This week on Riverdale, everyone’s got football, college, or rum on the brain. But what else is new? Before we take a lick of that maple syrup Sno-Cone, we need to cover the main plots of the evening:
Are You Ready for Some Football?
Riverdale High sure is. It’s championship time, and the matchup for the state finals? The Riverdale Bulldogs vs. the Stonewall Stallions. A lot’s going on here: it’s Archie’s last game, Monroe has a Notre Dame scout coming to watch him play, and Honey assigns Betty an article on the game. As she researches, she discovers that Stonewall plays dirty—really dirty. Like, corner-Monroe-in-the-parking-lot-and-smash-his-knee-with-a-pipe dirty. (It will surprise no one that Brett is the football team captain.) Betty keeps digging (which involves sending Veronica to a Stonewall party wearing a wire), and when Honey kills her expose in favor of the puff piece she was supposed to write, she decides to best Stonewall and Brett at their own game: meaning at the upcoming quiz show championship. Honey sanctions her forming a new team because he really, really wants a trophy. It’s kind of nice to see him working with a student for once.
Meanwhile, Monroe is in a lot of pain, and gladly takes Archie’s Uncle Frank up on his offer of pills that will enable him to play through the game, despite Archie’s protestations. Monroe makes it through okay, and even though Riverdale loses, he gets great news from the Notre Dame recruiter. There might be another shoe about to drop—certainly with the Uncle Frank of it all—but I hope not, for Monroe’s sake. Dude deserves a win, and to get the heck out of Riverdale, AKA The Place Where Bad Things Happen.
Luna Rum Is Open for Business
Veronica has a batch of spiced Luna rum ready to hit the market, and despite the fact that she’s a teenager brewing and selling alcohol, people are ready to buy. Too bad Hiram has a chemist analyze her concoction and determines that the base of her rum is still too close to his patented one. Cue the cease and desist from daddy dearest. He tries to get her to team up, but she says it’s too late and too much damage has been done to their relationship. They are still living in the same apartment, right? Must be awkward at the breakfast table. Anyway, by the episode’s end, Veronica is joining up with Cheryl to manufacture a Luna rum / Blossom maple syrup beverage, and Reggie has seemingly keyed Hiram’s car on behalf of Veronica. Yikes.
Quill & Skull & Yale
After receiving the gift of a new laptop from Quill & Skull/Brett and learning from Mr. DuPont that he’s received a Yale interview despite not applying there, Jughead seems to be leaning into the whole “Stonewall secret society thing.” So much so that he willingly shares his biggest shame—that once, when he was homeless, he watched his protector Dock get beaten up by some drunk suits and didn’t do anything to help—with the Quill & Skull kids as his final initiation. (Brett and Donna share some trauma, too.) After a minor quibble with Betty about how secret he kept the secret society, Jughead ends the episode on a high note: Mr. DuPont tells him he got into Yale (so did Brett, woohoo; recall that Betty was rejected). There’s something fishy going on here, and the first tip-off should be that no one gets their college acceptances in person from their English teacher. Run, Jughead. Run far away.
Rumordale dot com:
• Honey’s promised Vixen coach, Ms. Appleyard, shows up and gets right to wearing an “HCIC” T-shirt and Cheryl is predictably not happy about it. Unfortunately for Appleyard, Cheryl came to play and stages a coup right before the big game. If Ms. Appleyard wasn’t already outside when her whole squad had already taken the field, how good a coach was she really? Maybe she deserved to get locked in her office.
• Uncle Frank and Mama Mary do not get along, and the straw that broke Mary’s back was when Fred covered for Frank re: a DUI and Frank skipped town the next day. Surely Mary will be thrilled when she discovers that Frank is now sleeping on the sofa bed in her living room.
• Seems like Archie’s gym should have more lights on when people are inside working with very heavy weights.
• Amazing that B and V have a scene together this week—it’s about time these BFFs hang out. Sadly, the only time Jughead and Archie get together is when Archie shows up at Stonewall to fight Brett and Jughead accidentally walks into the middle of the confrontation.
• Mary is doing some top-notch parenting this episode. Archie? Grounded? Who woulda thunk?
• Brett has SUCH a punchable face.
• The choice of “Cherry Bomb” as the Vixens football game song is a weird one until you remember that Cheryl runs that squad like they’re all her personal back-up dancers and actually this song is all about her, and not about the football game at all.
