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variousqueerthings · 1 year ago

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This is what happens when you travel alone for too long

It's A Town Called Mercy, also known as "the one people say is super duper good in season 7" or "oh it's V for Vendetta but a Western"

and... yeah it's pretty good. I feel like it's one I cannot help comparing to other stories like it, and I'm not sure if it manages as much as they do, but I'm going to sit with it for a bit, and in the meantime! Ranking!

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 10/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored): 3/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 8/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 5/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 4/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 7/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 5/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 10/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 4/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 3/10

FULL RATING: 59/100 (if I can count….)

it's the politics that got this one. that and... the Ponds are still just kinda there this season. and other stuff. ah well, it's not terrible, on the whole

OBJECTIFICATION: Listen, there is none. not an off-colour joke, not an ogle, not a strange costume choice

there's not a lot of women in this story generally, Amy is kind of the only one who matters, and this one little girl who's in two scenes and doesn't have any lines, but I think that's something we'll get to later on when discussing this

PLOT-POINT: Eh, Amy doesn't really matter so much in this, apart from the scenes where she calls out the Doctor, which isn't really her, so much as him. it's not even a complaint as such, but I do still wonder... if this is a sign that maybe her story should have ended in The God Complex, since we're three episodes into s7 and she's not got much to do for her own story

COMPLEXITY: it's a good setup, town in the Wild West, beset by a gunslinger from space, because they're harbouring an alien war criminal who has since been repenting by healing their sick and bettering their lives generally

it's there to open the doors to discussions on morality

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: ah soooo, there's stuff here about the Doctor, subtextually, and I appreciate that it didn't do what God Complex did and spell it out so much (even though God Complex is still The episode of all time for this era)

the alien the Doctor has to choose to protect or throw to the gunslinger killed a lot of people in order to stop a war -- okay wait, before I go more into that as "see, like the Doctor," I have a question. has the show added the lore that it's the Doctor that killed the Timelords yet? because I don't think that comes up until later

we have last of the Timelords, we have the stuff at End Of Time where he sends Rassilon/Gallifrey back, but I think... that the Doctor pressed a big button and they all died is the 50th anniversary, no?

point being, one can begin to have a little wonder if this works for oneself or not, in terms of lore. 2005 nu!who established all the Timelords are dead, so far so good, End Of Time the Doctor sends the Timelords back to die, because allowing the Time War out would kill everyone, okay, the Doctor killed everyone... is an interesting thing I haven't thought much about until this moment. and then later on ofc (Chibnall era) we're getting the Doctor is in fact the most special Time Lord, the OG who through experiments gave the others time travel and was then force regenerated and had their memory wiped

it's an interesting thing, all this lore... it adds a lot of baggage to a story about a loser alien who's just out to experience the Universe (and who in the nu!who era is a war survivor with PTSD). in the classic!who series the Doctor is already an outsider, because the other Timelords think they're a fucking weirdo (simplification), and while I think -- biased because my era -- that nu!who made a good choice to have the Time War, so that it could strip away some lore and gradually re-introduce it to a new audience, perhaps we're getting... a teensy bit unwieldy here, in terms of who the Doctor is

that is more of a question to myself than an assertion. in any case, in this episode, war criminal, doing penance, nothing is too heavy-handed in playing into the Doctor that one cannot take it as one wants to, arguably the more obvious thing is the Doctor saying "today I honour the victims first, his, the Master's, the Daleks," which is fun, considering the last time we met the Master, the Doctor was desperately trying to get him to stay, because well... last of their species + the Master and the Doctor are Some Kinda Way about each other, so it's considering the fact that when the Doctor tries to hold an "everyone's lives have equal importance" morality constantly, this has had adverse effects on... victims of violence (especially with regards to the Master), and being the judge on this is no good, but also who is the Doctor to judge who deserves to die, etc.

there's also a question about the Doctor travelling alone (Amy says this) becoming more ruthless in exacting things like punishment

COMPANIONS MATTER: well sort oooof, Amy is mostly there to give another point of view to the Doctor's, especially with relation to "can i say that some people need to die," but I'm not convinced that couldn't have been done with someone else in the story, perhaps by refocusing the importance of the child, since there's that whole VO that's talking about her great-grandmother who was there... idk, they're not... really doing much in the story beyond that, especially Rory (who seems kind of fine with them sending this guy out for execution, and that is never explored)

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: nah, I think this episode did relatively well on having this be quite a Doctor-focused episode, without making the Doctor solve everything (or indeed... anything)

there's this bit that Jex the war criminal say: Looking at you Doctor is like looking into a mirror. There’s rage there like me, guilt like me, solitude, everything but the nerve to do what needs to be done. Thank the gods my people weren’t relying on you to save them

and I can see that's meant to be a bit of an Anti-Doctor moment -- the Doctor is not the great saviour that so many previous episodes have set them up to be in this era, the Doctor is a hypocrite, a coward, etcetc.

IIIII am not sure if.... oof, this is subjective. the idea of this as a continuity of exploring the Doctor's inability to save everyone, and need to be in control of situations, and "honouring the victims" there's just something about this episode that doesn't quite emotionally land for me, and I will continue to try and figure out what. the point being, it's meant to be a strong character piece, but I'm not sure it manages it

I'm also highly dubious in an episode that's exploring the Doctor's morality and what he's all about, about why the Doctor never asks the victim's name or background or... just anything really. but we'll get to that in politics

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: here's some of the "crux" of why I'm not sure it manages it, and it's more to do with "previous Doctor Who episodes of this era," than classic!who

in the sense of continuity of emotional journey. I think it's that seasons 1-specials had one long clear arc, one can pinpoint on the whole why the Doctor goes from s1ep1 to The End Of Time. and I'm not convinced that this episode works in this era, because I don't see that same arc in this era

maybe Twelve's era, from what I've heard of it, which deals with a lot of repercussions of having gone too far with things and not knowing if they're actually doing good on the whole, etc.

the main "big" arcs of this era have been 1. the relationship between the Doctor and Amy, a woman whose life he changed forever due to meeting her as a child and breaking a promise to her, which affected her entire upbringing and bent her towards the Doctor in an unhealthy way 2. the relationship between the Doctor and River Song, who is Amy's child and was kidnapped after being born and "brainwashed" into wanting to kill him, only to fall in love, but also if one takes this idea to its actual natural conclusion in conjunction with point the first, the Doctor's continued influence on Amy Pond continuing to be disruptive to the point that her child's entire life is even more (in fact solely one might say) in orbit around the Doctor, and never has the chance to break free from that destructive influence 3. some shit about a prophecy and a question and blabla, that has about zero emotional weight

there haven't really been stories about the Doctor's morality, so much as the Doctor's far more personal relationships, again The God Complex did this soooo well by introducing Rita as a possible companion and her rejecting the Doctor's whole schtick

so while technically this episode is fine as concept, I don't think it's grounded in an emotional continuity, which is a shame. give it to Twelve! watch Capaldi have these emotions!

“SEXINESS”: can you believe, a whole episode without a single sexy joke? wow, a rarity.

INTERNAL WORLD: so it's a Western town, it doesn't neeeed to be that fleshed out I guess, but I do feel like I wish the townsfolk were a bit more than just quaint set-dressing

we hear about Jex the war criminal's influence on this town, but we don't really see it

the Doctor even says to the gunslinger "this is their home, not the backdrop for your revenge," but it doesn't feel like anything but a stereotypical Western township, which is a shame

POLITICS: HA okay the other point where I am not 100% sure about this episode. it has good intentions, is my first point, it's not like it sets out to make conservative points or needlessly sexually harass Queen Nefertiti (sighs at prev episode)

buuuuuuut I just rewatched V for Vendetta a couple of weeks ago, as is the ritual on Guy Fawkes Night, and it's a very similar story, although ofc in V for Vendetta they're experimented on for far more nefarious purposes than "winning a war"... or are they. because that is my point, and maybe it's a pedantic one that a single 45min episode couldn't possibly have the time for, which is that a society/government that allows this sort of violence is "ends justify the means" and these types of governments are always at war in their heads

the idea of a neat divide between peace-time politics which are free to be nice, and war-time politics which necessitate the hard choices is simply not reality, and so the conceit that there was simply nothing else he could do but experiment on people and turn them into killing machines, it's... on shaky grounds

and it's kind of dependent on those grounds to work, because not only is this guy now repenting by doing good, the ends justified the means. they ended the war! millions were saved! (now where have I heard that before about an atom bomb?)

on top of that, the gunslinger isn't really as well-developed. who was he before he was experimented on? what did being forced to kill do to him? did he have friends on the experimenting tables die in front of him? who is he?

it's all well and good to say "but we don't do this Doctor, every life matters, including the war criminals" but why is the war criminal so well-developed, and the gunslinger -- the victim -- not at all?

those grounds are getting shakier by the Minute

why is this story not about the victim? why does the Doctor not go to hear the victim, not in terms of figuring out whether he should give over the war criminal, but just to be kind?

there is one scene in it where the gunslinger enters a church, sees a child and leaves again, because there's a neat thing in this that the gunslinger Will Not Kill Civilians, but that's such an interesting thing that's under-explored too. what if the gunslinger had to change his programming, because the original maybe didn't make a distinction between "enemy" and "civilian" (after all in these kinds of "wars" every person is an enemy, including the children)

what if the programming fights back when he's really upset and Jex the war criminal realises that this is his fault? what if a child died in this episode... that's getting a bit messed up, but let's entertain it for a second? or a parent died protecting their child and the gunslinger has to run from the town to stop the programming -- the programming that's been forced on him through mutilation and experimentation and that violence can never be undone? what if this story was about the victim, and not about a repenting war criminal?

gunslinger, after Jex self-destructs: "He behaved with honour at the end. Maybe more than me"

DID HE???? He just felt bad really, you're the most trauma-inflicted character we've had on this show in some fucking time

so yeah, it's grounds are. shaaaaky. shaky shaky shaky the more you think about it

another minor thing is that none of the main driving characters had to be men, but there's five extra characters in this episode with lines and big-to-small arcs (marshall, jex, gunslinger, young boy, mayor-type) and everyone else is backdrop, which is just kind of... in your cool scifi Western all the women were silent? why did the little girl not get to speak?

FULL RATING: 59/100 (if I can count….)

It's a good concept, executed at the wrong time in the story, and executed very clumsily

the good parts relate to the concept itself, and not spending valuable time being massively sexist

the problem is that it's just not smart enough to explore what it's trying to explore, and it's such a heavy topic, it better know what it's doing or it'll fall flat on its face. I wish it had come at another time with better writing, because I really wish it was better

I also wish that people were more adventurous about writing women. two historical Moments this season and neither have been kind to women for different reasons

is it time for the Ponds to leave? we'll find out next episode (I say, like I don't know their arcs)

#im watching nu!who #im watching eleven who #a town called mercy #the measurement

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jugheadvarchoni · 2 months ago

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Ranking the Worst Riverdale relationships (romantic)

Just throwing it out there again, MY opinion here. A mix of boring, overrated ships, and genuinely toxic ones. If you disagree, that’s fine. This isn’t meant to hurt anyone’s feelings or belittle anyone else’s opinion.

5. Cheryl & Archie, Jughead & Ethel

I wanted to include this type of relationship, which is pairings that were never actually couples. I honestly can’t stand either of these. Both shared “kisses” that had very unromantic circumstances and were also just chemistry-less. Thank god the writers never persued either of these!

4. Hiram & Hermione

I can’t recall any moment of genuine love between them tbh. They were always trying to out-manipulate each other, cheating, trying to kill each other. In terms of the adult relationships, I think they’re the most toxic.

3. Archie & Grundy

I’m not even sure I want to ever consider this pedophilic shit a real relationship, but it deserves a spot on here regardless. It got… significant screentime, mostly painted in a bad light, but… Just horrific. Grundy deserved what she got maybe idk. Archie was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD, like?!?!?!

2. Betty & Jughead

Putting aside the fact that they got WAY too much focus in comparison to the other characters, I genuinely never felt that much chemistry. I know they were CRAZY popular tho, and something obviously struck a cord for a lot of people. I just wasn’t one of them lol. They never seemed stable imo, too many breakups and cheating and makeups. Which, you could argue is the case for a LOT of couples on the show, but for me, there is nothing good about them to counteract that. They were cute-ish in the beginning, but starting S2, I just kinda started dreading their scenes. So much time spent on them, so many other characters and ships suffered for THEM. Not only do I find them the most overrated ship on television, but too many BH fans I’ve interacted with were just toxic, in the worst of ways. To the point where other actresses were harassed horribly online. Terribly overused & boring ship, with too many terrible fans. I can’t even watch their scenes in S3/S4 specifically without rolling my eyes at some point.

1. Toni & Fangs

On the flip side, we have a ship that had a total of 5 fans. Choosing to make Toni & Fangs a couple because Vanessa & Drew are friends was their first mistake. That doesn’t mean they have romantic chemistry because these two certainly didn’t. Their second mistake was having them raise baby Anthony as a couple, when it was supposed to be Kevin & Fangs. Neither character grew when they were together. Their entire relationship hinged on Anthony, to the point where he was the only reason Toni proposed to Fangs. S6 is Toni’s worst season imo, and Fangs/Anthony is the main reason for that. Chemistry-less, pointless, intensely unpopular and unexciting. Terrible partners, terrible parents, toxic to the max. This ship was an absolute waste of space. If they wanted to give Toni a midgame ship on her way back to Cheryl, it should’ve been a new character, not Fangs. I’m still baffled that they wasted Toni for a season and half with this crap. Only to have Fangs (rightfully) share almost no scenes with Toni in S7 and for Anthony to just disappear haha. POINTLESS!

#riverdale #riverdalians #riverdalians unite #follow me riverdalians #archie andrews #jughead jones #cheryl blossom #toni topaz #betty cooper #ethel muggs #fangs fogarty #hermione lodge #hiram lodge #geraldine grundy #worst relationships

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riverdale-retread · 1 year ago

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Riverdale S7 E13 (Chapter 130) The Crucible

[Weird little translation note from an international viewer: There are apparently some titles that the Netflix Korea translator refuses to translate into Korean for the international release, and some they will translate. The Crucible is one where the title is sounded out phonetically, which is very funny because the Arthur Miller play actually has a well known Korean title. The other deemed-untranslatable episode titles were Peep Show, Dirty Dancing, Hoop Dreams, Halloween 2, and After the Fall)]

The music is all jazzy film noir-ish at the opening of this episode as we slowly zoom in on Jughead in his very luxurious train car. The sheer beauty of the innards of this thing take me by surprise every time. Jughead is in suspenders, with what for him is sort of his Little Black Dress - a white t shirt under a button up shirt with suspenders over it. He looks upset and wan.

How does a fire start? he asks, or rather, types.

The fire might start with the English teacher, who has thus far paid Jughead’s actual career as a writer zero attention whatsoever (but does Jughead even go to school anymore other than to yell at people about milk or to get yelled at by the principal in the office?) but is cultivating Archie’s gifts as a poet (by letting him come and sit in the classroom to scribble in semi privacy?). It might begin with Veronica Lodge, looking kewpie doll adorable in her perfect hair (that my very valuable mutual taught me was a wig! I somehow never thought about it being a wig!), startled to find a tall clean shaven man smiling down at her in her elevator at home. It took me a long time to realize this was GLEN.

HI GLEN.

Glen without facial hair and in 1950s get up looks disconcertingly like a young Harrison Ford and goddamn you Roberto I refuse to find Glen hot on principle so fuck off.

The fire may begin with Betty coming home to find that her phone has been confiscated (by her mother, most likely). Betty has an ugly little ornamental bear on her bedside table. Is that meaningful?

Or maybe the fire starts in a classroom, where Betty and Kevin are acting out some scene from Tennessee Williams, the themes of which are “Crisis in the South/ Mendacity/ Nihilism.”

The only play they could be doing is of course Cat On a Hot Tin Roof which … this is the one time a Riverdale reference to a classical literature work is actually spot on and it’s making me feel very sour. The teacher sings their praises, calling their performance better than what she saw on Broadway.

(Also scratch what I said earlier about Jughead going to school - he’s there in class in the back, two rows behind Betty). Evelyn looks very pissy about this whole situation. Why am I being made to identify with Evelyn?

Principal Weatherbee bursts in. As a repressed closeted homosexual in denial about his feelings for his best friend and coworker he is likely to be very triggered by Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He just opens the door with “That’s enough.” He has Sheriff Keller and Clifford Blossom in tow (but not Werthers). In front of all her students, the teacher is led out like she’s done something terrible. Wearing an extremely campy red velvet jacket trimmed in black satin, Clifford Blossom steps into the class to stand right in front of a poster of Oscar Wild. I just now noticed that his hair isn’t red in this. It’s blonde. Why is it blonde?

