Category Archives: Review

Review, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE EP. 13, “The Sweet Hereafter”

Better the sweet hereafter than this awful limbo. 

Grade: A-

Giving this episode a high grade because yes it was good but it wasn’t as good as last week. In a similar way to Game of Thrones, the penultimate episode is the most dramatic and the finale serves more to tie up loose ends and set up new storylines.

So what are the storylines being set up for Riverdale Season Two? Well mama, read to find out!

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Source: The CW // I didn’t even know t-shirts could fit that well.

In the aftermath of Clifford Blossom’s suicide, Chief Keller (who is…hot. Have we talked about what a DILF he is?) discovered parcels of heroin packed inside the maple syrup barrels. It seems that the Blossom family business smuggled heroin from Canada into the U.S. Are we not even making our own heroin anymore? What has happened to American manufacturing?!

FP Jones is still in jail for being an accomplice in Jason’s murder and is being pressured into giving any information on Blossom’s heroin distribution. Because, obviously, in the town of Riverdale, only one group can be responsible for drugs—and that’s the Serpents. FP maintains that the Serpents don’t deal in harder drugs, and he refuses to be a snitch even when Keller offers him a plea deal. Damn, son.

To recover and save face from the fact that a pillar of the community murdered his own son and smuggled heroin into the town, Mayor McCoy is throwing all her efforts into the 75th anniversary of Riverdale, the Jubilee, and using it to highlight some of Riverdale’s best and (pardon the irony) brightest—Archie and Betty. Betty, who has psychotic breaks, and Archie, who fucked a teacher. Apparently that ranks higher on the list of Do’s than wearing a beanie, or being Latina. Betty is frustrated. How can Riverdale move forward, she wants to know, if they refuse to acknowledge the past?

Some people in town can’t imagine moving forward. Penelope Blossom is distraught and broken over the loss of her son and husband, and utters, “Maybe your father had the right idea. Better the sweet hereafter than this awful limbo.” The notion of the future, and coming to terms with it, plays heavily into this finale. It makes sense—when all energy is focused on solving something from the past, you are forced to live in the past. And when that’s over, all that energy might cause you to tumble over from the sheer momentum.

Archie and Veronica move forward into their future. Jughead has to switch schools and leans into his Serpent legacy. But Betty refuses to move forward without acknowledge the past—the mayor and the town won’t even talk about how Clifford Blossom did anything; it’s all about the Serpents. So she takes to the true hero of this season—journalism—to write about Riverdale’s need to forgo convenient amnesia. It ends with someone scrawling “Serpent Slut” and hanging a Betty voodoo doll from her locker—but the truth is rarely without cost.

This episode serves to end the awful limbo that this season has been trapped in, by going back to the beginning. Archie and Veronica solidify the passion they felt at first sight. Betty leans into the mantle of journalism her parents had laid out. Alice reveals that she, like Polly, had gone through the cycle of teenage pregnancy—one that ended with a baby boy given up for adoption. Veronica says what we’re all thinking, that that kid must be a 20-something “blonde Adonis” by now. And Cheryl—Cheryl ends this season where she first began.

On Sweetwater River.

After a farewell text to the girls, Cheryl made the journey to the frozen surface of the river. As the gang raced through snow to her, she flung her fists against the ice over and over and over. Her red hair was the only color on the bleached-white landscape. And as she heard the voices of the Sleuthsters, she rose and turned to them just as the ice gave way beneath her feet.

Underwater, she saw a vision of Jason—the bullet-piereced corpse of her brother—and it all became clear. She could go into his embrace and die, or she could finally let him go. And above her, another Hot Redhead shatters bones and sprayed blood as he slammed against the ice. Archie broke it open and dragged the languid body of Cheryl Blossom out. And when she coughed up water, she was halfway towards rebirth.

The other half came later, as she dredged her house in gasoline and set it ablaze. The last chill left her body as she watches Thorn Hill engulf itself in flames.

