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riverdale-retread · 2 years ago

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Riverdale S6 Ep 18 (#113) Biblical

So Riverdale, a formerly pretty, now busted up looking town where a series of unfortunate events have occurred without break, is so desensitized to disaster that they all just calmly invented silly explanation for signs of the apocalypse and went on with their days!

Frogs ‘escaped the biology lab,” flies, lice! Ew! Ack!

The most unrealistic part of this for me, the true sign of the end times, was that they somehow got Cheryl Blossom washing lice out of her niece’s hair. She looks like she wants to vomit and she roped the hapless Heather into it, but still she does it. With her own luxuriant mane down.

There is a completely bonkers transition by the way. The camera zooms in on the foaming lice killer on Juniper’s head which I was terrified was going to show me a big dead lice but then it did something worse - the lice killer shampoo TURNED INTO CAPPUCCINO that Veronica Lodge directly sipped from. WHY?

And there is an answer, actually! Veronica Lodge is about to get news and receive a request that is exactly as palatable as sipping poison foam flecked with dead lice:

Toni tells her that she and Fangs are getting married (siiiiiighhhhhh)

AND

that she is not going to be bringing money and profit to Veronica by renting a champagne suite (Did the Five Seasons get run out of business? I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve heard about the hotel.)

AND

that she is being asked to be a wedding planner.

Veronica is the nicest of the OGs. She really is. She is clearly a bit disheartened by this request, but she keeps the smile on and says only the most perfect, kind, appropriate things.

We cut to Betty and Archie in their nice cozy home.

Betty looks very pretty despite a very loud stripey cardigan made of bath towels, and Archie has surreal brassy reddish orange hair that clashes with his very depressive blue flannel.

Archie says he agreed to be a groomsman for Fangs as long as he doesn’t have to make any effort. I’ll say this for Archie - he always says exactly how much of a limited person and unabashed asshole he really is. It’s not his problem that everyone around him refuses to actually listen to him.

Betty for her part is looking forward to a happy event to dress up for after her difficulties at SlaughterCon. They kiss sweetly and are nice to each other. I agree with them that all of them “need something good to celebrate,” as Archie says.

But a fucking wedding between Toni and Fangs cannot POSSIBLY be a good thing. No.

Another fun shift as we burst through the wall of the Barchie residence to Jughead typing away on the typerwriter Betty got him back in the day. The last word he types is ‘Boys.’ Jughead is in the Bunker with Tabitha. Jughead ropes in all his girlfriends to be his beta readers (unless he’s writing about them directly, maybe) so Tabitha is standing there reading the pages hot off the presses. Tabitha says she loves the La Llorona story he wrote. When asked how he’s suddenly so prolific after suffering long bouts of writer’s block, Jughead says that he’s been ‘riffing off’ of the voices he has been forced to contend with (from Percival’s violating his mind’s boundaries). She is so gentle with Jughead, Tabitha is, so she asks him in the least pressured, most calm way whether he can consider coming out of the goddamn bunker and join normal life. I find it distressing how the bunker behind Jughead looks more and more like his home with her - the bric-a-brac in the green shelf in the corner, the Jughead Jones candle fetish out in full force, his penchant for creating bulletin boards on the fridge.

Tabitha tries to draw Jughead out of the bunker for the (I’m sure it’s cursed) cursed Foni wedding but Jughead says that while writing (by riffing off the voices) does make them subside, he just isn’t ready to go back out into society. Then he says he doesn’t want Tabitha to go alone to a wedding ,and she very gently says she just wants him to be OK. I just love Tabitha so much, and really, after all his troubles, it’s so wonderful to me that Jughead has someone who looks out for him consistently.

In his magic shop, Percival is muttering magic spells (which subtitles are telling me is Latin), bringing on more plague events. There’s a very convenient hole in the brick wall through which Kevin peers in on Percival, and watching him drop something in a bowl of water while muttering makes Kevin freak out quite a lot.

