-OK Riverdale, we get it. Archie's hot now. He's got abs and stuff and makes for good eye candy. It makes sense that you want to embrace that and show it off. What doesn't make sense is Archie deciding to run across town to the house of the teacher he's trying to move on from in the middle of the night solely in his boxers. That's just ridiculous and overly silly and it completely undercuts the seriousness of the plot point you're trying to set up.
-Archie's midnight run aside though this was a strong second episode. Second episodes have a tendency to feel like a second version of the pilot but this one felt like the second part of the pilot, not retreading what had already happened but moving forward to finish setting up the character relationships and conflicts for the season and give us a fully assembled classic Archie gang core four.
-Like last week Betty and Veronica were the best parts of the episode. Betty begins the episode trying to move past the "Archie and Veronica in the closet" of it all, continuing her friendship with Archie (after a cooling off period) and accepting Veronica's excessive efforts at making amends, if only because Betty assumes Veronica is going to move on to some other girl in a couple weeks so she might as well ride it out. It feels cheap and too easy by half and to it's credit, Riverdale knows it. It's not so easy to move past your feelings though and putting up the appearance of being fine is different from actually being fine so while Archie is playing some dumb song on his guitar, Betty is overwhelmed and stops pretending. Lili Reinhart does a really good job playing all of Betty's hurt and anger. She immediately knows Veronica is right that it's not Veronica's fault that Archie doesn't like Betty like Betty likes him but she's still hurt and angry about it and justifiably so.
-Camila Mendes also continues to excel as Veronica, who really does want to make amends but isn't sure how to do so beyond showering Betty with extravagant gifts. In the comics, it's not always clear why Betty and Veronica are best friends and the show tackles this head on through a delightfully over-the-top monologue where Veronica talks about how she feels it was her destiny to be friends with Betty and she's ruined it. In Betty Veronica sees someone who can help her become the version of herself that she wants to be, not the New York rich bitch who backstabs her friends and only cares for herself but a genuinely good person. It's a strong, nuanced take on a character who often gets flattened to her base characteristic as "rich, raven-haired girl".
-After being kept mostly off the board in the pilot, Jughead debuts in earnest and Cole Sprouse already seems to have a much better handle on the character. He's less sullen this week and more sardonic, nailing the "aloof and above it all" attitude of classic Jughead, while also showing off his better traits. He is still weirdly moody for Jughead, but I'm much more onboard with it this week than I was last week.
-Based on the fact that the much-publicized rift between Archie and Jughead is already explained (Archie bailed on a roadtrip they had planned for the 4th of July weekend and then acted weird because of his relationship with Grundy) and resolved by the end of the second episode, I predict that the rift was a plot element they threw in to make the pilot more exciting but then they quickly realized no one has much interest in seeing Archie and Jughead estranged for very long so they walked it back as soon as they could. It's a smart call but it makes the fact that there was a rift between them in the first place feel very contrived. At least it's over now though.
-I'm still not a fan of the "Archie slept with Ms. Grundy" story, but the show makes it very clear in this episode that this isn't something we're supposed to root for. Poor Archie just wants to do the right thing and come forward with what he heard on July 4th but Ms. Grundy keeps manipulating him into keeping quiet about it and trying to convince him that they'd both be in trouble. It's emotional blackmail and it's very predatorial and it's not at all OK. Look at the way she suddenly cozies up to him when he tells her he needs to know what she feels about him is real. Archie's too young to know any better though so he stays in her spell until the end when a talk with his dad Luke Perry finally convinces him to do the right thing and come forward. Of course then he's saved by the "Autopsy revealed something to incriminate Cheryl" bell, but I still feel he'll come forward soon enough.
-Madelaine Petsch continues to shine as Cheryl this week, as we get to explore her tortured psyche just a little, even as she's keeping up appearances and planning a big pep rally. Her interrupting the sheriff's intercom announcement to basically grandstand and toss out a #RiverdaleStrong was a great broad moment, but she got to show off different aspects of Cheryl too. The way she fakes niceties with Betty in an effort to get information about Polly only to get more and more obsessive is beautifully deranged and her pep rally breakdown, while expected was surprisingly moving.
