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riverdale-retread · 1 year ago

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Riverdale S7 E20 (Chapter 137) Goodbye, Riverdale

We open with Betty Cooper’s signature color as everyone around her thinks of her - pink and soft and fluffy. Cherry blossom petals are falling from leaves against a backdrop of a pretty yellow shingle house with pretty windows. (Betty doesn’t actually consider herself to be pink per se- one of her earliest fights with her mother that we saw were whether she has the right to scarlet lipstick).

A Jughead Jones (not THE, but A) tells us that it’s “the present day.” 67 years after 1955. It’s 2023. Not that it means anything in RIverdale where it was 2020 for 7 years. He starts to speed through people’s lives. The teenagers”have become adults.” We scan to black and white photos of Betty, Veronica, Cheryl and Toni looking very wholesome. There’s a glamorous photo of Polly Amorous performing that number she market tested on the girls of Riverdale. And a photo of Alice Cooper holding something up, looking very proud. There’s a photo of all the participants (with Cheryl in the center) of Riverdale Grandstand. In the most laconic way, this Jughead says people grew up and got married and had kids and raised them and also, uh died.

The knick knacks we are show are another shot of Polly Amorous, a tourist souvenir nightlight of the Statue of Liberty, an old hardcover copy of Kingsley’s Human Sexuality. The Riverdale postcard that adorned 1955 Jughead’s window in his train car, a little handout for The Annual Sock Hop, the button for Bee and Vee for Co-Presidents button. The final item we get shown is a photo of Betty doing her panty flashing turns on her mother’s tv show.

“The story tonight is about saying goodbye to a town that was once lost in time.” He says it’s going to start near the end with an 86 year old Elizabeth Cooper, who is hanging out with her granddaughter. Her hobby is apparently to check the obituaries daily. (I mean, obituaries are in every newspaper, so does this mean Betty reads ONLY the obituaries?) The dark haired granddaughter asks Grandma Betty about knowing someone in high school who is the subject of the obituary. She remarks that whoever is dead seems “like an interesting person.”

I had to pause to look. The obituary is for Forsythe “Jughead” Jones, in glasses, tie and suspenders. I can’t make out what it says.

Grandma Betty (there are multiple Betties in this episode just like Jughead so I’m going to have a heck of a time getting the nomenclature clear) says that the dead person was. Jughead Jones, in a blue S t-shirt, yellow suspenders and the felt crown flashes like a hallucination next to her as Grandma Betty fondly agrees that Jughead was indeed an interesting person. He’s smiling very brightly He rarely does actually, in this entire series, including the most recent season, so it’s nice that Grandma Betty specifically remembers him in this rare moment of unabashed grinning.

The granddaughter is named Alice.

Alice.

ALICE?

Immediately I don't like or trust Grandma Betty. It’s not my culture to recycle names so something about this western habit seems very ill-starred to me to begin with, but you named a girl child after ALICE COOPER on purpose! Oh NO!

Anyway, Grandma Betty says that she and her friends were all interesting people, and they had “marvelous adventures” the likes of which Granddaughter Alice “wouldn’t believe.”

Uh. If you’re in your 80s in 2023, Grandma Betty, you’re not the Betty that had marvelous adventures, per se. At least not with the other three members of the core four. Like, you barely ever even talked to Jughead.

Betty says that since Jughead is dead, she’s “the last of them.” With this thought she decides that she wants to go back to Riverdale before it’s too late, because she’s forgetting more things daily, and she wants to go back before she “forgets everything.” Granddaughter Alice agrees before taking her leave.

Mercifully the show shows me the obituary.

Forsythe “Jughead” Jones (no Pendleton or the 3rd), Prolific Editor of Jughead’ Madhouse Magazine, Dies at 84.

But the photo they use must have been when his Madhouse magazine did something because he is not in 84 year old make up. Grandma Betty lets out a heavy sigh.

It’s night-time now, and Grandma Betty has fallen asleep with her Riverdale year book. The nightlight comes on. (I feel like this nightlight is important somehow between the Cooper sisters but I can’t recall). This wakes her up, making her call out “Hello?”

There’s a jingle of bells. A Jughead Jones is sitting on a chair, staring at her, smiling. Watching her sleep?? Suddenly all the lights are on. Taking the entirety of this in stride, Grandma Betty calmly tells him that she was going through “our yearbook,” The Visitor Jughead Jones (I told you, nomenclature was going to be a problem) also acts like they just always talk to each other, asking casually what she was trying to remember. She tells him that she’s going to Riverdale tomorrow, and her granddaughter is taking her. She then says, “Going through these pictures, I just wish I could go back to how it was.”

Which the fuck Jughead is this that she’s hallucinating/ is visiting her? He’s wearing a beanie, an S T shirt, flannels. His demeanor is closer to the Brittle Sadness Jughead of S1, he’s not wearing the glasses of Adult Jughead, he also doesn’t have the manic-eyed chipmunk cheek demeanor of slick-haired RiverVale Narrator Jughead.

Anyway, Visitor Jughead tells her, like this is completely normal, that “You could pick a day, and I’ll take you.” He also warns her that even though this is possible, it will be painful, because she’ll have this double consciousness - one part of her will be living that day, and another part will be watching herself live it. So then Betty says that if it’s actually possible to “go back” then she will pick a day that she “missed.” The day she picks is the day of the yearbook handout, which she missed out on entirely because she “had the mumps and had to stay home.” She never got her yearbook signed.

It’s very disconcerting watching the young Jughead look at this old woman in a paternalistic way as she talks in an increasingly babyish way about how, out of 86 years of life, the thing she regrets with a lot of feeling is being sick on the day she could’ve gotten her yearbook signed.

Visitor Jughead, looking very lighthearted because she doesn’t actually want to relive a day that actually occurred, cheerfully tells Grandma Betty that all she needs to do is walk through a door (which magically appears) bearing the sign “Betty’s Bedroom,” and “you’ll have your day, the day you missed.”

There’s another magical twinkling of bells.

Ah. OK. So you see, every single thing that happens on ‘this day” absolutely didn’t happen. The actual day was a wash for Betty - she was sick in bed with the mumps. She has only a second hand (if at all) recollection of how that day went, maybe via phone call from Veronica or something. The things that happen on the other side of that door, DID NOT HAPPEN.

We’re on the other side of the door, when it opens and Betty walks out of a black void, looking young and played by Lili R and in a super pink outfit. The black void is absolute. She leaves the door open as she walks into a bright sunny day in her 1955 bedroom, to do a twirl, celebrating how “it’s exactly like I remembered.” Then she catches a glimpse of her 1955 self in the mirror and is stunned. I mean, anyone would be, to wake up and find yourself in Betty Cooper’s face and body with the 1955 styling - aesthetics 10/10, A++ etc. She gawks in wonder at herself, which is very funny, before turning around to ask Visitor Jughead (who hasn’t changed clothes or anything to make himself fit into 1955 better) if this is what she really looked like.

Bathed in gold light, Visitor Jughead nods at TimeTravel Betty.

“There were so many things I wanted to change about myself back then,” Betty says, before bursting out with “Why? I was perfect!” I mean, speak for yourself, I guess, but also I kind of know what she means. “We were all perfect!” she exclaims.

Visitor Jughead has an eerie agelessness about him, which is different from Angel Gabriel Inhabingting Jughead. He has no comment to make to Timetravel Betty about any of this, and just calmly, distantly observes how she reacts to this fictional world with 1955 trappings he’s constructed for her (reasons unknown). Reminder once again that she hasn’t been taken back in time to a day that happened. This is his personal magical gift to her (is he HER guardian angel? Why does he take the shape of a Jughead?)

