-Riverdale has been off to a pretty good start so far but one plotline has been notably weaker than all the others. You know, the plot where Archie is sleeping with Ms. Grundy. It's been easy to ignore so far because literally everything else going on has been much better but this week it took centre-stage. The good news is it looks like it's mostly wrapped up. The bad news is it wrapped up in an incredibly clumsy, open-ended fashion that made this the weakest episode so far. Which is a shame because there was a lot to like about The Last Picture Show, it just got swallowed by the Ms. Grundy of it all.
-So after learning that Ms. Grundy was at the river July 4th weekend at the same time as Archie, Betty puts two and two together and figures out exactly what's going on because Betty isn't an idiot. So naturally, she confronts Archie about it when she sees him, his dad, and Grundy out for dinner together and Veronica also learns about the affair because why not? Archie insists that Betty just stay out of it because he knows what he's doing, which tracks because Archie likes Ms. Grundy and is blind to the implications of the situation because of that. Betty doesn't drop it though because again, she isn't an idiot and finds out that Ms. Grundy appeared out of nowhere a year ago. More digging and some light B and E courtesy of B and V reveal that Ms. Grundy's real name is Jennifer Gibson (The one time you'll see that name in this review because they don't really use it) and she has a gun hidden in her car, which Betty takes to show Archie. The show later tries to frame Betty's actions her as that of someone who's doing this out of love in a way that suggests that she was out of line for what she did but she really wasn't. Breaking into Grundy's car instead of just tipping off the police that something might be up isn't great but looking into the mysterious new teacher who seems hella sketchy isn't a bad thing. It's smart. Well sort of.
-When Archie confronts Grundy, she tells him that she was married to an abusive drunk who put her in the hospital so she fled to Riverdale for a fresh start where she fell for Archie. It's your typical tragic backstory but it has some interesting implications for the Ms. Grundy/Archie relationship. There's a compelling story to be told about a woman who was repeatedly victimized romancing a student despite it being wrong because it gives her a sense of power and control over her life that's been taken from her. It wouldn't justify what she's done but it would make it more complex and nuanced in the way that Riverdale clearly wants to make this relationship. It'd be an interesting route for the story to go. Instead things go a different, much more frustrating way.
-Where things really get off-track is when Alice Cooper finds the gun Betty took and the diary where Betty wrote about everything (Really Betty? You have a manipulative, controlling mother and you didn't think she might go snooping and find the incriminating stuff you're hiding?). Alice has the right instinct to immediately tell Fred what's going on and then confront Ms. Grundy and informing the police is the right thing to do in this situation. Except Alice's motivation is to prove she's been right about Archie this whole time because he's a dumb kid who slept with his teacher. She doesn't care about justice, she cares about being vindicated. So Betty and Fred turn against the idea of turning in Ms. Grundy even though they definitely should turn her in and Betty threatens her mother into backing down. Then they all agree to let Ms. Grundy quit and leave town instead of making this whole thing public and Betty apologizes to Archie for not leaving it alone even though she did nothing wrong (Besides letting her mother find out) with Archie still convinced there was nothing wrong about what Ms. Grundy did. Agh! SO DUMB!
-Look I get it, they're trying to make the situation complicated and not clear-cut. Fine. Again, I have no problem with Archie insisting he isn't a victim and there's nothing wrong with Ms. Grundy because he's young and doesn't know any better and hasn't been given much of a reason to think that. I get that Alice's grudge is driven by a desire to avoid having what happened to Polly happen to Betty and she's projecting a lot of stuff onto Archie. I get that Betty is still in love with Archie and that might impact her decision-making in negative ways. However the way all of this is executed makes it feel like they wanted to get out of this storyline but also take Ms. Grundy off the board in a way that left things open-ended so they came up with the most contrived solution possible and tried to cover it with character work that came across as shoddy. The scene of Alice being vulnerable in front of Betty and Betty telling her off should've been a big moment for the arc of the show but it suffered because of how we got to that moment. Lili Reinhart and Mädchen Amick deserve better than that. Also I have no clue what's going on with Fred at all beyond not wanting his son to get hurt.
-The final glimpse we get of Ms. Grundy is her ogling some more teenagers on her way out of town as Betty's diary voiceover suggests that maybe she was right about Ms. Grundy. It's supposed to be an unsettling button for the story, a dramatic reveal that Ms. Grundy probably was bad news after all. The problem is it's not the surprising move they seem to think it is and it ends things on an unclear, ambiguous note when some clarity was badly needed to put the events of the episode into better perspective. The show is clearly aiming for complexity with the Ms. Grundy character and her motivations for romancing Archie but by leaving her true intent a mystery, it just muddles everything. Was Ms. Grundy telling the truth about her abusive ex-husband or was she making it up to get Archie's sympathy? Is Archie the first student she's romanced or has this happened before? Does she have actual feelings for Archie and if not, what was she getting out of the relationship? Trying to genuinely tackle any of these questions instead of just hinting at it could've made for a much more interesting episode than the one we got. Instead the show leaves it up to us to decide what the real story was with Ms. Grundy and I'm left wondering if Riverdale even considers her to be a predator at all or if they're just unaware of how she's been coming across. Of course it's very possible and likely that Ms. Grundy will return at some point and we'll get some actual answers about her, but given what a mess this episode was I'm not sure if I would even want that.