Tabitha is on a tour of good cheer because the next sad person she visits is Veronica. Unlike Toni, Tabitha picks up on the sadness that Veronica feels about her present situation in life, and what Veronica lays out highlights all the ways she’s the Jughead Girl Version. Veronica is mopey because she had a brief but glorious “Dreams Comes True” time in NYC (her as a Wall St. hotshot, him as a hotshot new writer) which then went terribly wrong, replete with a toxic partner, which landed them back in Riverdale under much less fun and thriving circumstances. For his part, Jughead really lucked out in terms of starting a relationship with Tabitha, but Veronica hasn’t had good luck in that area of her life.

Which makes me circle back to Toni. I agree with her that if I wanted something big done right one should go to Veronica Lodge, but she’s asking the woman who had to shoot her husband dead in self defense to plan her wedding. It’s bizarrely cruel.

Tabitha tells Veronica that her five year plan’s also gone to shit, leading to these two brilliant, beautiful, energetic young women having a moment of grief for their aspirations. It was a little bit too real.

Just as Veronica gets done saying she has a lot of love to give and wants to share her heart with someone, she gets an intercom message saying “There’s something wrong with the plumbing.” So I think this must be of a piece with her drinking the lice shampoo cappuccino - her heart is plumbing, and her actual building plumbing is spewing blood.

Everyone’s water is blood - Archie doing his dishes, Britta trying to get a gulp at the fountain, Toni and Fangs’ sink. Kevin chooses this time to visit to make a big announcement: He will no longer be seeking custody of Baby Anthony! So, while Kevin’s custody-stealing arc has come to a pretty OK resolution with his seeking forgiveness, I do find it a little dispiriting that he does it with these words: “You’re his mother, Toni” and also “You’re his REAL father, Fangs, not me.”

This seems exceptionally retrograde for this nonsexual throuple family - a gay couple and their best girl friend and the ambiguous baby daddy / sperm donor / who cares about the paternity had a breakup and now we have a straight-looking couple with their bio baby who are getting straight married with the gay guy on the outs seeking forgiveness for disrupting their nuclear family peace.

Bisexuals in a straight coupling don’t stop being bisexual OBVIOUSLY but this is a weirdly conservative way for the show to drive these relationships. The Foni relationship looks straight and now Baby Anthony’s biological provenance is important. What the fuck.

Oh and also.

FANGS. STILL. HAS NOT. TOUCHED. BABY ANTHONY.

The extremely sad look that Fangs gives Kevin is a tiny nugget they threw my way, I guess.

Archie is trying to mess around with his plumbing. While he’s down there Percival gives a call, demanding that Archie call off the strike. The difference between American TV Villain Brit cadences (so very sing song and high pitched) and All American Hero speech (vocal fry, growly, low, curt, almost monotone) is a fun contrast. Being ominously poetic at Archie Andrews might be fun to do but is ultimately useless, so after flapping his yap about God’s Lowliest Creatures and so forth, Percival is left with no choice but to tell Archie to watch the news which is so lame. Archie Andrews’ density does come in very handy quite a lot of the time.

Right on cue comes Alice Smith Cooper on the news, and she hilariously describes Sweetwater River as having turned ‘blood red.’ Uh, whether a fluid is actually blood or not is actually testable, you know? But the apparently incompetent “scientists” of Riverdale, who are “at a loss to explain this stunning, apocalyptic development” are unable to test whether the fluid in the river is blood, and will only concede that it is red of a bloody hue. It’s up to Alice Cooper to editorialize and put words into people’s mouths (“dare *I* say”) like the trash tabloidist she is at heart.

It’s only after having his girlfriend’s mom tell him through the television that it’s APOCALYPSE NOW that Archie looks concerned and freaked out. His eyebrows are black and his hair is a terrifyingly unnatural color.

Percival “insinuated that he was responsible” for the water going weird, is what Archie tells the assembled Riverdale Avengers (minus Jughead). It surprises me that Archie uses words like ‘insinuated.’ I like that the Riverdale Avengers is this collection of very pretty, extremely strange women. Cheryl (no explanation needed), Betty (ultraweird), Veronica (poisonous murderous party planner) and Tabitha who fits in like she grew up with these people. Tabitha thinks Percival is boasting. Cheryl concedes that powerful sorcerers exist but is not willing to give that crown to Percival just yet.

