes. Archie has somehow gotten his car out of the garage, so now he’s able to offer her a ride home. She’s very pleased, but Jughead walks right in between the two of them, carrying the time capsule ice box. Summarily, he insists that the two of them come meet him in the music room. Veronica has no idea who he is.

In the music room, they’re all holding their 2020 self’s contribution to the time capsule. Toni has never seen the Pretty Poisons jacket. Veronica thinks the Pop’s menu is an only passable prop. Betty finds the headlines to be “like Dr. Seuss” meaning amusing gibberish, perhaps? And Kevin keeps asking unanswerable questions - he wants to know what the “inch” is in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Archie wants to know when Jughead buried Fred’s hammer in a cooler.

Jughead tackles that one first, saying “YOU did.” Archie genuinely looks like he has no idea what Jughead’ is talking about, but I’ve sussed it out now - 1950s Archie’s response to confusion is to smile about it. So he smiles. Jughead can see that his attempt to “shake something loose” in his friends’ minds isn’t working, so in his frustration, his presentation starts to get very garbled. He tells them they buried all these things 67 years ago IN THE FUTURE which, given the tenses, doesn’t even amount to English. He says they need to get back to ‘our present, our future’ before full on stuttering. Betty is concerned, Cheryl is annoyed, Toni and Kevin look embarrassed for Jughead, Archie is smiling because he’s confused. Veronica, however, is very entertained.

Archie wants to know what Jughead buried. Jughead knows it was his “yarn beanie” but then says it wasn’t in the time capsule. For some reason, this takes the fun out of this exercise for Archie, the fact that Jughead didn’t include an item of his own in the ‘cooler.’

Veronica says she’ll play along, and asks if she or Elizabeth Taylor is more famous in the future. Cheryl, not to be outdone, cuts in with a request to give a bird’s eye view of the future. Jughead has not thought this far in advance, so his answer is (adorably) piss poor. he just throw things out - smartphones, text messages, spotify, the internet - in THAT order which is the most confusing thing of all time. Betty tries to help him out since he’s getting frantic during this speech that makes no sense to her - she asks Jughead to describe everyone’s Season 6 selves.

Jughead’s summaries are as follows: Archie was in the army, fought in a war. Betty was in FBI hunting serial killers. The way Betty practically salivates at the word serial killer, which doesn’t exist as a word yet, is VERY interesting. Veronica owns a casino, and before that a speakeasy. Toni bought the speakeasy, turned it into a biker bar. Both Veronica and Toni are charmed by this story.

Jughead positively chokes when he tries to summarize Kevin’s life. He can tell, by this time, that this is going very sideways, which won’t be helped by how out of sorts Kevin’s life became by the end of Season 6. Kevin is summarized as directing some musicals, after which he joined an organ harvesting cult. Not wrong, but not very fulsome. Cheryl, Jughead says, was possessed by an ancestor and became a witch. She is not a happy customer, at all.

Archie says a fascinating thing- that he wouldn’t want to go back to the future because “we” sound miserable. Well, given that he was just told he joined the army and went to war, this is true for him, but not all the futures are miserable.

Veronica wants to know how the whole ‘going back to the future’ thing will happen, to which Jughead’s entire presentation falls completely apart. When he says that one of the ways might be a comet, Toni (who has tried very hard to be polite so far) gives a What the fuck look to Betty, who answers it with a Oh he’s just like this smile. Jughead is fully in frantic world-maintainer Bunker Jughead mode now, and starts shouting about having Archie and Betty make out on Archie’s bed and then “BLOW UP A BOMB UNDERNEATH THEM.”

This is so funny. I love with Jughead gets all Bunker-Jug, with the shouting and the extreme hand gestures. Is he perhaps channeling Hiram??

Everyone thinks this is very funny, but Archie has had enough. Archie tries to make Jughead ‘take five’ which puts Jughead fully into feral motormouth mode to ask “YOU’RENOTGONNABEATMEUPAREYOUCUZYOU’REREALLYVIOLENTINTHEFUTURE”

The whole sentence is spit out as one long word.

When the two of them are alone in the gym, Archie lets it rip. “People are going to think you belong in the looney bin with the other nutjobs!” and “It’s hard enough without your crazy stories” etc. Jughead is coming down from his frantic mania so being called a ‘nut job’ is not helping. His eyes actually start to glisten with tears. “You think I’m crazy?” he asks, in a more normal, much sadder cadence. Jughead is so upset, and so lonely, and so despairing.

This is a big change from his mid teens, when he took on being not understood, being isolated, unique and alone, as a badge of honor. This Jughead understands the horror of being trapped in a solitary reality. He can’t even stand to look at Archie, because that would mean confronting how trapped and alone he actually is in this universe. Archie tries to be kind, telling him to keep using his ‘overactive’ imagination by channeling that energy into creating fiction. When Jughead gives up altogether, and agrees, Archie actually skips a couple steps (something he’s never done in any of the other universes) before leaving Jughead standing in the gym.

At the very red, very depressing Blossom mansion, Penelope, who has the most fascinating hairdo (it’s both ornate and simple, hideous and perfectly coiffed) while dressed like the nightmare camp version of the English queen wants to know why her twins look so sullen. The way the Blossom twins of this universe bicker seems much more realistic, and, accordingly, much more dull. I think this is post facto validation for the way the Cheryl-Jason relationship is in the S1-6 canon. It’s so much more interesting than this mundanity between Julian and Cheryl.

Penelope delivers movie magazines to Cheryl, and on the cover is someone not Veronica Lodge being cast in Our Town!

Meanwhile, Veronica is on a date with Archie at Pop’s! She loves the food. All her attempts to make lighthearted conversation with Archie fail. He has no idea who Gloria Swanson is. This literally breaks Veronica’s spirit. So she changes her line of questioning - “Tell me everything there is to know about Archie Andrews.”

His life is so boring. “Work on my car. I like sports. I come here to pops. And i hangout at sweet water river. mostly to fish.”

Then Archie reveals that Fred didn’t make it back from the Korean War, making him one of the 33,000 American servicemen who died. Thank you Fred Andrews for your service, I guess? I’m slightly peeved that they didn’t make up a different war like they did for Archie to go fight in during the 2020 that lasted for seven years, but then they used the real Emmett Till story so they might as well use the Korean War, I suppose. Archie is very used to people being upset about having asked, as well as not knowing what to say, so he is very smooth in the way he assures Veronica that “It’s OK” when she tries to apologize for prying. In this universe, Mary Andrews works part time at the dress shop (no lawyering for her, alas). I’m shocked she doesn’t work at Pop’s. Though I guess maybe this economy is better.

Archie has never had a serious girlfriend by his Junior year of HS, about which Veronica is shocked. Two days after meeting Veronica and in the course of their first real date, Archie more or less says that he wants to be Veronica’s boyfriend. He looks so starry eyed at her, that Veronica is extremely charmed. (So am I.)

