I Can’t Believe The Plot Of “Riverdale” Anymore, So Here Are 26 Things That Really Happened
1.Some people start the day with a nice cup of coffee, others do a nice little meditation or yoga. In this week's episode, Betty Cooper's morning starts with getting a call from town coroner and Josie McCoy stan Dr. Curdle Jr. with an update about the tongueless corpse she's asking him to hoard as evidence. We ALL wake up differently, there's no right or wrong here.
If you will recall, a few episodes ago, Betty captured and tortured one of the serial killers connected to the missing women cases on the lonely highway in order to solve the case and specifically figure out what happened to Polly. Rather than speak, he bit out his own tongue and choked on it — extremely normal behavior. ANYWAY, Dr. Curdle Jr. has just been keeping the body around for Betty, but he's getting antsy about it until Betty says she'll give him a payout.
2.Tabitha's reaction once again proves that she is one of my favorite characters:
Honestly, who needs bars and clubs when you've got morgues and moth men?
3.Veronica's estranged husband, Chad, came back to settle their divorce, but — despite the fact that she was a speakeasy and maple rum business owner before she could legally vote and is now the she-wolf of wall street — she still only has one interest in life: bear mauling survivor and savior of Riverdale, Archie Andrews.
Absolutely unfathomable that after a whole seven-year time jump, we are just right back where we were.
4.Lest you forget, last week, Cheryl determined that she is a saint by performing three miracles, the last of which was being Queen of the Bees. Yes, you read that right. This week, Penelope now seems to be undermining Cheryl's cult and convincing Kevin to leave for reasons yet unknown.
I was on vacation and missed last week's recap, and WOW what a recap it would have been with the bees ALONE.
Penelope plants a seed in Kevin's head that Cheryl is going all "Wicker Man." I must admit I know this is a big cultural thing but I do not watch or consume anything horror-related, so if someone wants to explain in the comments, feel free. That said, I found it absolutely hilarious when he's later reading the Wicker Man book.
5.Britta (who you'll remember from earlier in the season as the only girl on Archie's football team) finds herself in Toni's office — she punched a guy who was calling her anti-gay names. She confides in Toni that she is gay, and asks Toni to be there when she comes out to her parents.
I really just love to see Toni Topaz in a position of power, helping her students.
6.Hiram had a chat with Chad and convinced him to try out his favorite hobby — attempting and failing to murder Archie Andrews:
Chad attempts to shoot Archie outside the El Royale, but completely misses and Archie manages to hit him over the head and escape. Chad says "the gun completely misfired," which is an interesting way of saying he had horrible aim, but whatever.
7.Tabitha discovers that Squeaky (Remember her? She was the first woman we saw get into a truck on the lonely highway) is also missing and asks Jughead and Betty to team up to work on this mystery together once and for all.
Betty fills in Jughead on the fact that they're looking for a family of serial killers/kidnappers. They remember Jughead's student, "Lerman Logan," who was also kidnapped but managed to escape, and they realize he didn't fit the profile of the rest of the missing people: Namely, they're women.
Lerman tells them that he remembers being trapped in a metal shed by someone who called himself a moth man and then was allowed to escape as long as he swore never to say anything.
8.And, of course, Jughead and Betty also end up back at the morgue, where Dr. Curdle Jr. reveals that another body turned up. Unfortunately, it's so disfigured that they'll have to run a DNA test to figure out if it's Polly — so Betty gives a sample. This will be very important later.
Unclear at this point if Betty spends more time at the morgue or at Pop's, but both really do seem to be the town hangouts for her.
9.After Chad attempts to murder Archie (or as she says, "your pathetic attempt to kill my lover"), Veronica gets some big "Paulette Bonafonté I'm taking the dog, dumbass" energy, except instead of "the dog" she plans to take EVERYTHING. Pls enjoy this lovely piece of art:
10.We switch to brunch with the Blossoms and Kevin, but literally all I could stare at were these "eggs" next to Cheryl:
Kevin has started getting a little sus about whom exactly they are praying to in their ministry, and Cheryl realizes she needs to think it over a little bit.
11.Me, whenever someone asks me why I still watch this show:
12.In classic Archie and Veronica fashion, they have sex before the ink on Veronica's divorce papers even has time to dry:
13.Cheryl explains to Kevin that she figured out who her ministry worships — Mother Earth, of course. And Kevin ultimately is like...I gotta go, but thanks.
One cult was more than enough for him.