The mayor takes it upon himself to tell the kids that the English teacher has been fired. Their new teacher is going to be - of all people - Penelope Blossom. Atonal demon music plays as Penelope saunters in right on cue - which means she just stood out there in the all while Featherhead did his bursting in and escorting out - wearing a necklace that looks like it’s made of black scarab beetles. Her outfit is the color inverse of her husband's - black with red color accents. The Blossom children have no idea what is happening but they know it’s really bad, giving each other “Are you seeing this?” type of looks. Archie was the only student to actually speak up in defense of the teacher, and he continues to do so now that the bad news has been announced.

Penelope Blossom just has so much presence! Can’t we have more of her and less of the very boring Clifford Blossom?

Archie continues to be the one to use his privilege for the good (unlike say, Julian Blossom or Kevin Keller, whose fathers are directly involved in this debacle), wanting to know what exactly is going on.

Mrs. Thornton is accused of being a communist! Dun Dun Dunnn~ Penelope intones that “The Red Menace has come to Riverdale.” Right on cue, Evelyn turns around to take a look at the known Lavender Menace in the classroom - Cheryl- as Cheryl realizes that this is not going to go away easily and already feels exhausted by life.

After the class, the core seven (this is um, NO JUGHEAD, but Toni, Cheryl, Clay, Archie, Kevin, Betty and Veronica) convene in the student lounge to try to figure out what is going on. Betty wants to know if Archie can shed more light, since he’s been getting special tutoring from Mrs. Thornton. Archie is in the closet about his poetry, so he sounds sus as he says that Mrs Thornton just isn’t like that. Veronica’s chest ribbon is HUGE and makes her look very very tiny. Cheryl says that there must’ve been some sort of cause, but Veronica says that the Red Scare in Hollywood was terrible. She starts explaining the McCarthy Era to the people who are still in 1955 which is so weird, because the televised hearings started in 1954, so this is another instance when the “1955” of this show has nothing to do with the real “1955” except for the part where Fred Andrews died in Korea.

Anyway, Kevin (because of course he does) staunchly defends his father (indirectly) by assuming that nobody would do anything bad to anyone in America unless they deserved it. (Unlike say, when your father hires a prostitute to force you into having het sex and things like that). Veronica disagrees.

Jughead does not give a hoot what happened to the English teacher. Ethel doesn’t either. They are off looking to celebrate the publication of the comic that Featherstone decided to publish last episode. The friendzoning continues - Jughead calls it “your” first comic to which Ethel corrects, “our” first comic. But her brown checked skirt matches his brown checked jacket! The vendor, who is a crusty old man, says he no longer carries “Pit of the Perverse” at all because it’s “unamerican smut.” All around him are faces of pretty girls smiling invitingly out from covers with titles like “Flash Bulb” and “Women of Today.” The man even yells at the pair to go away.

At Thornton House, Cheryl is being interrogated by her parents about her unamerican public kiss with Toni at the Halloween Party. Red Menace, Lavender Menace (which is a Betty Friedan phrase, the homophobia of which was one the major failings of the initial Second Wave liberal white feminist movement in America) - it’s all the same to Clifford Blossom. He wants it stamped out.

The thing is, the Blossoms are scary, abusive people but I weirdly admire them (no please, hear me out) for not being hypocrites. When they say they want to ‘stamp out’ unamerican (™) activities, they start by torturing their own kid.

Cheryl also has a spine of steel. Though visibly frightened (and fully aware of her father’s homicidal impulses and callousness about his children) Cheryl says she will not be naming names. She calls him a jackal. Bravo.

Sadly, they already have a list of names compiled for the targeting. What they want is for Cheryl to just corroborate. This will allow her to ‘redeem’ herself.

The names on this list are: Cheryl Blossom (as NUMBER 1), Toni, Kevin, Clay, and then a bunch of people we don’t know - Chris Henderson, John Maclean, Jessical Leetola, Connor Rielley, Colin Ellis, and Kathleen Ross.) Cheryl absolutely refuses, except Clifford has her number - he threatens the only thing she cares about, the Vixens. “Anything but that Daddy!” Cheryl pleads, but she is not granted clemency.

At the same time, Veronica comes home to find Hiram Lodge is in the apartment. The number of ways and things that Hiram lies about in his conversations with Veronica are truly very toxic. He says he missed her, to which Veronica is unmoved, so then he bribes her with a Faberge egg, to which she wants to know who he fucked around with on her mom. Infidelity is something he’s very willing to own up to. This toxic dad also knows his daughter’s main weakness - she is very lonely So he says that he wants to meet her friends as he offers her a hug. This, she can’t resist.

The next day, Veronica brings Hiram to school like it’s show and tell. She’s dressed in the most demure, matronly outfit I’ve seen her in to date, complete with a matching pearl necklace-and-bracelet set. So these are her group of friends yes, but like, it’s funny how she’s dated, kissed or wooed or was wooed by the majority of her friend circle. (Betty, Clay, Archie, Julian) leaving out only Kevin, Cheryl and Toni.

Kevin is so horny and shameless. Ugh.

Cheryl pointedly says that the first season of Oh Mija was the best one (hahaha) because it went downhill after that. Featherhead has asked Hiram to be a guest lecturer (because I guess even he knows Penelope Blossom may not actually want to teach the kids anything), especially because this is monologue day at English class.

Julian Blossom is up first!

He does the Hamlet To Be or Not to Be soliloquy. Apparently neither Kevin nor Archie knew that this was a speech about contemplating suicide. Hiram is weirdly macho about it, asking of Julian is a man, because Hamlet was a man. I mean, Hamlet was a man but his whole problem was being emasculated, I thought? He doesn’t really achieve any of his goals, has his place in succession stolen from him by his uncle and does literally nothing about it for months and months other than dither, kill the wrong person, and drive poor Ophelia to suicide.

For some reason, Hiram giving Julian what sound like pretty sound corrections to the way he’s delivering a speech that’s very challenging to sound convincing makes everyone chuckle throughout. Is this supposed to be in reaction to like, Hiram’s star power? They’re just delighted and nervous that a real life sitcom actor is giving their Julian Blossom an acting lesson?

After the class, Betty goes to see the principal, who tells her that the Blue and Gold is going to be defunded with the loss of Mrs Thornton, who was the faculty advisor. Featherhead has already made up his mind, so Betty charges into the newspaper room and liberates the typewriter there.

This is very interesting, that first Archie and now Betty are acquiring the instruments and drive for writing now that they never ever talk to Jughead Jones.

Cheryl has gathered the three other known homosexuals that were on the list into the music room, to update them and to freak out about potentially losing the Vixens. She doesn’t feel the need to inform anyone she isn’t personally friends with. She needs to know who sold her out. Who stands to gain the most from getting her off the Vixens?

Evelyn!

So she confronts Evelyn immediately. I love Evelyn and how Evil she is. She’s so calm and reserved and coiled and hateful. Cheryl is protesting entirely way too much, which gives Evelyn the upper hand.

In the principal’s office, Featherhead wants to know if Mrs. Thornton was trying to “indoctrinate” Archie, who doesn’t know what that word means. Werther says that civil disobedience and revolution is happening in Cuba and can’t happen here. I mean, it wasn’t necessarily due to Mrs. Thornton that Archie started that unionized coup against Clifford Blossom, but I don’t think either man knows about that.

Veronica is doing a full show and tell of her life, bringing Hiram to the movie theater. The one he wanted to raze and make into a parking lot. He tells her it’s tremendous, which is so insincere,but Veronica bless her is just too lonely to see it. As soon as Hiram is off to see the afternoon movie, in comes Glen, who wants to know what Veronica’s relationship is with Hiram. I see that even though he looks like Harrison Ford when clean cut, he’s still dumb as a bag of bricks because he did not realize that Veronica Lodge was Hiram Lodge’s daughter.

At Pep Comics, Ethelhead tell of their recent misadventures to Fieldstone. He already knows that his comics are being rejected, and that it’s an emergency. He’s very upset. They’re getting graphic hatemail. They’re going to “hunker down and weather this storm.” I like Fieldstone for how adorable he finds Ethel. Everything she says makes him laugh or call her Freckles or Girl Genius. Ethel wants a copy of her newly published work. Then Ethelhead, without having to even say anything, just read each other’s minds and take bundles to sell on their own cognizance.

At home, Betty is soliciting anonymous submissions to her magazine, “The Teenage Mystique.” …. I mean. Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and I am not ok with a seminal work of feminism being consumed in this way by this piece of pop media. Betty Cooper uses “The Girl Next Door” as her moniker, shoving her invitation sheet into every single locker.

Now that he doesn’t have a quiet classroom to write poetry in, Archie has to try to eke out some space, much like Jane Austen or Emily Dickinson, to work on his writing. He flips out when Uncle Fucking Frank barges in, demanding to know what he is up to.

Uncle Frank and his obsession with Archie is very disturbing. Also does he still live in this house? Does Mary just lock herself into the master bathroom and sleep in the bathtub at night? Anyway, when Archie who acted like he’d been jerking it to hardcore gay porn eventually says that he was working on his writing, Uncle Frank says he came in to police Archie’s sexuality again. But the scary interrogation of the afternoon has definitely taught Archie what “indoctrination” means. It’s not sufficiently heterosexual of him, as a man, to write poetry for any purpose than to make some girl swoon and “get with” him. Except given the events of the past season, they don’t really want any girl to “get with” him either. No peep shows through windows between houses like 5 feet apart with Betty. And if he had impregnated Cheryl they were both going to have to get married. So the repression that is being laid on Archie is just as contradictory and repressive as what is being laid on Betty (except she’s much more abnormal about how horny it seems to make her) . He can’t be insufficiently straight and manly, but being ultra straight and manly (i.e. succeeding in impregnating a girl) would also be a disaster.

Plus.

PLUS.

The very single, very childless, only works with minor teen boys Uncle Fucking Frank trying to control Archie’s outward behavior to keep him on the “straight and narrow” is fully ridiculous. I hate Frank so much. Why oh Why is Mary considered too inept to mother Archie, when she goes out of her way to cockblock Beronica’s kiss by essentially haranguing a doorman to let her break into someone else’s apartment??

At the Pembroke, Veronica wants to know why the FBI is following Hiram. Hiram says he’s being investigated as a possible communist, because he went to Cuba the year before to buy cigars. Another lie comes out before he actually says the truth - the lie was that he came to Riverdale to hide out. The truth is that he needs Veronica to lie for him to the government. She balks because lying to the government scares her. He pretends there’s an out for her - he’s “meeting with a lawyer” but in the end he trusts she’ll throw herself into the fire for him.

The next day, Glen is waiting for her at school. Glen says that he’s been assigned to her, and that someone else has followed Hiram to NYC. Veronica wants to see proof, to which Glen says to get into the car. She does!

Archie sees Veronica get into the car, and she sees him as they drive by. Of course, the place they go to is the diner. Glen shows Veronica photos of Hiram at the same table in Cuba as “Fidel Mastro.” The person that Veronica is upset to be seeing in the photo is the blonde lover at Hiram’s side.

Archie has tracked down his English teacher by looking her up in the phone book. She is packing up to leave, moving to Greendale, to be a library there as a volunteer. Apparently that River makes all the difference - it refused admittance to Julian Blossom, dunking him and making him come out the other end of it as someone who is an ally to Cheryl for one. Mrs Thornton says really contradictory things - that there’s a “job waiting for me” but also that it’s “volunteer.” OK but ma’am what will you live on?

No matter.

When Archie expresses his confusion about the state of the world, his teacher hands him a copy of The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Archie says he was going to do Biff’s monologue from Death of a Salesman, but now he’s going to pick something out of The Crucible.

OMG is this why Jughead picked the name Biff for Archie when they run away together in Season 3? The key bit of that monologue is this: “And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is!” Biff is saying this to Willy, the salesman.

The teacher gives him a benediction, that strangely sounds exactly like what Hiram said earlier in the day to Julian: “Words have power.” She keeps telling him he’s “more than” a Biff type (when Jughead in the OG timeline reduced him exactly to it??). They give each other a hug of farewell.

Meanwhile, Ethelhead are running a brisk, literally under the table business, selling Pep Comic books, sitting back to back. I love their partnership. Jughead totally acts like he’s selling contraband weapons or something. He’s so dorky, I love him. he feels like he’s being such a badass, while Ethel just likes this entire exercise.

At the Dark Room, Cheryl is having another panic attack about potentially getting kicked out of the Vixens. The other gays have come up with a plan, to ape lavender marriages. Conveniently for them there’s one white and black person in each homosexual pairing, which obviates the need for a race discussion should it ever come up. Cheryl gravely says that going in the closet like that seems to betray Toni’s principles. Toni, who as we’ve seen all season doesn’t really have principles, lies again. Instead of saying, I want to hunker down and survive to see another day (like the much more honest Fieldstone), Toni says she’s allowing this charade for “all our sakes.”

Archie finds The Crucible extremely riveting.

Veronica is sadly mulling things over in her apartment, with liquor. Hiram comes in late from New York to say that his attempt to buy his way out of his problem did not work out. He needs her to commit perjury on his behalf. Veronica confronts him with the fact that his trip to Cuba was in service of an affair with a Kelly (the name of the actors’ IRL wife, which was a very cute reference). When Veronica sounds unwilling to acquiesce to his demands, Hiram reverts to villainy which is his true form and threatens her, saying that it wouldn’t be a favor for HIM if she commits perjury - it would be self protective for her, because he would lose everything if the story came out that he was in violation of his morality clause. Veronica shoots back that she already went through the experience of banishment and life in exile. She’s so lonely, as I’ve said, and she’s genuinely hurt that her initial intuition (Hiram would not show up unannounced and play all nicey nice unless there was a direct personal benefit she could do at her cost for him) was correct. “What you should be asking me for is mercy!” she cries, before storming off.

The next day, the Lavender Marriages storm the halls in patented Cheryl SloMo (™) which I don’t remember seeing much this season. Evelyn, wearing an appropriately lavender cardigan, is very annoyed by this workaround that the four homosexuals have found. Apparently, their queerness was an open secret, which is very very weird to me. Midge for one seems disappointed with Cheryl, who refuses to look at her. But everyone else is equally perturbed by these two pairings.

Archie is very nervous about trying to give his monologue from The Crucible. Penelope Blossom is teaching the class, sort of, I mean - she’s dressed up for it and in the classroom, standing like a Dior New Deal costume model in a very red dress. The thing is, she doesn’t seem to know what The Crucible is, which is surprising, and even more surprising, she didn’t insist on cross checking what the students were going to be performing before letting them.

Suddenly Archie is giving the John Proctor speech and uh -

I -

oh help-

I don’t want to be here.

This is the most grating thing I’ve ever seen on Riverdale and this includes a lot of the hideous singing and dancing and poorly transposed musical numbers and so on. I get very annoyed when shows do this, having actors “play” people who “play” at “acting.” It’s so self referential and masturbatory, sort of like how when movie people make movies about making movies they act like all the normal “This is what happens on a job” stuff is the most momentous thing ever and simultaneously they refuse to deal with the actual documented problems of their industry that are unique to just themselves

Ok so as far as that speech goes, John Proctor at the end of his rope, giving the thesis statement of the play etc, Archie (and KJ Apa’s) delivery is fine. He is doing all the correct actor-y things with his voice, going from screaming (but not to harsh) to suddenly dropping in volume (but not to the point of being inaudible), trembling with emotion but not enough to obscure diction, and his eyes also fill with tears but not enough to make his sinuses get sloppy. It’s all… fine. But this level of sincerity completely and high emotionality goes completely against the bouncy surreality of everything that S7 (and all the seasons before) have relied on to be watchable.

This is how Riverdale loses even by winning. KJ Apa works everything he knows how to do as an actor (activating tear ducts at will, flexible eyebrows, vocal chord range deployment, breathing techniques, working outside his native accent) so that Archie the character gives a professional-grade burst of emotion for his monologue class at school, and yet, because it just does not fit with anything Riverdale has ever done, it completely shatters the immersion in the narrative for me and all I am left with is

CRINGE.

But anyway. the power of Arthur Miller’s words supposedly gives Cheryl some sort of realization, because she marches down to the principal’s office to face off against her father, the principal and Werthers. She tells the three men that she will never cooperate with them, and has a wonderful moment:

“I, Cheryl Blossom, hereby and willingly, end my stewardship of the River Vixens.”

I really, really needed this palate cleanser after what they made Archie do. Thank god for Cheryl.

She also tells them of the Lavender Marriage workaround, before joining the gay kids of Riverdale club. “Clearly, we don’t live in a just world,” she says, bumping shoulders with Kevin.