That entire sequence was probably the best of the entire season, and I still get chills thinking about it.

To move forward, you have to do two things. One, you have to decide to move forward, like Cheryl did. You have to choose life. And two, you have to accept the past.

Betty—after another one of Archie’s “songs”—said as much. “Veronica Lodge is Riverdale. Archie Andrews is Riverdale. But FP Jones is also Riverdale. We banish the truth when it’s too ugly. The truth that Clifford Blossom was also Riverdale. If we don’t face the reality of who and what we are…then what happened to Jason could happen again, or, God forbid, something even worse.”

And as the flames consume Thorn Hill, and Veronica and Archie, and Betty and Jughead “consummate” their relationships, everything seems, for once in Riverdale, seared clean. But when an armed robbery in Pop’s ends in Archie cradling his bleeding father, that cleansing has not scoured every evil from Riverdale.

Riverdale’s Gilded Age of Innocence has been shattered, marked by an “act of violence that was anything but random.”

So that’s it for my recaps. I can’t say I’m not glad that it’s over. Mama’s tired. But hopefully we’ll meet again—when we meet Betty’s hot brother, and Veronica probably DILFy father, and the probably sexy possible-murderer of Fred Andrews, and every other slutty villain in the greater Riverdale-Southside area!

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Review, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE EP. 12, “Anatomy of a Murder”

Poison Root

Grade: A+

The root of “anatomy” is the Greek word “tome” which means to cut, or to break. To sever. And in “Anatomy of a Murder” the cutting open and apart is not just the murder of Jason Blossom, but the fabric of Riverdale itself.

Everything about this episode was so deliciously drawn-out that after it ended and the credits began, I sat there for a second and just breathed out—the air I had been holding inside of me for the last hour. Every actor, but particularly Cheryl, Jughead and FP, acted to the very edges of their skill.

Archie, Veronica and Betty (and Kevin? Was Kevin there? Who is Kevin?) spent much of this episode trying to prove that the gun found in FP’s trailer, the same gun that killed Jason, was planted in an attempt to frame FP. But as Mary Andrews, played by Molly Ringwald, who is apparently a “lawyer” their testimony is inadmissible because they broke into the trailer. Sorry hon. Side bar—Molly Ringwald looks amazing in black.

Before they can do anything else, FP confesses to everything. He confesses to the murder of Jason Blossom, he explains his motives, and even confesses to stealing the murder notes from Sheriff Keller. Wait, hold up, what was that last one? We know that Hal Cooper was the one to steal those notes. FP had nothing to do with it.

“Everything is tied up in a nice, little bow,” says Alice Cooper. “Too tidy, if you ask me.” She’s right, like she occasionally is, the truth is rarely tidy.

Hal sneaks back into his house to destroy those notes because, as he explains to Alice (holding a gun) and Betty when they catch him, he’s nervous that the connections between the Blossoms and the Coopers could be misconstrued as motive.

“That Great-Grandpappy (we need to discuss the familials in Riverdale—Mommy, Daddy, Grandpappy, Nana) Cooper was killed by a Blossom all those years ago?” asked Betty.

And then Hal is forced to divulge that that’s not just it. because, really, there never was anyone named Great-Grandpappy Cooper. He didn’t exist because…he wasn’t a Cooper. Betty’s great-grandfather and Cheryl’s great-grandfather were brothers, and Cheryl’s ancestor Cain-and-Abel’ed Betty’s. After the murder, the Abel branch of the Blossoms struck themselves from the family tree and remained themselves “Cooper.” That’s why Hal felt that the Blossoms had stolen the maple syrup business out from his hands.

That’s why he wanted Polly to get an abortion. Because she and Jason were third-cousins. And so it turns out that there is a little Blossom-loving going on, it’s just not between Jason and Cheryl.