But Veronica can’t be let to have nice things, so in comes Cheryl, shouting “J’accuse!” Cheryl hates Veronica SO MUCH. Just the ad hominem insults - “lying liar of a spoiled brat” and “banished by your parents!” - and she insists on shouting the fact that Veronica employed a bit of puffery when she was introducing herself to the class.

At the Pembroke, Veronica is weeping while consoled by Archie. Archie tries to say nobody takes Cheryl seriously Veronica fesses up that she was in fact banished, and she was a problem for her parents. Veronica says she was ignored and sidelined since the Lodges started Oh Mija! This is fascinating actually because Veronica’s persistent problem during her high school years was that both her parents were completely obsessed with her- and when she acquired a hitherto unknown older sibling halfway through her years in high school, Hermosa exhibited the same Lodge trait - obsession with Veronica, wanting to love her, wanting and willing to shoot at people on her behalf, and hating her just the little bit. Now, in this universe, she’s an inconvenient burden neither parents cares much about - which indicates that Veronica was so the object of her parents’ focus because the two of them didn’t have sufficient creative outlets. “The show is their real baby, not me.”

This happened in a slower way during S5-6. When Hiram finally, FINALLY killed off Riverdale and began his SoDale giant real estate project, he stopped being as invested in Veronica per se. And when Hermione found the semi-acting gig of being a “Real Housewife,” she disappeared entirely out of Veronica’s life.

It turns out Veronica’s deep dark secret, the thing that got her banished to Riverdale by her parents, was that she was in fact tangentially involved in James Dean’s death. She was one of several good time girls who formed a sort of racing fandom for Dean, and were going to meet him to cheer him on during a race.

After consoling Veronica, Archie gets home late, to be immediately yelled at by Mary. Mary is traumatized by the loss of Fred Andrews - which she honestly wasn’t very much in S4-6. Maybe this is why, if he does remember, Archie prefers to stay in this universe. He has a mom who cares deeply that his father died. Mother and son bond over their shared loss. The compromise is that Archie is allowed to drive as long as his car goes very, very slow. I will also note that his question about how he took HIS car out in a drive is a very unteenager thing to say. So the question remains - what does Archie know or sense about this alternate universe?

In a fit of masochism, Veronica watches her parents’ show. The kid cast to play the Mija is Tillie Temple (aka Shirley Temple, perhaps??). Veronica hates Tilie. Of course, right now is when Hermione calls. Turns out someone is keeping a strict eye on the guests that Veronica has over at the apartment. Veronica wants to go home for Thanksgiving, but Hermione doesn’t say she can come. She has Orson Welles visiting. Veronica is so lonely. This is also new for Veronica - Maternal rejection has never been her problem. That was usually reserved for Jughead, Cheryl and to a lesser extent, Betty and Archie.

Betty reads the Emmett Till newsletter which show the pictures of what Till went through. It radicalizes Betty into wanting to publish the article Toni wrote. But Toni wants to read a poem out during the morning announcements. There’s an echo of the larger theme in S1 through 6 here. In previous seasons, Cheryl took it upon herself to make up for her ancestor’s sins. In this one, Toni wants Cheryl to make it up to - who? Toni? the world? - someone for her parents’ cowardice in not wanting to cover the Till murder. Toni is planning an ambush.

Tabitha immediately approaches Jughead She asks for help. NAACP is taking Emmett Till’s mother on tour, so Tabitha is going with them. What Tabitha needs someone to help her ‘stay on top of’ school while she is on this tour. It’s really not clear to me what that will be, but Jughead - though he is crushed that this Tabitha doesn’t even seem to know him at all - agrees immediately. His eyes get all sad again, as he looks with wistful tenderness at this person who is exactly like his girlfriend but isn’t, at all. He smiles and says “Awesome!” which he corrects to “Swell.”

Meanwhile Toni ambushes Cheryl in the bathroom with Betty. Cheryl doesn’t mind letting Toni borrow her platform, but points out that Featherhead has pulled the plug before. For what, I wonder? When?? She’s otherwise very easily persuaded.

Tabitha has fainted, Featherhead is tending to her, Miss Bell is off, and so now, Toni can take over the morning announcement!

As Toni was reading the Langston Hughes poem I realized with the Rs and Ss stand for on those sweaters. R is for Riverdale. A bunch of other students have Rs emblazoned on their sweaters and sweatshirts. So the S must be for Southside. Jughead wears a Southside High sweater all the time to attend Riverdale High, and they just let him!

So anyway Toni exhorts everyone to ‘talk to each other’ about it, and this is the third weird lie propagated in American society. The emphasis on dialogue as somehow a catalyst for systemic change, which it is not

The four girls get a telling off from Featherhead, who tries to call them liars -but Tabitha has an answer for that (she felt sick! but felt better!) and insubordinate - but Cheryl has an answer for that (there has not been a rule that poetry can’t be read during the morning announcement or that they have to pass censorship).

In the classroom later, the teacher does open up the discussion to the topic, but see, this is the problem. It puts the burden on the three people of color - Tabitha, Toni, and the unnamed guy I have assumed is Chuck Clayton- to explain reality to everyone else, who can be passive recipients of information and responsible only for articulating their emotional responses.

Later that school day, Veronica is offered a ride by both Julian and Archie, and rejects them both in favor of walking home!

Late at night, Jughead is freaking out by himself in the diner, no typewriter. He is cracking up. Maybe seasons 1-6 were the dream and he finally woke up!!

Tabitha slides into the booth and Glory Hallelujah it’s HIS Tabitha! “The Tabitha who remembers and loves you.” He reaches out to grasp her with both hands. He’s so happy to see her, he says, covering his eyes with one hand, trying not to burst into tears. Tabitha says that the comet hit because Cheryl failed, so they had their extinction level event after all. This isn’t the Sweet Hereafter. She instead used her life force to send everyone back to 1955 to try to change the future. She has to be ALONE to untangle all the messed up timelines. “You have to make a go of it here in the 50s.”

So she parked Jughead here in 1955 to be safe, but because he kept remembering the actual reality (and could drive himself insane or further corrupt the safe timeline) she had to come back to make him forget, so that he can “live in the present, in the moment.” Oh, but Tabitha. Jughead was already so bad at that! And now that’s his part of the mission? To hold it together without her while she fixes the universe?

Jabitha may be the MOST EPIC relationship in scale which doesn’t quite make up for the tiny amount of screen time we’re likely to get if Tabitha has decided that she has to solve this universe sized problem ALONE. Jughead was willing to die a LOT. Tabitha went through every single scenario where Jughead died to see how to make that not happen. And now, Jughead is going to endure having the happiest time of his life wiped from memory - the time when he was a stable adult, who knew who he was in the world, when he was in a relationship and family unit of people who accepted him and supported him, when he had a real home - because Tabitha says it’s “for the best.” He decides to trust her with erasing the thing that any of us hold the dearest - his memories that constitute his sense of self. And can we talk about Tabitha’s self sacrifice? She’s going to do this very difficult work of setting the UNIVERSE RIGHT while voluntarily, entirely, completely forgotten (by her own hand!) by her significant other who adores her, all her friends in the community she chose to become independent from her parents, all alone.