Betty doesn’t really care what he thinks, and continues to exult over the perfect verisimilitude of this false world. “My window!” she cries. “How many sunrises have I seen out this window!” Well, technically speaking, none, because this isn’t in any way a real world. This is a fourth alternate universe (after Riverdale proper, Rivervale, and 1955 Riverdale) constructed specifically for Grandma Betty.

Then we see an Archie come into view, getting ready to leave his house for the day. “How many times have I looked out this window into Archie’s?” she says, her eyes suddenly full of emotion, her voice husky. This question, Visitor Jughead does answer: “In the thousands, at least.” (I mean, she and he lived in adjoining houses with the same assigned bedrooms since they were very small kids, so given the 365 days in the year, thousands seems like rather a lowball number).

Because Visitor Jughead is an omniscient narrator as well as a time-bubble builder, he tells a calmly accepting Timetravel Betty that Archie is “about to have a talk with his mom, about what he’s going to do after graduation.” She doesn’t ask like, How do you know that or whatever. She just turns to the window, apparently to … watch?

Then we cut to Archie looking at a pamphlet for “Building America’s Highways.” Inside, it says things like “Make an Adventure Out of It!” and “Everyone is Welcome” showing very cheerful, burly men in overalls doing manly work with other men. “Help build America for us, our children and those visiting our lands. Strong hands and positive minds are building roads for generations to come” and so forth. This is how you get trafficked, Archie, but okay sure, believe a pamphlet.

Mary Andrews summons Archie to breakfast. Archie says that he has to let Vic known if he’s going to be “joining his crew on Monday.” This upsets Mary immediately. She sits down to say that it doesn’t make sense to her, wanting to “dig ditches.” Archie starts to riff on what we’ve just see in the pamphlet. He is all about Eisenhower’s call to build roads “from coast to coast, all the way to California.” Then he adds that it’ll “give him something to write about.” She points out that he’s been plenty prolific while staying put in Riverdale. Archie patiently reminds her he’ll be gone three months at the most. Mary tells Archie that he’s going to “take one look at the Pacific Ocean, and forget Riverdale.” He insists that Riverdale will always be “our home.” She then says the things you should never say to Archie Andrews if you don’t want him to do something- “You’re just like your father.” In any universe, including this fourth one, this is the way to unlock Archie Andrew’s heart. If Mary actually wants Archie to return home from his road building adventure, she shouldn’t say what she says next: “He always dreamt of settling in the West.”

It’s very bizarre that Fred Andrews who died in 1952 would think of California as “the West” like that, like he was born in 1852 but okay. Sure.

Then Mary says that Archie has her blessing to settle in the West. So at least, this third? (because does Mary Andrews exist in Rivervale??) Mary Andrews is consistent with the others - she doesn’t want that much to do with Archie Andrews, her son.

The scene ends with them telling each other they love each other and embracing. Mary starts crying.

It’s clear that somehow Timetravel Betty was in fact able to ‘watch’ all this along with the audience. She comes in from the side as Mary’s upset face starts to fade, to inquire of Visitor Jughead, “I don’t remember. What happened to Mrs. Andrews?”

There’s a whooshing sound, and Visitor Jughead tells her a made up story, which he also shows her in a sort of TV show hallucination. Mary was running her dress shop. A customer named Brooke came in, and they fell in love, and lived together until “the end.” There’s a whooshing fade out. Timetravel Betty skips over the any of the obvious questions - Mary Andrews wasn’t straight? Was she out? Did anyone give the two women trouble? - to simply say that Mary was “always a kind woman.” Which … that hasn’t really been evidenced by anything that’s ever happened with the story as far as Mary Andrews is concerned, but we have to remember that TimeTravel Betty is the same person as Grandma Betty who was the 1955 Betty grown old, and 1955 Betty was actively, alarmingly, intensely stupid. And once again, Time Travel Betty exhibits this same trait that sets my teeth on edge so much about all the other Bettys - “She once gave my mother hell for disowning me.” Either someone is directly useful to the life of Betty Cooper and their action counts, or it doesn’t matter at all.

Why even ask about Mrs. Andrews if you’re not at all going to be listening to the answer nor care about what happened to her?

I think Visitor Jughead feels the same, because he activates the Not Alice and Not Polly clones that he has invented for this bubble universe. Polly is heavily pregnant, seated at Alice’s table fiddling with ribbons or decorations or something, and laughing and talking with Alice Cooper, who is wearing a flight attendant’s uniform. Time Travel Betty bursts in on them to say - You’re talking again! after noticing they are both alive and so young. They both laugh at her in an affectionate way.

This is how you know this is completely not real.�� I don’t know what happened to Polly Amorous Polly but she definitely did not come home to have her twins in the actual timeline. This is just Visitor Jughead making things nice for TimeTravel Betty.

In any case, Time Travel Betty and Not Alice have an exposition dump type exchange in which Time Travel Betty tells Not Alice that she divorced Hal and made her dream of becoming a stewardess come true. Betty insists she isn’t sick with mumps, and then has a really wonderful hug with Not Alice, followed by the same with Not Polly, where she tells them she loves them.

This sort of exchange never, ever can be possible between any of the iterations of Alice and any of the iterations of Betty. It is so absolutely not true to either of their characters that I vomited a little into my mouth. Visitor Jughead is a very sentimental fiction writer.

Sitting on the stoop of the Cooper house, TimeTravel Betty asks Visitor Jughead how this version of the multiverse of Riverdale turned out for Alice: “Was my mom a stewardess for very long?” Still in his very, ‘I don’t know these people’ sentimentalist way, Visitor Jughead makes up some stupid story about how she managed to land a plane because the pilot died mid flight. So then TimeTravel Betty picks up the story from there and further invents another OC who takes Alice out to dinner for sheer gratitude, after which they got married and the man took her around the world. TimeTravel Betty, at age 86 obviously has long since lost her mother, so she has to finish with her death, but in a really nonspecific way: Alice was sending post cards from new locations, and then stopped doing that and hence that’s how, in this false universe full of stories of things that never happened, is how Alice Cooper died.

As for Polly, TimeTravel Betty again leans on Visitor Jughead to give her the headcanon. The thing is, Visitor Jughead just doesn’t know a lot about Polly, so his sketch for her is the most ridiculously barebones - she had twins, “she was very fulfilled with her family” and ummm she also just stopped performing as Polly Amorous as soon as she was weighted down in motherhood with twins. There’s some nondescript dark haired white man in a suit in the hospital room when Alice and Betty allegedly meet the twins shortly after birth, but interestingly Visitor Jughead doesn’t say she got MARRIED, so I am feeling very validated in not believing Polly about her so called engagement to her so called uptown gentleman in the alternate universe that DID actually occur.

Visitor Jughead takes TimeTravel Betty to school.

The episode directly addresses the fact that everything that happened past the point when TimeTravel Betty walked out of the void into her ersatz bedroom to her ersatz version of her family did not occur. “Is this real,” she asks, “or a dream?” Visitor Jughead says what she’s experiencing is something ‘in between’ → it’s most definitely not real.

Time Travel Betty says some pablum about how everyone looks young and beautiful and are unaware of how special this time is and how it goes by so fast.

I guess this is what a fabricated flashback to a day that never happened feels like to someone who peaked in high school? I really wish I could find some way to connect with Betty, since they’re making her the focus of the show’s final episode, but really, I feel nothing but irritation about everything she’s ever done or said.

Thankfully, we run directly into Veronica. Betty is ecstatic to see her. So this Not Veronica’s appearance managed to make Visitor Jughead completely stop existing. The two of them march into school, and they talk about how emotional they feel about this day when they are about to get their yearbooks.