Ew, even though I Googled it and third-cousins are totally kosher (and apparently actually kind of ideal for reproduction). Those Blossom-Blossom babies are gonna be superhuman and they’ll kill us all. The Coopers (the Blossom-Coopers? The Bloopers?) rush to Thorn Hill and take Polly back with them, who has just learned that she was fucking her cousin.

The Blossoms know this, and are pretty chill about it. Penelope even praises it a little bit, thus eliminating tentative incest as a motive for the Blossoms killing their son. Eugenics? More like Ewgenics!!

So with the knowledge that FP lied at least about the stealing, the Sleuthsters decide to explore other avenues. They discover that FP’s one phone call from jail was to Joaquin, the Serpent who is “dating” “Kevin.” Why would that be? Well, as we find out, because Joaquin helped FP dispose of the body of Jason Blossom.

This episode purposefully had us moving in circles because it’s confirmed, at least, that FP was on-site for the murder, and that it took place in a Serpent-owned bar. So part of FP’s confession, that he and Jason had struck a deal for Jason to smuggle drugs in exchange for a getaway car, and that FP realized that ransoming Jason would be a much more lucrative payoff, is truthful. So while things aren’t looking awful for FP, they’re still not looking great.

Joaquin, with a quick side-tour to an OD’ed Serpent named “Mustang” who had a bag full of Hiram Lodge blackmail money under his bed (Oops!), leads the Sleuthsters to FP’s “contingency plan” in the form of a certain murdered redhead’s letterman jacket. And in the Andrews garage, Betty makes Archie put on the jacket, because Archie looks amazing in blue. She runs her hands along the hard lines of his muscular torso until she finds a small hole in the lining of the pocket. She reaches in and fishes out one small silver hard-drive.

And they learn the truth about Jason’s murder.

The truth is twisted, like the convoluted roots of the Blossom family tree which fractured after a murder so many generations ago. The truth is messy, like the pool of sticky maple syrup spreading like infection on the Blossom barn floor. The truth is that Clifford killed his son.

The truth is often fruitless, because while one question has been answered, a thousand other ones pop up. Why did Clifford kill his son? What did Jason actually see that made him want to run away? What happened?

A murder destroyed the Blossom family tree all those years ago. And another murder has ruptured it even further. The poison root might be cut off at the surface, but there are other pieces in the earth that remain to flower in poisonous blossoms.

And the truth is often incomplete, because the one person who had all the answers now hangs from a rope in the Blossom family barn, while barrels of maple syrup have cracked open beneath him, spilling truth, maple syrup and strange brown parcels wrapped in plastic.

Next week: “The Sweet Hereafter”

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Review, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE EP. 11, “To Riverdale and Back Again”

Coming Home

 Grade: B++ (Not quite an A, though hon)

I really enjoy these episodes where the majority of the tension and drama is centered in a single night. Last week it was “The Lost Weekend” and Jughead’s birthday; this week the nexus of the episode is the Homecoming Dance. As someone who went to private school, I don’t know what a “homecoming dance” is, so I Googled it. according to Wikipedia, it’s in many ways essentially a fall prom, taking place in September-October, and the “homecoming” part is welcoming back alumni to the fold. So I guess that makes sense that it was held in the gymnasium, which I previously thought was rude that the chairs of the homecoming committee couldn’t spring for a second location. Hindsight.

This episode is the return of Archie’s mom Mary, played by Molly Ringwald. For some reason, it was this character that really solidified—paired with the homecoming theme—the reason for the Brat Pack casting. I mean, actually I think only Ringwald is part of the Brat Pack. But several of the actors playing the parents were well-known teen actors in the ‘80s: Molly Ringwald—Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles; Luke Perry—90210; Madchen Amick—Twin Peaks; Skeet Ulrich—The Craft (!!). The point of hiring these actors (in my mind) allows for unspoken history to be added to their backstories. You have the faint whispering in the back of your head that you’ve known these people since they were teenagers, so when they return as the parents of a new generation, the overall sense is that of a continuing story.