Holy shit.

Jughead’s sprint home after their kiss, which rightly seems to freeze time to be everlasting before Tabitha steps away, is so desperate and frantic. Jughead who was terrified of being forgotten is beginning to forget the most important person in his adult life. All he has are the words “bend. toward. justice.” and the sense that something terrible has just happened to him, without the ability to remember what it is. This isn’t the Sweet Hereafter. This has to be hell.

I am LOVING this. It’s so BIG. I wish they could SHOW it though. But I think eventually, because the universe does in fact bend towards justice, someone will write me the fanfic that will have me lain flat on the floor from devastation. Because omg the Jabitha relationship has SCOPE.

And the final kicker- Jughead doesn’t recognize his stupid hat. Ha!

P.S. The title reference, “Don’t Worry Darling” if it’s to that movie that came out this year, in 2023, then it’s very twisty and fun. Because that movie is about a man manipulating a woman’s mind for his own aggrandizement, and this episode is the mirror of that - a woman manipulating a man’s mind, with his explicit agreement, to save the universe.

#riverdale season 7 #riverdale opinion #jabitha #tabitha tate #jughead jones #veronica lodge #riverdale episode 7.1 #i am back on my bullshit #but wow these are taxing to write #i was so insanely bored during the pandemic that i could churn out one of these per day almost lol #i love this show so much #riverdale positivity #riverdale s7 recap #riverdale s7 #Riverdale s6 #riverdale recap #riverdale episode recap

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riverdale-retread · 2 years ago

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Riverdale S7 E 18 (Chapter 135) For a Better Tomorrow!

Jughead Jones is definitely established as a weird weirdo in this universe, yes, but the way he is doing his relationship with Veronica Lodge is very funny. He says, as a boy person at his indisputable sexual peak, that one of the “distinct advantages” of dating a movie theater owner (the very sexy teen witch cosplayer Veronica Lodge) is being able to score free movie tickets for his friends. On the one hand, Jughead is a true one, because despite getting a cool girlfriend he just hangs out with all his old dorky friends - I like this. On the other hand, how in the heck is getting to make out with THE Veronica Lodge one of the UNDIFFERENTIATED OR INDEFINITE advantages in life? Que???

The makers of this show are doing the most, I suppose, in order to check all the possible boxes for what Jughead Jones’ sexuality could be. We had the yearning homosexual Jughead (Jarchie - not canon), the clueless lesbian coded Jughead (with Bret Weston Wallis), monogamous romantic prince (Bughead), slutty famewhore who sleeps with his groupies, toxic failboyfriend (with the evil drug dealer girlfriend). We now get Wide Eyed 50s Teen Boyfriend Jughead in the Jeronica relationship, but also asexual Jughead who has no reaction whatsoever to two people sloppily making out next to him as he happily tosses popcorn down his throat, bracketing the central Ethel and Ben couple with the Emasculated-By-Racism- Big-Dick Dilton on either side. All FOUR of them are the only people not making out at this movie theater for this screening.

Ethel. Ethel! If you want to get action you can’t be taking TWO hangers on with you to the movies!?

In any case I’m glad to see that Veronica’s movie theater business is doing very well despite the immense number of movie tickets she seems intent on giving away for free. Is this like a Helena Rubinstein/Estee Lauder way of doing business, where you give away product in order to keep customers? But isn’t she the only theater in town? Veronica Lodge is an improbable creature - an ethical monopolist??

Jughead and Ethel are happily chatting, smiling about the movie they just watched. As Jughead says they’re about to walk into their very own “science fiction tinged B-movie.” The screen goes to black and white. The B&W episode referencing Chinatown was great, so I have high hopes for this one.

Segment One! Jughead Jones In The Mysterious Melting Man!

A man walks towards Jughead as bits of skin boil painfully off of his body and face. Jughead seems to have the most curious frozen response to this. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t try to get away and he doesn’t even look particularly upset, to be honest. He just looks merely interested. He also doesn’t do anything to rush to that man’s aid. But then again, if confronted with such a sight I’m not sure what I would do either.

The horrendous police force consisting of the extremely incompetent Sheriff Keller shoots this man from behind, but actually he’s aiming his gun IN THE DIRECTION of a crowd of theater goers that have just left the cinema. The Americans of this time (or maybe now) are so desensitized to gun violence that they don’t seem to clock that a) cops or anyone do not have a supremely high marksmakship rate especially of a moving target and b) the gun was pointed directly at each of them during this entire time. They just watch a man get gunned down by cops on a Saturday evening right in front of them in the open town square and don’t scream or blink or duct. They just look a bit inconvenienced.

Keller claims later that the man was a) a vagrant (who can be shot on sight apparently) and b) suffering from leprosy which is why he looked like that. Except, Jughead supplies immediately, that Ethel recognizes what the man was wearing because it’s the uniform of the Blossom maple factory.

Jughead decides that all this is bullshit so he takes it upon himself to hunt down the answers.

DOCTOR CURDLE JUNIOR IS BAAAACK !

HI MY FAVORITE LITTLE TALL GIANT MAN!!

So, Dr. Curdle (not Jr!) is all about gruesome comics, which Jughead still has copies of when he nicked them from his employer, and is now dealing like they’re some sort of hard street drug.

“Worthy of a quid. Pro. Quo.” God I love the way Dr. Curdle talks.

Jughead responds, “keen-o!” Which I quite like. I tend to say Okedoke in an effort to not be offensively autistic when people give me unnecessary boring bits of information at work, and I think I might add “keen-O” to my roster. Jughead wants to know about the “mysterious melting man.” He didn’t actually have to say all three words, but he was very happy to be alliterative so he couldn’t pass that up.

The answer is “acute radiation poisoning!”

Sadly, Curdle didn’t get to have a lot of time with the body, but it was Mayor Blossom who came to collect the body. Curdle confirms that the man was in fact an employee of the maple factory. “That stinks like a rotten fish!”

Bright and early the next day, Betty bounces down the stairs to ask if Ethel wants to go to school with her. Hal suggests that Betty permit Alice to drive them both, but Betty is firm in her rejection. The cold war between mother and daughter post-slap seems to be something that is giving Hal indigestion. Further, Betty apparently will just not eat breakfast unless her mother will make it for her, and then to up the ante it seems as though Alice is still making breakfast for everyone in the household who isn’t Betty - inclusive of Ethel. It’s getting very complicated. Anyway, Alice tells Hal that at some point the weather will be terrible because they’re in upstate New York that isn’t America, and Betty will “finally let me give her a ride.” Betty remains just as pleasant in her hatefulness when she informs Alice that she will not ever be needing that ride from her mother because she’s taking Driver’s Ed at school and pretty soon she will be able to drive herself wherever she wants!