Toni comes onto the intercom to tell everyone that she is senior class president. Then she recites a poem as “the final” one as Weatherbee looks on in adoration. My schools did not have this thing of having some kid make an announcement first thing in the morning, and thank god. Some girl reciting a poem like this before 9 a.m. followed by some earnest speech about ‘making lasting change’ after ‘dreaming it first’ would’ve ended my high school ‘career’ prematurely with murder charges. In any case - this is odd because in the early episodes of this season it was Cheryl who was making these announcements. So an ‘improved’ world is one where Cheryl doesn’t say anything and Toni forces her political views on people.

We’re at the Blue and Gold office now, where Visitor Jughead is suddenly back. There are a lot of framed articles on the wall, all of which are Social Justice oriented. Time Travel Betty says that Toni always insisted that they report on national news about race issues. Visitor Jughead says that engagement with the “larger world” would continue, then starts to speak of Toni’s future when Time Travel Betty stops him. She doesn’t want to know, yet, so she requests that he doesn’t tell her. Look like he has a thousand more things to say, Visitor Jughead simply says, “ All right, I won’t.”

The slightly embittered expression, laced with a sadness, that Visitor Jughead keeps on his face is the only thing keeping me watching this saccharine disaster. Who the heck is he?

Next we’re watching Cheryl hand out Yearbooks to people standing in line, behaving as though she’s the principal handing out diplomas. Somehow she knows precisely which illness Betty had on the actual day, so she is very alarmed. (“I don’t want your lumpy cooties!”). She hands a yearbook to Betty but refuses to sign right then, because she will see Betty later. They’re having an event at the Dark Room, and then a party at Thornhill.

The first person seen signing Time Travel Betty’s Yearbook is Fangs, who is with Midge, who tells Betty that Fangs has a song on the charts. The huge accomplishment of a hit single got Midge’s parents to agree to let them get married. Fangs adds on that he’s going to go on a tour. Betty starts to cry immediately.

Visitor Jughead is with Betty again. If I’m to posit that whatever it is Visitor Jughead tells Time Travel Betty was “Really What Happened” to the S7 characters in their timeline, I’m supposed to believe that 86 year old Betty simply FORGOT what happened to her mother and her sister but had total recall of exactly how and when Fangs died. Which is a very long winded way to say, I don’t believe any of this happened to the actual people we knew from 1955 S7.

Dementia from old age manifests in people in a LOT of different ways, and I’ve read about examples of people who remember their earlier lives but not their adult ones, sure, but the framing device for this - that this is the alternative, fanfiction, The-Way-She-Wishes-It-Was version of the day she didn’t get to have because she was sick in bed - makes me doubt everything about the life stories that are told by Visitor Jughead.

So, to return, I don’t know what Visitor Jughead’s reason is, but he gives Fangs a pretty dire ending. The tour bus crashed in the Rocky Mountains and he died immediately. He was the first one of ‘us’ to die, apparently. Visitor Jughead invents a super successful posthumous music career for Fangs - his songs made so much money that Midge and daughter were able to live off of it forever.

….Sure OK yeah.

Time Travel Betty says that she’s ‘remembering’ more and more. Disbelieve. Truly. It’s more like, you’re getting a comforting false memory implanted into your head by Visitor Jughead who, like all fanfiction creators, is trying to make sure his audience stays engaged with his vision.

Visitor Jughead disappears in a jingle of bells again when Kevin enters the room to fetch Betty, who is wiping away tears. She goes out to sit with Kevin and Clay for lunch. Kevin signs her book while waxing sentimental about this is the last time they will do this experience, of sitting to lunch together.

I think I get what my problem is with this episode, and it’s deeply personal (but hey this is my blog and my reaction). High school was not a good time. I only endured high school as a way to get to college and then grad school (and yeah I planned to go to grad school well before I graduated from hs) then on to my adult life, which I expected would get exponentially better the closer I got to adult life. And I was right, by the way. Being an adult has been awesome so far, incomparably so compared to how life was daily in high school, so I feel zero nostalgia or warmth about high school whatsoever. So for me, the last day of high school was not this like, sniffle-sniffle Farewell My Friends type of a deal. I was very much uh, come to think of it, ETHEL as in - I AM FINALLY GETTING OUT OF HERE, NOBODY CALL ME, BYE BYE~! This is yet another thing I do not understand Betty about, at all.

Anyhoo-

Riverdale, possibly because of the educational pedigree or, more likely, the educational insecurity of the maker, is very snobby about school. Instead of saying “going to school in New York” like most normal people who go to any school in NYC, Clay specifically says I AM GOING TO COLUMBIA and KEVIN IS GOING TO NYU. He also says that they decided it “made sense to get an apartment together.”

It…. really doesn’t. I am not going to bother looking up where NYU was located vis a vis Columbia University in 1955 but no, it doesn’t. If one of you was going to Fordham, maybe? Or Julliard? Even then it’s quite a distance between Lincoln Center and Harlem.

Kevin admits as much - he immediately adds that this is the excuse they each gave Kevin’s mother and Clay’s father, and even made lovey dovey eyes at each other right there, and even reached out and held each other’s hand, and both parents (a white woman whose former husband is fucking Uncle Fucking Frank and Clay’s African American father) seem extremely pleased with everything. In 1955. So, this is something I very much like about Riverdale. If you’re going to imagine gay people, then HELL YEAH imagine for them good supportive families that are happy that they found love. This show is more than half magical realism fantasy anyway, so go with that. I’m all for it.

There’s that jingling sound effect, and Visitor Jughead is there, sitting in mimicry of Clay’s pose, across from Betty and visible only to her. TimeTravel Betty asks what happens to them, but then she puts in a specific fan request: “Nothing awful, I hope.”

So, in acquiescence of her request, Visitor Jughead makes up something that I think he thinks the very stupid 1955 Betty can handle. He tells her a ridiculous fairytale about an interracial gay couple in NYC who lived there through more than one race riot, Stonewall (1968) and Studio 54 (the 70s) and AIDS but had the most insulated, untroubled life on planet earth. Like, THEY NEVER EVEN HAD TO MOVE. I guess they got one of those super prized rent-controlled apartments that I’ve read so much about and just lived in that one place for sixty years. What??

See, this is how you know it’s a lie. Betty pretends that she remembers visiting them - at this point I wonder if Visitor Jughead is just implanting memories in her head the way that Angel Tabitha could edit the Riverdale S1-7 episodes to be only good memories (such as, erase the homophobic abuse that Cheryl suffered but recall the happiness of Toni coming to Cheryl’s rescue and their romantic kiss).

Clay got tenure, Kevin ‘started’ a theater company, and they both lived into their 80s ,and Kevin died first (causes unknown but given his age probably just old age) and Clay died very soon afterwards.

I want there to be more story. Like, if Kevin was in the theater arts, and even moderately successful, he would have experienced the decimation of the performing community that happened in NY in the 80s. He did zero AIDS related activism? OK wait actually, 1955 Kevin was a self serving hideous asshole, so he might well have. But Clay??

Visitor Jughead only relates the very start - they moved in together into an apartment in Harlem, which to reiterate they apparently never moved a single time, IN NYC, for SIX DECADES (sorry, I’m hyperventilating from all the trauma of apartment hunting in the same city omg), and the sequence of their deaths. The rest, 1955 Betty is too stupid to understand. She cries very prettily about it, thinking about their deaths.

Somehow, Kevin notices her tearing up, asking if she’s OK. She tells Clay and Kevin that “you two are soulmates.”

I despise this. Kevin really REALLY REALLY needs to be taken to hardcore TASK for how he abused Betty during the time he was using her as an unwitting beard. Betty rolling over like this makes me not respect her at all, whatsoever, given how vicious she can be about her mom in the 1955 universe.