Cheryl has been all about the low cut top with the push up bra these past episodes and I don’t know, do people get desensitized to such magnificence? I find it so distracting.

Anyway, Cheryl says that she is an awesome Devil’s Advocate, Veronica gives a very funny nod-nod of agreement. Cutting right to the chase, Cheryl suggests that they just kill Percival. She delivers this suggestion with a bright smile, and very responsibly offers to do the deed herself. Tabitha looks not alarmed but rather skeptical, Veronica is stressed, Betty just looks at Cheryl like she’s told a bad joke, Archie puts a hand over his eyes. Cheryl’s exasperated, sotto voce, “Oh my god” before she points out that they have all thought about it is both true and very amusing. I love Cheryl.

Archie as the leader (?) kiboshes the murder plot by saying that in the fight between good and evil you cannot choose the ways of evil. Cheryl rolls her eyes, and so did I. I don’t know about you, but using evil’s tools to dismantle evil looks really good to me in real life right now. Good keeps losing and maybe we need to get our hands dirty?

Whatever. SO anyway, continuing on with the very bizarre retrograde values kick the show is on by forcing this marriage between Toni and Fangs, Archie says that the wedding should not be rescheduled (as per Veronica’s very sensible suggestion) because a wedding will remind everyone about what they’re fighting for, because a wedding is a symbol of a better tomorrow for our families. Right. But that’s so cursed, because this quickie shotgun wedding between the Serpent King and Queen was originally manipulated out of Fangs by Toni under false pretenses (she wanted to marry him to win the custody war), the need for which has now dissipated.

Betty, who has just recently told Archie that getting married, being a mom, and living in a white picket type situation may not be for her, casts a very worried look at Archie as he delivers this speech about Family Values, essentially, being paramount to well being. Oh dear.

Jughead in the bunker is visited by La Llorona complete with water drip and squish sound effects.

The ventilation, plumbing and other issues with this bunker fascinate me all the time. Jug is burning candles in votive cups and bottles all night apparently, because I guess he’s scared of the dark while he sleeps? But doesn’t that do weird things to the air quality, to burn so very many candles like this in a closed space? Also does he LOCK the bunker at night?

Jughead narration says immediately after that he had “vivid nightmare.” It’s not clear what time it is or how soon after that La Llorona visitation (or dream). He asks “Can someone have snuck into the bunker and stolen it?” about the missing La Llorona manuscript. Well I don’t know Jughead! Can you lock the bunker?? The fact that he still makes these single hard-copy drafts of his works even after Jess made off with an entire (cringey, drug-induced) book length manuscript is amazing to me. Get it together, sis.

Meanwhile at the diner the striking workers are chafing at the bit, because having no income (supplemented by whatever per diem the union is able to provide and free meals at Pop’s) is not enough. Tabitha (who has her own business) exhorts everyone to hang on ‘for the future.’ This is the key weakness shared by movements like this, I guess. The present is such a terrible burden, so the endurance necessary for something to be realized “for the future” cannot be sustained.

At the FBI office, Betty asks Agent Lin to get her bibles and texts about apocalypses. The response is highly weird, because Lin immediately assumes that Betty is asking for these things for her personal needs. (“I didn’t know you were such a religious person”). Is this how Riverdale thinks the FBI works, that Betty as the senior ranking (somehow?) agent can make Lin do her personal shopping? Betty explicitly explains that she needs it for a case.

Veronica and Tabitha are spending a lot of time together, which is soothing to me and grounding for the show which is doing a lot of audacious things (La Llorona wetly jumping universes from Vale to Dale; Biblical plague brought on by a black magic sorcerer, Toni and Fangs getting fucking married etc). Veronica is not wearing her very questionable 1980s first lady type skirtsuit with big buttons, for which I am relieved. I love her in polka dots.

