Tag Archives: television

Review, television, Things Happening RN

“ROSEANNE” IS CANCELED

On Tuesday, ABC announced that it would be canceling the reboot of Roseanne after the show’s star, Roseanne Barr, went on a Twitter rant that included a racist remark against Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, in which Barr compared Jarrett to an ape. Despite tepid headlines calling it “racially charged” or heading into “racial waters,” the remark was just plain racist.

The reaction to it was swift; Wanda Sykes, a consulting producer on the show, announced that she was quitting, Emma Kenney, an actress on the show, Tweeted that she was going to quit. This is after showrunner Whitney Cummings announced last month that she was leaving the show as well.

In a letter, the president of ABC Entertainment Group, Channing Dungey, announced that Barr’s comments were abhorrent and they were canceling her show. Dungey is also the first black American president of ABC.

To talk about this is to talk about how something can be both good and bad at the same time. It is good, categorically, that people had the response to Barr’s comment. It was racist, because Roseanne Barr is racist. It is good that ABC canceled the show, and that people on the show had the reaction they did.

However, Roseanne Barr being racist on Twitter and peddling in racism, bigotry, Islamophobia and conspiracy theories existed before her show was rebooted. Former U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, who is black, said that Roseanne also compared her to an ape in a tweet. Roseanne also perpetrated the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant. That theory led to an armed man entering and threatening the occupants of that restaurant.

ABC did not have a problem with Barr’s past comments, so it’s difficult to assume that this latest remark, even though it is a racist, repugnant comment, was what sent her show over the edge. ABC canceled the show for one reason: because it affected ABC. Without Cummings or Sykes, and with the possibility that several of its actors would leave, the show, and Barr herself, became a financial liability. That is why they canceled the show.

In February 2017, Simon & Schuster dropped Milo Yiannopoulos as a client after acquiring the rights to his book with an advance $255,000. The book deal was tabled after audio surfaced where it appeared Yiannopoulos condoned inappropriate sexual relationships between men and boys. This was decidedly too far for Simon & Schuster, the people signing the same man who was banned from Twitter for inciting racial violence and bullying against Leslie Jones, who called people faggots and derided feminists as “ugly and sexless.” Simon & Schuster did not drop Yiannopoulos because they were offended morally. They dropped him because the bad publicity and optics of keeping him were not worth it. They found worth in him, and subsequently cosigned his words and bigotry, when the benefits of him outweighed the costs.

ABC cosigned Roseanne’s actions because the benefits of her outweighed the costs. When the scales were flipped, they dropped her. It was, and is, business.

This isn’t to say that I don’t think that the people behind these actions, like the executives at Simon & Schuster or Channing Dungey, were not offended by the actions and words of their clients. I think it’s highly likely that they were. But what I’m saying is that everything else, and everything before, they did not have a big enough problem with to stop working with Yiannopoulos and Barr.

I think that there is a place for conservative shows on television, and I think that it’s necessary to have conservative voices in the conversation.  I think it sucks that everyone on the Roseanne show was unceremoniously fired, leaving their jobs and their paychecks in limbo. I think it sucks that Roseanne Barr was given literally a golden opportunity and all she had to do was keep her raging racism barely in check – and she couldn’t even do that.

I think it sucks that the ABC executives who greenlit the show fed into the lie that Roseanne was important because it represented the so-called “silent majority,” white middle-class Republican voters, perpetrating this lie that they are the people who are being marginalized. Losing your status as the only voice can feel like, I’m sure, losing your voice, but that’s not true. Roseanne was not, and is not, the only show that represents white, middle-class Americans. There is, without sounding facetious, countless shows that represent this demographic – The Middle, Bob’s Burgers, Modern Family, The Goldbergs, Family Guy, Fuller House… the list goes on and on.

I understand the push behind reboots; it’s the same reason why I re-watch the same shows over and over against. There is power in the familiar, and there is capital in nostalgia. But the shows being rebooted after remnants, unfortunately, of a time in television where the pre-eminent voices were white, cisgender and straight. What if we put the energy, money and passion that is being directed towards rebooting old shows into creating new ones? What if we created shows that were representations of the present and future of Americans?