The thing is, this feels like a course correction to the plotline that lead me to hate Kevin - that is, he was in the closet for real, lying to himself and to Betty and everyone else about what the hell he was up to. With this lavender marriage situation though, the show seems to be positing that there is such a thing as a ‘good and useful’ closet. If you construct it and climb into it yourself - and everyone sort of kind of knows you’re lying - then it’s fine. (Is it?) And I must still ask - WHY IS IT CHERYL THAT HAS TO GIVE ANYTHING UP? Because think about it - Kevin nor Clay nor Toni have had to give up a single one of their hobbies or group affiliations. It’s just Cheryl that had to give up something she held to a religious level of importance.

Why is Kevin not expected to confront his father about being a lackey to the mayor? Oh right, because even Betty finds his relationship with Clay ‘dreamy.’ [Vomit]

Cheryl says she’s happy to have even a small amount of space on earth to live her truth. Toni hopes Evelyn breaks her neck cheerleading.

Veronica approaches Archie to say that it was quite the speech. She gives him a kiss on the cheek, and then they kiss each other. Archie is very surprised, but not displeased. Veronica looks very serious.

Ok.

Ok SHOW?

FUCKING SHOW ME ANOTHER BERONICA KISS PLEASE.

Back at the diner, an Asian boyscout (or whatever they’re called) is asking for Pit of the Perverse #32 . Jughead has been marking up 10 cent issues all the way up to a quarter for his sales. The boyscout turns out to be a plant, and this is a raid. Keller is doing this with his time. The jig is up, so they have to turn over their stash to the cops. It’s very funny to me that Jughead completely expected to be SHOT for selling the comic books - he was this close to demanding that they not shoot.

Jughead has Ethel at his home again, and the two of them celebrate with milkshakes and a “god bless America toast” about the money they’ve made.

At the Pembroke, Hiram and Veronica are having dinner together (Cooked by who I wonder?). Hiram is trying to ingratiate himself to his clearly not very happy daughter, but all he can offer is his own show (“A new episode of Oh Mija!”). This is absolutely the wrong thing to say, and Veronica takes off in a huff.

The next day at school, Archie is taking things out of his locker. He seems to only have images of male baseball players on the inside - a cover of Batter, and a picture of someone pitching a ball but somehow also called the Bulldogs. Just then, a woman asks him if he’s Archie Andrews.

And it’s Geraldine Grundy, this time as an English teacher. She’s wearing a white cardigan with gold embroidery that I think is supposed to have some sort of angelic effect but I am too consumed with the question WHY THE FUCK IS SHE HERE to really be persuaded. She’s taking over for Mrs. Thornton. Archie looks very smitten immediately. Grundy claims to have attended Mt. Holyoke together with Mrs. Thornton and in the name of Emily Dickinson, I banish thee! Shoo! Away with you! So she seems to appreciate Archie’s poetry from what she’s heard from Mrs. Thornton. Archie wants to keep things discreet because his uncle hates the idea of his writing poetry. But then Grundy ruins it by whispering “IT CAN BE OUR LITTLE SECRET” like a total creeper, then she dangles her husband, an alleged poet.

In the Principal’s office, the hideous white men are going over their loot of confiscated comic books. There’s so many of these. Werther’s is very pissed off. There’s something about his presence that renders his lover (sorry, I just keep interjecting my headcanon about this but otherwise their relationship makes no sense to me) Featherhead completely mute. I don’t care about them enough to go all the way back and check, but I feel like at some point Werther’s dominance became such that Featherhead just nods and mimes with his face when Werthers is speaking. Werthers wants to do something he calls “Full measures.” Kevin’s dad makes like Kevin and is spineless.

Meanwhile, in English class, Veronica is doing King Lear. She’s giving Cordelia’s refusal speech. The person who understands exactly what Veronica is going through, with an overbearing, criminal father, is Cheryl. Betty is sad because Veronica is clearly sad, but it’s Cheryl that understands her. While this excellence is going on, Grundy is fucking making eyes at Archie, who reciprocates because he doesn’t ever not.

Later that day, Veronica brings an affidavit with the correct set of lies to her father. She says she did it for her mother, then starts laying out conditions. She wants her father to tell her mother that he’s cheating on her. She also wants the title to the Pembroke. The way this father daughter pair constantly fight over real estate, and the supreme importance of paperwork to their relationship is an odd constant. I have issues with Cordelia - The great tragedy of King Lear, to me, isn’t that King Lear has evil daughters. It’s that King Lear is a deeply stupid man who favored the child who most directly inherited his deep stupidity, the extremely stupid Cordelia. I am immensely satisfied that Veronica finds a very Goneril/Regan type of solution to her Cordelia problem. Good for her. There’s a reason I love her so much.

At the post office, Betty collects a literal BAG of mail. Did post office rules in the US change sometime after the fifties? Because you can’t actually send things that are addressed to something like “The Girl Next Door.” The US Postal Service literally will not deliver if you give your addressee a title like that. Oh but I guess this is Riverdale, not the US of A? Or did Betty somehow manage to like, actually establish an LLC or something with the name “Girl Next Door”?!

Hermione has come home to the Pembroke literally the afternoon of the morning Hiram left, I guess. Veronica says as much. Hermione says that Oh Mija is going to shutter after “seven long seasons” because she is “ready for something new.” She has extremely nervous hands while she’s announcing this plan to Veronica, fidgeting with her gloves and twitching her fingers. I think she has to let out her feelings in this digital dance because the expressive muscles of her face do not move much at all. She also adds almost like an afterthought that she will be divorcing Hiram. Veronica seems not particularly perturbed by this news. She reacts like she’s Hermione’s older sister, rather than her daughter. “What will you do?” as in - how will you cope? But also What will you live on? and so forth. Hermione manipulates a promise to not have to spend Christmas by herself from Veronica, as though none of the rest of the season have actually happened.

What absolute assholes both Hiram and Hermione are. They both abandoned Veronica, banished her, locked her out of the house rendering her homeless on purpose in order to punish her for getting in the way of their parking lot real estate deal, but when the going gets tough, they both come to see her to demand her company, her fidelity and her services. And she gives it to them, because Veronica is second only to Jughead Jones as the most love-starved character on Riverdale. Poor baby.

Jughead gets to school the next day to fine that the whole student body is lined up with armfuls of comic books, trying to sell them to Werther. Dilton doesn’t see what the harm would be, but later we are shown. There is a cartoon Nazi style book burning which I would bet is taken shot for shot from Indiana Jones. Cheryl is standing in for the Nazi Elsa (which is so not fair to her but ok) crying tears over the destruction of free speech and art. The Riverdale Adventure Scouts stand in for the Indiana Jones Hitler Jugend.

#riverdale season 7 #riverdale episode 130 #riverdale 7x13 #riverdale s7 recap #riverdale s7 #riverdale episode recap

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sylvie-brett-two-ts · 10 months ago

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Do you think fan criticize Stella way harder than any other firefighter on the show? It just feels like any mistake she makes ends with people calling her a terrible person, Lieutenant, and wife. But if it’s any male character making those same mistakes fans will say it was a mistake. I won’t say that Stella is perfect because she obviously isn’t. She’s made her fair share of mistakes and even I sat there at times thinking “wtf stella”. It just feels like fans disregard everything every male character has done and continue to be hypocritical of Stella.

For example, that post you responded to about Stella being Boden’s favorite. She was wrong to get into that car and drive, no denying it. But saying she’s his only favorite is also wrong. Casey and Severide are my biggest examples. There have been countless times that Boden shows favoritism toward them and nobody seems to question it.

So full disclosure, the only full episodes I’ve seen since 10x05 are 10x22, 11x18, and 11x22. Otherwise, I’ve only kept up by watching clips, mostly just the Sylvie scenes.

With that being said, Stella is definitely criticized by fans more than all the male firefighters IMO. It’s particularly bad on Reddit, where some of the most misogynistic and vile things are said about her. It has unsurprisingly grown exponentially since she became a lieutenant. Gabby as a character is very heavily criticized (for good reason IMO), but I’m not sure if you classify her as a firefighter or paramedic. But most of the criticism is about her personally and not professionally.

Boden definitely has multiple favorites including Severide, Casey, and Gabby. Maybe it’s about them being officers, but I think it’s also just the main characters. It’s confusing though since Kara is 2nd billed, and was 3rd billed from S7-10x05, and Sylvie has been PIC since late S4.

#stella kidd #chief boden #sylvie brett #chicago fire

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martianbugsbunny · 2 years ago

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OUAT S4 Salt (But Constructively) (With Alternative Solutions)

That whole plot line in S4 of OUAT where the Charmings yeeted Maleficent’s baby is so stupid. Easily top 3 worst decisions the writers ever made.

If they wanted the interweaving between Lilly and Emma, then here’s a nifty lil solution: every time a Savior is born, a person of equal darkness has to be born as well, in order to keep balance in the universe. A Savior existing is an incredibly extraordinary thing to happen, so it’s logical that an extraordinary darkness might also have to exist. The show occasionally acts like light is the norm and darkness doesn’t belong in the same world in it, but that’s factually incorrect, as both dark and light magic do belong in the Enchanted Forest, it’s just that the heroes, through whom we see a lot of the story, have more of a taste for one than the other.

There are also ways to keep the tension between the Charmings and Maleficent without going against the Charmings’ previous characterization. Because, to be frank, this just doesn’t fit. They’re allowed to do some less-than-perfect things, but ruining the life of Maleficent’s infant is beyond the realm of plausibility.

Maybe there was a battle between Maleficent and the Charmings. Maleficent wanted to escape from the Enchanted Forest with Lilly before the Dark Curse was enacted, so she opened a portal but didn’t specify where to, and it opened to the Land Without Magic. The Charmings didn’t know if there was magic in the world she was trying to get to, so they wanted to keep her from leaving and potentially destroying another realm, but the egg fell through the portal on accident and Maleficent wasn’t able to follow.

Or, conversely, maybe Snow and Charming felt under threat by Maleficent, so they decided to send her specifically to the Land Without Magic, because she wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone there, and because they needed their energy free to focus on Regina. So they tried to send her through a portal, but the egg was sent through instead.

I just think it makes more sense to have the Charmings involved in the transportation of Lilly from the EF to the LWM, but in such a way that Mal blames them because she’s A) angry and B) as a villain likes to blame heroes for the things that go wrong in her life; and the Charmings blame themselves even though it’s not directly/entirely their fault because they are good people and they feel guilty about it. So then they’re still trying to keep what happened a secret, because they’re convinced that Emma will see things the same way they do, and Mal is still out to get them because she holds them responsible.

(Like, for Pete’s sake, the point of the Charmings isn’t that they’re heroes and everybody else are villains, the point is that they are good people, which just happens to lead to them being heroes because heroes are people who do good things. And also, villains are labelled villains not because they oppose heroes, but because they do bad things. Another issue with S4.)

Anyway, I really like the idea that Emma and Lilly are connected by magic, just not in the way the writers came up with. I think they were terribly uncreative, and I don’t understand the reasoning that says “Hey, these two characters are beloved, because they’re flawed but ultimately choose good and hope over everything else, so let’s make them do an incredibly terrible thing! That makes sense!”

Thank you for coming to my Theodore Talk. Don’t be surprised if you see more S4 salt from me in the future, because although I adore OUAT I think S4 is the weirdest-written part of the show as a whole (S7 aside, because it’s a horse of a different color).

#once upon a time #ouat #ouat S4 #snowing #the charmings #Snow White #prince David charming #maleficent #lillith #Lilly #Emma Swan #martianbugsbunny opines

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tiggymalvern · 1 year ago

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Burn Notice - s7 rewatch

I finished rewatching season 7 of Burn Notice a couple of weeks ago now, and on second watch, it worked better for me than it did the first time. The first time, the ending felt rushed, and I didn’t entirely buy into Michael’s switch of allegiance; but knowing it was coming, and watching the details more carefully, it seemed more realistic. And I’ve been pondering over it since, poking over what I felt were flaws on first viewing, and it holds together a lot better than I thought. It always made sense that Michael would turn against the CIA, given how they treated him and everyone he cares about, given the corruption he uncovered among them. On first watch, though, I didn’t buy that turning against the CIA would immediately mean siding with James. There had to be a third option. Except there pretty much wasn’t, from Michael’s perspective. He didn’t know that the rest of the gang were already working on the ‘get the hell out of the country’ plan – and even if he had known, the last time they all tried that, it went appallingly badly. Michael’s first choice for getting out was to die. He expected James to shoot him in the head, and he was so done with everything, he was fine with it. But James didn’t – instead he exploited Michael’s weakness. He knew that Michael was doing everything to keep the people he loved out of prison, and he offered Michael another way to do that. When Michael was in the world’s shittiest frame of mind and not likely to be making good choices, James dangled a carrot in front of him. And Michael being Michael, if he decides he’s going to do something, he goes for it 100%. That’s always been one of his primary strengths, but applied in the wrong circumstances, it becomes a massive flaw. In Nature of the Beast, Michael admits to Sam that he’s struggling, that he likes James and Sonya despite who they are, and he says he’s relying on Sam to help him. Two episodes later, when Fiona confronts him about it, he’s all, ‘Nope, I’m fine, nothing to worry about here.’ I don’t think he would have said that if he and Fiona had still been an item. But he knows that she’s moved on with Carlos, and there’s a combination there of Michael not wanting to dump his crap on her when she wants nothing to do with his world anymore, and Michael not wanting to rely on her when he’s no longer her priority. It’s a case where he’s protecting both of them from each other, I think, but it results in him turning away from support even though he knows he needs it. And he turns away from it more after some of the things he has to do. After he has to kill Roger Steele, after he watches James shoot the useless dude. Michael’s got some pretty bad self-loathing going on at that point, and he’s deliberately dodging the rest of the team because he doesn’t want them judging him too. When he needs help the most, he won’t ask for it any more. It's been apparent for a long time that Michael’s the most dangerous of the Burn Notice crew. Fiona’s dangerous because of what she might do when she’s furious, in a particularly bad moment. Michael’s dangerous because of what he might do when he’s cold and semi- rational. Because of that Larry-like part of him that’s he admits is in there. Michael might do terrible things when he’s not actually all that rational, but he thinks he is, and that can be so much worse. Sam and Jesse, meanwhile, are the stable ones of the group. Which isn’t to say that they can’t get angry enough to want to murder someone – they absolutely can. But they nail that shit down. It’s most obvious with Sam when they’re interrogating the guy who tells them how he took Sam’s friend out into the Everglades and shot him in the back of the head. At which point Michael grabs Sam and hauls him out of there – good call, you should absolutely do that. But later, Sam’s back inside asking the guy who paid him to do it. Which makes sense, because you don’t make the cut for a SEAL team if you can’t get a grip on yourself under just about any circumstances. And Jesse somehow manages not to murder Michael after he figures out Michael was the one who destroyed his life. Those two guys are reliable pretty much anywhere and anywhen – they’re the stability Michael needs to be utilising and isn’t. Another big flaw of Michael’s is that he’s willing to hurt people he cares about to protect them. He tells his mother early in season two that he ghosted her for ten years because he wanted to keep her away from his world. He knows the rest of the gang will vehemently disagree with what he’s doing, but Michael’s convinced himself he’s right. In his own head, he’s not turning on the gang, even when he is. When he and Sam climb out of the water after their fight, Michael leads his threat with, ‘Because we’re friends,’ - still present tense, even when he’s warning Sam to stay the hell away from him. And that fight on the bridge is SO perfectly done. We’ve seen disagreements between these two turn physical before when Sam’s tried to stop Michael from doing something stupid. With the stakes so much higher this time, neither of them were going to back down, and it was always going to get ugly. Sam knows that in a straight fight he’s going to lose, so he plays it smart and gets them into the water. It takes him a couple of tries, because Michael sees it coming. – they’re both smart. And it works. Sam has the advantage, and if he’d wanted to kill Michael, he could have. He loses because killing Michael is the absolute last thing he wants to do, and because near-drowning is so unbelievably dangerous. He has to loosen his grip and head for the surface the second Michael goes limp, and so Michael fakes him out. They both played to their strengths and their understanding of each other, and Sam really couldn’t have done anything differently. There are a couple of things in season 7 that don’t really work. First of them is that it takes Michael any time at all to make his decision on the roof. Sonya vs the woman he’s been in love with a decade – he really shouldn’t have to think about that. Even if Fiona tried to move on emotionally, it’s obvious all season that Michael hasn’t. Dramatic tension and all, but… nope. The big thing that bugs me is James’ security lapse. Sonya vouches for Michael, and then Michael gets put through days of sleep deprivation, drugs and interrogation before James will trust him. Which makes sense in a vile way. But then James takes Fiona, Sam and Jesse on trust because Michael trusts them? Meets up with them more than once, lets them see his face? Since when? It’s not even necessary for them to ever meet James. Michael could have worked with the rest of the gang exactly as Michael worked with Burke and Sonya prior to meeting James, all at one step removed. That’s what I would have expected. Yes, they have to be able to recognise James when they see him with Michael at the end of the series, and know that Michael’s lying to them. But they didn’t ever have to meet James for that. By then, they’ve already got James’ full name and background and details from his ex-colleague at the mental hospital, so they’d only need photos to recognise him. If James had stayed away from everyone but Michael and Sonya, that would have been consistent behaviour and changed nothing about the overall plot. The only detail that would have been different is that the others wouldn't have been there to see James kill the useless dude. But that could have been worked around. The others could have been all, 'Hey, where's useless dude these days?' and Michael wouldn't have wanted to explain. And they'd figure out he's dead quickly enough, and maybe they even start to speculate that maybe Michael killed him... Season 7 still has its glitches, but fairly minor ones in the overall plot arc. The writers wanted to send Burn Notice out with a dramatic bang, and they certainly did that.