-The show does throw people upset with this young, sexy, predatorial version of Grundy a bone by revealing that the real Geraldine Grundy (And only one Betty could find on the internet) was a polka-dot clad old woman the way nature intended. She's also been dead seven years but hey, you take what you can get.
-Of course, thankfully the Ms. Grundy story wasn't the only thing going on in Riverdale this week as Jughead tries to save the closing drive-in he loves and works at but hadn't brought up at all before now and it turns out that Riverdale has a thriving criminal element that also hadn't been brought up before. It's all fairly contrived and at odds with the idea of nothing obviously bad happening in Riverdale pre-Blossom murder but it's more interesting than the Archie plot and features Skeet Ulrich as a gang leader so I can give it a pass. A street gang is the one thing Riverdale has been missing so far and now it has it with the Southside Serpents, a group of hooligans from the bad side of town who do things like deal drugs and loudly heckle the drive-in with hiss noises or something.
-Jughead is back to being mostly brooding this week but they actually take the time to justify it and to flesh out his backstory a bit in some interesting ways so I'm officially on board with Cole Sprouse and his brooding, angsty Jughead. Jughead is someone who didn't have a great family life and the drive-in represents both good memories and a safe haven for him. That makes his futile efforts to save it compelling, even if the scene between him and Fred seems mostly there to set up exposition about Fred firing Jughead's dad for stealing on the job.
-Meanwhile Hermione Lodge gets more complicated this week as we see her dealing with a Southside Serpent and making shady backdoor business deals with that money Hiram sent her in the pilot to acquire the land the drive-in is built on. It turns out Hiram paid the Serpents to devalue the land the drive-in was on so he could snatch it up at a cheap price with the last of his money for unknown purposes. Marisol Nichols hasn't been given a whole lot to do yet as Hermione and this complicates her character nicely by making her unopposed to the kind of shady dealings needed to afford the lifestyle her and Veronica were accustomed to. It's a lot to process for Veronica however and Camila Mendes does a great job portraying Veronica as she has to grapple with the idea that both of her parents aren't who she thought they were. This should hopefully provide for a lot of good story material in the weeks to come.
-Riverdale seriously fumbled the Ms. Grundy reveal but it was almost redeemed by the twin reveals about Jughead that the episode ended on. It turns out that when he was pretentiously narrating at the beginning about the drive-in being a home for him, he was being very literal. Jughead has been living in the projection booth at the drive-in. It's a strong twist that raises a lot of interesting questions about Jughead's background and I honestly didn't see it coming. The second twist, that Skeet Ulrich's gang leader character is actually Jughead's dad was less shocking (At least it wasn't shocking to people who read casting announcements/the show's Wikipedia page and knew the character's name is F.P. Jones and he was connected to Jughead.) but it was equally well-done and suddenly gives the Southside Serpents a compelling reason to exist beyond needing a gang to cause trouble. It's a dramatically different take on Jughead's home life and father than what we've seen in the comics, but it's also much more interesting than if Jughead had a normal home life and it makes him a better character.
The big question that goes unspoken is what happen to Jellybean Jones, Jughead's sister? Is she simply living with Mr. Jones wherever he lives? Or did something bad happen there?
-I'm a bit confused as to what Jughead's job was at the drive-in. He ran the projectionist booth but he also had complete control over what movies played? Shouldn't there be a manager to make those decisions? The drive-in's dead now so it doesn't really matter but it's odd.
-Kevin gets a love interest this week. His name is Joaquin and he's a Southside Serpent so they're totally going for a star-crossed lovers thing that is going to end in disaster and I'm excited for it. Casey Cott is in dire need of getting to do something besides being the Gay Best Friend and even Kevin's dad knows it.
-This week in Absurd Cheryl Blossom Dialogue That Madelaine Petsch Inexplicably Pulls Off: "I spy with my little eye, Hermione Lodge full of secrets. Riddle me this hair models of the damned, why is Veronica's mother having a clandestine tête-à-tête with a Southside Serpent behind a dumpster at Pops?"
-Cheryl also inexplicably crashes Veronica and Kevin's friend date at the drive-in so she can hang out with them/randomly cozy up to Veronica and it's hilarious.
-The last movie the drive-in plays is Rebel Without A Cause. A very obvious and on-the-nose choice considering how much of this episode was about parental issues, but they showed the "You're tearing me apart!" scene so it's cool.
-Murder Theory Corner: The murder was on the back burner this week so we could focus on other things, though Jason was a former student of Ms. Grundy. Was she involved? Maybe. Again, I'm torn between wanting her to come back because of how terribly this story resolved and wanting her to never come back and them just washing their hands of this whole mess. Anyhow, on the suspect front, Mayor McCoy showed that she's kind of shady this week and Hal Cooper continues to seem like a very passive individual so that's also shady. Also someone broke into the Keller house and trashed the murder wall, which is interesting but also came out of nowhere.
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