The 2016 election uncovered for many Americans the truth of our country: that we are riven with cracks, that we are deeply divided and angry and frightened. I understand the impetus behind rebooting shows like Roseanne, that desire to reach out to different sides of the aisle. But I don’t think Roseanne was the answer. I think the answer is not in encouraging growth from a poisoned root, but in growing something new and wholly its own. There is a way to truthfully and accurately represent what it means to be an American in 2018.

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2018, pop culture, Review, Riverdale CW, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE Ch.26, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

The devil you know.

Grade: B+

A “capo,” or caporegime, we learned tonight, is someone that does the killing – the dirty work of the boss. It widens the web of guilt, attaching other people to the sins of someone else.

Betty assists her mother get rid of the body of the man who came to the Cooper house, a crime that Jughead and FP will eventually get drawn into. Veronica negotiates with Mayor McCoy on behalf of her father. Archie gets pressured by Agent Adams. All of these tangential people are being drawn into the actions of others, almost against their will.

The energy of the episode catapults off last week’s, where, interestingly, Tall Boy was, in a sense, the capo of Mayor McCoy and Hiram Lodge. Now that Juggie knows that Tall Boy was working at the behest of Hiram, he sends back the head of General Pickens to the Lodges and uncovers the nefarious actions of Mayor McCoy – that the Lodges donated hush money to McCoy while she looked the other way on their business dealings.

What I love is that Jughead is, at his core, trying to do a good thing: stop his friends and family from being evicted. It’s getting overshadowed by, you know, covering up a murder but it’s still super nice! Veronica stops Mayor McCoy from going public of her crimes by threatening to release the information of her affair with Sheriff Keller, which would decimate them, their families and their social standings.

Archie is being pressured more and more by Agent Adams, who wants to get Hiram on tape. Archie uses the newspaper coverage of Papa Poutine’s murder to bring it up to Hiram, but Lodge isn’t budging. And when Archie doesn’t deliver the goods (and purposefully misleads the FBI), Adams goes after Fred with some made-up illegal immigrant worker business.

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Source: The CW // Cheryl was criminally underused this episode.

Upon a second visit to the dead body – wrapped in a rug and deposited in an old pipe – Betty discovers his phone, which show that he has a jealous girlfriend and a thriving drug-dealing career. This disproves my theory that he came to the house as a result of Betty or Chic’s cam-habits, but begs the question: is Chic doing drugs? Or is he involved in the dealing?

Betty cracks and involves Jughead in the cover-up. He, then, involves FP who utilizes his “getting rid of bodies” expertise to dissolve the body. He’s learned from his mistakes covering up Jason’s murder and he won’t be getting caught this time. Is it just me, or did we all gloss over the fact that FP got rid of Jason’s body?

After Archie comes clean to Hiram, that an FBI agent approached him but Archie hasn’t squealed, Hiram’s minion Andre – Hot Andre – comes to collect him for a visit with the boss. As the limo descends into darkness, conveniently scraping spookily against finger-like branches, Archie becomes more and more nervous.

And perched on the edge of a cliff, the river frothing below, is not Hiram Lodge. Instead, framed by liquid sheets of dark hair, Hermione Lodge is “the boss.” It turns out that, as we suspected, Agent Adams was not, in fact, an FBI agent. Instead, he was a test for Archie – to prove his loyalty. And the phrase, “capo,” comes back from the beginning of the episode. Agent Adams was the capo of Hermione. But more interestingly is the role, the active role, Hermione appears to be taking. She is not, perhaps, the capo of her husband. She might be an agent of chaos in her own right.

Archie is confused, and betrayed. However, the test worked: Archie didn’t snitch. But with the steely blackness of Hermione’s eyes, it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like a warning: that Archie is not safe, not because of Veronica, not ever.