Then Kevin, on the day that never happened, asks Time Travel Betty, who is getting fed fiction by Visitor Jughead, asks if “the four of you have figure out what you’re gonna do yet?”

Time Travel Betty has no idea what he means by “the four.” When she says as much, Kevin tells her that she is not only dating Archie but she’s also dating “the others.” Time Travel Betty still has no clue what he means. So then Kevin says she can’t “suddenly have forgotten” that she “Archie, Veronica and Jughead have been in a quad this entire last year.” Time Travel Betty has no idea what a quad is either.

When she looks over, the other three wave at her, with the tall boys flanking the very tiny, very happy looking Veronica on either side. The waving clues her into what a ‘quad’ means.

There’s a cut to commercial.

Then Betty is in the bathroom, smiling blissfully into the mirror. Cheryl comes by to wash her hands, wanting to know why Betty looks so smug. Betty tries to explain that she is in a very different place from “a year ago” right before The Teenage Mystique came out. Cheryl impatiently waves it away - “Yes yes, we all read The Teenage Mystique.” The last time, ahem, ‘a year ago’ allegedly, that Cheryl knew the identity of the Teenage Mystique author, she was a huge fan of it. She was an important part of the book. This is very not how Cheryl is about that book.

Time Travel Betty smiles to herself as she says it’s been a very fun year. Cheryl’s response is ‘ugh.’

Next up, Time Travel Betty has tracked down this alternate version of Reggie Mantle to get her yearbook signed. He expresses regret that the two of them could’ve had a fun time together if only she’d chosen him over Archie. Scooting closer, Time Travel Betty, who has completely bought whatever these Marionettes of Visitor Jughead versions tell her, tells Reggie about the Quad she is in with The Other Three like she literally had no idea what any of that was about until the Marionette Kevin put that in her head.

You know what I think? I think at this bend in the story, Time Travel Betty has become a co-writer with Visitor Jughead, for this final story. It’s just a story, remember? By telling Marionette Reggie this story, Time Travel Betty is making this real for herself in her fantasy.

So her version of the story is as follows: That after the visit of Angel Tabitha and the strange mind-wipe she sort of kind of did on everyone except for Betty and Jughead, Bughead and Varchie both had recalls of what it was like being in those couplings, so that the 1955- established Barchie and Jeronica (I refuse to call them Vughead) pairings felt that they didn’t have to make a single solitary choice, and could just do a mix’n’match among all involved individuals “at the same time.”

And see, this is the bit that rankles me. Archie and Veronica remembering their sexy times (without the burden of how their attempt at an adult relationship entirely failed, or um, how much Archie made Veronica cry, or how taxing and painful it was for her to keep it all together for the three of them after she discovered the Archie-Betty cheating situation) wanting to regroup, I can kind of understand. But Betty and Jughead chose to remember the bad with the good, did they not? Jughead also chose to remember Tabitha as she had been. So … Uh.. No. There’s something very fucked up about Bughead reuniting when they BOTH remember what happened in the previous seasons.

So.

I’m tired. I think the playfulness of the music and the very funny Marionette Reggie performance is supposed to inspire feelings of delight in watching exactly how this foursome supposedly worked in their senior year, but I am mute with disappointment and honestly, a dash of horror. But before we get to that - I wish we’d gotten to see more of this wide-eyed doofus funny 1955 Reggie in the previous season. He’s carrying a HEAVY load, here, being made responsible for selling this hogwash to me.

There were double dates among the four, which lead to Jughead and Betty holding hands. Then it graduated to Archie visiting Betty in her bedroom (which is permissible because Uncle Fucking Frank has been exiled from the Andrews house) and Veronica going home with Jughead. And other time, Archie would visit Veronica at the Pembrook, with Jughead being the lesser, unofficial partner and hence being unable to come to the Cooper house. Betty also visited Veronica a lot at the Pembrooke.

I would do some hollering about Jughead and Archie but the thing is, they were setting us up for there being no Jarchie in the mix even if Beronica is a reality in this bubble universe, because Jughead and Archie in the 1955 time bubble really don’t know each other very well at all. They are somewhat close at the start of the year - such that Archie is the one to tell Jughead that he sounds insane when he starts spouting off about the future from whence he’s just come - but as the season went on, they spent almost no time with each other. 1955 Reggie inquiring about Archie’s friendship with Jughead got an ice cold non-reaction from Archie, because whatever closeness they had in their preadolescence was completely obsolete by the time Archie wanted to take Reggie to fuck a prostitute together or whatever.

Reggie is upset that he wasn’t asked to join, and Betty says that this is because Reggie seemed too focused on basketball. Reggie insists that he would’ve completely made time for the sort of busy nights that Betty is making up - err, describes - had he been invited.

Betty had the flattering experience of Reggie competing outright for her against Archie, but Veronica actually got roundly rejected by Reggie for being too much of a handful and then had the missed connections problem. Plus, what was the highlight reel of ‘good’ that Reggie and Veronica would’ve been shown? Was NONE of it good? (This is where Time Travel Betty making up this quad completely falls apart for me- why it is that Reggie and Veronica don’t remember THEIR connection. Is it condemnation for the entirety of the Reggie-and-Veronica friendship, relationship and situationship in toto? But their relationship deteriorating was no more toxic than Bughead’s implosion and the extremely bitterness they exhibited about each other in S5.)

After the two of them very nicely tell each other that they would’ve liked to have hooked up but it’s too late now (but why?), and also say that they think the other is destined for greatness, Visitor Jughead is back. Time Travel Betty wants to know what happened, so Visitor Jughead says that Reggie Reggie’s life is Kansas State, then a short professional basketball career with the Lakers which apparently didn’t make him a whole lot of money because he still had to work the farm during the off season for his still very invisible parents, after which he had to sell the land upon their death. He had an unnamed wife who is killed the second she is introduced so she can be buried next to him (she predeceases him), and he had to return to Riverdale to be a coach, where both his sons were also on the basketball team. Betty tears up again, apparently in reaction to the thought of Reggie dying. Or maybe she’s crying because he ended up back at Riverdale, coaching

Visitor Jughead tells her that they have to go to the Babylonium now. She looks a bit scared. They’re showing “The Big Sleep.” Since Riverdale (intentionally?) misquotes cultural chestnuts all the time, I think the title “Big Sleep” is meant to be a pun on the fact that this story we’re being shown is a big dream that the 86 year old Betty is having. A lucid dream, in which she’s controlling all of what she allegedly ‘remembers’ via the narration of the invented Visitor Jughead.

Veronica’s opening line is “How’s that absinthe, Betty?” It’s in the middle of the day, so Veronica Lodge being an unacknowledged alcoholic is a weird theme they are carrying through to this season for reasons unknown. In any case, Veronica says she’s given Betty the alcohol because she has news which she hasn’t “yet shared with the boys.”

The news is that Veronica has been haunted by Josie McCoy’s kernel of inspiration about being a producer of movies, so she’s gotten herself a job straight out of high school to go work at a studio in L.A. Her long term plan is to work her way up the ranks to become a studio executive with the power to gatekeep film production in the future.

I really love the scale of Veronica Lodge’s dreams, and the fact that she just launches businesses and careers for herself all the time. Whenever she works at a place, even as an actual child, like the Diner, she goes, OK but one day I’m going to OWN it and then open a bar underneath it and also I’m going to be the direct producer of the alcohol that I sell in the bar under the diner that I own. So Betty, looking very very teary eyed all over again, says that what Veronica has set out to do seems like “the opportunity of a lifetime” then adds “of all the businesses that you’ve started, this move feels the most right.” Veronica says it feels like destiny.

When Betty says California feels so far away, Veronica says they will always be in each other’s lives. They tearfully hold hands.