Veronica lays the stakes full out:

Tabitha is fighting for Jughead. (WHICH NOBODY HAS EVER DONE BEFORE EVER, NOT ONCE NOT EVER, OMG THIS IS HUGE. ahem). (Betty would have fought for Jughead, in theory, but in actuality did not.)

Betty and Archie are fighting for each other. (Is this right, though? I feel like Archie is fighting against Percival. Archie doesn’t seem like someone who fights FOR things. And Betty is along for the ride, but as always Betty is primarily grappling with the problem of herself.)

Toni and Fangs are fighting for Baby Anthony (So, Veronica the smart one knows that Toni and Fangs are not marrying for love. They’re marrying so they don’t lose their son or risk losing him to Kevin Keller, because Kevin is just that untrustworthy and unreliable. She knows what this is.)

Veronica doesn’t know what she’s fighting for, which is interesting. Most of her teen life she was either actually fighting with her dad or with her idea of her dad and how it affected her. Now he’s dead (at her hands) and she’s feeling adrift, rather than liberated. Tabitha is very tactful and doesn’t try to suggest things that Veronica can feel attached to. Instead she invites Veronica to find out, for herself, her reason for staying in Riverdale.

Except, uh oh, Veronica looks very called out.

At Thornhill (does Heather just live here now?), Cheryl tells Heather that she agreed, at Toni’s request, to officiate the Toni/ Fangs nuptials.

I -

OK So.

The deliberate, unthinking violence that Toni seems to keep doing to her friends (Veronica first, now Cheryl) as she marries the baby daddy that she tricked into marrying her, who really wasn’t that into it, is awful. Cheryl was fortunately wearing her version of Veronica’s 1980s political candidate wife skirtsuit (with the same round brass buttons), and it gives her the affect of a Jackie O post-assassination.

Fittingly, having this act of aggression inflicted on her while she doesn’t have the coldness that I have to just refuse to participate drives Cheryl into deciding to commit homicide as a present for Toni.

Cheryl is all Id. She wants to kill Toni for this cruel, careless, self serving request, so she channels that and wants to give a marriage she disapproves of a charred corpse as a ‘gift.’ Nice.

Percival in the meantime lovingly puts together an altar of food, beautifully lit like a classical still life, before doing some Latin magic spell to do with making things putrid. It rots the food on his tableau but it also rots all the food set out for the Toni/ Fangs wedding.

This is when both My Five Year Plan Failed Tabby Tate and Nothing To Fight For Veronica Lodge both get pissed, but for very different reasons. Tabitha, as a food purveyor, is very annoyed at the ruination of perfectly good, edible food. Veronica, as a very uptight person who used to get a lot of her sense of self from doing and achieving things, is FURIOUS that the thing that she recently put a lot of energy into has been rendered for naught. To fulfill her own ego needs, Veronica insists that the wedding and the rehearsal dinner must go on, in the face of Toni’s very reasonable conclusion that it should be put off.

Meanwhile, Jughead is typing away in his bunker when he get a supernatural delivery of burger, fries and a cup of coffee, which came along with some watery sounds that apparently he can’t hear. He recognizes the scent. Jughead apparently never got over his intense food insecurity, but the scene that happens is extremely funny. Jug sees the clearly NOT NATURAL burger, but only says it’s weird, rather than, I am losing my mind. He says, I shouldn’t touch it, and then touches it. He says, I definitely shouldn’t eat it, then takes the hugest possible bite out of the potentially poisonous burger.

Cheryl in her blue suit and Heather in her Little House on the Prairie pajama dress have made a huge salt pentacle lined with red candles. This is to project Cheryl’s power to burn Percival by burning his poppet. The extremely childish way they recite the common language incantation is a big warning that this is not going to work, because in evil and magic Latin trumps everything. They even wrote it into a little ditty. The fire projection DOES hurt Percival for a bit, which was very fun to watch. But he defeats it, as expected, with Latin.

Nana Rose is set on fire! Cheryl comes in and screams her head off.

Cheryl is not at the rehearsal dinner.