This is the first time that the Riverdale ragtags didn’t involve the police in something that’s happened, and it marks an unholy shift in the narrative for me. Before, they circumvented the (relatively) hapless law enforcement when they had to, but they still were operating on the side of good. Now, with so many people moving to cover up a murder, and some getting deeper into the pull of mafia, our heroes of Riverdale are taking a distinctly antihero approach.

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Review, Riverdale CW, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE CH.16, “The Watcher in the Woods”

Riverdale’s residents are playing with fire.

 Grade: A-

Before we get to the Kevin Keller of it all, let’s dive into this episode. Everyone in Riverdale seems to be entering dangerous territory: Archie’s deep in the Lodge lion’s den, Juggie is trying to navigate the gang-riddled waters of Southside High, Alice is facing a dangerous proposition and Kevin’s literally cruising in the woods.

At his new school, Jughead is at ground zero for gang violence and drugs (Jingle Jangle, which is such a stupid name that it veers out of stupid and into acceptable). Because he’s a better and more driven journalist than I’ll ever be (I spent my high school career stalking this one hot guy during free periods) he approaches his English teacher (after learning about Fahrenheit 451) to restart the Red and Black, Southside’s answer to the Blue and Gold.

Also at Southside, Jughead meets Toni Topaz, who I LITERALLY love already. She’s a Serpent as well (everyone cool is a Serpent, I want to be a Serpent). It seems that they’re positioning Toni as a way of complicating Bughead, but I would like to posit another theory. Allegedly Cheryl will be getting a love interest in Season Two. Could she be into Toni? The only man we know she’s had feelings for is her brother, and he’s dead, and also her brother and also dead. I don’t know which is a greater barrier for their love: honestly, it might be the dead thing.

Side note: Toni said, “Have fun in your safe space, snowflake,” to Jughead re the Red and Black. So Trump exists in the same space as Riverdale? Who did everyone in Riverdale vote for?
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Review, Riverdale CW, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE Ch. 14, “A Kiss Before Dying”

Who is the green-eyed man?

Grade: A(yyyyyyyyy)+

And we’re back! After what feels like the blink of an eye but was actually five months, we’re back in the town of Riverdale. So let’s sip some milkshakes, shake the dust off our pearls and GET BACK TO IT.

Overall, the premiere of season two was BEAUTIFULLY-SHOT (ouch, no pun intended) and brought the drama. It felt a little messy and unfocused, as well as advancing storylines like Juggie’s in a forced way, but it accomplished what all premieres should accomplish – it made me desperate to watch the rest of the season.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the end of last season, Archie was clutching his bleeding father to his chest after a lone gunman stormed Pop’s Diner and shot Fred.

Now, Archie is driving like a maniac – he does not have his license, because he is so young (if the show’s absence has made you forget the pure ickiness of Ms. Grundy and Archie) – through the streets of Riverdale while Fred Andrews is turning the inside of their car – and then the hospital steps, hallway and everything else – into a Jackson Pollock painting. A hospital, by the way, whose ‘50s décor did not inspire confidence.

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Source: The CW

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Politics

A TAKE ON THE NORTH KOREA-TRUMP SITCH THAT STARTED LIGHT BUT GOT REAL DARK, REAL FAST

Header photo credit: U.S. Department of Defense 

I can’t decide if Twitter jokes about nuclear war makes me want to laugh or cry, and really that’s the best description I can think of for Twitter – and the internet world in general.

So I’m coming off working my first freelance job, and it was very exciting but a little draining for someone who, until now, has considered wearing pants with zippers to be the greatest triumph of any given day. So I almost considered skipping this, because I knew it would have to be about the whole Trump-North Korea thing and I just wasn’t ready to put on my journalist hat. But then I realized, infusing humor and drama into politics is what I do best. So I’m going to give you a Casual Cool Hip Take on the Trump-North Korea dramz.

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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.9, “La Grande Illusion”

Sins of the Father 

Grade: A

Honey never goes bad. And because it never spoils, it can be used to preserve things indefinitely. There was a myth once of a Greek king whose queen died tragically. To cope with the pain, he entombed her body in honey—thus preserving her forever. It seems like the Blossoms are trying the same—preserving Jason’s memory by suffocating Archie in sweet maple syrup. But the problem with preservation is that that thing you’re trying to keep will still be dead when you uncover it.

In fact, this entire episode centers around preservations of things gone spoilt. Betty struggles to hold together her family, Veronica is trying to reconcile her father as the parent she loves with the monstrous businessman in the shadows. The beginning of the series delved into the dysfunctional mothers of Riverdale, and now we’ve moved onto the fathers. Fred Andrews, Cliff Blossom, Hal Cooper. Speaking of the last one, Hal Cooper is totally a concussed football troll gone to seed.

In the A-plot, Archie is being roped into the Blossom family drama. The members of the Blossom Maple Farm board are descending upon Thorn Hill for the annual first tapping of the maple tree. With the scandal of Jason’s murder, and his role as the heir presumptive of the family business, the board members are trying to edge the Blossoms out of the company. The entire first half of the episode is dredged in layers of sexism as Cliff Blossom tries to coil his meaty, rosacea hands around Archie’s broad, sculpted shoulders. Cliff wants Archie to temper out Cheryl’s irrationalness and erraticism. She is, apparently, not even remotely being considered to run the company. Let’s not forget that Jason was a drug-mule and knocked up his high school girlfriend, and he—as a boy—was still considered more stable than Cheryl. Sexism.

This was the first episode that I got a slightly lower register on the Cersei scale from Cheryl. Yes, her obsession with her brother verges on pornographic, but something was illuminated for me. Jason was the golden child—in the eyes of his parents, the school, in sports. And he was always the biggest champion of Cheryl. She was always tolerated because Jason marketed them as a package deal. Without him by her side, she’s back to being the pariah.

Like Jughead analogizes in his last voiceover, Cheryl is a hurricane about to bear down on Riverdale. But as much as that works for her potential destructiveness, it also serves to elucidate her role as the center of Riverdale. Everyone this episode operates in her orbit. The Blossom family board underestimate her. Archie uses her for her parents’ connection to some top-tier music program. Polly is using her to find out if the Blossom parents had something to do with Jason’s death. Only Jason never asked anything of Cheryl—never wanted her beauty, or her crazy, or her connections. Only Jason wanted just her. And unmoored, without Jason, Cheryl is cracking in the most interior parts of her soul.

In the accompanying B-plots, Veronica tries to balance the karma scales by being especially nice to Ethel Muggs. Ethel’s father, Manfred Muggs, tried to commit suicide because he invested money with Hiram Lodge and lost everything. Subsequently, the Muggs are going to testify against Hiram in court. Something that wasn’t said, but could be possible given Hiram’s far reach from prison, is that Manfred’s “suicide” attempt might have been a little…induced by Hiram’s machinations.

Betty and Alice try to bring Polly back, unaware that Polly is at Thorn Hill as a spy. Their plan is to write a scorched-earth exposé of the Blossoms—how Cliff Blossom is the one who put Hiram in jail, their treatment of Cheryl, the circling vulture movements of the family board. It comes to a halt when Hal, a human erectile dysfunction commercial, cuts Alice off from the Riverdale Register. Alice then throws a brick through the front door of the newspaper office—go Alice—and later, Jughead suggests Alice write for the high school newspaper. Madchen Amick, who plays Alice, is a great actress so her scenes are electric, but I was mostly bored with the Cooper subplot. Sorry babe.

The episode’s cliffhanger is the addition of a new suspect. We learned from Archie’s overhearing that Clifford Blossom put Hiram Lodge in jail, thus “shattering” his family. We’ve seen Hiram’s ability to enact his will from jail, so is it possible that he made his own revenge—shattering the Blossom family with the murder of their most prized possession?

Intrigue.