OK so this is the second time that California is talked about like it’s Cape Good Hope, and I would think that for small town upstate New York people, New York City also feels very far away, no? I mean, Frank Sinatra used to sit on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, which is literally a mile wide, and stare across at the City vowing his dreams to himself, because NYC felt unreachable.

Another woosh, and Visitor Jughead is back, pretending like he has ever seen a single movie at the Babylonium. (No he has not). “I always loved this theater,” is what he says. So maybe this is one of those like, multiple eternal universes theories where every moment in every possible universe also exists for eternity? This Jughead has never seen a single movie in this theater, I repeat. He also says, “Lots of kids made out here” before flipping up the seat next to him to show a lot of gum stuck underneath - ew - and his signature crown graffiti as well as some other markings. The 1955 Jughead went to see B-horror movies and watched them with full concentration, completely ignoring everyone who was making out all around him.

Time Travel Betty asks what happened to Veronica. The usual lie comes out of Visitor Jughead - Veronica started out at the bottom of the corporate ladder (I mean, maybe the Hollywood nepotism helped??) then “within a few years” she was running the place, leading to “two Oscars” and she produced “iconic movies.” I’m happy that the two of them are concocting a nice narrative for Veronica’s life, but what I notice is that she isn’t given a wife or a husband or children. She just had her career, and was buried in Hollywood. Betty is crying again and it’s getting very tedious. She regrets that they - the two of them but also in the larger sense of the four of them, did not keep in better touch, because they were “so close.”

Um.

I think maybe you weren’t, Betty. I think 86 Year Old Betty is expressing some sort of Crone Sexualityawakening, something along the lines of - instead of fighting the one girl who I was really good friends with over the boy we both had the hots for I should’ve just fucked all my friends! The false narrative is that the four of them were “so close, inseparable” suddenly in their final year, and Betty can’t actually say the truth. “And then we just … dot dot dot.” That faltering has the truth hidden inside of it - none of this happened. They did not have this kind of senior year. And there was no quad.

Visitor Jughead isn’t really necessary anymore because Time Travel Betty has just taken over the fiction making, so he’s staring off, not even looking at her as she has her self-serving memory-induced breakdown about her lost friends (based on the fictional relationship she is just now coming up with), and the flat, cold way he looks down at her has that same eerie disconnect he was exhibiting earlier.

“That’s what today is all about,” he says, “Remembering. And getting one more chance. And no regrets.”

This long hallucination is that Betty remembers she was sick that last day of school, and then as everyone moved on to the next bit of their lives, they all grew apart, so her second chance is her wishing she’d had more sex when she was younger. She’s just getting to write a fix-it fanfic of her life.

So then we go to the Choni fanfic segment. I’m getting very tired. Cheryl and Toni are fully out, at least in the confines of the underground coffee shop. Cheryl says that “there’s no separation between our art and our love.” Toni just looks at her, but doesn’t say a single word of support about this so called perfect love, which fits in with how nasty a user fail girlfriend she’s been this entire season. When she does talk, Toni talks about Black Athena, her accomplishment she was very reluctant to take Cheryl to and from which Cheryl on her own cognizance banned herself.

The theme is “Beefcake Meets Cheesecake.” This seems like Toni forcing her bisexuality on Cheryl, who wouldn’t seem the type to voluntarily draw shirtless men. Time Travel Betty really likes the paintings.

The most important thing about this scene is that 1955 Jughead with his felt crown is there, with his arm around 1955 Veronica.

The very nice, kind future that Visitor Jughead weaves for Betty’s benefit about Cheryl and Toni is that Cheryl had a super successful career as a painter, and that Cheryl and Toni stayed together for life, in California (he says Oakland, and for some reason this doesn’t merit a third mention of how very, extremely far away California is), i na big rambling hippie house. They “lived as artists and activists” - I assume off of Cheryl’s family money. They also “had a son” which they named after Riverdale (poor boy). They both died “peacefully.” Time Travel Betty doesn’t really care about either of these people, so the details are extremely hazy - no age, no sequence of death, no cause of death, no place of burial. Their lives were long and sexy, apparently. OK Sure.

Visitor Jughead and Time Travel Betty take in Julian, sitting alone, taking a drink. She wants to know what happened to him. He’s the second man who caused problems for Betty, so he gets a really sad, bad ending. He was not “just a lost soul” - what, no invitation from Kevin to perform at the theater company he founded?? - and he died in Vietnam, leaving behind no lover, no children. I mean, the Vietnam War technically began in like, 1955, so it was already ongoing by the time they all graduated in 1956, but damn that’s cold.

See, and I understand now why Fangs had to be killed in his version of his life story. His impregnating Midge, and Betty’s very limited intelligence making her unable to understand how that happened was a pretty humiliating conversation for her. Fangs had to die for sins of his dick. Julian was the one that clued in Betty to the fact that Archie and Reggie had gone to a prostitute, so that’s why HE had to die. Poor Julian. He was 28 when he died, by the way, which means he would’ve died in 1966 (the US military presence in Vietnam peaked in the late 60s so this tracks, but what was he doing before??).

Nana Rose, who somehow is at this event, is asked after by Betty, and Visitor Jughead just makes something up - She reincarnated multiple times. (Rivervale is real?)

Weatherbee and Mrs T got married, late in life. (No other story).

OK so then we come to Frank Andrews, who Betty has a lot of reasons to be mad at, and Tom Keller, which she had less of an interaction with, also meet a bad end. WHY would either of those men be HERE at this event? They wouldn’t but of course, as I’ve been saying all along, this isn’t happening, not really. This is the dying 86 year old Betty telling herself a fanfiction of her own life. Anyway, what happened to them was this: “A hustler they picked up one rainy night named Chic” murdered them both. Betty in earlier seasons of Riverdale very much disapproved of gay pick up culture, so again, instead of dying of AIDS or homophobic attacks, these two assholes died of gay on gay murder. Uhhh. That’s a bit homophobic of you, Time Travel Betty.

Veronica, in the corner, is telling 1955 Jughead and 1955 Archie about her pending departure for California. Visitor Jughead says of himself and Archie, “We are not taking it well.” Betty says a true thing that was already established - she wasn’t there for any of these conversations. So Visitor Jughead offers her another fix-it fanfic writing opportunity. “You should be.”

The “boys” are very down in the dumps. Veronica calmly reminds them that they all knew “they would be going their separate ways after graduation.” Time Travel Betty is writing the story now, and marionetting all these people. They are all utterly silent and still and devoid of reaction as she catches them up to her fantasy’s narrative - that their senior year was “incredibly” physically fulfilling as well as emotionally a great experience. Veronica immediately agrees. Then Jughead says the most unJughead thing of all time, because Time Travel Betty’s narrative is forcing him to: “If I had to live through high school twice, I’m glad it was with you three yahoos.”

Jughead, you barely saw Archie all through junior year. We have no idea what happened senior year. He would not say this.

Betty says what she wishes she’d told all these people: “I love you all so much.”

This episode is her party and she can make it do whatever she wants it to do.

Betty does acknowledge that there were in fact “heartbreaks and all.” The four of them hold hands, so then Archie suggests a last ride to Cheryl’s afterparty. For some reason it’s not night time, so they have a long ride on the jalopy in slow motion.

Ok I really liked this. The world OPENED UP because we see the huge Canadian forest, the Sweet Water River, the bridge - just this big huge space the show used to inhabit before the cramping down of the available sets from both the pandemic and budget constraints. They start to look very bittersweet (emphasis on the bitter) as the ride goes on - Betty looking rather askance at Archie, not meeting his eye, Jughead looking away from Veronica at the river as she stares stony faced straight ahead.