Veronica is not ok. She ends up dissing Pop’s in favor of complimenting Toni (“she elevates everything to five stars” which means Pops isn’t, which, true, but still). Tabitha is shown not to mind.

Then she bursts into song. She sings a song to single girls at a wedding rehearsal dinner. Her eyes did dim watching Archie and Betty kiss just then, but this song has been preplanned. Britta is having a good time because the beautiful Ms Lodge comes to sit on her lap (uhh) but all the adults are increasingly scared at Veronica’s rendition and the pointed delivery of these already sharp lyrics.

I mean, Toni, you brought this on yourself.

You asked Cheryl to officiate, and you forced Veronica to do this, which is only half a step better than asking KEVIN to be your wedding planner. I already didn’t like Fangs this season and now they’ve taken Toni away from me. The bastards!

Veronica takes a glass off the Barchie table, GLARES at them, and then smashes the full glass on the floor. Betty checks to see nobody got stabbed by flying glass while Archie blanks out. Veronica then yanks Fangs out of his chair to violently fling him against the bar, sits on him as the lights turn an evil red, before slamming his head down on the bar top. She hollers “dieeees” as this happens.

She looks insane. She starts shouting at people to rise. Rise! RISE! And nobody does, because they’re too scared, so she points at individuals who have no choice but to comply

Some of the attendees at this thing just think she gave a rousing (if inexplicable) performance because you can hear some dude going Woah! Yeah!!! but Toni, Fangs, Archie Betty, even little Britta - people who all know Veronica when she’s well, are worried, scared, confused, concerned.

So - I am not the hugest fan of Broadway musicals (or West End musicals either, tbh) but I will say that Veronica doesn’t sound bad at all and doesn’t falter in what sounds like a big belting number that has lots of pitfalls for the vocalist.

Afterwards, Veronica is sitting alone at the bar quaffing alcohol. Betty is the only person brave enough to approach her at this juncture. Is this what hell looks like for Veronica? To be weirdly (in)famous in a little town, too rich, too fancy, too successful, too beautiful to be approachable? Betty says something that could be read either way - “That was quite the performance, V” and henceforth I am going to take after Veronica when interpreting statements of this kind. I will simply assume they are praise so that I can respond accordingly.

Betty asks if Veronica has a date to the Foni wedding, knowing the answer is no, so that she can suggest that Veronica third wheel Barchie.

I retract my question - this IS hell for Veronica. I did like the mutual sarcasm of the two girls calling themselves ‘badass’ about their distinctly very lame adventures in being the two girldates of Archie Andrews all the way back as sophomores in high school. This trip down memory lane appears to lead Veronica to conclude that what she’s fighting for is “her friends.” But actually, Veronica just wanted to make this conversation end. Betty did make the right gesture in asking her to talk, but said a series of useless things. That’s kind of a cause for despair, isn’t it? When your female friends can’t come up with the salve for the wound.

Just then, Tabitha and Archie tell B&V about the summons to Thornhill. Cheryl says that HEATHER is rubbing a salve on Nana Rose’s burn wounds, which - why is this? Shouldn’t Cheryl be doing this? It’s HER grandmother. Or maybe this is my not-American credentials coming out. The gang - Archie, Betty, Veronica, Cheryl and Tabitha (as Jughead proxy?) put all the pieces together:

Percival is a powerful sorcerer

He is bringing all the plagues

They must call off the strike and try for subterfuge of the Ghost Train rail construction instead.

Betty wishes they had someone on the inside. Veronica says Kevin might be coming around to the light, so Betty says she will speak to Kevin. Is this wise? Betty and Kevin’s relationship is really actually kind of terrible.

Meanwhile, in the bunker, the magic burger is disagreeing violently with Jughead, who vomits, and then has to lie down.

In the depressing forest greens of the Andrews house interior, Kevin is making a confession to Betty, who absolves him (“I went along with it like a fool” - “You weren’t the only one.”). I see now why it had to be Betty that had this conversation with Kevin. Betty, sensible and practical, has to be the one to bring the audience along to accept the magic /supernatural turn that this story is continuing to take. Tabitha and Cheryl are already too involved in the magic, and Archie and Veronica do not have enough of a connection to Kevin. Percival is officially confirmed as A Magic Man Who Performs Spells. Kevin is given the mission of trying to steal Percival’s book of spells.

At the relocated diner, Fangs is leading The Guys with his tits out to go play basketball. (He touches the basketball, and does not hold his son. Yeah I am fixated on this. Maybe I have daddy issues. What about it?) Archie does forthrightly bring up the topic of calling off the strike to negotiate better working conditions terms with Percival.

HE DOESN’T TELL THEM ABOUT THE FUCKING PLAGUES AND THE UPCOMING APOCALYPSE.

When the very dim Fangs says, without the necessary information that would allow him to make an INFORMED decision, that he wants to do ‘what is right,’ Archie grins and says “Screw it” to unilaterally alter the plan.

Betty has put up a Plague Board in her office. Boils are next. And right on cue, Percival starts ‘boiling’ little men figurines. This is not what boils mean. Archie runs over to Percival, and as he plays around with the chess pieces, Archie asks “What the HELL are you PLAYING at?” Masterpieces.

Percival doesn’t care about the strike. He now just wants Archie’s submission. “Work for me” often means slave labor in Riverdale.

Jughead is visited in the bunker by Cheryl looking fucking amazing in her Rivervale Midsommar get up. She says, “Sweet Forsythe, what ails you?” which is AN AMAZING LINE. He still has his tummy ache. Cheryl stabs him to make it all better. Jughead wakes up , freaked out, only to discover that there’s an actual knife stabbed on his desk. To someone (himself? us?), Jughead narration asks, “How much do you want to bet another one of my stories was stolen!”

Kevin has entered Percival’s lair to enact his mission. He gets caught IMMEDIATELY. Very cleverly, Kevin plays the sad low-self esteem man which disarms Percival.

Betty’s sifting through Bibles when she finds a really well done plate of the Whore of Babylon. Flashback to TBK calling Betty that, which she takes very seriously.

From here we directly cut to Archie Jesus carrying the cross on Riverdale Golgotha. The Jughead narration intones, AND LO IT CAME TO PASS, ON THE THIRD DAY WHILE ARCHIE ANDREWS WORKED THE RAILWAY TO SPARE HIS CREW ANY MORE SUFFERING,

I just basically lost consciousness.

I was so scared I was going to get struck by lightening. Like that time I watched The Last Temptation of Christ scene where Christ walks off the cross led by an androgynous angel to Mary Magdalene’s house to fuck her while she asks if they’re gonna have babies.

Fortunately, the scene is short and we move on to everyone else: Veronica is busily setting up the wedding, FONI are putting their wedding vows together, while a solar eclipse happens which Alice Cooper didn’t make any sort of announcement about.

Betty, as the voice of reason whose job it is to take us all along on this journey, sounds exceptionally beleaguered as she says something literally impossible: “And now SURPRISE ECLIPSES ARE HAPPENING IN RIVERDALE.”

This sounds like something someone who watches a TV show called Riverdale might write into a snarky episode summary, doesn’t it?

Kevin is there to tell her that Percival is buying weapons. “Stockade for the Harlot of Babylon” is the one that really captures Betty’s attention. So Betty goes charging to Percival. She keeps speaking for the viewers (“I don’t understand it. I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND IT”) but charges ahead to say that she knows she’s the Whore of Babylon and Percival’s war is the only war (on the planet?) that she is “aware of, currently,” a phrase that sounds like it was put together by a legal team. She offers to put herself in the stockade in exchange for a stopping of the plagues. Percival tells her what he really wants.

Cut to!

The Blossom residence which is massively done up in candles again (Cheryl and Jughead decorating soulmates). Turns out what Percival wants is Baby Anthony. Earthquakes, Fire from the Sky, Pestilence, Hail and Death of the First Born are next.