Veronica learns that trying to preserve her family legacy doesn’t always work. Betty realizes that in times of strife, people either come together or fall apart. And dear, dear Cheryl. As she sobs, scrawling over Archie and Polly’s faces in a photograph with a red Sharpie, Polly knocks at the door. Cheryl hastily wipes up her tears and spreads a smile across her full, syrupy-red lips. In a hurricane, the center is often the only part that is not seized by wild winds. But that calm center belies the most dangerous part of the storm. Beware of Cheryl. And beware, Cheryl. As she preserves her rage behind layers of clear gold maple syrup, she could be entombing herself in the process.

Next week: “The Lost Weekend”

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

  • Everyone in this episode was wearing Ralph Lauren Polo
  • “Mrs. Lodge, this Quiche Lorraine is to die for!” –Kevin Kevin, setting back gays for decades to come
  • Kevin truly just exists at Veronica’s beck-and-call.
  • “Mr. Andrews, nice haircut—looking extremely DILFy today,” Cheryl Blossom, bringing the gays back from the setback Kevin caused
  • “That was a joke, you hobo,” Cheryl is SLAYING QUOTES this episode
  • I love how Archie needs to have a serious conversation with Cliff at the tailor, but can’t be bothered to put on pants to do it. No, seriously—I love it.
  • Val and Archie break up because…when were they ever together?
  • Fred showed his dark side this episode, strong-arming Hermione into twenty percent of the profit in return for his continued support. Also, they’re done. #AndrewsBoysBreakUp
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pop culture, Rambles, television

THE KARDASHIAN AQUARIUM

Written late. I’m going to blame this going up late on the time-change, which is not at all true but you’ll never prove that. I mean, I just admitted to it, but will that hold up in court? Unclear.

This morning (my morning, your mid-afternoon), while I bustled around getting ready (doing dishes in my towel because I’m using this weird in-shower tanning moisturizer because clearly I don’t know when to quit while I’m ahead re God’s choices for my body; making my bed; choosing what plain t-shirt to overwear today) I watched the season 13 premiere of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It’s been, like, so long since it’s been on—and so much has happened since then, even though the premiere was probably filmed in late September—that I almost forgot what it was like to watch KUWTK.

For instance, I don’t even need to be paying attention. I was doing dishes while it played, because by now, I understand that what happens in the “Coming Up” segment is essentially all you need to know for the next portion of the episode until the following commercial break. Also, they speak so quietly that I had to put on subtitles, and when I wasn’t looking at it, I knew that they would be lying on their sides lithely, picking at their acrylics, wearing hoop earrings, that I wasn’t missing anything.

Watching the Kardashians is like going to the aquarium. The main reason you go to the aquarium is because the fish are pretty, and it’s a glimpse into a world that you would know nothing about otherwise. To live amongst the fishes, you must forgo oxygen. To live amongst the Kardashians, it’s kind of the same thing. I don’t have elaborate parties at Prime One Twelve in Miami for my personal assistant. I don’t occasionally drop into my New York brick-and-mortar shop.

By the by, the Kardashians should sell DASH to Nordstrom. To not to that would be so fucking dumb. Make like Topshop and put that shit in a department store. Pls.

I don’t arrange for four extra rooms in a luxury hotel for my NBA player boyfriend and his crew. I don’t have a crew.

For these reasons, amongst a thousand others, I watch the Kardashians. Kylie and Kendall weren’t in the episode at all (apparently Kylie is gunning for a Kyga reality show—because that worked so well with Khlomar) and Kris only popped up at the end to wear power blazers and talk about baking cinnamon rolls. My family is boring and not even we have conversations this boring.

But I watch, and in the moments where I’m not fluffing my duvet (not a euphemism) or picking a cologne (out of two options) I’m glued to the screen. There’s something so alluring about these people—like watching Galatea come to life and talk about beanies. They’re hyper-human; they’re hyper-beautiful; they’re hyper-rich. And the fact that they have the most mundane conversations is part of the appeal; that people with this much beauty, influence, wealth and power could actually be so boring. STUN.