Betty is outside the house, fidgeting, which then brings Visitor Jughead. He wants to know why she hasn’t gone inside. Time Travel Betty has fully bought into her own bullshit - this evening, this party and basically NOTHING FROM THIS WHOLE DAY ever happened, but she is now weeping because “this is the last time that that all of us will be together, ever.” Betty doesn’t want to say goodbye to these fictional versions of her high school friends she’s invented as she lays dying at age 86 on the other side of the close door void. She says even this idealized version, the act of saying a proper farewell to all her friends that she, even in her made up memories can’t help but decide she never saw much of ever again, woul d be too painful.

As Visitor Jughead looks at her with that same cold, disengaged affect he’s had this entire time, Betty regrets the entire venture - “It was a mistake to come back here. I should be at home with the mumps.”

Visitor Jughead gives her a weird little koan, that the whole arc of a life is to say hello, “walk alongside someone for a while” and then the relationship ends. This pat summary seems to upset Betty, but at the slightly threatening reminder from Visitor Jughead that “every minute counts” she girds her loins and goes into the party that didn’t happen and even if it did, she was never there.

First speaker at this event is Archie, who is going to read a poem. Julian ribs him meanly about being a poet (“You won’t shut up about it!”) and Reggie coos flirtatiously at him, (“Are you going to give us the weeps?”). I’m bracing for impact here, because Archie’s poems have been hideously painful.

What Archie mentions in his strange little ode reveals the truly bizarre things that apparently counted as worth being included in the “happy memories only” cut from Angel Tabitha that almost everyone opted for:

And here it comes: “And no, I won’t be mentioning the epic highs and lows of high school football.” This is said to ironic affectionate laughter. The scene in which it features, which happened in juvenile detention for Archie, and was mentioned a second time in universe by a very miserable grown up Jughead Jones when he was having to work as a waiter in the diner where sometimes he served his sneering students - made the cut for a ‘happy memory’ that everyone got to have via Angel Tabitha.

Betty Cooper having the serial killer gene which could also be set off by the word Tangerine (which was the incident in which the plot played with whether she really killed Jughead Jones or not) was another ‘happy’ memory that everyone gets to remember. And laugh about.

Veronica not ever being prom queen is mentioned by Archie (because??) and then also the fact that she was a human dialysis machine in S6 is also in everyone’s memory. Veronica even addresses this: “I specifically asked Angel Tabitha not to let anyone remember that.”

Jason’s death, his exhumation and mummification, then being hauled around the house while in such a state is another happy memory that everyone remembers.

????

Toni looks very displeased at this mention, but Cheryl acts like this actually was merely embarrassing rather than distressing.

Maybe I don’t know what happy means, after all, to Betty Cooper, because this is still Betty Cooper’s fanfic of what she thinks could have happened if there had actually been an afterparty like this.

Betty Cooper is possibly a meaner girl than I ever gave her credit for. Or Archie Andrews is. I don’t even know anymore.

Anyway, Archie really doesn’t have much to say about Toni in particular, other than to point out that Southside is one word not two, so the South Side Serpent jacket logo is stupid.

Heehee ha ha? (I think this might be both a cultural problem and a personality trait of mine coming together. I hate practical jokers - not the jokes, but the people who come up with them - and I don’t see the point of roasting. It’s hardly ever done well, and never has good consequences.)

We come to Jughead Jones, of whom Archie begins, “Jughead Jones needs no intro.” The first thing Archie addresses is the suicide of Chipping - “he made his teacher jump out a window.”

I mean. You got groomed and child molested by one of yours and tried to redo that relationship again in this timeline asshole, and also this is inaccurate. Jughead didn’t make Chipping do anything.

Further, why is everyone remembering this? This can’t possibly be anybody’s idea of a happy memory, least of a Jughead’s. Was Angel Tabitha fully lying about leaving only the happy memories for people? In narrative, that doesn’t seem likely, because there has never been ambiguity about Angel Tabitha’s goodness. Which brings me back to - this thing is being written by Betty, who remembers all the bad things along with Jughead, and she is the puppet master behind this Marionette Archie being deeply unfunny and meanspirited to everyone. Because my general thesis about S4 was that Betty was furiously resentful of Jughead being given the opportunity to ‘pull ahead’ of her by getting himself this plum spot at prep school, so the first major indication that things were about to go seriously awry for him (Chippings’ suicide) may well have been a happy memory for Betty after all.

I have also garnered from Tumblr fandom that the actor who played Chipping annoyed the writer’s room at some point by seeming to mock the plotline of which he was a part, so I think this may be them settling scores in a really bitchy fashion, and not giving a shit what happens to the character arcs by having ALL of these assholes laugh about someone’s suicide, regardless of how cartoonish.

The rest of Jughead’s ditty goes:

Thinks himself a private eye/ Chained himself to Southside High.

… Again this was, at the time of presentation, shown to be deeply hurtful to Jughead, because he was making a stand for something (in his usual grandiose way) and his person, who was Archie at the time, more than Betty, betrayed him in a publicly humiliating way.

This is so mean.

Betty the fic maker has Kevin eagerly volunteer himself for this put down which by rights in the flow of the story if it really happened should have been 90% utterly incomprehensible to him.

Archie starts out by saying that Kevin has a beautiful voice and should be singing always (fair point) but then adds: “But he spends most of his time Cruising Fox Forest.”

This! This is evidence absolute to me that Betty Cooper, the one who remembers, is the one writing this entire scene. The only person who was ever deeply upset about Kevin’s cruising was actually Betty Cooper. Fangs, his actual adult sexual partner, was puzzled by it but did not take it upon himself to mock Kevin. Cheryl, his gay semi-ally, knew about his compulsion but also never publicly attacked him or outed him or tried to punish him for this activity. It was only and ever Betty. And what a hypocrite 86 year old fanfic author Betty Cooper is. She imagined a very sloppy smorgasbord of teen lovers for herself (Archie AND Jughead AND Veronica but NOT Reggie oh my!) but she’s going to STILL DO THIS about Kevin’s S1-6 sex life. I want to chuck the angry spirit of George Michael, he of the immortal This Is What Men Do quote, at her.

Next up is Fangs, whom Archie-as-Puppeteered-by-Betty mocks as being “a long way from a cult member who stole organs to put in freezer.” Of course, Fangs and Kevin worked together to attack Betty when she tried to overturn the Edgar Evernever Cult. This is the only time that Fangs was significant in the life of S1-6 Betty. Other things he could be mocked for that were equally terrible- such as the killing of Tall Boy - did not have much to do with Betty, so she doesn’t mention them.

Archie-Puppet goes on to roast Reggie, to say “Pound for Pound/ You’re my closest equivalent.” To whom is this true? Since when? Possibly only in S7 when Reggie suddenly replaced Jughead as the primary best boyfriend and then got all the affection from Archie that Jughead never got? “But there’s that other Reggie/ So how do we know you’re even legitimate?” Then it gets weirdly racial, which everyone hoots about like it’s funny. “I’m going to need to seem some sort of birth certificate.”

You know how I have been curious about exactly how it is Reggie is American and 17 in 1955 when we never see his parents and he’s visibly biracial and it’s just not clear to me at all? This is not… funny. After creating a super awkward and strange episode dealing with Anti-Korean racism, they do this. Reggie answers, “You know I’m sensitive about that,” and it’s not clear if it means his immigration / naturalization status in S7 or the other Reggie existing at all.

Dilton, the other boy doesn’t get any sort of mention, and Julian, the other Better Archie than Archie, doesn’t get a single line.

They - as marionette by Betty - give him a standing ovation. God knows why. This is Betty applauding herself for being mean to these paper dolls.