#burn notice #season 7 #rewatch

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horta-in-charge · 2 years ago

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Content Warning: Contains 18+ content MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, Spoilers for Star Trek Deep Space Nine S7, references to my earlier one-shot called Rainbow Rider, Weyoun 6 is alive, mentions of inadequacy, Klingons, trauma, death, medical content, Dr. Pulaski, possible Librarians references (no need to watch the show to understand), Sisko being (nearly) at his wit's end, swearing.

Author's Note: I did try to list everything I could for warnings, if I missed something please let me know. This is much shorter than the others, only 5 pages, there's worldbuilding for my OC, some mentions of Klingon OC's, in space six degrees of separation is still valid. This is my first time writing in a while, so it's not my best, but I think it's okay. The telepathic communication isn't marked with anything special, it's just italicized. Other than at the beginning, all italization is her private thoughts. I have a lot of worldbuilding I haven't been putting anywhere but my own head, but I really do intend to put it somewhere. Dr. Pulaski is one of those things, so she does get mentioned. Once again, I am stealing one of @deepspacedukat 's gifs. If I use a gif and you would like it removed, please tell me.

X Minus 1

Dad?

Telepathic communication required no booking time on subspace which was highly convenient. Conveniency comes with a cost however, and in this case, it was more than sleep. The Breen had attacked Earth and Starfleet Headquarters.

We are safe. We lost no one. How much comfort was it to know none of their own had been lost when there were so many families who could not say the same. Hereford wants to recall you from Starfleet service. Would it be a willing recall was the unstated question.

Tell them to contact Starfleet Medical immediately, but do not expect me to be awake until 1000 hours station time. Could this be luck? To go home now after feeling so unneeded? Unwanted? Useless? Perhaps in the morning she could say, but now, she was too tired to think and too tired to sleep; that did not prevent her from closing her eyes and lying quietly during the artificial night.

How usual the morning routine felt in the wake of so much death. Then again, when had her morning routine not been accompanied by the knowledge that new casualty reports would be displayed in the ward room? It seemed so long ago. Food still had taste, her Hereford uniform still fit snugly, but now she had no need to wear the Starfleet uniform over it. Freedom was reading a data PADD and knowing that there would be few more she needed to look at before she was home. Before she was working at Hereford again and never needed to look at one. She ran her fingers over the combadge resting in her palm, PADD resting in the other, and left her quarters.

Ops was a lovely place. It was like walking into a sales booth at a horrible, off-market replica of an opera house, except the staff didn’t have matching uniforms and those stupid, paper boat-looking hats. They didn’t bat an eyelash at her, but then she was still technically off-duty. Permanently off-duty. The doors to Sisko’s office made that soft air compressor sound and slid open, revealing the beleaguered Captain. He will need to deal with more than this today. We are losing terribly. I hope he doesn’t put up a fight about this.

“Captain, I’ve come to deliver my resignation and my badge.” He sat in the chair facing the window, looking out at the stars. The silence became intense quickly, as it was prone to do in the presence of any commanding officer. This silence was deeper than any other.

“Doctor, under the circumstances, I wish I could decline it.” She walked up to his desk and set both the PADD and combadge down on it, as he turned around slowly and got out of his chair. “Stay. The station needs you. Starfleet needs you.”

“If I stay Hereford will strip my medical degree. They have that right.” Her tone was flat and low, stating facts the Captain already knew.

“Starfleet Medical will recertify you. They only need a signature.”

“You expect me to sign away everything I’ve worked for, for a measly holocertificate? So that I can practice medicine for Starfleet? So I can stay here, and work swing shift? The worst of all? What do I do all day but paperwork for other doctors or lab tests? Do you know the last time I treated something that wasn’t a work sprain? You have plenty of doctors here Captain, seven, not including me. You can manage. You’ll survive.” Her voice carried through the doors to those working closest in Ops, she was sure of it.

“Stay, and Starfleet has agreed to promote you.” His words were of a desperate man, but there were many desperate men now, and pity was scarce.

“A promotion I more than earned on Starbase 375 treating survivors with half of their bodies missing. To give me one now? To try and barter to keep me? When I have more experience than your CMO? When Starfleet Medical wouldn’t take me in the first place because I had just as many linguistic credits as science? I wouldn’t even be here now if Pulaski wouldn’t have gone over the rejected candidates when she became head of Medical! I know her, and she would never suggest that. In fact, I know she’d deny your request even if I wanted to stay. I do not belong here. You can keep your promotion, your credits, and your pride- in fact, I suggest you shove them up your ass because that’s what you’re talking out of. Have a good day, sir.” She turned and walked towards the doors, who made their normal air compressor sound and slid open.

“Doctor!” She continued to walk away, towards the turbolift, not giving a damn if anyone had heard her.

In her quarters, she began packing, putting things back into her trunks and that lovely set of Mary Poppins carpet bags, one of which actually belonged to Mary Poppins. She giggled at the thought of stuffing a floor lamp in there. Right now it was full of underwear. Her door chimed. It took little focus to tell it was Weyoun.

“Come in!” He did. His diplomatic walk was genetic and did not suit the occasion at all. She turned to look at him, and he was doing his best not to look pathetic, holding the copy of The Hobbit she’d lent him.

“Why are you leaving?” He knew exactly why she was leaving, but that’s not what he really wanted to know. He had no friends here, or at least he wouldn’t anymore, if he considered her a friend. She liked six, even if he did annoy her nearly incessantly. Good arguments were hard to come by at times like these. He held the book out to her, and she took it, carefully setting it on the table.

“Surely you heard what I said to the Captain.”

“Yes. But that isn’t why you’re leaving.” She sighed, looking at the shorter Vortan man. He was nearly close enough to hug. Maybe I should hug him… but then I’d have to hug Quark. I like him, but I’m not sure I like him that much.

“I came here because I thought I could prove myself to everyone that thought I hadn’t earned what I got. That I could actually do something of value. I came because I wanted to be worthy of the job I always wanted. The sheer hubris of thinking I could go to space and be so incredible that when I came home no one would snicker behind my back. What have I done? Nothing. I am going home where I belong, with my people, who need me. I can do something there.” I mattered to my patients on 375, but that was the last time I felt wanted out here. Not needed, not just another pair of hands or eyes, but wanted.

She was not expecting Weyoun to hug her. He wasn’t exactly the hugging type, but she hugged him back, because this was special for him. Had he ever hugged before? Been hugged? The top of his hair tickled her nose a little, but she leaned into it a little. Poor Vorta, if I could take you with me, I would.

When he shifted and pulled away, his eyes were glossy. She pretended not to notice, but grabbed his shoulder gently.

“Be careful Weyoun.”

“Have a safe trip, Doctor.” She watched him turn and leave before resuming her packing. There was a lot to do before the Klingon Bird-of-Prey left for one of their outposts, and that was her ride home. Or at least, her ride off the station.

The Klingon Captain looked at her and made a non-committal hissing noise. He was unhappy about carrying a passenger to the outpost, which was understandable because none of his crew looked like they even remembered what a break was. Meanwhile, she was leaving the war effort, and she could feel the stares as she maneuvered her things into the hold and sat on one of the trunks. At least it would only be six hours, maybe less, before they reached the outpost. It was commanded by a friend of the House of Grelnak, which her aunt had married into. From there, she could return home under her own power and no one would be the wiser. After all, the commander would remove her name from the manifest, and it would be like she never boarded the ship. However, as much as she liked Klingons, the smell of this ship would never leave her nose. Rotten targ, rotten targ, wafting through the vents.

She was the last off the ship, and her belongings had been piled in the hallway. At least the trunks were on top of each other. She moved her bags on top and sat down, holding onto them, and waited. The Commander strode through the hallway like he was his own warhorse. The power radiated off of him, even in the dingy, darkened outpost.

“Screaming Fish?” He stopped and looked at her. Clearly, she did not live up to his expectations for her species’ name.

“Doctor Screaming Fish, niece to the head Bellringer of the House of Grelnak.” He was still unimpressed, but at this point she didn’t really care. She could deal with Klingon honor and reputation after the war ended.

“You do not look like one. I doubt you really are of that house.” She stood up from the trunks and got directly into the Commander’s personal space, staring him in the eyes.

“If your eyes were not in perfect order I would say that you are blind, clearly you are stupid, if you think you have ever seen a Screaming Fish before. I doubt you have been to Earth and you have never joined my Uncle in a feast while I accepted his hospitality on Qo'noS. Your higher right kidney is infected, you should get that looked at, Commander.” She went back to her trunks and sat down, grabbing her bags, and willed herself off the station.

The connection was immediate, but moving through that amount of space feels like an eternity. She, and her belongings, gracefully appeared in the front hall of her family home on Earth. Of course, she was tackled immediately by her niece and nephew into hugs, and then pulled around by everyone home into several as well. The telepathic conversation would have been a cacophony to a human, perhaps even a Betazoid, but for her it was warm, comforting, and easy to separate. She was home.

#ex terra sirena #star trek deep space 9 #star trek deep space nine #benjamin sisko #captain sisko #quark #weyoun 6 #dr. pulaski #in office #my writing #this posted to the wrong blog originally #sorry for the double tags everyone

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tevanbuckley · 1 year ago

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I mean, this is a massive oversimplification of what happened. Just because this is the “just in case” finale they wrote doesn’t mean it’s what they wanted it to be. I’ve said before that everything in 6x18 screams last minute rewrites to me and I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial plan was to end on a cliffhanger (potentially multiple) and they had to scramble to wrap everything up at the 11th hour. We don’t really know how the renewal process went down, who knew what and when or how certain/uncertain it all was. And this isn’t me arguing that the writers are playing 4D chess or that they have some grand plan we can’t imagine, just that they’re human and working under human limitations. So no, just because this is the finale that aired doesn’t mean they think it’s the best possible endgame for these characters/arcs just the best they could come up with under the irl constraints of an actual TV production. And by that metric I don’t think they did all that terrible a job.

Who knows maybe this is their dream ending, or maybe they think they hit the last minute changes out of the park and decide to stick with it, or maybe s7 will air and they’ll immediately backtrack on a bunch of stuff because they (a bit tellingly imo) left a bunch of room to do that.

this is a great chance to save people from heartbreak. this is the finale they wrote. This is the endgame they want for every character and we don’t know if they’re gonna change their mind. In fact, they probably won’t and the final episode ever might be exactly like this. So if 6x18 affected your mental or physical health in any way I recommend using this 8 months hiatus to actually consider if you want to put yourself through that again. next time we might not even the luxury of thinking “thank god there’s another season”.

#writers are people and not primordial gods challenge 2k23 #sorry to be snarky but I’m about to have an aneurysm #what we see on screen is as much a product of production constraints as it is creative vision #911 fox #911 abc #911 discourse #911 spoilers #buddie

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eddiediazismyhusband · 3 months ago

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What are your thoughts on the relationship Buck has with Pepa and Isabel? (There is pretty much nothing of it in canon but me personally I think at the very least they like him for how much he loves his Diaz boys. )

And how well do you think Buck speaks/understands Spanish?

hi bestie, once again i am so sorry for neglecting your ask— i feel like i posted multiple little ask games (especially my wip one that i have had absolutely no time to work on any of them for the aks i got) and then immediately got bombarded by real life stress (i was working on two theatrical productions, as well as finishing my last semester of college) as well as fandom stress (all of the bts content that hasn’t proven to be exciting to me in any capacity) and then began to get a barrage of hate anons in my inbox that sent me into a nervous spiral so i am only just now getting to sit down and go through my inbox!

anyway, that long winded explanation out of the way, onto your ask!

I actually love the idea of Pepa and Abuela adopting Buck as their sobrino/nieto respectively because of how close he is with eddie and chris. i really wish we could have gotten to see more of abuela this season (i know ryan said at the beginning of s7 that there was a plotline involving abuela but then it got cut when tim decided to scrap 7b) and possibly see her view on buck and eddie’s relationship after buck came out… i hope though that we get to see more of them in s8, however, especially with chris being in texas, i’d love to see abuela take on a more central role in chris’s story this season, perhaps providing context to eddie and shannon’s relationship that eddie leaves out every time he romanticizes it to chris. I think it would also provide some interesting room to play with abuela and chris talking about buck’s role in chris and eddie’s lives, and possibly getting christopher to see what’s in front of all of them, and then having chris come back to tell them that he loves the family they’ve built and doesn’t want to lose it (which could also provide some angst for buddie if this happens after their feelings realization, and they both refrain from starting a relationship because they think chris doesn’t want that) which could provide a sort of gateway for pepa to swoop in and smack them both on the back of their heads. I know that wasn’t quite what you asked, but i think they have a lot of rook to showcase buck’s relationship with abuela and pepa onscreen, and i hope that it’s shown that he is considered one of their one, further cementing his role in eddie and chris’s lives

as far as buck speaking spanish, i’m sure he has to know some peruvian spanish from working in peru before moving to LA, but there are differences between peruvian spanishand mexican spanish as well as the familial slang that would come with the diazes, so i think buck would pick up bits and pieces of things said by the diazes, and could maybe carry a conversation, but i wouldn’t say he is fluent. i do think eddie/chris/abuela/pepa all pick on him for getting mixed up, or for his accent, even though for a pennsylvania native living in LA, his spanish isn’t terrible.

thank you for the ask! i’m sorry again that it took me so long to get around to it, and sorry that my answer for the first point is probably not quite what you were looking for, but i had a lot of fun thinking about how they could play with buck’s relationship w both abuela and pepa next season (though, i won’t hold my breath for that)

#911 abc #911 #911 on abc #eddie diaz #buddie #evan buckley #buddie 911 #buck and eddie #911 buddie #christopher diaz #tia pepa #abuela #isabel diaz

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bau-rookie · 4 years ago

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started the last season of Castle, so some random thoughts (tons of spoilers for s6-s7, some of s8):

okay this ended up longer than i thought lmao this is what happens when i obsess over a show and just binge without having anyone to talk abt it so i’ll just put it under the cut:

im not entirely mad about the way they ended season 6, but couldn’t they have done what they did after the wedding. you seriously had everyone all dolled up in the beautiful Hamptons and did nothing with it

when they finally get married in s7, it is lovely and the vows are so sweet. but it did feel a little anti-climactic. i totally was on ryan and esposito’s side when they were salty abt not being there, even if it was impromptu.

i also noticed right away when s7 has different names in the credits. and then s8 had ENTIRELY different names again. so the original producer jumped shipped after s6, then the s7 team didn’t stick around after one season, and it kinda shows. it doesn’t feel like the same show.

that’s not say that it’s BAD. in fact some of the individual eps and their cases are some of the funnest, most interesting ones they’ve put out. like the plane one with Alexis. and the Saw-esque experiment one. but the bigger seasonal arcs are weirdly done.

the whole ‘Castle disappeared for two months’ plot is so contrived, and just seems like something for a show’s changing cast of producers to just fill in the blanks as they go because there is no clear vision for where the show should go anymore.

s8 kinda makes up for it by tying Castle’s disappearance back to Locksat. but!! Beckett’s characterization about the whole thing is so inconsistent. they are so past the point in the relationship where Beckett should feel the need to justify keeping Castle in the dark to protect him.

and when it comes out that Castle’s lost memories were partly about Locksat she is really upset and that scene where she tells him to stop talking and they just start drinking??? what??? they are MARRIED ffs, they’ve learned by now to just talk things out?? esp Beckett who they emphasized is willing to put in the work like when she voluntarily went to therapy for her PTSD in s4.

like yeah Castle, decided to have his memories abt Locksat wiped, so there is intent to keep things secret there, but that is not the same to the way Beckett consciously made the decision to lie to him

Castle had every right to be mad about Beckett leaving him, because it was kinda unnecessary. the moment Beckett comes to her senses and apologizes, her apology is just too little too late. ‘Don’t make me do this alone’ is also a little insincere, because she brought it on herself if Castle has had enough.

it looks like Castle isn’t going to forgive her immediately, but then... he kisses her and everything’s okay suddenly. cuz they’re in love and horny for each other, i guess lmao

i also dislike how they end seasons with this huge cliffhanger moments and big decisions only to have them reverse them after only a few episodes. how do you expect ur characters to change and grow if you just keep them in the same situations?

like Beckett being Captain is a huge deal, but oh she also happens to become the Captain of the 12th Precinct?? im pretty sure that’s not how it works.

the only growth from Ryan’s side so far is that he... is having a second kid? off screen? like we get it his married and he’s a dad. lol.

the animosity with Esposito abt the sergeant’s exam had potential, but they really had to resolve it with ‘you took a bullet for me bro’. like they couldn’t just actually talk abt their feelings.

all this Lanie/Esposito buildup for nothing lmao. they seriously dangled a potential new love interest in that train hijacking, and had them go ‘nope you have Lanie, don’t take her for granted’ and then they just. break up amicably anyway.

what is up with s8 and replacing familiar faces with new ones? im surprised Gates left, just when she seemed to be getting more airtime on the show. also where is Tori??? is Vikram our new tech guy now????