-It says a lot about both Betty and Veronica that even after Cheryl was terrible to both of them (and after Betty threatened Cheryl's life) they still both rushed off to find her after her breakdown and offer support. Of course Veronica was a lot quicker than Betty was, conveniently putting Betty in a place to see that Veronica is a good person and allowing for the official re-healing of their friendship and a promise to never let a boy come between them again. We'll see how long that lasts but again I'm stoked that Riverdale is actually committing to a friendship between these two.
-I still find Archie to be mostly a snooze but I'll say this, K.J. Apa has terrific chemistry with both Reinhart and Mendes (He and Sprouse still seem to be figuring each other out at this point). You buy into the friendship between all of these characters immediately and it gives the climatic scene of all of them in the soda shop extra weight. Jughead's narration about there "only being three people at that table" is almost too overwrought but the chemistry between the actors sells it. It's also good that Riverdale is building the friendship between these characters before the love triangle kicks off in earnest. It's going to make things that much more powerful.
-Betty quietly forgiving Archie and inviting him and Jughead to join her and Veronica was a very nice, very strong piece of acting from Reinhart. Sure it probably came so fast because the show wanted to get to that shot of the four of them in the booth at Pop's as quick as it could, but it was a very effective shot so I'm not complaining.
-I also think I figured out how Jughead's narration works. Basically what we hear of his novel is roughly one episode ahead of where we are so he stays mostly in the present tense before coming in at the end with a tanatalizing tease for next week. So he's partially omniscient but not really.
-Mädchen Amick continues to ham it up as Alice Cooper who continues to be driven to both protect Betty and control her. You can tell she really does care for her daughter, which keeps her from coming off as too one-dimensional, even as she's doing things like lighting incense to clear the room of Cheryl's presence. She's definitely hiding something about what happened between Jason and Polly though, considering how skillful she is at changing the subject when Betty brings up the possibility of visiting her. She's also the editor of the paper which means she gets to do such terrifically campy things like declare that Jason's death is going to be a "national sensation" and bribe the equally campy creepy coroner for body access.
-So Josie and The Pussycats performed "Sugar, Sugar", the 1969 novelty song performed by The Archies for the cartoon Archie show that became an actual chart-topping hit. Well, they sort of performed Sugar, Sugar. The version Josie did is actually a reworking of the song called Candy Girl (Sugar Sugar) that Inner Circle and Flo Rida did a few years back, which is more their style than the white bread original. It's a fun number and it brought a lot of energy to the pep rally sequence, while providing a nice wink to Archie fans. However, what's the point of even forming The Archies now (Something I'm assuming the show is building to with Archie's interest in music) if their biggest song has already been written and performed by someone else? Sure they could rely on different songs with a more modern sound, but who wants that? Also those samples Archie played for us were not as great as the show wants you to think they are.
-In the comics, Kevin is an Army brat so having his dad be the town sheriff in Riverdale is a smart choice that also allows them to further tie Kevin to the investigation. That's good because Kevin is still easily the best male character, even with Jughead being less mopey this week, and the more of him the better.
-Moose is still as confused about his sexuality as he was last week, though this episode confirms that Midge does exist and he is dating her. Kevin has no interest in being a guinea pig for Moose to figure this stuff out and advises him to stick to girls, but it's likely this won't be the last we hear about Moose and Kevin. Also kudos to Riverdale for acknowledging that sexuality is a wide spectrum and whatever's going on with Moose might not be as clean cut as "gay" or "straight".
-Having Reggie as a hulking bruiser is still kind of a weird choice, as the character is classically more of a sneaky tough guy wannabe than an actual tough guy. That choice aside, with his boasting about being the greatest and his antagonism towards Jughead and Archie, he definitely felt more like Reggie than the generic jock bro we saw last week, though still kind of a footnote.
-Murder Theory Corner: So with her dramatic arrest and confession that she did it, Cheryl definitely didn't do it. Well she didn't do the murder anyways. Based on her "He was supposed to come back comment" and that her arrest seemed to have to do with the autopsy results, I'm going to guess she and Jason had conspired to fake his disappearance for some reason only for everything to have gone wrong. Also I'm not sure how much we should trust anything about the autopsy given that the coroner is a bribeable creep. As for suspects, I'm moving off of Josie this week because her mom is the mayor and there's no way the mother of a regular character who's also the mayor isn't involved in this somehow, especially because Cheryl and Josie seems to be close which implies a family connection. I'm watching you Mayor McCoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment