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Riverdale Presents: Whoa, Dark Betty (Bam-a-Lam)

With Cheryl having come clean with the police (at least somewhat) about what happened to Jason on the 4th of July -- namely that the twins' plan was for Jason to fake his death and escape the small-town shackles of Riverdale forever -- Archie's colossal guilt over boning the music teacher while shots rang out gets to take the back seat this week.

Climbing into the front seat? Betty and Jughead and their heretofore unseen but suddenly incredibly sophisticated newspaper operation. And Riverdale's own Spotlight desk is sure busy this week! While Jug sets out to find out just where that gunshot Archie heard came from, Betty finds herself embroiled in the sordid details of the football team's conquest-list.

Oh, and Achie plays some of that sweet, sweet guitar music.

But whose shoe-leather reporting landed him or her in the top slot on our rankings?

  1. Chuck
    Rough breakthrough episode for ol' Chuck. He spreads a filthy rumor about his date with Veronica, gets all male-aggro-football-bro about it, and inspires the women of Riverdale High to band together and expose him and the other jocks for their SVU-worthy playbook of their various conquests. And that's all before Veronica and Betty tie him to a chair and force a confession out of him. Bad luck, Chuck.
  2. Alice (Betty's Mom)
    Cheryl calls Betty's mom a "holy roller" in this episode, which makes me even more confused about her characterization than I was last week. Alice ends up on the business end of Jason's mother's slapping hand for having published the details of Jason's autopsy.
  3. Fred (Archie's Dad)
    It feels incredibly quaint for Fred to be so uptight about Archie and his music when Archie's music is so clean-cut white-boy Ed Sheeran-style strumming, but I guess a TV had has to be uptight about something.
  4. Josie and/or the Pussycats
    They're still kind of off on their own island, but Josie gets to teach Archie an important lesson about cultural appropriation and not presuming to be able to tell black women's stories, and yes, this is still a dumb teen soap, but in 2017, dumb teen soaps have to be woke as fuck because the actual adults in charge of things are super not, so we take what we can get.
  5. Ethel
    Hey, it's Barb from Stranger Things! Here she plays Ethel, another uncool girl who steps up to talk about being victimized by Chuck and his football bros. No glasses this time, though, so good luck cashing in on every TV writer's trauma about their own awkward teen years.
  6. Archie
    He just wants to play his guitar, DAD! You wouldn't be saying this if I played football, DAD! I live entire lifetimes in fear of disappointing your forehead wrinkles of judgment, DAD!
  7. Hot Archie
    So hot.
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    Previously.TV

    Previously.TV

    Veronica should really barge into the boys' locker room more often.

  8. Cheryl
    As anyone probably could have predicted, Cheryl's "I'm guilty" from last week was not so much an admission that she killed her brother (and I enjoyed that Jughead's narration basically was like "We all clocked how easily parsed her words were, yes?"). So she's guilty of...not telling the whole truth, I guess? Obviously, there are still things Cheryl must know about Jason's disappearance and death that she's not saying. But it might be telling that it didn't take all that much convincing to get her onboard with the idea that Jason was one of the football sex-ring bros.

    Also props for another verbal hashtag ("hashtag justice is served") and many more props for busting out "Frida Shallow" on Veronica for pretty much no reason.

  9. Veronica
    Veronica gets a whole lot of self-mythologizing monologues this week about "she is not the one" and "scorched earth" and "full dark no stars," and you desperately want her to, like slip on a banana peel or something, but it's tough not to give her credit for rallying those girls together. It's also probably notable that Veronica is the one who keeps pushing Betty toward these moments of self-actualization, whether she intends to or not.
  10. Jughead
    I'm gonna forgive ol' Juggie for yet another Truman Capote reference because I really enjoyed his dumb little side plot this week. Tracking down where that gunshot came from on the 4th leads him to scout leader Dilton Doiley, and you can't exactly keep things dark and noir-ish when you're dealing with someone named Dilton Doiley, so we got a kind of oddly whimsical Jughead. And if you're with me on Team Judgead Is Lowkey Sexy, this moment where he swipes a maraschino cherry from one of the scouts is strangely alluring.
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    Previously.TV

    Previously.TV

    That's the rule with maraschino cherries, right? They're not food, they're not garnish, they're only props for accentuating the sex qualities of the mouth.

  11. Betty
    WHOA, DARK BETTY, BAM-A— okay, sorry, I know I already did that. But Betty is Queen Bitch in this episode, and it's great. Especially because Betty gets to be awesome in ways that are decidedly not cool. Re-opening the school paper isn't cool. Constantly talking up the school paper isn't cool. But Betty's not going for cool. She's going for...honestly, unhinged. We got a peek at Betty's potential crazy last week, and this week, she let it ALL out, adopting a sexy/dangerous/vengeful personality that she named after her sister, Polly, and the extracting revenge on Chuck/Jason with what I can only describe as an attempted maple-syrup waterboarding. Maybe I'm watching too much Santa Clarita Diet, but Betty's being led by her id these days, and it is working for her.

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