Haley, is pretty cool. tho i hate how they shoe horned her into Castle’s missing two months arc. she’s solid enough of a character to hold out on her own, and would’ve preferred her just growing attached to Castle (or maybe just more to Alexis) and just becoming an ally/friend that way.

i will end with one thing S8 has going for it: ALEXIS CASTLE!!! after sidelining her in S6 with that awful Pi storyline and being almost non-existent in s7, they just abandoned all pretense of her still being in college and just made her a Private Eye in her own right. PI Alexis kicks ass!! Haley mentoring her is wonderful. they’re using Alexis to her max potential, and her short hair looks this season, iconic. i’ve always loved Alexis, now im sticking it out for her.

#this got so long im sorry #s7 isn’t TERRIBLE #it’s just the writing is a tad inconsistent and the larger arcs are weird #anyways once im done with castle #i’ll probably go back to criminal minds #im just in too deep to take a break from castle right now #castle #charlie watches castle #not criminal minds

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bowenandjohnson · 2 years ago

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having now finished druck s8, I’m incredibly saddened at how this season has gone, considering it’s the end of the second generation, and it’s unlikely that we will see any of these characters again. after 10 weeks, mailin is still a cipher—she had no internal struggles; her flaws were left unaddressed from previous seasons. there was no growth. overall, this season felt incredibly pointed towards silencing BIPOC members of this cast—particularly ish, which isn’t surprising given her comments. every episode, repeatedly, had ava and fatou either comforting or praising mailin for her “feminism,” her “girlbossing,” when it’s clear in seasons produced by q3/jünglinge that ava, in particular, would not say these things. for a season where finn was the LI, we learned nothing more about him or his family, besides that they run a furniture business impacted by the pandemic. yara was given a romance plotline with zoe, but that was entirely offscreen until the last two episodes. kieu my was only allowed to criticize the action mailin and zoe engaged with once, and it was apparently because nhungi and the others intervened on set. season 8 was also a season pointed towards conservatism—nora upheld purity culture in her final clip before departing for three weeks, and essentially shamed mailin, one of her best friends, for taking pictures of herself. in one of their fights, finn also did the same to mailin. zoe and mailin’s activist action with the destroying of books was essentially a parody of Teenage Activism™️, while in earlier seasons, activism was treated as something worthwhile, something important to engage with and discuss.

but the thing is, it just wasn’t season 8 of druck. season 7 had much of the same issues. the instas and sascha were static. the season, while hinting at the ideas of toxic friendship, did not touch on that internal struggle within isi from season 6, choosing to instead show the topic of gender dysphoria. while this topic is incredibly important, the new writers and SM team did not remember how isi was the one who introduced kieu my to the LGBTQ+ community, queer terms and language, and how she already was following drag queens and non-binary people on IG, and would have had some inkling into what was happening with themselves. the writers chose an easy route instead of building on the nuances already in the character. lou’s actions from s7 with the tampons could also be seen as a parody of true activism, and she also may have been a character created to fight back against the “isi is fatphobic!” allegations—but he was. that four minute clip in which he apologizes to ava for the bullying, and then it is never addressed again confirms it. the LGBTQ+ youth group & david could have been incredibly important for isi, but they were only shown in two clips; same with the turkish community, where they made a nameless neighbor into a bigot and homophobic and transphobic, rather than addressing the issues where consti essentially assaulted isi and made terrible comments towards her head-on. sascha, much like finn, didn’t have a personality beyond plant boy and LI either, and isi treated him like shit in his shoe until a bogus apology in ep 9. screentime was taken from BIPOC members of the cast and given largely to two white newcomers. eren had to fight for the pronoun scene, but also mentioned the efforts of the team/castmates to help them in that fight.

it’s sad to see the parallels between s5/s6 and how s7/s8 turned out. this last clip really showed me how much this cast had to fight tooth and nail to try and protect these characters who they loved. the cashqueens memory scenes consisted of s5/s6 references; as did the montage in between the cast speaking, again primarily about the early generation 2 seasons. overall, i wish the cast the best, i wish jünglinge & q3 the best. their talent is stunning, and i can’t wait to see what they do next. thank you, mina, sira, eren, frida, ish, zethphan, nhungi, madeleine, elena, anh, casper, paul, and paula. thank you for these characters. they will always have a place in my heart, even if the writing doesn’t. rant over!!

#druck

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riverdale-retread · 1 year ago

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Riverdale S7 E8 Hoop Dreams

I kid you not, this thing is 20 pages. Enter at your own risk. (ILY for reading even part of this.)

Jughead Jones tells us that while “some towns are football towns,” Riverdale isn’t. My longing for OG Tabitha, the angel of chronokinesis and savior of FailAdult Jughead Jones, is such that I pondered if this is Tabitha’s touch - to make a town that for six seasons has been all about football (insert the immortal “Highs and Lows of High School Football” quote gif here if you’re able, which I am not, so you’ll just have to imagine it for this summary) stop caring about that sport altogether and switch over to basketball, which might be her favorite.

Please come back, chronokinetic angel Tabitha, God of Time Loop Manipulation!

The funny thing is, even though Jughead says with what sounds like regret that Riverdale has but a “so-so football team” there’s a banner over the in progress basketball game that says 1942 RIVERDALE HIGH FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS. Granted, it doesn’t say WHAT they were champions of, but I suspect Jughead might be wrong about everything he’s saying, because the other banners say things like Riverdale High Field Hockey Champions 1944, Riverdale High Boys Basketball Champions 1945 and Division II State Champions Field Hockey 1952. Jughead insists that kids only play hockey on the river in winter, implying that they only do that because there’s nothing else to do. Granted, field hockey isn’t ice hockey, but it’s still hockey, and they were champions of this twice across eight years, so - basically, Jughead currently only thinks basketball is cool because (a) his girlfriend-god that he’s been (tw: Harry Potter reference) obliviated into forgetting wants him to think that and (b) Archie in the 1950s AU that we’re in plays basketball not football.

I wondered if the reason, say, that the one and only time the Riverdale football team was the champion was because of WWII or if that war had something to do with this spotty history of performances from the high school of at town that is completely obsessed with sports in every iteration, but I don’t think it quite lines up. WWII was between 1939 and 1945, and the US entry into that war was in 1941.

One more irrelevant point - in OG Riverdale True Timeline of previous seasons, SWEET PEA played basketball. So did Reggie Mantle. And now - now that the tallest boy Riverdale ever had is gone for good, NOW is when they make basketball a thing. O Riverdale Why Are You Like This?! (All Hail the Members of the Cult of Sweet Pea of which there are about five at any given time). I only say this because they actually cut to Fangs, playing basketball, which spiked my stress levels.

Basically, every time I see Fangs I’m enraged because that actor - while beautiful in the face and body - makes for a very terribly unintimidating Serpent and a very terribly unintimidating US Civil War warlock, and a deeply inappropriate basketball player because everything about him says gymnast weightlifter.

Anyways! Even though Fred Andrews, who is basically a saint now in Riverdale because Luke Perry was apparently a very kind man as well as valuable actor who died tragically young during the production of this show, led the team to become champions of the state three years IN A ROW, there are no signs to actually commemorate this achievement in the current halls Riverdale High where his son, Archie Andrews, plays basketball. Granted, doing some rough math, if Archie is 17 in 1955, his dad’s high school career would’ve been in the mid thirties, so the basketball glory days of Riverdale High would’ve been between like, 1934 and ‘37 (assuming Fred was born in 1918 and had Archie at age 20 in 1938 - omg this makes this Archie so old to me - 1938?!?!). Do they only put up banners for wins from the last 10 years? (But then why the 1942 win?)

I tried really hard to see what team kicked the Riverdale basketball team’s butt so hard they lose 63 to 32 (with the announcer saying “that’s another big loss for Riverdale” while all the worthies - the evil vile boyfriends the HS principal and shrink, Hal Cooper, the Blossoms, Betty and Veronica, all mourn the loss) but they had very small print on red jerseys and I could not make it out. Uncle Fucking Frank reacts with violence against innocent paper cups that Dilton Doiley with literally Long Duk Dong hair (ARE THEY SERIOUS?) cringes beside him.

I always wonder about actors who get hired for roles that essentially play a hateful racist stereotype based on their racialized phenotype. Is the actor’s ‘cringing’ reaction portrayed here so awkward because he’s a bad actor, or because the scene is bad, or is he ‘resisting’ the Asian Dweeb stereotype he’s being forced to portray by being very unnatural? (There was a black and white film from the 1940s I watched for a college class whose title escapes me where white people go do things in “China” - a set - that had as its plot device and local color provider character a “Chinese” girl who spoke surreal pidgin English, and the obviously California born-and-raised Asian actress insisted on delivering these “Me Help For You Go Get!” type of stupid lines with the most So-Cal Accent of all time). Anyway, Dilton cringes because the awful white man beats up his paper cups because he sucks as a coach.

Choni, looking amazing in those cream turtleneck sweaters (I really want a cream turtleneck sweater with something navy emblazoned on it because of this), are so very upset about this loss. They find it unspeakable. Further, Toni is discomfited by the fact that Lizzo the Lesbian who dresses in proto Tom of Finland outfits and looks very hot came to sneer at her and only her for being a cheerleader.

In the locker room, Archie, because 1950s Archie is adorkably wholesome and a natural leader, is trying to give his discouraged teammates a pep talk. He sounds so decent and sweet. The other redhead, because really, there is room for only one redhead to be supreme in this town, the Julian who isn’t Jason, interrupts him with a generic sort of homophobic slur against them all - “Not if we keep playing like pansies!” before launching into a shouting rant that Archie cuts off. Nostrils flaring, Julian invokes St. Fred’s sainted “legacy” of having gifted Riverdale with a streak of wins at Archie, who is very very peeved. Julian makes sure to mention the fact that his parents sponsor the team, to which Archie fights back with a very pointed pronunciation of the title, “Captain.”

After the game, Uncle Fucking Frank is begging Clifford Blossom for something. When Archie asks him in his 1955 voice (which I now realize is a very creditable impression of the tenor husky tone of Luke Perry actually) what Blossom wanted, Uncle Fucking Frank says that he’s been permitted to bring in an outside player.

And here we come to it.

This is another Very Special Episode of Riverdale S7 - subtitle, The Thorny Question of Race in America.

Uncle Fucking Frank has many many MANY MANY flaws but he is a middle aged white man in 1955 who is entirely free from not just racism but any sort of prejudice or racial awareness whatsoever. Which - what? How? Does Uncle Fucking Frank have prosopagnosia or something? I mean, he called with evident, drooling joy, Betty Cooper in her underwear that he happened to see without her permission in her skivvies “a ripe peach of a girl” to Archie his nephew, but this is what he has to say about Reggie Mantle, about whom the first thing literally everyone other than him notices is his Not Whiteness:

- Farm kid out of Duck Creek

- Kid who knows how to win games

- 6ft 3, 220 pounds, pure muscle, fast.

- Nickname: ‘The Blur - cause you never see him coming.”

Zero mention of Reggie not being white, of being Asian (or as he may more likely have said, Oriental), or Korean. Zippo, nothing, nada. Just the barest locational and socioeconomic background, no mention of immigrant status, and only what needs to be known for his credentials as an ace basketball player to be communicate to Archie.

Do I - must I - stop hating Uncle Fucking Frank quite as much? I mean I’ll always hate him, but I might have to downgrade from Despise to just Hate. Frank, Sir, you are coming up in the world.

Wait no, I figured it out. I still can still hate Uncle Fucking Frank despite the fact that he manages to talk about Reggie Mantle purely limited to his traits as an ace basketball player with zero mention of his race, ethnicity, being oriental, what kind of Asian etc etc. During the past few years I have seen and heard in passing analyses about how pro and college football will populate their winning teams with not-white athletes, build out hugely profitable merchandising using these same athletes but not pay them their due share. I’m sure coaches that recruit students for this sort of enterprise also don’t really go into what color their skin is or their facial phenotype: they only want to know if they have the physique to render them profitable for the team. Same with Uncle Fucking Frank. He’s not enlightened, just desperate.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and Toni are working off the stress of cheering for a losing team (and in Toni’s case, whatever that meaningful look was between her and Lizzo at the end of the game.) Cheryl, who manages to not have her siren red lipstick all over her face after this make out session looks very fetching in her red neckerchief (omg the clavicles on this chick are to die for) proposes that she and Toni “go steady, just for us." Toni, looking equally fetching in with her thick bangs and leopard print scarf (do they wear these to hide the hickeys or are they too sophisticated for that?) is not nice about it. She points out that they can’t walk down the hall at school holding hands nor can they ‘pin’ each other.

Uh. That’s struck me as quite nasty, and a weirdly underhanded blow at that. 1955 is only five years after the founding of Mattachine Society which moreover was just white men, and it’s not clear to me that those dudes would’ve necessarily welcomed either of these girls. Why is Toni pointing out that they are living in a homophobic society to blame Cheryl for it?

When Cheryl finally gets the hint (“Unless you don’t want to!”), Toni finally says that monogamy is too ‘square’ for her. (What the hell is happening with her and Lizzo?) Cheryl though is nothing if not obnoxiously persistent, so she works her way around Toni’s refusal, which was I will note once again, not at all gentle, by concluding that “it’s kind of like we’re already secretly going steady if you think about it.” Way to be suffocating, Cheryl. Toni is annoyed.

We are now finally going to meet 1955 Reggie Mantle. A very dusty blue pick up truck drives down a road to turn into a yard with lots of goats. It turns out to be Archie Andrews’ ride. The farm house looks pretty huge, though not particularly fancy. Reggie is moving bales of hay from one truck to the other. His hair is all glossy and shiny looking as he does this. Archie asks apparently for the second or third time if he can’t give Reggie a hand, to which Reggie who is very Eyeore in 1955 says no.

The second thing that Archie says to Reggie is to ask if Reggie is “from Korea.” Which means at some point Frank told him he was Korean.

Maybe American and European awareness of Korea existing waxes and wanes, but this question surprised me, as in, it struck me as very unrealistic. It’s only in literally the past seven or so years (i.e. since BTS hit it big in America in 2017) that an Asian looking person is going to be asked if they are Korean first and foremost. My, how we’ve come up in the world, I guess? (Except this more like that one nutty Englishman who plastic surgeried himself into ‘being Korean’ for a bit before deciding that he wasn’t Korean after all.)

Reggie gives a very, like, 1990s answer to this “Where are you from” question, politely answering with his genealogy - Mom is “Korean.” Then he goes on to say his dad “was born here,” before adding “I was born here.” This convoluted writing is necessary because the show doesn’t want to say if Reggie’s father is ethnically Korean or not. If Reggie was born in 1938 like I’ve calculated already for Archie, and let’s just say for the sake of argument they’re all the same age, Reggie’s father was born in 1918 in the US and his mother managed to enter the US (that’s what “from Korea” or “Korean” here is supposed to mean) before the 1924 Oriental Exclusion act banning all Asian immigration to the US, which stayed in place until 1952 (My head hurts. Why did they have to make his being KOREAN a thing on this show?). This makes her the wrong age to have come to America as a picture bride (1905-1924). Also what the heck does Reggie mean by “here”? Most of the initial immigration by Koreans to the US were to Hawaii (prior to annexation) and to California because those land masses are closer to Korea (Koreans moved east to America).

Reggie looks very hot in his baggy jeans and brown belt and work gloves that match his tan boots. Of course this is a bit of a call back to the Jarchie Run Away from Hiram Together moments where Archie takes his shirt off and moves bales of hay as Jughead watches peevishly because he gets annoyed whenever Archie does things that are likely to get him laid.