This is Segment 2: BETTY COOPER IN DRIVER’S EDUCATION!

We’re suddenly in black and white again.

Oops except we’re not.

We’re in the Andrews’ kitchen as Frank smugly informs Reggie that he got into a really great basketball camp. He’s being very nasty to Mary’s son right in front of Mary first thing in the morning, sneering at him about how there is no camp for poetry, and so Archie is without a fun set of summer plans to look forward to. His sneering is very heavy handed. He even calls Archie ‘Shakespeare’ in the most condescending tone of voice. It brings out the CAN YOU SPELL IT in me.

Segment 3 is going to be ARCHIE ANDREWS IN SHIPPING OUT!

Everything is in black and white again. Mary is for once not being completely useless, which I can’t tell if it happened in the technicolor real-life of this season or is possible because it’s not real, just the B Movie version, because I don’t know yet what these black and white transitions mean. Mary as I say isnt completely useless, only merely mostly useless. She says that Archie can pick up a summer shift or two at Pop’s or come help his mother out at the dress shop.

Frank doesn’t even respect Mary enough to look at her as he sneers about HER BUSINESS which is what he must have been LIVING OFF OF when he first moved to Riverdale with no job. What the fuck, Frank. He brings all his patented boring ass toxic masculinity to the fore - oooh yer gonna be workin’ at your mom’s *dress* shoppe~~ I mean. You get to interact with all the pretty girls in their super tight body-con dresses at the dress shop. What’s your problem?

Archie looks angry as he stomps off.

We switch to the Blossom household, where Julian is willing to give Cheryl a ride to school. He’s a dickhead though, because she’s walking RIGHT NEXT to him, clearly ready to go, and he’s still gotta voice the threat about how his “train is leaving with or without you.” Hon, your schlong isn’t that big.

On a brighter note, I do like how much white Cheryl has been wearing with her red ensembles. I love the cherries on her shirt. They both see a military someone salute their father. They smirk at each other about his ridiculous it is to see someone give Clifford Blossom a salute of any kind. Julian wants to know if he’s enlisting. Clifford hates both his children equally, apparently, because he calls them “asinine” and then says that this was a General Taylor from Washington who was “delivering unto me a gift.” Then he brings them into his study to show them a cock-less Baphomet, whom he calls Moloch. Seriously. Moloch is not hiding anything under that skirt. He has Barbie Genitals, you know he has. Anyway, Clifford makes ridiculous statements about how this ancient deity can only be appeased by child sacrifice, and tells his very physically mature children that they should be frightened, implying he’d kill either or both of them “should you be inclined to give me any more grief.”

A pompous father who can’t take any sort of joke about himself so that he always responds to anything that isn’t flattery and obsequiousness with threats of violence? Oh hey that was on my Riverdale is my life Bingo!

This is Segment Four! CHERYL BLOSSOM IN PROJECT MOLOCH!

At school, Jughead approaches Ethel in the black and white world. Jughead asks if Ethel’s father ever got sick. She says he was a janitor at the maple factory, who had joint pain, stomach pain, and hair loss, all in a chronic way. Far away, Dilton hears this list of symptoms. He looks very disturbed immediately. Jughead thinks that the Blossoms are hiding something, because Ethel’s dad, the melting man and Brad Rayberry all being former workers at the maple factory dying very strange deaths is not a coincidence. He wants to get everyone closure about what happened.

Ethel shakes her head. She wants to move on with her life. She’s going to get her driver’s license, she is about to get the car from her Miss Teen Queen win (it’s still not clear to me if the prizes were OR or AND but I hope it was AND so she can get the car AND the scholarship AND the screen test). She tells Jughead that she is also going steady with Ben, to which Jughead says “our Ben?” and doesn’t believe her. He turns around to stare at Ben.

Why is this surprising to Jughead in a world where he’s going steady with Veronica Lodge EVEN AFTER the milk screeching incident and all the other weirdnesses of before?

Ethel is trying not to be annoyed at this reaction of Jughead, so she just sums up, to say she is trying to put the bad events behind her, so he should take of.

The teacher starts showing them a scary movie about what happens to people in an atomic blast. Some of this looks like it’s real period product. All the students are freaking out together in the lounge about the atomic explosion.

Jughead is seated holding court at the big armchair, which is really weird because why is Cheryl permitting this? That used to be HER seat?

Oh because this is the B&W B movie universe of Jughead Jones in The Mysterious Melting Man. Veronica is wearing her not great napkin=bikini ribbon floof dress again, perched like a good little housewife on the arm of the chair that Jughead is sitting in like a king which -=VERONICA WOULD NOT. Behind them, in a weird echo, are Ben and Ethel, leaning their butts against a table as they stand.

Jughead states the obvious, that “in truth, most of us wouldn’t likely survive an atomic explosion.”

Archie has never heard of Japan, Nagasaki or Hiroshima. He did not understand that the atomic bomb would kill him. He wants Jughead to spell it out. Veronica says that there is an underground CITY levels of basements at the Pembroke. She invites Juggykins to come with her. Jughead doesn’t seem to feel any better, but Cheryl is outright disgusted at this display of heterosexuality from Veronica Lodge. The thing is, she also has a place to go in case the bomb hits - she thinks. She’s going to go to the mines which have “stood strong since before the Revolutionary War.”

I can’t remember anything anymore but wan’t there a caving in of those very same mines in S6, some half century after this conversation, in the other universe? It doesn’t immediately occur to her to invite Toni, so Toni prompts her. (Oh and I forgot they are not out).

Reggie is going to go to Duck Creek to climb into the mines. Archie is going to drive all the way to California (he’s very California fixated in this universe) while trusting that the Rockies will serve as a general kind of radiation shelter. Ethel says wistfully that out west does sound nice, to which Ben agrees.

I don’t think any of the characters, nor the people making this, realize how very funny this is. This is the most ridiculous display of the American delusions of both exceptionalism and extreme individualism. When something bad happens, they refuse to imagine a possibility that they will come up with a community solution because they don’t want to include certain people in that community (be it Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Italians, Swedes, Germans, Asians of any stripe, or black people etc etc). People coexist in America, apparently but they don’t live together. This is funny especially because in Korea everyone assumes that if we get nuked by the evil fat boy up North (each generation has gotten one of its own for three generations) we all die, and then those that don’t die will have to suffer and rebuild, because we had something akin to a nuke level disaster happen in 1950 and that’s what we did. We don’t coexist very well among ourselves (the viciousness of our press makes Fox vs CNN battles look trifling) but we do actually live together.