I think what I’m most excited for (besides the Paris saga) is Blonde Kylie. I was a huge stan for Blylie, and every day I miss that blonde bombshell moment she went through. Best few months OF MY LIFE. Also, I just realized that months ago, I tweeted that if Kylie did not release a line of highlighters called “KyLighters” that everything she’d done would be for naught. And guess what!!! It’s not for naught because she released Kylighters!!!! I can’t believe I’m psychic.

Side bar—there was a point sophomore year that I was legitimately convinced that I was psychic and I truly believed I could predict the future. So maybe this is my second wind!

I like how all I thought to write about was the Kardashians and even with that, it’s taken me, like, an hour to get this far. Not all heroes wear capes though, because I’m managing to finish this 4 my fans. Actually, though, I totally would wear a cape—very chic. Although very fall.

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Source: Danny McCarthy// My current background

Is there anything left to say? I switched out my phone cases because “if I had to look at my clear phone case for another second, I would’ve flipped out” and that’s too extreme of a reaction to have about anything. My new one is silicone-y and says “Chill pills” which isn’t basic of me because, technically, I am on chill pills. It’s ironic and subversive. Fuck off.

I love my life. I love the Kardashians. I love cauliflower.

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Source: Twitter//Peep the time-stamp; who’s gonna tell my Twitter about Daylights Savings?

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television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE EP. 5, “Heart of Darkness”

Grade: B

Out of all the horrors incurred upon Jason Blossom—shot in the face, forced to wear white, having creepy-as-fuck parents, bound and tortured for a week—perhaps the greatest one is the sickly-sweet nickname that Cheryl has for him: “JJ.”

Jason Blossom, whose previous acting credits include being a beautiful mannequin and “playing” “football,” is most definitely not a “JJ.”

This episode was all about the Blossoms—Penelope, Clifford and Cheryl (and also Grandmama Blossom)—living on the creepy Thornhill estate, the “house that all the kids avoid” (according to Jughead). The Thornhill estate includes: one massive mansion, an enjoined cemetery, and creepy-beautiful flowers that have flourished from soil nutrient-rich from decaying Blossom carcasses. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Blossom to blossom—haven’t we all heard that before? And even though the body of Jason is being laid to rest in the ground this episode, the questions surrounding his death are scraping their way to the surface.

After waking from a nightmare where—I swear to God—I thought Cheryl was going to climb into Jason’s coffin, Cheryl finds her mother staring at her. Cheryl has taken to sleeping on Jason’s bed to get inspiration for her memorial speech. Well, not too fast, because Cheryl won’t be speaking at Jason’s memorial, according to Penelope.

However, with the help of Veronica—who we’re calling “Ronnie” now? Unclear—“Hermes” Lodge, Cheryl gets her groove back. She invites Veronica over for a “sleepover” the night before the memorial—a sleepover that Veronica soon finds involves no one else but a dinner with the Blossoms where Mr. Blossom makes cruel digs over Hiram Lodge’s imprisonment. Sounds like a dinner at my house. But when Veronica finds out that Cheryl has been banned from speaking at the memorial, she resolves to help Cheryl. Any way she can.

“Heart of Darkness” saw the return of Shirtless Archie. He’s beating up a punching bag (is it redundant to say “punching a punching bag”?) in his room. He wants to get football captain, because getting captain gets him a scholarship, which gets him into college, which gets him into studying music. Has he thought of YouTube tutorials? One taught me how to knit, so I’m sure one could teach him about song-writing. Archie and Reggie square off to see who will be the captain. Spoiler alert: Archie gets it because despite being wildly sleep-deprived and under-qualified and young, the hot white guy always gets it. He’ll turn it down for music so that Reggie can have it—but Archie gets it first.

But because Riverdale is cruel, while we do have Shirtless Archie, we also have “Brooding Weirdly” Archie, and “Archie Together with Val of the Pussycats” Archie. Val gives Archie the connection to a new music tutor—Richie from HBO’s Looking—who, like everyone else, treats Archie so mean about his music. Archie is a gorgeous, strong-jawed musical athlete—HOLLYWOOD WILL SNATCH HIM UP. WHY IS NO ONE REALIZING THIS? DID NONE OF YOU WATCH GLEE?