Apparently, Reggie used to play basketball for Stonewall Prep, but then dropped out. While he’s willing to be polite about explaining his ethnic background (kind of - we know his mother’s ethnicity and his father’s immigration status, to be accurate), Reggie gets testy when asked this question about his history as a Stony. He says he dropped out, as Archie smiles ruefully at the rebuff (“You writing a book?”) which seems very harsh because OG Archie of course has difficulties learning things from books.

I was wrong- it wasn’t Archie’s truck, it was Frank’s. Frank has come out of the farm house to tell Reggie that things are “squared away with your folks” and that Reggie should “say his see you laters.” I don’t think this is intentional, but it’s actually accurate. Certain types of Americans do lay it on super heavy with the colloquialisms when they are speaking to someone they didn’t expect would have an American accent.

When Reggie walks past Archie towards the house, Archie looks exactly like I would if a panther just casually walked by me in the street. He’s so amazed by Reggie that he gives Uncle Fucking Frank a ‘Oh My Golly Gosh Did YOU See That Too?’ look to which Frank gives him an understanding nod. Frank apparently doesn’t find this reaction ‘bent’ at all.

So now we’re at the dinner table at the Andrews home with Mary politely trying to make conversation.

I’m gonna have to break the summation again once more to note the huge problems that trying to be ethnically accurate about Charles Melton the actor (his mom is ethnically Korean and his father is not) for this season that they’ve set in 1955 causes the show. In S2-6, they gave Reggie a Tiger Dad type father who looked Asian (or part Asian) and his mother was cast with an Asian (or part Asian) actress. But in 1955 we’re having to go with the idea that Reggie was a mixed race kid born in 1938, without actually going into anti- miscegenation and laws associated therewith (I am not going to research this ok? I just know Loving v Virginia was decided in 1967. FML. I hate history so much and here I am having to do this for my RIVERDALE HOBBY - , like wtf is my life rn).

The thing is, THE THING IS, the set up they have for “dad born here, I’m born here, I speak fluent English with an American accent” Reggie is that of an exchange student far from home, an alien guest in an All American Caucasian Household.

Long Duk Dong set up (from Sixteen Candles, which is a movie Molly Ringwald was in, who now plays Archie’s Mom) ONCE AGAIN. There’s a classic Margaret Cho quote from decades ago about how Asian Americans aren’t allowed to just, like, EXIST in American shows and movies. There’s always got to be some reason that justifies their existence - foreign exchange student being one of the most benign go-tos. Riverdale is reproducing the Explain Your Existence, O Surprising Oriental trope even as they pretend to actually engage with Asian American identity.

Friends, I have written five pages, single spaced and so far I’ve covered literally FOUR MINUTES of the show. Let’s move faster.

Mary Andrews has heard that Reggie grew up on a farm, and wants to know all about it. Uncle Fucking Frank is seated at the head of the table like somehow he has a right to be there. Anyway, Reggie is bouncy and discreetly proud of himself when he says that his dad was injured in the Korean War (“Came home with shrapnel in his shoulder”) so he has to step up, because it’s his family’s legacy.

These are all words designed to ping every string in Archie’s heart - Dad, Korean War, Family Legacy, Stepping Up.

Times are hard, is what Reggie is telling them, so Archie asks why they couldn’t get assistance from the GI Bill. “We’re not considered eligible” is what Reggie tells Archie. So… is Reggie’s Dad a Not Korean But Asian person? Who was born in America in 1918 and got drafted into the Korean War while Asian? I mean, I have no idea how many that might be actually, and the Korean War was an international police action that had battlefield participation from, like, Ethiopia, Turkey and South Africa, so there were bunches of not Korean men fighting that war. (Oh and uh, if you bring up MASH to me I will curse your bloodline and block you because NO.) So where the US government refused to do right by its veterans of color, Clifford Blossom's need to have his pet basketball team win something will provide the assistance the Mantle farm apparently needs and should’ve received from the US government.

Reggie is going to be roommates with Archie. He gets a bunk, lots of blankets, and a dresser drawer. Reggie looks very glum about this, though the adorable clueless 1955 Archie whom I do like so much is being very sincere in his efforts to be a good host. Reggie happens to glance out the window to see Betty Cooper, very fetching in green and white polka dots, settle on her bed

“Who’s that?” he wants to know. He says everything in this dour, serious tone, which I guess is meant to convey that the weight of the world is on this Reggie, as opposed to the one that lived in the permanent year 2020. Archie tellingly refuses to say her actual name, describing Betty as “his neighbor” that Reggie will “get to meet at school tomorrow.” Then, just to make things extra weird, he firmly notes that they’re both supposed to keep their window curtains shut from now on - no further explanation. Reggie clearly has a ton of questions but decides not to ask any.

Hal comes to give Betty a visit. Werthers has advised Hal that Betty might be better off burning off her excess energy by becoming a cheerleader. The fact that her school shrink is talking about Betty's sexuality with her dad is supposed to give me the heebie jeebies but it doesn't. When this town's adults don't like something about their kids they straight up shove them into a mental institution run by a pseudo Catholic cult (both in the OG Universe and 1955 AU) so what Betty is getting is cosseting. What's more interesting is the very All American conviction that repeatedly keeps getting voiced that Sports Will Fix Sexual Problems In The Young. Kevin's unacceptable homosexuality was supposed to be cured by participation in homosocial team sports. Betty's unacceptable sexuality in general (because God forbid women do anything) is also supposed to be cured by participation in a homosocial team sport. Nobody sees the contradiction in any of this. When told that she must join the Vixens - AND without auditioning! Join through back channels! - Betty looks completely disgusted. And yeah there's a very Rivderdalean triple pun here, of a sexualized virgin being forced to join the most objectfied female activity in American high school AND acquire the title VIXEN into the bargain! I wonder if this is the show advocating for teen girls to send nudes to boys - because that's what Betty would've done had she had the technology, right?

The next morning Lizzo the Lezzie is waiting for Toni at the school. I thought Lizzo dropped out? Is she just an incorrigible morning person? This is a disturbing level of stalking of Toni is it not? To come super early to the grounds of the school you dropped out of to provide sneering commentary on someone else's relationship is a LOT. And Lizzo is so carefully dressed too : Tom of Finland leathers hat and jacket, maroon pants, belt with a big interesting buckle that is the same color as her huge hoop earrings. She tells Toni she's "figured out a good hustle." She picks put "ripe" closeted girls, brings them out and uh deflowers them, then ditches them.

Oooh is this Toni Topaz having a toxic trait? Because her relentless pursuit of Cheryl, who was all manner of unwilling (plus the usual lack of sexual frisson between these two performers- also sidebar rant WHY WONT THEY GIVE VERONICA A GIRLFRIEND) was in truth a little icky right?

Toni looks shifty and avoidant when she spots Tabitha Tate and simply leaves Lizzo in the lurch.

Tabitha says that Mrs. Till was all the things that sound exhausting to have to be ("so strong, so inspiring") but that the tour trying to voice the racial injustice of America took a personal toll on her. This is the start of a severely, comically fucked up race related discussion vis a vis African Americans on this episode. First of all, you have two African American women explaining white racism to each other, very calmly, without expressing anger or fatigue and even managing to experience some surprise. That is so weird. Second, Toni says she "can only imagine" the hatred and racial injustice that Tabitha just got through encountering up close and personal. Excuse me? Why can she only imagine? Wouldn't Toni actually KNOW? Because anti black racism doesn't exist at all in Riverdale 1955?? (But she was one who pointed out exactly what some of the more obvious ones were to Featherhead!) When Toni confesses to Tabitha that she's now a cheerleader, she prefaces by saying "Don't laugh" and doesn't say the BS she tried to push on Lizzo at the start of her River Vixen career - that being the first black cheerleader is somehow meaningful. Tabitha evidently doesn't feel anything other than horror at the idea of being a cheerleader so she instead asks about whether Toni is still writing think pieces for the Blue and Gold. She isn't. Tabitha completely runs out of things to say. OK so thus far, 1955 Toni is a bit of a predatory lesbian lothario who will get sanctimonious about race only when she thinks she can get away with it, and Tabitha is a judgmental prig. I suppose this could be considered a sort of progress for characters who used to be all about their “race,” each with the designated role of being the only one with the braincell because that’s clumsy representation but it’s better than a hateful depiction, but the dark sides shown here are still a simplistic flip of the equally nuance-free ‘light’ sides that were dominant for both.

In the student lounge, Betty, Veronica and Cheryl (who really would be an ultimate throuple - with Veronica as the hinge person, if only, well, if only all of them didn’t have the various issues they’ve always had) allow Kevin to sit with them, which I simply do not understand. Betty is too good for her own good, to coin a phrase. Veronica is deeply amused by Betty being a “RiverVixen” to which Cheryl makes it clear that she did not want this to happen - for Betty to join the cheerleading squad NOR the nepotistic way she joined it. Veronica now owns the Babylonium - complete with “paperwork.”

Why. Do they do. This. with the Contract Mentions. [fists clenched, vibrating with rage] Finalized by who? Which paperwork? Is Veronica an emancipated minor too like Jughead probably possibly is or has she been lying all this time about being the same age as everyone else purportedly is in this universe?

In any case, Betty, who has developed a new oral fixation with lollipops, finds Veronica’s penchant for business as adorable as Veronica finds the thought of Betty in a cheerleader uniform. Veronica is wearing a very un-1950s Veronica outfit - the collar goes right up to the collarbone, the sleeves are puffy, the color subdued. Now that she’s recovered some element of her OG Universe self (compulsive entrepreneur), she is now speaking of herself in the third person and archly. The camp is dialed up so high the knob breaks off. (“Veronica Lodge likes to burn rubber” which is, what, three layers of pun? Burn Rubber = goes fast. Rubber = slang for condom. But Veronica is a virgin, etc). Betty and (Sighhhhh) Kevin think so too, because they give each other a look.

Or it could be because their 17 year old friend suddenly talking like she’s a 1940s screen diva at a waning stage of her career AND talking about herself in the third person using her full name is just fully very strange.

To make matters worse, Archie brings in Reggie Mantle to this little group, trying to do his best to integrate this valuable new teammate (and roommate, and all round amazing looking cool handsome guy that he thinks is just the tops on first sight) to his coterie. Veronica fully falls into an erotic fugue at the sight of Reggie, and starts to speak in tongues - “Are you gonna introduce us to your strapping flutter bum of a new pal?” 1950s Archie smiles nicely at her while not answering, which is the usual thing that he does when he just doesn’t understand wtf the other person is saying but doesn’t feel safe asking them to explain in case everyone else understands and they all wind up finding out that he’s dumb.

Reggie apparently expects Riverdale people to be completely insane because he doesn’t even do a double take at this exceptional sentence from this girl he’s meeting for the first time. He just soberly introduces himself. I mean, given that he has first met Uncle Fucking Frank on a mission from Clifford Blossom of all people, and then had Archie say what he said about the curtains and Betty, he’s not wrong.

Veronica is laying it on an inch thick - “I suspected a tall drink of water like you was a sportsman!”

She’s taking all her behavioral cues from an earlier era of movie diva, I think. This is like, Marlene Dietrich (“Marriage? [scoff] I never found a man good enough for that.”) or Greta Garbo (“But I vaaunt to be aloonnne”) with a certain brassy kind of young Joan Crawford making movie after movie with Clark Gable.

The original high-camp archly-haute queen of Riverdale, Cheryl, fights for her crown. She interrupts whatever next thing Veronica was going to say by snapping that Veronica “might get a ticket for speeding.” This doesn’t just mean that Cheryl really dislikes it when people are very heterosexual around her (though she does feel that too). Veronica first of all is intensely wlw-coded, which is why it irks (the closeted) Cheryl that Veronica is laying it on so thick with the attraction to big handsome man’s-man Reggie (which of course goes all the way over the maximum virility level to loop all the way around to being gay!). (In a way that Toni never actually appeared to like or interact with other women, OG Veronica absolutely LOVED other women and made the personal political in a very principled way). And it shows that Cheryl not only closely listens to everything Veronica says but also really thought the whole ‘burn rubber’ triple pun was great, which is why she references it in her attempted put down.

She tries to demonstrate how she thinks not-straight girls should react to someone with Reggie’s glossy hair and sculptural face. Cheryl puts on the most anodyne professional face to tell Reggie what “professional” (ahem) connections they have, and makes sure to say that the two of them “will be working closely together.” She does this very well. But the thing is, she looks even more insane than before because the flip of the switch from her sniping at Veronica (an explosion of genuine feeling) and this ‘groomed professional’ self is so abrupt!

Reggie is like, okay so hot girl 1 is nuts and so is hot girl 2, but maybe hot girl 3 (and neighbor) is not insane, so he asks Betty if she’s a cheerleader. Kevin makes a face like he knows exactly Reggie’s thought process (but honestly, fuck you Kevin. Die in a ditch.). Betty does give the most sane reaction out of the three. When Reggie calls her ‘neighbor’ though, Veronica AND Betty AND Kevin all have a reaction. (Cheryl already knew and possibly doesn’t care so she doesn’t say anything). Kevin and Veronica look over at Archie, while Betty scrunches her forehead at Reggie.

Archie is still looking at Reggie like made of solid gold. “He’s gonna help turn things around for the Bulldogs.”

Veronica is so bored by Riverdale. She must be. Why else is she acting like this? She immediately tries to monopolize Reggie’s attention, calling him “Reginald” and interviewing him like she’s a celebrity journalist trying to win some sort of tabloid spirit award. Reggie continually gives her looks that blatantly say, Are you really like this - like, really?? Yet Veronica is utterly undeterred. What she reminds me of is Samantha from Sex and the City. No woman talks like that - that was a ‘woman’ written by gay men who thought THEY would talk like that and behave like that if THEY were women (which no, they would not. There are reasons why actual women can’t talk or behave that way). Veronica tries to lay out all her best cards (she thinks) on the table, concluding with “I own my own business, yes” and calls her movie theater a “movie palace.”

Oh Veronica. Being a entrepreneurial girl in a heterosexist world is exactly like being a logical confrontational girl or a scientifically rigorous girl. Being these things is surely a strength, to be aspired to and will fuel you to achieve self actualization, but no straight boy ever found these things hot. They like us in spite of these strengths, not because. Sad, but true.

Reggie clearly just doesn’t believe her, possibly adding ‘mythomania’ to his assessment that already includes ‘speaks strangely’ and ‘incomprehensible’ about Veronica.

When showing off her fabulous gift of the gab, her perfect face, and her entrepreneur skills fails to make an impact on Reggie, Veronica gets annoyed. In response to his saying his town just did not have a movie theater AND his parents never owned a TV (possibly, never made enough to buy one), she offers Reggie a job, which will come with a side order of sexual harassment from a very attractive female boss.

Cheryl Blossom, who knows all about Reggie’s financial dependence on her father, finds the mention of money horrible (Cheryl Old Money vs. Veronica New Money dynamic). She calls Veronica uncouth (“Raised by wolves!”). Reggie has had more than enough. He used to go to Stonewall with rich WASPs so can tell when things are about to go sideways. He literally backs away from everyone, asking to be shown the gym.

Veronica AND Kevin leap at the chance to get near Reggie and a shower stall at the same time, so Archie comes to his rescue to show him the way. Reggie gives Kevin a Et Tu Brute?!? look, not because he’s homophobic, but I think because he thought a big muscled fit person like Kevin might conduct himself with better comportment. Archie gives Kevin a look before leaving.

Tabitha approaches Jughead in the hall. They are wearing perfectly matched outfits. She’s wearing a fabric with a pink-and-green checkerboard pattern, while Jughead is wearing a vest with shades of green in a grid over a pink shirt. His locker door is very interesting. He’s got a big cover of the Super Duck comic issue taped in the honored central location, which I take to mean that not only is he actually really working on the Super Duck comics but he actually is proud of and excited by the work (Unless this is some super tightly thought out trickery against Werthers and Featherhead). There’s also that month’s calendar with each day crossed out - is this him working on his personal writing ‘every day’? To be true to himself, there’s also some sort of movie postcard about SPIDERS and another one about TOMB. I wish I could make out more of what’s on there but I can’t.

Anyway - Jughead apparently has NOT been doing anything to help Tabitha keep abreast of her schoolwork like he promised her a few episodes ago. Tabitha smilingly takes him to task for it, and he’s full of stammering apologies. Tabitha says that she didn’t actually have difficulties keeping up with school, so Jughead is “hereby absolved.” She even wants to know why Jughead was so preoccupied, like he tried to explain during his apology.

The way Tabitha and Jughead keep echoing each other in this little scene is just so cute. Their outfits exactly match, as I’ve said. Jughead says that he “got a job” writing a “broad range” of comic books and that he’s also working for Bradberry. Tabitha has read Bradberry because she “reads across all genres, including science fiction.” The cuteness of these super attractive nerds with their pretty faces just moisturizes my dry little heart. Their twitchy little body language tells of excitement and shy liking also match - they both shake their heads a little when they suggest something, to indicate Please Don’t Say No, and bounce on their heels and do minute little up down motions with their shoulders. Whereas 1955 Archie is wholesome in a slightly clueless way but also because he’s trying to be perfect as a way to grieve the loss of his father, these two, memory-wiped Jughead and 1955 Tabitha, are genuinely wholesome. When Tabitha takes her leave, Jughead looks at her with slight disbelief at his own good fortune.