The heartlessness of these announcements by these people in front of their friends, and the extremely calm, almost non-reactive responses to the heartlessness makes everybody sound psychotic. They all say, more or less, I hope I don’t die, and I don’t care about what happens to any of you.

The surreal Americanness of this matches the cop pointing his gun in the general direction of children in the hopes of hitting the one person he wants to shoot dead in the street.

Anyway, Clay gets especially annoyed at Archie wanting to drive away from the imaginary nuke. The fact that those who have means are only creating solitary survival plans doesn’t bother him at all, even though those plans seem just as silly to me as driving away from a bomb.

Kevin takes the conversation to surreal heights by saying that the inside of a refrigerator is going to be a good bet to not die in a nuclear blast. Immediately, Toni and then Betty point out how dumb this is. (“What would you do about food and water?”) Kevin though has a funny enough answer that lightens the mood - “I’d be inside a refrigerator.”

Fangs actually saves the day (what the heck?) by saying he doesn’t want to plan to hide from anything. Clay mentions that there are communities in Nevada that have built nuclear bomb shelters, a “lead lined bunker,” in case of a nuclear war. Betty tries to see if the small town she so wanted to burn to the ground last episode might have some redeeming qualities after all: Maybe it’s too insignificant to be the target of a bomb like that. Jughead thinks that “an atomic drop could drop anywhere, even here, in Riverdale.”

Well yeah.

Later on, the gay boyfriends are trying to tie a sailor’s knot. Because Frank was so heterosexually ugly to him that morning, Archie is wanting to hang out with the gays. He shows them how to tie the knot, saying all this stuff about a rabbit and a tree and a hole. Archie asks them why they want to tie knots, after he drops his competent one on the table. They say that they want to join the Merchant Marines, which is not part of the US Navy but is instead a civilian job, where you are on merchant boats I guess and “travel around the world.” Clay starts to recruit Archie to the Merchant Marines.

OK so Clay has a thing about white boys, I guess? He spent a lot of the past couple episodes trying to ease Archie into the idea that fucking men didn’t mean you had to stop wanting to fuck women, for one, and also that fucking around in general is really great for writing material. I am not at all sure about that but OK. He drops the names Ginsberg and Kerouac as having both “done time on the Seven Seas.” Too bad he doesn’t know Archie likes to jump into the (ahem) deep end so he lost his virginity on the same night that he also had a threesome and prostituted a woman plus he developed a taste for middle aged woman.

Archie is very susceptible to specific, easy to understand suggestions, and is like this in every universe. Recruiting pamphlets are designed for people like Archie Andrews to get themselves into trouble. His priorities are first, to get away from Uncle fucking Frank, second, See The World, third, Have Adventures, fourth, enrich his writing, and uh finally, tie a lot of knots. The recruiter is coming tomorrow.

Grundy is the driver’s ed teacher. For some reason the driver’s ed class is fully gender segregated. Why is this? Is this something to do with the laws? I really like the cool desktop dashboard these girls all have. I want one of these just to have it. They’re going to practice parallel parking tomorrow! Grundy seems like a good teacher.

At dinner, the three men including Frank are eating the food that I assume that Mary cooked. She is trying to make conversation within the very surreal seating arrangement. She and Uncle Fucking Frank sit across from each other like they’re a married couple, with Reggie and Archie occupying the sides. She wants to know if anything interesting happened at school. Reggie tells her that they were shown a video of what happens if you get nuked. ARchie says he wants to join the merchant marines. She wants him to finish high school. She also wants him to go to college.

Frank is still on his Must Make Archie Stop Writing Grief Poetry About His Father bender, so he says that the merchant marines might be better than going to college to learn poetry writing like some sort of man who has sex with other men. He doesn’t say this last part, of course. Reggie searches Archie for his reaction. Archie though does have a spine. He tells Frank directly that he is considering going out to see expressly so he can pursue his poetry better. He even name drops The Beats. Then he actually takes a jab:

YOU WOULD KNOW THAT IF YOU EVER CRACKED OPEN A BOOK.

Well OKAY Archie Andrews! Unleash that bitchiness! Feeling bitchy makes you smarter! Embrace it!

Frank is not amused at having the tables turned on him, and yet again, Mary is not as useless as she used to be (but this is a fiction within a fiction, because in-universe actual Mary really is quite useless - case in point, FRANK STILL LIVES THERE). Mary interrupts what’s clearly an attack that Frank is scrambling to put together against her son by saying, “No one is joining anything tonight.”

Meanwhile, Dilton has come to visit Jughead. “You don’t have to worry Jughead. [blah blah] If anything bad were to actually happen I’d take care of you. You’d be safe.”

This is as clear a declaration of love as I’ve ever heard anyone make in Riverdale short of Jughead’s I Love You Betty Cooper all the way back in Season 1. But Jughead, in the same way that he did not pick up that he should date Ethel Muggs, doesn’t understand what Dilton is saying as a love confession. Poor Dilton.

Instead, Jughead wants to know what the hell Dilton means by “keep him safe.”

Dilton takes Jughead Jones to THE BUNKER!

Hi Bunker, my old friend!

Jughead sounds like James Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes To Washington as he exclaims, “How does your family have a bunker!?!” He sounds like he should be married to Katherine Hepburn in a movie. He sounds like this a lot this season and I thoroughly enjoy it. The tribute to Stars of Old is at the level of Josie McCoy being rendered an Eartha Kitt tribute character last episode, but much more subtle and baked into the general character portrayal for this season.

Anyway, Dilton is very proud of his dad. He grins like a little kid, excited because Jughead is excited, as he tells him that “we’re deep enough to survive an atomic blast, and any radiation after the blast.”

Jughead wants to know why the science teacher built this at all. “What does your dad know that we don’t?”

Dilton starts to unpack all the secrets, literally from his bag. He hands a little chunk of palladium to Jughead from his knapsack, saying Mr. Muggs came to get this assessed by the elder Doiley saying that Clifford Blossom was doing something with palladium. “Worth killing for?” asks Jughead.

Apparently, in its purest state, palladium could be “more volatile than plutonium,.... and more destructive than a hydrogen bomb.”

Palladium is a highly useful narrative tool, that’s for sure.

Jughead says reminds him of something, and then he is madly digging through his collection of comics. Jughead seems to have a photographic memory of every comic he’s ever read. Not sure this talent will ever get him any money, but it is a talent. The story he was thinking of was written by Rayberry, called The Palladium Incident! “Had he seen or heard something while he worked there??

We cut to the science teacher bursting in to make the announcement, in a hysterical scream of unhelpfulness, about “This is the big one.” In response, all the children in the class start freaking out too. The only one with a slow response time is Jughead Jones. Everyone else is hollering, on their feet, moving around, flapping their arms. Jughead acts like he’s sleep walking. Cheryl is the one that goes running to get him to some sort of safety. She is shouting at him to “Get away from the!!!” as he walks, fascinated, to the window which is getting brighter and brighter. As the bomb explodes, Jughead still has this very ‘interested’ look on his face from when he was looking at the melting man get shot in the street.

