KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes, Cole Sprouse
There’s still plenty to enjoy here, not the least of which is some Melrose Place style histrionics among the parental set.
Our assertion last week that Riverdale won’t be messing with the core characteristics of its cast of characters may have been premature. While the Big Four may be inviolate, lesser members of the Archie Comics pantheon seem to much more malleable in this side-universe. To wit: Chuck Clayton (Jordan Calloway), for decades a sports-happy aspiring comic book artist, is now a slut-shaming alpha jock, while boy genius Dilton Doiley (Major Kurda) is a hardcore survivalist bent on welding his scout troop into a militia. That’s a bit different.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Episode three kicks off with one of the fastest cliffhanger-reversals in history. When we last saw Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) she was holding her wrists out for the handcuffs and declaring herself guilty. Pretty much immediately she’s clarifying the situation to Mr. Weatherbee (Peter James Bryant) and Sheriff Keller (Martin Cummins): she’s guilty of lying to the authorities, not offing her brother, Jason. Now, at last, we get the heavily telegraphed revelation that Jason wanted to run away from Riverdale forever, and Cheryl was helping him fake his own death in order to get out from under their parents (who we meet briefly this episode, and it’s kind of an anticlimax).
The main thrust of this episode is the aftermath of Veronica’s (Camila Mendes) date with Chuck, who takes to social media to put it about that he gave her a “sticky maple” (apparently that’s a Riverdale thing, with the exact details left to the imagination). Ronnie is livid, but it’s social justice minded Betty (Lili Reinhart), currently in the middle of reviving the Riverdale High school newspaper, The Blue & Gold, who spearheads the counterattack, uncovering a culture of misogyny in the football team and bringing together a number of victims – including Big Ethel, played by none other than Shannon “Barb from Stranger Things” Purser. Revenge being needed, a honeypot is set, with Betty as the bait.
Meanwhile, Jughead’s (Cole Sprouse) investigation of Jason’s death continues, with Betty now promising him column inches in the paper a la Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Juggie takes a run at a witness that we haven’t spent much time with – Dilton, the smartest kid in town, who was nearby with his scout troop when Jason disappeared. After zeroing in on a weak link in Dilton’s khaki-clad foĺlowers, Jug learns that it was Dilton who was responsible for the gunshot everyone heard on the 4th of July – he was drilling his charges for the coming apocalypse because in this version of crazy-smart Dilton Doiley, the emphasis is on crazy. In return for Jughead not telling the cops about his penchant for firearms, Dilton drops a clue on him that the audience already knows – Ms. Grundy’s car was at the river that day, presumably along with Ms Grundy (Sarah Habel) herself. This will in all likelihood swing the focus of the investigation onto her next episode (a promise made, as it turns out, in this ep’s kicker).
Kind of lost in the mix this episode is ol’ Arch (KJ Apa), who manages to parlay Cheryl’s interest in him into an in with Josie and the Pussycats in order to further his music. Plus he manages to convince his dad that music to him is as important as football and deserves equal paternal support, which is all well and good, but pretty vanilla in an episode where Betty is donning a stripper wig and almost drowning a handcuffed Chuck in a hot tub.
And therein lies the problem with Archie as a character, at least in Riverdale; for all that he’s hunked out and had an affair with a teacher, he’s still a good kid trying to do the right thing, and the show is struggling to both dramatise that in a meaningful way and to make it stand out amongst all the other salacious action going on – and this is certainly the most salacious episode so far. The focus on Archie’s music is also sitting awkwardly; the creative process is always difficult to depict in a way that doesn’t come across as mawkish, and the series is definitely failing here. The show’s title certainly implies an ensemble piece, but surely the flagship character shouldn’t be this uninteresting? Give the Andrews kid some agency, for crying out loud.
There’s still plenty to enjoy here, not the least of which is some Melrose Place style histrionics among the parental set – Betty’s eminently bitter mum and the grieving Mrs Blossom damn near have a catfight, for crying out loud, and you get the feeling that some serious sins-of-the-father stuff will come to light before the series is done. There are also plenty of dangling threads left to ruminate on, in addition to the ongoing plot; Betty called Chuck “Jason” when she was torturing him, then claimed to not remember – does mental illness run in the Cooper family? Are we gonna meet the mysterious broken bird, Polly, soon? Still, this feels like a minor but measurable step down from what has gone before.