At the ‘movie palace,’ Kevin, who like Cheryl pays very close attention to everything Veronica says I guess, asks Veronica for a job. He’s also obsessively watched Singing In the Rain so many times that he’s gotten it memorized end to end. (This is yet another way Kevin is not friendshaped to me - I’ve always been a Fred Astaire girl.) One of the (spoken) prerequisites of getting a job at this theater is to love movies. One of the half-spoken prerequisites, however, is a willingness to get involved, either directly or not, in Veronica’s attempt at having a sex life in Riverdale. Veronica really thought that becoming a sort of mogul would help her land straight guys.

Oh honey.

Veronica (sort of like Toni, actually) is sexually predatory and also desperate in a way I find curious. She’s been hitting on Clay for a while, apparently, but even though hes just NOT RESPONDING (which is very woman-coded of him) she refuses to take the fucking hint. She makes it blatantly clear that she only hired Kevin because he is friends with Clay AND will help her “suss him out.”

Oh honey!

We finally get to the reveal of Reggie The Blur Mantle's basketball skills! Uncle Fucking Frank calls his players "turkeys." Waterboy Dilton is there wearing an especially unflattering rotten greenish Grey color sweatshirt while everyone is in either a blue or a yellow jersey. I guess gold was too expensive? I can comfortably hate Frank again because a teammate tosses a used paper cup right at Dilton and another gives him a fist bump for it in a very visible act of denigration and Frank neither notices nor cares. Maybe it's this inability to see detail and perceive reality by this coach that is the cause of this team sucking so badly?

Reggie’s purpose in being brought on is made crystal clear to everyone. He's either to be an unwelcome alien element that provokes the existing property team members to hitherto impossible levels of competence and, if that doesn't work, use his own proven excellence to drag them over the edge. Frank has no interest in Reggie’s quality of life or smooth integration into the team, accordingly. I've been hired a part of a reform and upgrade effort like this one and lemme tell you - the push back from the existing people who are told We Are Bringing Them In Cuz You Suck is insidious, nasty, brutish and persistent. People don't like being insulted nor shown that they are replaceable.

So Fucking Frank makes Julian the captain of one team and Reggie the captain of the other. The only two that initially join Reggie’s group are Archie and Fangs. Archie thinks it's a no brainer - he dislikes Julian, this is his uncle's big gambit, and he thinks Reggie is just tops. Fangs joins, I assume, because Reggie has black hair like him. When everyone else joins Team Julian, Fangs objects (3:7 is unfeasible).

Reggie invites Dilton to join. Dilton lights up as that fucker Frank looks back at him as he's seeing him for the first time. Maybe he has. I've had white teachers "forget" wholesale that I was in their class when the class had only 6 other students when assigning roles for a semester length project. (Riverdale got this right, is what I'm saying.)

The thing is, I HAD TO be in that class.

Why Dilton puts up with this especially when he had no ability in it is confusing to me.

Archie is worried about this decision but he does nicely ask Dilton if he's up for it, then prompts him to get on the court.

This is by the way fascinating kingly behavior on Reggie’s part. The easier choice when you're bullied is to avoid the people who are the same type as you.

The Vixens filter in. I didn't realize the cheerleaders were obliged to sit and watch team practice. That is truly terrible. No wonder Betty was so annoyed.

And we're off!

I do not care about sports and therefore have zero knowledge or reference but is this sort of angle normal for basketball??

Reggie scores a point immediately. I'm assuming that what he does here - a sort of demi tourne en-l'air as he scores- is awesome because they show it a) in slow motion and b) most of the Vixens clap and all react like they saw something amazing. Cheryl especially looks shocked.

I am again so enamored of their outfits this season. An extra wears a beautiful pinstripe skirt with stripes of color mixed in - white, red, and mustard - with a grapefruit cardigan over a white shirt. I covet this outfit. Betty is fetching dressed only in pink and white. I LOVE IT when they put Cheryl in navy, like they do here, because it makes her look like three scoops of vanilla ice cream. Midge looks extremely not pregnant in her cinched-tight skirt. Toni is trying to dyke it up while matching Cheryl in navy tones - tight blue jeans and a matching sweater.

Julian makes like he's going to smash Dilton's glasses (or face) with the basketball in his hands. Dilton cringes, costing his side however many points Julian immediately scores. He's crushed. Reggie comes up from behind to reassure him with pats to the stomach, maintaining eye contact with Dilton to make sure he is OK.

The fucker Frank seems worried at this show of solidarity that Reggie feels with other Asians.

Reggie scores every time he attempts to. He looks right at Betty as soon as he scores the first one, and Betty is getting into it with every score Reggie uh, scores. (I am bored and I also know very few sports words.)

Julian fully elbows Dilton right in the chest, knocking him over, before scoring too. Abusing Dilton seems to be what helps him achieve excellence. I'm wondering what exactly was wrong with this team to begin with because Julian at least seems as good as Reggie at scoring, albeit in less aerodynamic ways.

Muscles rippling, Reggie lifts Dilton up off the ground. I feel a grim obligation to look up a Dilton/Reggie tag for s7 on Ao3. (Grim because I much prefer the other Dilton, the feral one that eventually grows his hair long and has that secret close friendship with Jughead).

Oh and when Julian scores the banner behind him says Victory Is Ours! whereas when Reggie is helping Dilton out the banner behind the two of them says Go Team Go!

Frank shouts something about game point, and Dilton, whose dusty skills are irrigated by one instance of skin on skin contact by Reggie, actually manages to score. Frank looks pleased but I think he's not proud of Dilton so much as pleased for himself that Reggie’s excellence transfers to other people.

Reggie, Fangs and Archie hoist Dilton into the air to celebrate his single solitary winning moment in life so far in the 50s alternate universe. The two Asian boys helped each other win against Julian Blue-Blood Blossom and to make sure you got it, Riverdale gave the Asian Boy Team members yellow jerseys. Guess what color Julian's jersey is. Later, Julian is so pissed he kicks a basketball.

In the locker room afterwards Dilton is shown collecting laundry to haul off somewhere. Just like I didn't know that cheerleaders were forced to attend the practice and training sessions of the players, I didn’t know that to be a water boy was to be an unpaid maid for the other players. Remind me once again why Dilton wants to participate on these terms?? (Also, an Asian boy with laundry duties is actually worse than Long Duk Dong. Having the less stereotypical Reggie (though at this point, the Super Asian Who is Good At All the Things is ripening into almost a fully fledged stereotype) doesn’t counteract Dilton’s portrayal. That’s not how this works.

Everyone other than Dilton is pretty glum, because the player that was brought in because they suck has proven himself to be superior to them. Archie suggests that they all take him out for burgers at Pop’s. Possibly for the first time in his life, Archie is met with silent treatment from a bunch of people. He wants to know “what gives?” Reggie gets it immediately, so he tries to recuse himself. Ominously, Julian suddenly says he wants to go, and that’s because when Julian is down in the dumps the immediate next thing he alights on is to use his money to squash someone. Knowing that Reggie doesn’t have a car, he sets up a race - “Last one to Pop’s treats!” knowing it’s gonna be Reggie. Archie didn’t think of that, so he feels alarmed. Dilton is permitted to come by Julian. The four of them - Fangs, Archie, Dilton and Reggie - awkwardly stare at each other.

In the extremely constricting looking cheerleader practice outfits - the button down shirts with tightly belted blue shorts - the Vixens are assigned their ‘designated’ player by Cheryl. Cheryl thank the lord gets Julian (which she doesn’t mind and is great for everyone). She describes this duty as “personalized support, baking him cookies” and “helping with his homework.” Neither Veronica nor Betty have ever heard of this. Cheryl assigns Archie to Toni, and Reggie to Betty. Toni is full of questions and suspicions about this choice, but Betty seems more than pleased.

Meanwhile, Tabitha and Jughead (him wearing the felt crown, which unlike the beanie I can’t ‘unsee’ and her in a pink bandeau headband) are visiting Apartment 407 which belongs to Bradberry. The author is not responsive to Jughead’s knocking. Tabitha suggests leaving him a note, and Jughead, while scribbling, asks if Tabitha wants to go see a movie. lOoh, sort of like how Jabitha started - with her asking him to hang out!! “I would love to go to the movies with you” is what she says, in her melting sweet voice and her huge soft eyes which can’t be fully obscured by those huge glasses frames. It’s a completely unromantic movie, about being attacked by a giant octopus, yet Jughead gets starry-eyed when she says Yes without hesitation. Having written his note, Jughead takes out a piece of gum from his mouth that he hadn’t been chewing this entire time to attach it to the door. Jughead and Tabitha giggle cutely at each other as they head off to the movies.

In the changing room back at school, Toni is changed into her Hot Beatnik Chick outfit. Cheryl asks what’s wrong, to which Toni ominously replies, “We need to get real, Cheryl.” So, this emotional rollercoaster that Toni keeps dragging Cheryl on - is this supposed to serve as some sort of corrective to the way Choni ultimately worked out in the OG timeline? Lizzo’s critiques about how Toni’s predatorily self-serving ways being correct doesn’t really do anything for me until they do more with Lizzo as a character. Toni, though, is not wrong when she says, “Baking for my own personal meathead is not really want I want my life to be about.” Hear hear. Plus, I don’t think that it was general knowledge that this level of handmaidenhood was what was required of cheerleading, so this probably is far beyond what Toni is willing to put up with for a girlfriend. Cheryl seems infinitely sad at the dismissive way Toni says “cheerleader” when she says that isn’t what she wants to be. Then she asks a really scary question, so scary that she closes her eyes the entire time she is asking. Cheryl wants to know if this whole rejection of everything square and cheerleader and so forth is because Cheryl asked to go steady. Toni says no, at first, but then says that she needs to “figure herself out” plus she “needs space.” Again, I must reiterate my question about what making Toni not just a bohemian but such a toxic one supposed to show me. Cheryl is left alone with two sets of paper shakers lying like dead animals on the bench. Poor Cheryl.

At the movie theater, Jughead is ordering a LOT of food because he is flush with cash from his writing gigs I guess - popcorn, large cola with ice, two packs of ‘Senior Mints,’ a ‘Butterflinger’ with a hard emphasis on the G, Mint BoGos, Buccaneers and a Skit-Skat.

I happen to love KitKats and calling them SKAT is hurtful to me in a personal way. The official ‘joke’ of this little bit is that all of this is entirely for Jughead’s solitary consumption. Tabitha, who is grossed out by this collection of foodstuffs, has no appetite. There’s an inflation joke too, because Veronica says all of this is 75 cents. The thing that’s truly an insider level of joke about this bit, of course, is that Jughead seems to have entirely forgotten that he and Veronica had a pretty long term flirtation where they dated and she fixed up his residence and he read her his first drafts.

Veronica tells Clay that she founds it “interesting” that Tabitha and Jughead are at the movies together. Clay does not care about straight people’s shenanigans, plus it’s apparent that Veronica will not stop bringing up the topic of sex to him, so he deflects as politely as possible.

Veronica however has not forgotten their entanglement, which she describes as lasting as long as a “New York minute.” Now Clay has no choice but to show interest. Clay thinks Jughead is “plenty handsome” to which Veronica rolls her eyes before saying a very lukewarm, “I suppose.” Veronica says that Jughead is an oddball, which she makes sound like a bad thing, before trying to butter up Clay by telling him that she prefers her men to be “continental” and “worldly” and with an “air of mystery.” Cut to Kevin’s POV (Kevin is sweeping up the front hall of the theater while Veronica has Clay trapped in close proximity with her behind the concession counter. The signs on the wall immediately behind Clay read:

Refreshments

Hot Buttered (much small writing: Popcorn)

FRISKY (sandals - is this a movie?)

FLESH (eating spiders).

Clay gives Kevin a helpless look before deciding to beat a swift retreat. He’s got reel changing duties to attend to. Before he can fully get away, however, Veronica turns it up a notch to fully sexually harass her employee: “Just think about picking up what I’m putting down” she says, placing pointy manicured fingernails against his hand. Clay gives Kevin yet another Oh Help Me look (unseen by Veronica). Kevin is trying to figure how to rescue his boyfriend.

At the student lounge, Betty is trying to provide support for Reggie. She asks him what he got for a certain question, to which Reggie says she doesn’t have to do this. Betty tells him straight out that this is part of her job as a Vixen. She also wants to know what his favorite cookie is because she’s obliged to bake him some. Reggie doesn’t want her to do that either. Reggie is either some sort of paragon (Uhhh Model Minority?) or sexually repressed (Sigh) or gay because he seems ultra unreactive to Betty, being gorgeous and friendly. Betty is repressing a lot of anger about being made to participate in any of this, so it comes out in this arch, sarcastic way. I also think that she’s defensive about her ‘reputation’ so she pretends she doesn’t care as she tells him how her innocent sexual exploration (“A peep show, in our windows, if you can even call it that”) was violently taken out of the realm of privacy and ruined her reputation in town, leading her to flash her underwear on live television.

Reggie has fully had enough. He looks very concerned for her sanity as well as his own safety. Betty belatedly realizes how insane how she said what she said makes her sound but her panic makes her unable to order her thoughts. (“We didn’t— No, we’re not— I’m completely–! [dissolves into adorable mouthsounds of incoherent reassurance]). He decides he should just go. This is very reminiscent of the “Am I the only one here who hasn’t gotten rid of a dead body” moment from Killing Mr. Honey, except a bit less funny because Reggie’s personality is so tamped down for 1955. Overwhelmed by this girl mentioning “peep show” and “flashing panties” in her first real conversation with him, he tells her that she’s hereby “relieved of your, uh, Vixen duties, okay?” As he takes off, Betty puts a hand to shield her face. She is just the cutest.

Reggie is practicing basketball when Archie finds him at the gym. Archie invites him to lunch, but Reggie refuses. Archie insists that it’s not with the team (shitty people) but instead his other friends (hypersexual crazy people) so Reggie politely declines double.

Then we come to a comical bit that I don’t know the show knows is comical. Clay, Tabitha and Toni are sitting together to discuss Toni’s idea of starting a literary society at Riverdale High for black students because of …Emmett Till. That’s a really weird jump to me, but OK. Clay and Tabitha seem excited. This isn’t what I find comical. What I find comical is that this is an oblique discussion about anti-black racism by three black students who are all dating white people in an episode that decided to focus on Reggie’s Korean ethnicity.

Toni wants to highlight Black voices and writing. Clay is a prolific writer off screen - he writes poetry, literary criticism and short fiction. He wants a forum and probably deserves it -except he did spoken word that one time at the coffee house, and it’s not clear to me why he had to wait for Toni to get bored with her jaunt to Caucasian Squaretown to do this. Tabitha really hates cheerleading. Does she know about the baking and the helping with the homework and being assigned a personal meathead and all of that? It’s strongly implied Tabitha really wants Toni to give it up for an idea that she approves of as much more worthy. Toni says she gave up cheerleading because she was gay for Cheryl Blossom. Neither Tabitha nor Clay have a reaction to this at first. Tabitha enthusiastically agrees when, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from her personal life, Toni says her ‘journal’ would make a big difference to (just) the black students. The fact that Tabitha and Toni take it as a given that absolutely no white students would read this journal is an interesting commentary.

Clay wants to know what happened to which Toni gives a toxic significant other answer: ”We’re just so different.” I say it’s toxic because all the things she names about Cheryl - family background, race, financial status - were fully upfront and known and contributed to why she pursued Cheryl in the first place (according to Lizzo). Clay calls bullshit on it immediately - that it’s not ‘impossible’ to date someone who is very different (i.e. white, if you’re black) from you. Toni really needs writers for her upcoming journal so she graciously concedes his point about how “everything is a conversation” (when what she has been doing to Cheryl this whole time is making demands, ignoring refusals, and now, issuing unilateral decisions), but then needles him back with the fact that both Kevin and Clay are preppies. “I guess it depends on how much you like the person,” is Clay’s retort.

They’re actually fighting while making really sweet faces at each other. Clay is very interesting.

Tabitha, who is dating the show’s officially strange person, and the one that freaked everyone out weeks ago in this universe with his nutty theory about comets and the future and the internet etc, says absolutely nothing. Did she know both Clay and Toni were gay? I can’t tell if she’s just mulling over what they said or she’s in over her head and this is stunned silence.