This turns out to be a nightmare of Cheryl’s. She had a dream about trying to save Jughead Jones when the bomb hit. I’m very moved, actually. She curses his name before she goes to fetch herself some water.

On her way back to her room, she hears her parents having a discussion. IN RUSSIAN. Clifford says that things are in readiness (apparently - I really have no idea, and I have my suspicions about American/Canadian actors’ capacity to speak passable Russian) to which Penelope says that it’s unfortunate what happened to the man, but Clifford is fine with the state of Project Moloch. Then they are going to return to the motherland.

Cheryl Blossom speaks … Russian? She is understanding this? Clifford apparently has been promised something by the Soviets. Penelope is a Russian spy! Cheryl runs away.

At the recruitment presentation by the Merchant Marines, Archie wants to know if he gets to explore the places they can visit. The answer he gets is very unkind - “This isn’t a pleasure cruise” plus “no one here is guaranteed a spot.” Well, ok sir, but I thought the point of your visit was to RECRUIT.

In the hallway, Jughead is approaching Cheryl. He actually does a little sing-songy “Hi Ho~~” which is very cute and again for some reason reminds me of Jimmy Stewart though I’m sure he’s never done that. Who knows. Cheryl is very annoyed to be approached by Jughead, which is not improved when he opens bluntly with this question: Has anything weird been happening at your house lately?

He really doesn’t know what a can of worms he’s opened. Cheryl is making a face at him like, oh you sweet clueless child, you have no idea what you’re about to unleash. What she says is, “Why do you care?” Jughead says that he’s interested in the location of the mines she mentioned yesterday vis a vis the maple factor. Cheryl confirms that the factory is built right on top of the mines. Jughead says, going straight to the point, “I think you father is up to no good,” and then without even taking a break to let that settle in her mind he jumps right to accusation: “I think he is involved in the Milkman murders.” Then he adds the mines are palladium mines, plus not abandoned.

This is a method that Jughead is pretty consistent about throughout the seasons - he gets a set of facts, intuits something, gets a clue or a hint that he might be on the right track, and then goes directly to the source to launch accusations. The thing is, it WORKS this time because he went to Cheryl and not to Clifford Blossom, and even if she doesn’t like Jeronica, Cheryl definitely wouldn’t let Jughead just die if she could do something about it.

As a sort of unintended test, perhaps, Cheryl brings up that she thinks her father might sacrifice her to the pagan god Moloch. Jughead blinks about it but he doesn’t laugh or run away or attack her, so he passes this test.

As a result, Cheryl feels free to tell him forthwith (they’re being very forthright with each other here, which is great) that her parents were speaking in Russian with each other (she didn’t understand what they said, though, alas). Jughead, having found a kindred spirit in an unexpected place, immediately asks her to “get in there and play gumshoe.” At the thought of finding “something incriminating” against her parents, Cheryl looks bright eyed, bushy tailed, and inspired. She’s never looked at Jughead like that, ever.

OUtside, in the parking lot, suspenseful music plays as the girls are gearing up for their first parallel parking lesson. The performance anxiety of doing this in front of like A DOZEN PEOPLE is horrifying to me, but Ethel does a wonderful job. They all passed the written and practical portions of the test! Grundy is going to be taking all of them to the DMV to get their licenses! She says that they must bring their birth certificates, because the DMV “needs to make sure none of you are Russian spies.” She says it in a way that makes it clear she thinks it’s silly, but Ethel suddenly looks sad. Oh dear. Does she not own a single valid form of ID??

Archie is working out using a rigged up rowing machine in the garage. Uncle Fucking Frank of course has to investigate. I feel like there’s something off kilter about the way Frank keeps such close tabs on Archie. It’s most like Archie is a girl whose virginity is supposed to be safeguarded. Apparently everyone rows at least an hour a day to stay in shape, so Archie is trying to get a head start.

Frank has the temerity to give Archie a man to man, I Know I’m Not Your Real Dad speech, unprompted. Against all available evidence, Frank claims that he wants “what is best” for Archie, and that what he wants is “same as” what Fred would want. I was very worried for a second that he was going to sexually molest Archie, because this sounds like a sexual molestation set up. But it isn’t. Instead he gives Fred’s dog tags to Archie. Then he tries to get Archie to enlist in the army.

Fred apparently wasn’t drafted. He volunteered for the army. This is supposed to make Archie feel better? I mean it makes ME like Fred a lot, because it’s MY democracy and MY freedom that people like Fred suffered and died so far from home, but I don’t see how Archie, who is so terribly wounded about his father’s death is supposed to feel better. Also why oh why does Frank want Archie to die so badly, like WHAT IS HIS PROBLEM? “Drop this poetry nonsense and join the army!” Turning that spooky sexual maniac look on Archie again from before (it’s the same face he made calling Betty a ripe peach - vomit, phlegm, poop, bile, all the vileness, FIE) he says that “the best part about joining the Army” is that he “doesn’t have to wait until graduation.”

I mean. OK so in th 1950s Americans weren’t all having to earn PhDs in order to get entry level jobs like they have had to recently, but this still strikes me as absolute shit advice, AND going expressly against Mary’s clearly stated wishes.

Meanwhile, Cheryl is exploring her house using a three color candelabra at the dead of night. She is so dramatic omg I love her. “Let’s see what you’re hiding, daddy,” she mutters to herself in an empty room like a totally sane girl. She finds a hardhat in his desk with a lamp attached to the forehead portion. The candles react to a draft she wasn’t expecting to exist in this room, so she pursues the source of the airflow and finds a SECRET PASSAGE hidden behind a portrait!

Oh my gosh I love Thornhill so much.

This hidden compartment reveals A DOZEN milkman costumes!!! Complete with full pristine sets of glass milk bottles!!! Ooooh!

The next morning, Archie is being haunted by his dad’s dog tags which make his world tilt at a weird angle. He wears the dog tags to breakfast, freaking Mary out. She’s innocently asking about how many waffles he wants, but her world is about to implode. She wants to know why Frank gave those to Archie.

At the same time, Ethel wants to talk to Betty. She doesn’t have her birth certificate because it’s somewhere in her house. Betty is so kind to Ethel, immediately offering to go get it for Ethel. The document is probably inside Ethel’s mother’s crafting desk, which held all her important papers.

At school, Cheryl sees Jughead coming towards her, so she grabs him firmly by the lapel to drag the physically head-and-half taller boy forcibly into the music room. This is. uh. This is very hot to me even though I know Cheryl is a gold star lesbian in her heart. Anyway this is a first time experience for Jughead, being grabbed and tossed by a girl. I bet he didn’t know that cheerleaders have good upper body strength and powerful grips.