As Betty plans the homecoming dance and tries to balance her loner boyfriend and her Mommy Dearest mom, Veronica is trying to…prove her father is a murderer? The end result is a little murky, but the driving motivation—to learn the truth about her father—pushes Veronica into uncomfortable and gripping places. Because to discover whether or not her father is a murderer requires her to implicate FP Jones—Jughead’s dad—in the process. It’s a Catch-22: to save her own image of her father, she has to destroy someone else’s.

This more dangerous side of Veronica—she says to Alice Cooper when offering her help, “I don’t feel the same kind of loyalty to the Jones family that Betty does”—peels back the “reformed bad girl” persona that she has crafted upon her arrival at Riverdale. Not saying that this means that she’s a bad girl, but her actions prove that there’s something dark and steely underneath her glossy black curls. She’s not afraid of the consequences. Archie goes along with her because—despite having just left a relationship because he was too inattentive—he wants to be her boyfriend. Ronnie, understandably, is like, “Hon, we might be about to prove that my father murdered the town golden boy—I’m kind of busy right now.”

But since Archie’s storylines are generally direct results of his various relationships—see Ms. Grundy, Val, Betty—he decides to help her break into FP’s trailer (tragic) to find any evidence connecting him to Jason. They come up empty because, remember, FP smuggled Jason’s letterman jacket to Joaquin already. He took the jacket, we can assume, while burning Jason’s car of any evidence of Jason’s drug-smuggling for the Serpents.

Betty discovers that Archie and Veronica are investigating FP because none of them are particularly sneaky, and she’s outraged. Personally, I’ve never found Betty more boring than when she’s dating Jughead (whom she “loves” now). I hope they break up and Betty lets Petty Betty rise again like a phoenix from her ash-blonde roots.

In an adjacent plot, Preggo Polly is blundering around Thorn Hill mansion looking for any evidence that the Blossom Parents murdered their son. While snooping, she stumbles upon Cliff Blossom and his wig (!!?) collection. That prompts a chastising from Mrs. Blossom when she’s delivering Polly’s daily milkshake. They will later use that milkshake to roofie Polly, but who didn’t see that coming? Ever read Hansel and Gretel?

Don’t trust sweet treats from evil people, hon.

But when Polly convinces Cheryl to forage through Mrs. Blossom’s jewelry to find something for the dance—pre-roofie, obvs—Cheryl discovers the ring Jason proposed to Polly with. Now, here’s the intrigue—Jason would’ve supposedly never let go of that ring willingly, and technically it’s rightfully Polly’s. So how did Mother Blossom come by the ring?

Cheryl tells her parents that she flushed it down the toilet after finding it, to erase any trace connecting her parents to her brother’s murder. But in the last frames of her in this episode, we see her staring at the ring resting on her alabaster palm before curling shovel-tipped nails over it. What is Cheryl planning?

Overall, this episode was juicy. As Ronnie and Archie sing, “Kids of America” (kill me, shoot me—oops, too soon—make me deaf), the scene intercuts with the Riverdale police force searching FP’s trailer—guys, this is feeling very Making A Murderer to me—and finding the revolver used to kill Jason. The intercutting did not have quite the impact I think the editors intended, probably because that song is horrible, but I can understand where they were going and, hon, I got in that car.

And while we think that FP is a murderer for a hot two minutes (Jughead has a meltdown) Archie and Veronica track down Betty to tell her something: That revolver was planted there. This is so Making A Murderer I can’t deal! Except FP Jones is way hotter than Steven Avery. WAY HOTTER AND WAY MORE INNOCENT. Actually, I have no opinion on the Avery case. I did have to write a paper about their slightly problematic editing.

Overall, even though this episode forced us to listen to an cover of “Kids in America”, we got several seconds of Shirtless Archie (second week in a row; we’re back people!) so can I really even drag it?

NEXT WEEK: “Anatomy of a Murder”

And one more Shirtless Archie for blessings on your family:

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