At the theater, Veronica is stalking Clay, who isn’t there. She asks Kevin where Clay is, so Kevin has had enough. He calls her a slut first (because of course he would - “You’re coming on really strong”) but then Kevin says a correct thing: “Is that really appropriate [given that he works for you]?” Veronica thinks there is “nothing wrong with a little workplace flirtation.” Um. So Kevin (???!??! wtf wtf??) is like, literally decades ahead of his time (the COINAGE of the phrase sexual harassment wasn’t until the late 70s by the very great legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon who is a personal hero of mine and in a direct connection - not really- to this episode visited S. Korea in 2019 where I got to meet her at a talk she gave). All because he wants to safeguard his boyfriend. Anyway, not only is this the They Say the Word Korean Too Many Times For My Comfort episode, this is also the episode where all the gay people come out to someone. Kevin outs Clay first (without asking, and in a fit of pique, which is so shitty) and then himself, to Veronica.

Oh but not before he’s hateful to a beautiful woman first. When Veronica dejectedly notes that Clay “isn’t remotely interested” he answers in the most swinish way possible: “He’s not. I know that for a fact.” Have I mentioned enough times that I hate Kevin? I do. I hate Kevin.

Veronica does a huge about face to say that “she knew” both Clay and Kevin were gay. I think she’s lying. I might give her the point that she knew Kevin was gay (from all the obsessive Singing in the Rain watching, which is really about looking at Gene Kelly’s ass) but Clay? She didn’t.

Anyway she adjusts to reality really fast, thinking swiftly on her feet when Kevin confronts her with, “If you knew that, why would you make a play for Clay?” to retort that it was all to test her hypothesis, “of course.” She can’t sustain the lie, however, because her bored horniness takes over. The immediately next thing she does is to ask if Clay could possibly ever be bisexual. I really doubt Kevin has ever asked Clay this, but he states that “he doesn’t” before presuming to answer a question that Veronica did not ask - he includes himself when he says “we” don’t swing both ways. Veronica lies again and says that she was only ‘double checking.’

Her disappointment is so crushing that she turns into Mae West. She makes up some gibberish - that it’s better to have “hunky friends who are boys” than a hunky boyfriend. I’m not at all this type of woman (the old skool term for this is a double whammy of homophobic misogyny so I won’t use that word here) so maybe I’m missing something, but if Betty Cooper’s experience in this universe is anything to go by, Kevin is no friend to any woman because he hates women. Being homosexual doesn’t do anything to ameliorate his misogyny - in fact, it makes it much, much worse. He’s disgusted by female human bodies. Stay the hell away, Veronica!

Veronica in her disassociated Mae West persona is too much for Kevin to handle at this moment. She claims to have had more fun with the “Toni and Tab” types than Dennis Hopper and Steve McQueen which can’t possibly be true if you’re a woman attracted to men. Like COME ON (Tab is Tab Hunter, and I guess Anthony Perkins is Toni?). I Have got to hand it to Veronica for having a can-do spirit about everything. “This hick down is finally starting to feel like home,” she says, in the immediately aftermath of being told that the guy she’s been panting after for weeks and weeks will never be interested. Kevin seems moved, but since I hate Kevin, I don’t care.

At basketball practice, Julian has an announcement: Tomorrow is the “Bulldog Booster Basketball Mixer.” We know that it couldn’t possibly have been Julian who came up with this mouthful of a title - it has Cheryl stamped all over it. It’s a fundraiser to build a new gym, girls will be there, and everyone has to “dress spiffy.” Coach Fucking Frank forces Julian to issue a nastily worded invitation for Reggie in particular. All the boys are wearing the identical Chuck Taylor high-rise sneakers - is this part of the Blossom sponsorship?

Reggie I guess always stays later than everyone else to practice a bit more (and to avoid Julian), because when he heads into the locker room the only one there is Archie. Archie tries to get Reggie to commit to coming to the mixer (“They’re always a gas and a half!”). Reggie shuts him down forthwith.

In an echo of Mad Dog Munroe from the OG timeline, Reggie of 1955 wants to get a scholarship for college through his sports skills. Archie is wearing yellow to show his, uh, solidarity I guess with Reggie. (I rarely recall Archie in yellow, but also I am cranky now from all this unprecedented history research I’m being made to do.) Archie really, really, truly, desperately, like a WHOLE LOT wants to be friends with Reggie, not just roommate and host. He wants to know why Reggie can’t “cut loose a little.” He even tries to gloss the turd that Julian laid with his reluctant invitation, upgrading what Julian said (“We’ll be welcoming our newest Bulldog to the family, I suppose”) to “you’re the guest of honor.” Reggie refuses to go along to get along. In response to being called “naive,” Archie calls Reggie “a killjoy.” He wants Reggie to meet Riverdale’s Bulldogs “halfway.” This turns out to be a trigger for Reggie to tell his story.

Oh, before he tells his story he correctly points out that outside of Archie, who is tone deaf and determined to not see any unpleasantness even as it’s right in his face, nobody else has taken any sort of step towards him.

Bret (who is also alive - yay! - and a basketball player in this universe) of Stonewall Prep put up a hugely labor intensive prank of getting a really big bag of rice into Reggie’s locker, tearing it halfway open and then wedging it so that as soon as Reggie opens the door an avalanche of cascades from it all over the floor. He also concocted some sort of mean line (“You guys like rice” and “Enough to take back to the farm” and also “Yellow belly” which is kind of funny actually - if someone called me Yellow Belly I’d laugh, but I suppose any of the actually on-point racist epithets aren’t allowed on American television). The sheer amount of effort that something like this takes marks people who are bullies to be absolutely psychotic. Bret and Co. basically ran Reggie out of the school. Reggie in the OG universe felt safe telling Archie his most painful secrets (back then they were about his father who was openly abusive to the passive observation of everyone else in town, which is also a sort of racist reaction - “Those people are just like that” - which, no we are not). Reggie is so hurt. He’s determined to not “give anyone a chance to humiliate” him “ever again.”

OK so this is a great character moment for Reggie, but of course, people of color having to relive their most wounding moments of racist trauma in a way that feels sufficiently authentic, and/or literally bare their broken bodies (i.e. the open casket photo of Emmet Till which started this season) for the edification of single special white persons is a racist trope which keeps getting regurgitated as being meaningful in American popular culture. This time, Archie is the special white person. Plus, instead of just being ashamed of their appalling ignorance, the white person always gets to have their say according to the trope, which Archie does here as well. (“We’re not like that here.”) Reggie though gets the final word, which is very nice; “Aren't you?”

Wounded Reggie is wearing the navy jersey top. Wounded Cheryl is wearing a violet-navy long coat, with red accents (gloves, collar, shoes, file folder, patent leather shoulder bag) as she descends the steps of the school. Can we just talk about how hard it is to get the exact same shade of anything for an outfit like this, nevermind red, and across so many different articles of dress? I covet the coat and the bag, especially.

Toni is waiting for her. The way she says “hello” like a scared little cat filled me with tenderness. This season’s highlight of Cheryl’s essential softness has been wonderful for me. Cheryl says she’s being “stoic and strong for the sake of” the Vixens. Toni doesn’t really pretend to care about that. Instead she directly asks for money. Toni sells the journal idea to Cheryl as “a way to express ourselves on our own terms.” Cheryl indicates that she’s all for it, but that Featherhead might nix it.

Because Toni is doing this social justice type thing but the only three black students with actually speaking parts are all dating white people and there is a statistically anomalous over representation of not-straights, the show has a black extra stand on the steps of the school to show that there are indeed other black students. His legs stay in view the entire time Toni and Cheryl are talking .

Cheryl even volunteers to bake for a fundraising bake sale, if it comes to it.

Cheryl then asks if she was dumped for being white. Toni says yes, which is very brutal. I have no idea what the hell this is supposed to indicate because um, what is wrong with Toni? Did she somehow discover that she is more black than she thought? But she’s dated not-black women before, no? Her and Lizzo are exes, right?

At the fundraiser mixer thing at the Blossoms, a mixed race couple (a white man and a black woman) pointedly walk across the screen. Fangs is posing for Midge, which Cheryl intercepts by hauling Midge off screen as the camera moves on in one long take towards ARchie, who is hanging out at the food spread. The Blossoms own what looks like an enormous oil painting based off of an Audubon print. Why that bird and why this shot I don’t know. Betty approaches him for a chat.

When asked how being a Vixen is going, Betty says that she’s been forced into it by Werther, who thought it would “burn off excess energy.” They both agree that adults are really stupid about the fact that becoming more cardio-fit doesn’t actually make you LESS horny. Plus the outfits and all the looking at boys in short shorts? How exactly would this make Betty not think about getting naked with boys? Betty tries to tell Archie that there’s a weird system of “taking care” of basketball players on the cheerleading squad but Archie is not listening at all. Oh- by the by - now that Toni is off the squad, does this mean Archie is the one boy without an assigned cheerleader?

Anyway, drawn by the power of recessive genes, Archie has made eye contact with Clifford Blossom. He is summoned to the circle of people of the inner sanctum at this party - the Blossom parents, Julian, Uncle Fucking Frank and one more dude whom I don’t know named Dennis. Penelope is wearing the most extraordinarily unflattering terrible dress of all time. I am so fascinated. It’s a long dress with sewn on details all down both sides from the waist to ankle mimicking the effect of a hoop skirt, making the extremely narrow and petite Penelope look as wide as a barn door.

Clifford Blossom wants to discuss Reggie, his “secret weapon.” Clifford, with Julian behind him, says that being forced to share a room with Reggie is a “sacrifice” that he appreciates Archie for being willing to take on. Archie is “cranked” to do it. Dennis says he wouldn’t be able to tolerate such a thing, having to “bunk with a…..” [Korean yellow belly? Lol why does that sound like a species of bird or fish?] Penelope chimes in saying that having Reggie around is “a necessary evil.” Clifford Blossom is obsessed with winning. Oh and he was also a former Bulldog basketball player. He then turns to Frank to say that he was initially skeptical of bringing on a “Korean prodigy.” Clifford is offended by Reggie’s absence, even though he finds what he’s seen of Reggie’s basketball skills very impressive. Archie, possibly because he had that talk with Reggie earlier or maybe because the recessive gene holders communicate better with each other, realizes that he needs to say the right things to Clifford Blossom and tries to appease him, by saying that Reggie “doesn’t want to fall behind on his schoolwork,” which is why he’s not here at this party kissing Clifford’s ass. Clifford, intending that this message be conveyed by Archie, threatens Reggie that if he doesn’t keep smiling while bringing home the championship trophy, there will be “trouble for his family.”

Why? Why will there be trouble for his family? What is Reggie’s father? Are both his parents illegal immigrants? (But how was his father able to enlist for the army?) Is this something to do with his mother’s status? Did they break anti miscegenation laws? WHAT?

Dennis smiles evilly at this threat, but it has no teeth because I have no idea why it’s threatening. Archie is perturbed enough to take his leave right then. We scan to Cheryl, having overheard this entire exchange, also look quite upset.

At the movie theater, Veronica is very pleased to see Reggie. She needles him right away, and he banters right back - I thought you didn’t like movies vs I didn’t say that, I just said my town didn’t have a movie theater. Why oh why is Veronica so desperate though? She hits on Reggie in the most nakedly fishing-for-compliments way. And why oh why are these dudes so brutal to her? Reggie bluntly says he didn’t even remember he might run into Veronica at this theater. Forgot all about her. What the hell.

Veronica rewards his churlishness with free popcorn. 1955 Veronica being overly generous to whatever boy she is interested in is upsetting to me the way 2020 Adult Veronica was never not drinking liquor. When Kevin points out that what Reggie just said was quite rude (as though he himself did any better? Hypocrite.) Veronica says this about Reggie:

“Take a powder, Herman Melville, because that is the real Moby Dick.”

I’ve already made the post about how this is a joke about Asian Dick Size. But also, a second layer of this is that she called an Asian guy a Great White Whale.

Meanwhile, Jughead has taken Tabitha all the way back to his home that Veronica has fixed up for him for free.

Actually the line progression is very hilarious:

“... that is the real Moby dick.”

[pinging music]

Tabitha’s voice: “Wow this is like the Orient Express!”

So they managed to work the word “Orient” in here I guess. Well done. Tabitha has brought Jughead a book gift. “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by WEB Du Bois.” Jughead pronounces it Du-Bwah, which Tabitha corrects as Du-Boyz. We’re not allowed to make a pun about Du Bois I guess, like call him Trois Bois. Jughead is impressed with the title, so Tabitha tells him to read “The Comet” first since he likes science fiction. She describes the actual real story written by Du Bois, which is “one of the first times an interracial relationship has been depicted in science fiction.” She wants to read it aloud together with her new white boyfriend. Jughead looks entranced by the twitchy cuteness of Tabitha as she suggests this activity.

Archie has come back home to find Reggie reading Super Duck(written by Jughead??) on his bed. Reggie wants to know if the cheerleaders looked pretty at the mixer, but Archie is too burdened by the choice of whether to convey Clifford Blossom’s threat to Reggie, and opts the path of least resistance. He doesn't convey the message, and skips out on further discussion about the event with Reggie. Reggie seems to take this as a dismissal of his overture which is intended as an apology and a gesture of friendship.

The next day, Julian is being obnoxious at the basketball practice. Uncle Fucking Frank is ‘in a meeting’ so Julian runs warm up, to bully the shit out of Reggie. At some point he calls Reggie “Banana Boy” which is another ridiculous epithet. I kind of wish they would either not address the fact that hate speech exists or just use the actual examples because this and Yellow Belly just aren’t cutting enough. In any case, Reggie reacts like he’s been called a proper slur. Reggie refuses to pass the ball to Julian, instead giving it to Archie. Archie, however, decides to um, White Knight the situation. He punches Julian so hard he knocks him flat on the ground.

I mean, it can’t be that hard, because Jughead Jones managed to do this on behalf of Ethel Muggs. But the violence startles Fangs and Dilton on the bench, and Reggie grimaces because he just wants to get his NCAA scholarship and get out of this general area.

Archie gives an anti-racism speech to his teammates about Reggie, based on Reggie’s merits. Merits based arguments in service of anti-racism only feed the racism, so I’m not sure this is better for Reggie’s life than just not saying anything. Moreover, in a very strange move, whoever directed this decided to have a black extra stand next to a white one as the main 2 people that Archie appears to be directing his speech at (Julian is still flat on the ground). Um. The look that the black student gives Archie can only be described as disassociated. Archie says that if any player can’t get on board with being true teammates and supporting Reggie be his excellent self, they are free to leave. He even tells Julian “that includes you, too, captain.”

Meanwhile, at the offices of the Blue and Gold, with the world “Gold” in huge font right behind her head, Cheryl hands Toni a check. It sounds like she’s committed a form of embezzlement, diverting funds that were originally intended for something else, on her own cognizance, without Featherhead final approval. Even though Cheryl took a huge personal risk, her toxic ex girlfriend Toni does not give a shit. She even shittily helps herself to a ‘plausible deniability’ option (“Well I won’t ask any more questions.”). Cheryl is so disappointed.

Toni stops her just as she’s about to step out the door, to ask what her plans are after cheerleading practice. Oh Cheryl. She’s twisting her hands, almost breaking them off the stem, when she tells Toni she doesn’t have plans, because she is so hopeful. Toni asks her out on another date. “About what it would mean if we tried again.” Cheryl is so happy her eyes are tearing up, but I hate this. It reads to me just like Toni has realized she has more ways she can use Cheryl than just for the power trip of bringing someone out and taking their virginity.

Meanwhile, Reggie and Archie are sitting together in the boys’ locker room. “I didn’t sock Julian for you,” he says, confirming that that is indeed what he was doing. He’s had a realization, he seems to say, that Riverdale is “just as messed up as any other place.” Then he says the pivotal thing, the only true thing he can say with any conviction: “I don’t know.”

In a weird reward for his outburst of violence, Reggie accepts the friendship overture at last, asking of Archie wants to grab a burger “on the way home.” This is as sour to me as Toni wanting to restart things with Cheryl only after she has the check in hand. Archie says sure.

Jughead has stayed up all night reading the “Comet” story (about a comet hitting NYC and only two people surviving) and talking about it with Tabitha. Why can’t we at least get a montage of this? Why do all the important Tabitha things have to happen OFF screen?

In any case, because the experience was so “swell” he runs immediately to his adopted daddy to tell him all about it. When he gets to Rayberry’s apartment, however, he is told by Sheriff Keller that Rayberry has killed himself. (They are just now covering the body on the gurney with a sheet). “I can no longer continue living this way.” Jughead is deeply upset. Keller is kind enough to say he is sorry because he knows Jughead was friends with Rayberry.

#riverdale #riverdale recap #riverdale opinion #too many thoughts about riverdale #but this time I've gone too far #riverdale ep 7.8 #if you say the word Korean in your show once too many times you summon a korean reaction which is a whole LOT of reaction

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