Heather has a huge reaction to the word “stockade.” She knows what this is and Cheryl and Heather read the witchy gobbledygook at the group. Two witches, a woman who travels through time, an FBI agent, a mob princess, a cult follower and a Fail Serpent Queen decide to invade Percival’s lair. This is to me strongly reminiscent of True Blood, except nobody is a vampire. (Can Kevin be a vampire, please?).

While they’re doing this, Jughead is talking to a deep dark hole. “Who are you?” and “What are you?” and “What do you want from me?” and “Why are you stealing My Work?”

I really adore Jughead for the way he talks about His Work all capitalized like that.

The dark hole sends him a message in a bottle, that says, Keep Writing, type written. He has a flashback (forward?) to Vale’s Jughead with his ships in a bottle that made Vale Tabitha finally break down and want to kill him.

At his shop, Percival is cooing at a pestilent insect perched on his hand. Betty enters carrying a baby shaped thing in her hands. She even dandles the baby, but it’s a big doll. She is wearing a very interesting outfit for this - a lowcut red dress and purple blazer that doesn’t go with it at all. She summons all the other ones who approached invisibly using Cheryl’s witchcraft that they all accepted and acted as though it totally worked.

Um. OK so - I know JKR is persona non grata to a lot of people so Harry Potter Reference TW (Skip to after the second ***)

****

Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley showed MUCH MORE surprise at the functioning of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak and they went to Hogwarts, than the librarian, the former banker, the diner owner and the sheriff’s son do that Hold Your Breath and Think of Cheryl rendered them invisible to the local wizard sorcerer.

****

Cheryl knocks Percival out with the blow-in-your-face powder that functions like whatever it is Donna Sweett used on Betty back in the day.

Cut to Archie, shirtlessly building the railway, Surprise Eclipse or no. He looks marvelous, all rippling muscles and sweaty skin in the red glow of doom. Jughead is having a wonderful time continuing to use Ye Old Biblical Speeche that I haven’t ever seen in a Bible in our post Vatican II era. Or maybe this is how he actually feels any time he sees Archie without his shirt on - he wants to shout : AND LO!

Percival is captured which brings the sun back. Or rather, the capture of The Mad Monk is what does it. This is what Jughead calls him because I guess Jughead doesn’t realize that Percival and Kevin have fucked. Or maybe he does that on purpose. Oh.

Veronica in a very interesting checkboard green knit outfit, takes the time to taunt Percival, locked up on the very stockade that freaked out Heather so much, in the dungeon she’s rigged up for him in the basement of her establishment (Her vault).

We skip over to the Foni residence where the queers are reconciling. Toni and Fangs tell Kevin that he’s invited to their wedding (which is very not straight, at all, nope) and Kevin excitedly asks of Moose can come too, to which Fangs says yes. Fangs and Kevin and Moose have all fucked each other. This could be so bohemian and out there, but I just hate it.

The Toni/Fangs wedding cake IS A MONSTROSITY.

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME IT WAS LIKE THIS?

It looks like a pile of rubber tyres wound through with rose petals on thorny vines topped by what looks like a big bloody turd but turns out to be an intertwined pair of a red and green snake forming a heart as the green snake kisses the red snake on its head.

You mean to tell me Veronica Lodge ordered this cake. On purpose? She’s secretly anti-Tangs, anti Foni. Veronica is on my side. I know she is. Because nobody but an anti-fan could order this cake. oH No.

The aesthetics of this wedding horrify me. Cheryl has dusted off her red Serpent jacket to wear over what look like bedazzled matador pants. Toni is wearing a wedding dress that doesn’t flatter her with weird lace cut outs at the sides, Fangs has YELLOW ROSES in his lapel while dressed for a funeral, wearing a terrible fail beard.

Fangs and Toni also got INITIATED into the Serpents. Did they get punched in the face too? I thought they were BORN Serpents? (Goes off into the distance to pitch my usual fit about how I wish they wouldn’t bring up Serpent lore if they’re going to fuck around with it this much).