As a grand finale, Archie comes to Time Travel Betty after everyone has left, to say a special goodbye to her in particular. “I know we’ll see each other again,” he says, including a very flattering confession that he’s always felt that it would be Barchie end game, because it started with them, “a boy and a girl next door to each other.” But just like she reacted to his proposal in S6, this Betty also rejects Archie. She tells him the future - that Archie settles in California for good. He marries some girl (unnamed), settles down in Modesto, has an unnamed number of children, he never breaks into publishing (“amateur writer”) but he’s content and happy. She even goes to invent a death for him - she insists that everyone has to fucking be buried in their place of origin - but she does get this right about him: Instead of being buried near is “sweet, strong” wife or his “beautiful” family of children, Archie Andrews in Betty’s imagining will seek to be buried next to his father (but not his mother).

After this self-serving self-insert fix-it fic is over, Betty tells Visitor Jughead that she has one last place she wants to go, so they visit Pop Tate’s grave. Even though Pop Tate in S1-6 got to actually have a retirement, and see his gorgeous, smart granddaughter take over his business with big ambitions for it and also not coincidentally take up with the boy he’s adopted in his heart (Jughead!), Time Travel Betty wants to kill of Pop Tate as soon as his usefulness to her as the proprietor of the diner is over. Self centeredness taken to the point of homicide is basically the show - not mine! - the SHOW’s repeated thesis about Betty Cooper.

Like any good improv partner, Visitor Jughead doesn’t argue with any sort of thing that Betty Cooper wants to do in this universe he’s created for her, so he just plays right along, to say that the death of Pop Tate was “a terrible blow” to the town.

What can I say- the cemetery is gorgeous, and I’m so excited (in this last episode) and sad to see the time and potential that was lost because of the limitations placed on television productions during the pandemic of 2020.

I can’t help but recall that 1950s Betty was much, much stupider and less creative than all the other iterations of Betty in seasons prior when she finds that she can’t imagine a theology of death for herself in her own self-insert fanfic, and has to ask Visitor Jughead about it. “What do you think happens when we die?” Visitor Jughead says that Pop Tate is still going to make burghers and making people smile FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY. This is extraordinarily cruel, and see, Betty can’t not recall Tabitha Tate, but she absolutely won’t mention her in the context of her own grandfather’s death.

Sitting at a bench in a really truly lovely bit of wilderness, Betty tells the Visitor Jughead, whom if she has any intelligence would know is NOT the 1955 Jughead that went on to die at 84 after founding “Madhouse Magazine,” that she read “your” obituary. But as I’ve been saying and the show has been showing all this time, 1955 Universe Betty is deeply, exceptionally, stupid.

The nice thing about this is that the show shows me more of 1955 Jughead’s obituary.

“Forsythe Jones III, Jughead to his friends and followers, passed away on Tuesday at his home in New YOrk State. Jughead took fledging Pep Comics, popular for it’s (TYPO IN THE TEXT, TRANSCRIBED FAITHFULLY) horror themed comic books in the 1950s and created the wildly successful Jughead’s Madhouse Magazine. Jughead spent his youth devouring comic books and short stories and turned that passion into a profitable enterprise that gave an outlet to the misunderstood, twisted minds of America’s teens for the better part of two decades. A young horror writer and [illegible] for Pep Comics himself, Jones [illegible] the magazine in [lots of words illegible] comics [illegible] back in 1955, [illegible] the first issue of Jughead’s Madhouse which still [illegible] high school in Riverdale.

Jughead is remembered as the…. satirical …[Illegible].”

Anyway, Time Travel Betty gives the Visitor Jughead (WHO WASN’T THAT JUGHEAD) her assessment on his life. “Yours was a life well lived.” Ever the faithful improv partner, Visitor Jughead simply Yes-Ands her. He pretends to be speaking for that Jughead, the 1955 one, by answering that “it was swell.” He knows what she knows, because he’s not living the narrative, and possibly has just read he recall of the obituary that she recalls reading earlier in this episode. “I put all my eggs in one basket.” When she tries to praise him about the magazine he founded being an institution, Visitor Jughead (oh whom the captions suddenly refers to as ANGEL JUGHEAD by the way) says modestly that it was “juvenile satire at best.” Betty keeps praising him, because Jughead, whom she has decided she would’ve had a fun time fucking in the 1955 universe but without the intensity and purity of the one-true-love type relationship that he tried to have with her from S1-4, is one of those who are going to be gifted a nice (enough, and according to her very twisted rules) life by Grandma Betty. Angel/Visitor Jughead keeps playing along, saying in answer to her saying that people adored his work 70 years in, that he had an audience of “mostly teens and adults” even though the ‘self’ we are shown in flashback is a mutton chopped, rather portly man who seems like a cranky middle aged dude.

Anyway, Visitor/Angel Jughead, now pretending to be 1955 Jughead, says he’s happy with the legacy (that Grandma Betty is inventing for him) and then asks what Time Travel Betty thinks about legacy. She says she doesn’t. Then, in improv partner mode, Visitor Jughead creates the most improbable series of events for 1955 Betty to have lived through: the Teenage Mystique becomes a “best seller” even though it was “self published.” Sure. Then there was an advice colum called “Betty’s Diary,” then it was New York City, then starting She Says magazine (a sort of Ms. I guess). “Exposing hard truths and still being published today.”

Time Travel Betty echoes more or less exactly what Visitor/Angel Jughead said about the life she wrote for his 1955 iteration, but saying she could have done worse.

Then the show drops some really, really weird summary bombs.

Bomb 1: Revealed by Visitor/ Angel Jughead - Betty never got married, but adopted a daughter, whom she named Carla. Carla is the mother of the dark haired Alice that we saw at the start, and Betty says she loved being a mom and a grandma. Then she says something incredibly retrograde to me - that her true legacy is her family. Okay sure. Even though apparently you didn’t have any sort of relationship whatsoever with Polly or your niece and nephew.

Bomb 2: Revealed by Time Travel Betty - Jughead also never got married and never fathered any children either. She’s only doing this because she’s just not very creative, and also because demonstrably mean. She doesn’t WANT Jughead to have moved on to some unnamed “sweet strong girl who makes you laugh” like Archie. She definitely doesn’t want Jughead to end up with someone like S5-6 Tabitha either. Visitor/Angel Jughead, speaking for all the Jugheads that have existed, sounds very, very sad when he says that he “sometimes” regrets “not getting circled” in her words. Her improv partner doesn’t like the direction she took his story.

Then because Betty is upset for the umpteenth time in this episode (I’m getting very tired of her tearing up non stop with no real reason for it. I feel absolutely nothing.) Visitor Jughead holds her hand. Betty expresses a strange wish: “I wish we could stay in Riverdale forever, with all of our friends, as we were. Young and beautiful.”

This is a very dangerous thing to say to a genie. He’s looking at her in that same calculating way, though his face is reflecting some of her intense emotion.

It’s only when she says something patently untrue and not shown so far that Visitor Jughead looks away. “Bursting with love for each other.”

Erm. Okay so the Core Four were rarely ever bursting with love for each other. Bursting with lots of other complicated emotions, yes, but if the show was about four people bursting with love for each other it would have been a) fucking boring and b) I wouldn’t be here writing an extremely long winded blog about it, trust you me.

She keeps fishing for reassurance from him, easing Visitor Jughead out of cosplaying 1955 Jughead for her into being his magical self, because she says “I know it’s not possible” twice, until he finally confirms, “No, it’s not.” But that strange ambiguity of expression remains in this Visitor Jughead’s face. She wants really not to return to her 86 year old expiring body. She says, in the end, that she’s ready to go back because he tells her it’s time.