Archie’s main task of the week is to write music, you know, while Veronica helps Cheryl get over the death of her brother, and Jughead and Betty try to solve Jason’s murder. Because you don’t always get the same as your friends.

Remember last week when I said that the tacit connections between Jason and Archie are becoming obvious to me? Well I was sort of right all along. Archie reveals—to Music Teacher Richie—that he began writing songs over the summer, and the first one was about Jason.

Side bar—wouldn’t it be amazing if Archie turned out to be bisexual and previously dated Jason?

But because we live in a gross world, I doubt that’ll happen, so Archie is just a murder-obsessed freakazoid. It’s like how Hayden Christensen played Anakin Skywalker and you forgive the fact that he’s an egomaniacal killer because he’s gorgeous. Hot people get an unnecessary amount of passes—and I know this because if I didn’t look the way I do, I would’ve been citizen-arrested by now.

The second instance is at the memorial. Archie has been wearing Jason’s number (oh that too) but retires it into the care of Mrs. Blossom. Penelope, who has been literally a monster, falters at the sight of Archie in his letterman jacket and red hair. She reaches up and caresses his face.

“You’re so much like him.”

That one small moment humanizes Penelope as more than a heartless bitch. She’s a woman who lost her son horribly, whose daughter lied to her, whose husband has an unfortunate haircut. There’s only so much one woman can take.

In the Adventures of Betty and Jughead (and I guess Kevin), they’re working on replicating Chief Keller’s “murder board.” Betty is going on a “date” with Trav, who was friends with Jason. Kevin wants to know if it’s more than a date—because gay people just exist to ask their straight friends about dating!!

Petty B and Juggie decide that during the memorial, they’ll sneak into Jason’s room for clues. Because the dead may tell no tales, but their browser histories do. Mine doesn’t, because I use Incognito, but the main search engine in this town is something called “Sleuthster” so all bets are off. They learn from Trav that Jason was selling off his possessions before he disappeared, and he was also selling drugs. The plot thickens.

MEMORIAL. Cheryl shows up in a STUNNING WHITE DRESS—the same one she was in when she last saw Jason. Archie is wearing a letterman’s jacket because he has no respect for fashion rules. Betty and Juggie sneak upstairs where they loudly open drawers until the Blossom Grandmama reveals herself from the shadow.

She mistakes Betty for Polly and drops the major bomb that Jason and Polly were engaged. But Jason and Polly got into a fight, Polly tried to kill herself and was carted off to an asylum. It’s revealed that Hal Cooper—Betty’s dad and someone who I have NEVER seen before—knew all this. Hal’s anger over the Blossom family turns out to be incredibly deep-rooted. Generations ago, Great-Grandfather Blossom and Great-Grandfather Cooper were in the maple business together. Blossom didn’t want to share his profits so he murdered Cooper—duh. Murdered over maple. It’s a blood (maple) feud that tried to keep Jason and Polly apart.

In not even a B-plot (maybe a lowercase “c”) Fred Andrews flirts with Hermione Lodge, who shuts it down until the South Side Serpents threaten her with a live snake and Fred comes to her rescue.

Overall, the Sleuthsters determine that Hal Cooper is the one who stole the murder board from the Keller’s house. And now Hal is a suspect in Jason’s murder, with motives old and new.

Maybe this call is coming from inside the house.

And in the last moments, the Sleuthsters realize that they need to talk to Polly. YES. FINALLY.

NEXT WEEK: Faster, Pussycats! Kill! Kill!

 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

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Source: CW//RICHIE

  • The characters pronounce Music Teacher’s name—Mr. Castillo—with such a forced foreignness, it’s bizarre.
  • This dialogue: VAL: “I heard Ms. Grundy used to tutor you.” VERONICA: “Understatement of the year.”
  • How many different-colored veils does Cheryl own?
  • Why are we not surprised that Archie has a punching bag in his room?
  • “She’s sick, and Jason made her sick.”
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