The speech Fangs gives is mostly fine, except it’s terrible. He says he loves her and their family, but he doesn’t say he’s in love with her. He says it’s us against the world and Toni looks very neutral. Why are they going through with this?

Her speech is even worse. "I love how unconventional, surprising and beautiful our relationship is.” Then she lies. “You’re an amazing father.” No he isn’t. He’s just the sperm donor and has acted like it all season. She says, “You make Baby Anthony and I very very proud.” She does not mention the word love once to speak about Fangs. This is the most damning wedding speech of all time.

I am very appeased by how the writers are making it very clear that Toni knows exactly why she’s getting married. She has realized that she needs to grab as much privilege for herself as she can in order to protect herself and her needs and heteronormativity is one of the few that are available to her. Fangs being queer is helpful because she wouldn’t be able to breathe in a marriage of convenience with a completely straight man (that’s why she loves how ‘unconventional’ their relationship is).

While this bullshit is going on upstairs, Percival hums Flight of the Valkyries to himself to summon the pestilential insects.

Fangs and Toni kiss and everyone is completely BEAMING for unknown reasons (like why is POP’s so happy about this? Or Principal Weatherbee??) but Kevin and Moose are merely being polite. They are correct.

Kevin sings a song with Moose on keyboard at this wedding. Britta has a girlfriend! They’re so excited to be dancing. Britta & girlfriend are the only people that are making me happy during this number. That and the fact that Moose apparently plays keyboard. This makes me like Moose even more.

Percival has broken out of the vault with the help of insects. The first place he goes to is Thornhill, where he murders Nana Rose. She’s the eldest living first born child of Riverdale and he kills her. As the Eldest Daughter I am deeply offended that they’re altering the plague to be First Born CHILDREN and not First born SONS as in the original.

Listen.

LISTEN.

FIRST BORN DAUGHTERS HAVE IT HARD ENOUGH OK? Even Yaweh understood this and gave us a pass that time. Fuck you Percival!

Nana Rose RIP. Her last exhaled breath is red.

At the wedding, Veronica is very upset, watching Barchie dance. Tabitha approaches to comfort her. Veronica asks WHO IS ENDGAME. I’m shocked that she asks Archie And Me as an option for Endgame. Veronica actually tried to make the Endgame with Archie happen, but she couldn’t stand it. Why girl, WHY?

Tabitha knows! And is about to tell her!

But Archie dies.

Then die all the First Borns. Fangs (yay!). Toni (yay!). Unknown Serpents 1.2.3. Cheryl runs directly to Toni.

At the Bunker, Jughead wakes up. I love Jughead wakes up scenes, he’s so great at these. This is again a different variation from what he’s done before. This is being woken up after falling asleep expecting to be woken up by an unwelcome visitor. Jughead has flashlight at the ready (for some reason he didn’t light all his usual candles!).

His unwelcome visitor is HIMSELF! He shouts at himself to turn around. Other Jughead glares meanly at him, but our Jughead starts to expire, under the curious and not very concerned gaze of Other Jughead.

At the cursed wedding where both Toni and Fangs are dead, Betty weeps over only Archie, and nobody went to Sunday school because they all forget that it was THE FIRSTBORN SONS that died, and shouldn’t have affected the women, but I suppose Percival hates women and he upgraded just for us. (I am taking this very personally.)

Everyone names their older sibling (Hermosa for Veronica, Jason for Cheryl) but nobody cares about Heather so she doesn’t say anything. Kevin doesn’t say who his older sibling is and nobody asks about that either. Or Moose. And Baby Anthony is still alive somehow.

The only person who gives a care about Jughead is Tabitha, who runs as fast as she can on super high heels and a tight dress. Betty, Cheryl, and Kevin all simply absolutely utterly do not give a shit. Wow. This is a truly lonely life that Jughead Jones lives. Goddamn.

Heather mentions that they should call on Sabrina the necromancer.

#tw harry potter mention #riverdale is the most catholic show on television #jabitha #anti tangs #anti toni topaz #riverdale season 6 #riverdale opinion #Riverdale s6 #riverdale recap #riverdale episode recap

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