Immediately after, Jughead gets to have another new experience: A person with no reason to be particularly nice or supportive of him telling him that You Were Right. He’s so flummoxed by this reaction that he seeks reconfirmation: “About which part?” The answer is ‘Everything!”

She brought one of the giant milk bottles in her purse, which did not look like it could fit something that big.

Jughead has been saying an interesting series of oaths this episode (“Holy crapola!” in response to the bunker, “Holy Moley” about something else I forget) so he busts out Holy Toledo at the news that Cheryl’s father has sets of milk bottles and the uniforms that go with the milk bottles hidden in his study. He concludes, “The Milkman must have been working for your father! Doing his bidding!”

And because he’s a sweetheart who reads a lot of scary fiction, Jughead immediately asks Cheryl, “Are you in danger?” to which Cheryl has the coolest like, pretty girl working as an agent of the Resistance during Vichy type answer, which is “No more than usual.” She does look extremely worried. Cheryl had an extremely busy night of investigating, because she is also able to confirm that the mines a) do produce palladium and b) are not abandoned. She demands that Jughead bring his camera to her family estate that very night. She further instructs that he “pray an atomic disaster doesn’t befall us all before then!” before she takes off.

Betty walks into the abandoned murder house to try to do a nice thing for Ethel Muggs. She’s very brave. I would not be able to do this. She’s shifting through the desk, and finds a lockbox. She opens it with her hairpin! Her skirt pattern is very pretty. She finds what look like a series of receipts - that Hal Cooper was paying the Muggs for. And then she finds a photo of Hal Cooper HOLDING A BABY. What? What??

At dinner that night at the Andrews house, Mary has some things to say. She informs Frank that Archie has told her about the whole thing with the dog tags. “You used his father … to try to manipulate my son into joining the army. How dare you Frank? Especially when you yourself never served.”

Frank tries to speak homophobia code to Mary: “It’ll set him straight!” he says.

Mary however is too obtuse to pick up on it. She still thinks this is about Archie writing poetry. She finally - FINALLLYYYYY - lays down the law. That Archie can make whatever choices he wants with his life after he graduates high school. That is non negotiable for Mary, this high school graduation. Archie indicates with a nod that he gets the message.

Then she says that she “can’t have Frank here anymore. It’s time for you to move out.”

You mean to say that she had the power all this time, to kick Frank out, and DID NOT?

Then her sexist homophobic brother in law and her clueless sexist son have a dick measuring contest IN FRONT OF HER about who is going to be the man of the house. Frank is an underhanded piece of shit too, reminding her that she’s the one who invited him to Riverdale to ‘help.’ (So really, Mary is doubly guilty, first for inviting him, and second for letting him punish Archie for existing like that). Mary reminds them both that she’s the one who pays for the mortgage which.. again… HOW? She doesn’t have a bank account, right? Or did she inherit Fred’s when he died?

Looking suddenly at peace, Frank says that he’s going to “shack up with my old pal Tom Keller.” He makes a deeply inappropriate comparison between himself and Keller - Keller is being divorced by his wife of almost twenty years with whom he has a son. This is not the same relationship that Frank has with Mary!

Mary doesn’t care what Frank does as long as the “bullying uncle” is out of the house. Frank was living rent free in this house, yet he was so desperate about Archie’s poetry that he was willing to make him drop out of high school to join the army!

Betty goes home to ask her parents why they were writing checks to the Muggs household. Mrs Muggs was their housekeeper! is the first lie that Hal tries to tell. Betty then wants to know who the baby is. It’s Ethel, so Betty has to cross examine her dad. Hal says that it’s because he’s Ethel’s godfather. Betty wants to know why she’s never heard of any of this.

Alice stops Hal from telling any more lies.

“You’re Ethel’s father, aren’t you?” Betty concludes.

Alice kicks Hal out of the house for a bit so she can share an alcoholic drink with her daughter. the real story is that Mildred Muggs was their housekeeper before Betty was born. Alice suspected an affair between Mrs. Muggs and Hal which was confirmed when Ethel was born. The reason they hid all this was because of the TV station. Everything Alice says after that first thing is a lie - she doesn’t give a fuck about “us, our family.” She wanted a tv career because Alice has always has had a career obsession. When she says she ‘had no choice’ she means there was no other way for her to have a career on television than to be married to Hal Cooper. So the arrangement was that the Muggs would raise the girl ‘as their own’ (which she was, she was Mildred’s own) while the Coopers sent money every month for support (from Hal).

Betty puts it together again. That this is why Alice took Ethel in, but hated her, humiliated her, had her forcibly imprisoned in the child abuse nunnery and so on. And that this is why she was on such a rampage about Betty coming to adulthood. Except Betty doesn’t say that - she concludes that Alice didn’t “want what happened to you to happen to me.” What, your husband a middle class white man predating on a working class woman? How would having Kevin pin Betty over Archie fix anything? Kevin is much more likely to have impregnated a lot of women in his life if he’d not been able to actually come out at least to himself by Betty dumping him. This doesn’t make sense, but then, Betty in S7 is really stupid, and so is her mother so I guess this explanation is enough for both of their levels of intellect.

Alice starts weeping about how she failed as a mother and she’s sorry, but like I said, I don’t believe that motherhood, her daughters with Hal or “doing what was right” was in any way part of Alice’s calculations. She simply wanted to hold on to having a tv career above dignity, above her own sanity, above her sexual well being. Betty says that she thinks Alice did the best she could, because Betty is a kind person, but this is categorically wrong. Alice has acted purely out of malice towards Ethel and sexual jealousy for Betty (in that Betty had youth and an unblemished future without any bad compromises spread out ahead of her).

Betty says that they need to call Hal back home so they can all tell Ethel she is a Cooper. I hope Ethel axes them all to death in their sleep.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and Jughead are having their adventure in the dark of night. Jughead takes a hugely flashing photo of the night guard at the mines, who is watching Oh Mija. Then they sneak past him to the mines. The cooperative bickering-affirming dynamic they have between them is truly great. When Jughead wants to know why there aren’t more guards, Cheryl points out that secret projects should maybe not call “undue attention” upon themselves, which Jughead concedes immediately is a good point.

Jughead even gets the mojo back to narrate for a bit, as he says that while Cheryl and he were on the verge of a major discovery, Ethel was “experiencing emotional shockwaves about learning the truth about her life.”

Ethel says that she always felt like her parents’ discord was her fault, and that there was a lot of discord. “That explains things” is what she says, with so much dignity. The Coopers offer to adopt her, to “make things right.” Extremely elegantly, Ethel rejects their offer immediately. She says that what she wants is to be happy, which you can’t possibly be with Hal and Alice Cooper as your parents in any capacity. She wants nothing to do with these people. Ethel is the only one with a brain cell in this entire community. Good for her, and her smarts.

Frank is finally leaving. The little family is seeing him off. Reggie first. Then Frank finagles a final invitation to a regular home cooked meal (“Sunday dinner”) from Mary, who apparently is wonderful at cooking as she is at dress-and-halloween-costume making. She still invites him, which is a level of forgiveness that I don’t think I am capable of mustering, even to be polite. As he says goodbye to Archie, Frank asks that Archie not “hold things against him.” Archie tries to teach Frank that writing poetry is not an emasculating activity. He specifically says that men in trenches in the fields of war have written beautiful poems. Maybe that’s my path, he says, and Mary shakes her head a FIRM FUCKIN’ NO about dying in war. They send him off. They’re playing sentimental music over this, but I have to confess I do not understand why. He’s been hateful, overbearing and condescending to them the entire time he’s been here. They had a big blowout fight after he tried to induce Archie to drop out of high school to join the army, which is both expressly against Mary’s wishes and without any consultation with her. Why are they making nicey nice?

Can Frank please die now? I am tired of hating him (though the hate is still going very strong.)

In the photo development room, Cherly and Jughead are talking about what to do with the evidence they have found. Cheryl wants to take these to Sheriff Keller. Jughead disagrees, saying Keller might be in on it too. “He’s just a dimwitted small-town sheriff that’s in over his head,” is Cheryl’s fantastic little summary of the stupid father of the awful Kevin. Jughead wants to make this federal, not local, and is going to tap Veronica’s contacts with the FBI from when they were investigated her father. Cheryl is impressed that Jughead Jones is capable of this much serious, rational thought. I also wonder if she likes the idea of getting the feds involved or not. In any case she calls him, playfully, “Sherlock Jones” which is some Veronica level moniker coinage, I must say.

Cheryl now wants to know if Jughead and Veronica are “officially an item.” She …

Cheryl and Jughead have actually friendly banter! I am pleased as punch. They have really nice chemistry! Cheryl says, gently teasing, that she suspects Jughead might be “in over his crown” in trying to be in a relationship with Veronica Lodge, to which Jughead snaps back, bringing some bravado to it, that he is “holding his own.”

One of the photos they took is of Jughead leaning very suggestively up against the very phallic looking palladium bomb.

Cut to the family meal at Thornhill when they get an unexpected banging on the door. Cheryl leaps up, offering brightly to “go get it.” Ooh ok so I was wrong. She was purely pleased about involving the feds in this. She lets in Glen(!) and the other G-Men. She apparently even summoned them at this exact time.

Clifford’s full name is Clifford Marion Blossom, and Penelope’s name is

Penelope Pavlina Novikov Blossom.

Which I am going to commit to memory immediately.

However, point of order here - shouldn’t that be Pavlina NovikoVA Blossom??

The Blossoms are arrested for “treason, conspiracy, and advocating for the violent overthrow of the American government.” Moreover, the FBI is going to shut down “Project Moloch” which makes Clifford jump with surprise.

Cheryl manages to get the last word in: “You did a bad thing, Daddy.”

She stole wholesale, all of Veronica Lodge’s bag from right under her. No conflicts of interest despite being the daughter, either. Because Veronica always waffled over Hiram. Not Cheryl. My hero. MVP of Riverdale for real.

Jughead sounds excited as he relays that the world eventually learned that the American capitalist had been seduced by a Russian sleeper agent,. The plan was thus:

From the A-bomb to the H-bomb to the P-bomb!

Clifford Blossom pretended to be developing the P Bomb for the US government but in fact was going to sell it to the Russians. The FBI took credit for foiling this plan, which Jughead says was “fine by” him except it wasn’t because he’s setting the record straight here. In any case, he says he did manage to “put the rest of the pieces together.”

Jughead still needs to worship a father figure, and fortunately for him FP doesn’t exist in this AU and Rayberry died, so he’s quite safe. His hagiographic treatment of Rayberry is that even though all Rayberry did was use what he was worried about from his job at the maple factory to write obscure stories in an obscure comic book the “brilliant, terrifying” nature of these stories is enough to stand him in good stead. The thing is, Rayberry apparently died directly because he fell in a sort of love with Jughead Jones. When he invoked the First Amendment on Jughead’s behalf, he “spooked” the powers that be, which made Mayor Blossom sicc his hitman on him.

By the same token, Mr Muggs somehow, as the janitor, obtaining proof positive that the Blossoms were sitting on top of a stockpile of palladium similarly made him a target. We are shown Ethel pack up her bag to leave to go somewhere. Her last meeting in town seems to be with Jughead, who really just does not really care what the plot was, because she paid all the prices for everyone’s secrets from day 1 to literally the moment when Alice Cooper decided to do a nice thing for Ethel purely (and I do mean PURELY) for the purposes of fucking Betty over.

But Ethel is unendingly kind to Jughead who is very obtusely obsessed with telling her how bad it all was, when all she wants to do is LEAVE. She tells him, with the same dignified graciousness she’s exhibited throughout, that all his crazy eyed efforts make her “hope for a better tomorrow.” To his credit, Jughead seems very moved by her elegance, looking at her with misty eyes as she departs with Ben.

Ben calls her Lovebug!!!!!!

Alice is deeply resentful (because she is evil) of Ethel getting to leave Riverdale and for Hollywood, to get a real job at a real movie studio, based purely on her talents. This is not a caliber of career that either of her daughters is ever going to achieve. Of course she’s going to try to stop her. As usual, Veronica has taken care of everything like the generous queen that she is - gotten Ethel a job, a connection to a powerful person who will feel obligated to look in on Ethel and give her some protection while she figures out the ropes and a place to live.

You know, Tabitha may be the Guardian Angel of Riverdale but Veronica is the patron saint of Riverdalian hopes and dreams. “Give them hell Ethel!” Veronica says. Betty says she wants to visit Ethel. Jughead and Ethel hugfarewell. “I’ll miss you. You always were the best partner in crime,” Jughead says.

Why do I still get the feeling that Ethel is just a little bit in love with Jughead Jones? She pats him gently on the face, telling him not to be “too sad” because they will “always have Pep Comics.” Jughead really does look very sad about her departure.

Alice tells Ethel that she’s going to be just fine, and keeps touching Ethel and I wish she wouldn’t. Because I don’t trust Alice at all.

Jughead says that Ethel was the first to leave Riverdale. (Ben Button is apparently going with her to California but is going to come right back? Or is he so irrelevant he doesn’t count?) Ethel drives out to the tune of NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW! in her wonderful looking yellow car. I’m glad the pageant didn’t stiff her with the car. Jughead has this to say:

“All of the pieces were falling into place, but it was just about time to find out if our little town would be avoiding an even greater cataclysm.”

I’m so glad Ethel got a great exit. I really am. I still think she should’ve gotten to fuck Jughead though, just to realize it isn’t all that.

#riverdale opinion #omg it's almost to the end and this was actually a good episode #ethel muggs #riverdale s7 recap #riverdale s7 #riverdale episode recap

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