We cut to Grandma Betty being taken to Riverdale by car by her granddaughter. She starts to say goodbye to things, out loud:

Town Sign

Sweetwater River and all its mysteries (there was only one mystery)

Fox Forest and its haunted trees

Red Door and secrets behind it

Room (empty), window, Archie’s room (empty) Pembroke (with furniture covered up) “with its crackling fires and sexy sleepovers.”

Then we are shown a really weird space. It looks like the bombed out remains of the train car that 1955 Jughead, except it looks cruddy without all the fancy improvements that 1955 Veronica made to it. Instead, what’s in it are a bare mattress, a cruddy couch, and on the floor, some weird objects that do not belong in the 1955 train car: a ceremonial looking bulls’ head mask (minotaur?? Gargoyle King????), and an abandoned G&G game complete with the gate prop. The voiceover by Betty describes this as “Goodbye to cups of coffee and late nights of writing.”

Then we move on to the emptied out set of Thornhill, and tumbleweed rolling across very inappropriately (Riverdale would not have tumbleweed) the front of the Babylonium, then “music and poetry and art” are bid farewell to the completely scuppered and emptied out set for the Dark Room/ the Speakeasy.

Next comes the farewell to Riverdale High, the basketball court set, with Betty solemnly intoning “Goodbye to basketball games and pep rallies and dances at the gym.” The main high school sets of the show are shown - the school hallway, the classroom where the beat poets and heteronormativity were discussed, the Blue and Gold workroom, the boys’ locker room, the music room, the time capsule…and time.

“I wish, I wish there were more of it,” Betty says.

OK so this last bit really did get to me. I did get verklempt. I also wish there were more of Riverdale.

The final place we along with Grandma Betty are taken to is the diner set, which has a leaf-strewn empty parking lot and is adorned with a for sale sign with this number (914-555-0157).

“It was wonderful getting to grow up here,” Betty says, and my sentimental feeling is entirely gone just like that.

No it wasn’t.

NO IT WAS NOT.

Granddaughter Alice tells Grandma Betty they are “here,” then looks around at no response to smile at her, telling her no-name male companion that Grandma Betty is asleep. The man, whose name is apparently [Robert] according to the captions, somehow knows on sight that Grandma Betty is dead. Alice sees is too, and start to get upset.

Then we cut to the ominous red lights of the Sweet Hereafter, or hell, or whatever it is, bathing Betty, young again, who opens the door to a different car (a 1950s design) to walk up to the fully functional diner as Visitor Jughead watches her approach the silent Jason, who is the doorman to the reanimated Diner.

A song creepily starts just before she gets there, and the lyrics are “You’re Miiiiine” and goes on to say, “And we belong together… for eternity.” Inside Betty’s personal afterlife diner, everyone is already dead and delighted to see her:

Toni and Cheryl in one booth. 1955 Jughead with ARchie and Veronica. Dilton sitting with Ben Button, and Dilton looks absolutely ecstatic. THERE IS NO ETHEL. There’s several black students, whom she did not interact with at all during S7, but they’re all delighted too. Julian and Reggie are playing Foosball together, and Reggie looks excited and Julian looks at Betty with a sort of brotherly affection he has absolutely no reason to exhibit. Betty gives Reggie a big hug as the song goes on to say “You’re mine” again as I break out in hives. The big pink ribbon tying up Betty’s long hair in a ponytail really bothers me. She then goes to greet Pop Tate who is going to be flipping burgers for her benefit for the whole of eternity. Then she hugs Kevin and Clay (song: “They belong to only me/ For eternity”), followed by Fangs and Midge. She skips over to Choni, and Cheryl is also ecstatically happy to see Betty, as is Toni. “I swear by everything I own…” says the song, as Dilton and Ben, who had been the most demonstrably happy to see her, get only waves, and no hugs.

She joins the core four booth, giving Veronica a hug, then reaching out hands to hold with Jughead, followed by ARchie. “You’re mine/ we belong together.” Archie tells her that her timing is perfect, and they have a strawberry milkshake waiting for her. She says thank you.

Cut to the outside of the Diner, which is bathed in that unholy red neon light. In a red T shirt with red flannel we see Angel/Visitor Jughead, who breaks the fourth wall to say:

“We’ll leave them here, I think.” His summary for what is going to be going on in the third iteration of the 1955 universe (this is another pocket universe, and Grandma Betty’s own personal afterlife, that she specifically order from this Jughead) is depressing and reductive as hell. These are “the moments that make up a life”: “Forever seventeen” and “always grabbing a burger” “always going to or coming from some dance” “talking about school” “who is dating who” “homework” “movie playing at the Babylonium.”

He brings it around to say that this is where “they”- quickly amended (lying?) to say “we’ve” - have ALWAYS BEEN, IN THIS DINER, IN THIS TOWN.

This is a magic spell/ curse that he’s weaving, to trap all the puppet version of all the 1955 Universe characters in the heaven/hell of Betty’s making, for her personal preferences.

He just names it: This is The Sweet Hereafter.

Visitor /Angel Jughead has been Death all along.

He invites all of us to come into this little personal afterlife he’s made for Betty Cooper, whenever it is we are destined to die. He says that we should come in, because we’ll “always be among friends” and “Riverdale will always be your home.”

To the sounds of typewriter clickety clacking, Visitor/Angel Jughead refuses to go into this little hell himself. and instead walks off.

1955 Betty got exactly what she said she wanted, at the end. Which is to say, perhaps, that everyone else may have as well. They may have ordered a very different Sweet Hereafter, from the one that Betty requested for herself. Jughead’s Sweet Hereafter was him inside the diner having fan meetings, AWARE that it was an artificial construct full of puppet versions of people, and enjoying himself so much that Tabitha couldn’t bring herself to yank him out of it. Betty, who was aware of all parts (well, as many as she considered salient and had the cognitive capacity to understand) of S1-6 summoned a Jughead shaped Angel of Death, as the prime fiction maker, to create her Sweet Hereafter for her, as well as a last-day hallucination of the life she did not live to send her off in comfort. The actual 1955 Betty’s life was not worth recalling for her on her last day of consciousness, because the quad never happened, and because people didn’t live in the ways or die in the order that she would have preferred. On her final day of consciousness, Betty got to rewrite Riverdale to HER tastes, and this is how it worked out. She made a thing wearing Jughead’s face give her the story she wanted, for herself.

I wonder what really happened to 1955 actual Betty, because it was NONE of this.

The least believable, most ungrounded portion of this very shallow set of stories Betty wrote for her people was the path she gave Jughead Jones. If anything, Jughead Jones has been a compulsive relationship maker. There is no way he never got married. He got married multiple times. There is no way he never had children, either. It’s just telling to me that the possibly infertile Betty refused to imagine a future for Jughead where he got to have even the short amount of time he DID have to Tabitha Tate before the world ended.

As far as finales go, I’ve seen better and I’ve seen a lot worse. I do appreciate the consistency - Betty Cooper is indeed a very dark character, not for the reasons her stans think is dark, but because of her hypocritical victim-stance-stealing malevolence and self absorption.

On a meta level, I also wonder if this is from the power of the actual fandom, the vast majority of whom I think really were Bugheads. They produce a lot of fiction and art - and the only way the show can avoid any and all accusations of cribbing from those fanworks is to work out a cramped ending like this- Betty never had a great love in her life, never got to have her own kids even though in the final analysis she found that her core value was motherhood, and oh fine, neither did Jughead!

What a strange, odd, supernatural way to end this strange, odd, lovable show.

Goodbye Riverdale, I will miss you!

#riverdale opinion #anti-betty cooper? I think?#but i call it as THE SHOW has shown it to me #i think this episode is a great prompt for future fanfic writers who engage directly with canon #each of the core four and choni besides would have a totally different final-day and sweet hereafter #riverdale s7 recap #riverdale s7 #riverdale episode recap

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