14.Being earnest for a second, Toni and Fangs have a sweet heart-to-heart about their own coming out experiences after Britta's went poorly, and they have this exchange about baby Anthony:
15.Since Hiram's first murder attempt of Archie went poorly, he decides to try to blow up the mines where Archie and several others are currently searching for palladium. Hiram's expression as he's about to murder a bunch of innocent people for no reason is similar to mine when I'm about to drop some juicy goss in the group chat. This is real sociopath stuff:
16.This is the kind of moment while watching this show where I genuinely stare at the screen like, how did we even...get here???
Everyone except Archie and Eric make it out right away. Throughout the episode, we get more war flashbacks as Archie summons the courage to get them out. More on that a bit later.
17.Kevin calls Cheryl after the explosion, and I genuinely LOL'd at the way she picked up the phone:
I genuinely pray to Mother Earth that eventually we get to read all 12 of Cheryl's commandments. (And yes, I did just attempt to zoom into the picture because I'm normal.)
18.Naturally, Veronica holds Hiram hostage (because of course she does) and basically reveals that Hiram has truly always been an absolutely crap father.
Veronica says that if Archie ends up dying, Hiram will die, and then goes into a whole thing about their "dance of death" and this family's dynamics ARE SO EXHAUSTING, OMG.
19.Alright, here's where it gets wild, so buckle up! In Dr. Curdle Jr.'s THIRD appearance of the episode, Betty learns that the serial killer IS ACTUALLY A DISTANT RELATIVE OF HERS, because all serial killer roads seemingly lead to Betty:
They also learn that the other body that was found was Squeaky's...not Polly's.
20.And they piece together that actually, it's on the Blossom side of this messy family maple tree. Jughead remembers that Nana Rose once gifted him and Tabitha a corpse preserved in maple syrup (lolol) and realizes the serial killers, moth men, and Blossoms must all be connected. Which leads to the questioning of Nana Rose:
Sorry, couldn't resist a Twilight joke.
Jughead asks Nana whose corpse was preserved in the maple syrup, and she admits "It was cousin Timothy." LOL, OKAY WHAT?
21.Um, okay, so basically, Nana explains that her ex-husband cheated on her a lot and had a bunch of babies with other women, and then Nana had to "deal" with them, so she found a couple who lived in the woods named the "Starkweathers" to take in all of the kids. Here, I'll let Jughead sum it up best for all of us:
THIS SHOW IS SO BONKERS LOL! Oh, and they call themselves the moth men! See, it's all connecting! But pretty messed up of Nana to just SIT on this information for so long.
22.Meanwhile, Cheryl convinces Veronica to relax a bit, to which Veronica first replies, "I can't go home, Archie's trapped in a mine." She ends up taking Cheryl's advice, but Chad attempts to attack her and...Veronica accidentally kills him. BYE FOREVER YOU MASSIVE PIECE OF GARBAGE. Smithers is pretty shocked by everything, but Veronica is somewhat chill considering everything that just went down:
For some Lodge family closure, Veronica lets Hiram go because Archie survived. The episode ends with Archie and Veronica in their favorite state: naked in a tub.
And then immediately after, Hiram burns a picture of Hermione and Veronica. Very normal family.
23.Like I said, Archie and Eric DO ultimately survive the mine explosion, seemingly thanks to Cheryl's prayers to Mother Earth, which looked suspiciously like a Pantene Pro-V commercial:
24.But back to the illegitimate Blossom family. So Jughead pieces together that Old Man Dreyfus, who first TOLD him about the moth men, must be Mr. Starkweather. Remember him?
I feel like I spent a lot of time this episode remembering small details and characters from months ago.
25.Because there's SO MUCH GOING ON, at the same time, Toni realizes that Britta is now missing — so a crew of Toni, Fangs, Jughead, Betty, and Tabitha all go to take down the moth men. It's basically a lot of...this:
Thankfully, they successfully manage to rescue Britta (because I guess there was one "nice" moth man?) and arrest the (not nice) moth men! And Betty also forces Old Man Dreyfus to reveal where Polly is, which leads to genuinely one of the saddest moments I've seen on this show.
26.Betty and Alice finally get the closure they need when they find Polly's body at the junkyard, and the acting is so good and it's such a genuinely devastating moment. RIP Polly.
Truly, it’s wild that in one episode, we can go from laughing about moth men and palladium to crying over Polly.
Next week will be the fallout of this horrible news, which manifests in the form of a musical episode. This year's musical is Next to Normal, and per the synopsis, Alice creates "an imaginary musical fantasy world" of her family. We'll be here next week to unpack it all, I suppose.
Goodbye to the moth men plot forever...
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