The Jingle Jangle comes to Riverdale this week, the serial killer’s pattern becomes more baffling, the Scooby gang keeps themselves busy, and so do their parents.
Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe has been renamed Death Diner by Riverdale residents with a sense of humor. With or without a sense of humor, no one is visiting the Shoppe since the shooting.
Betty decides to spearhead a campaign to save Pop’s. She’s enlists V and Kevin at school. Juggie is there for some reason, even though he attends school across town. Probably can’t stay away from his girl. 😂
Jughead and his dad meet with FP’s court appointed lawyer. He wants FP to take the deal that would put FP away for 20 years. This unacceptable to all of us, obviously.
Archie meets with Sheriff Keller to insist that he be allowed to join the police force immediately help with the search for his dad’s killer. Keller lets Archie down easy, then gets the call about Grundy’s murder in Greendale.
Jughead goes to Archie’s house to tell him about the hopelessness of his dad’s situation. When Juggie opens the door to the house, Archie almost attacks him with a bat. Juggie tells Archie that he looks like a dream warrior from Nightmare on Elm Street 3. They aren’t being subtle with the references this year, which I guess fits a season based on slasher films.
Both Archie and Juggie admit that they’re really, really scared of losing their dads. Archie’s so scared and exhausted that he’s starting to hallucinate masked killers everywhere. Juggie’s getting desperate enough to do something really stupid, like going back to the overzealous Serpent who “helped” him last week.
Stalker neighbor Betty narcs out Archie to his girlfriend, who gives him a talking to. He won’t be able to keep up his good looks if he doesn’t get his beauty sleep.
Betty and Juggie talk to the Mayor and ask to her to help Pop Tate. She refuses, on the grounds that Pop’s now has a reputation. She doesn’t want Pop’s association with crime to hurt her reputation. She also refuses to help FP, saying she’s sure he’ll get a fair hearing without a decent lawyer. Funny how much more helpful she is when the suspect or person in need has money and influence.
Midge approaches Reggie at school and asks him to score her some of the latest, greatest drug craze, the Jingle Jangle. Reggie tells her to be quiet about it at school, but yes, he’ll get her some. Then Reggie moves on to shame Archie for seeking out counseling, and offers him illegal drugs instead. Archie goes for the uppers. It’s getting tough to stay up all night, every night.
Archie finds out that Grundy is dead, and is sure that it has something to do with him. He goes to Alice and asks her to find out what she can about the autopsy results.
Jughead goes to visit Penny Peabody, the Serpent lawyer known as the Snake Charmer. She gives him legal advice for free, in exchange for an unnamed future favor. FP goes ballistic when he finds out about this later. He tells Juggie to ignore any future contact from Penny. It feels like the more criminal side of the Serpents are on a campaign to draw Jughead in.
Alice tells Betty that Pop is selling the diner, so she can stop trying to save it. Veronica, of course, assumes that her father is trying to buy it, and confronts him. He insists that he’s not involved. Then V moves on to Fred’s shooting, which Hiram also denies. Her last piece of evidence is the threatening letter blackmailing V into testifying that targeted Hermione. Hermione looks at the letter, and claims that she wrote it herself. Gothic chimes play as Veronica tells her parents they deserve each other.
Bughead pay a visit to Cheryl in her new ancestral mansion. Cheryl greets them with “Hobo. Bride of Hobo. Welcome to Thistle House. Mother’s in the conservatory.” Wow, how many murder references are in those few words? More analysis below.
Cheryl and Penelope sit down with Juggie and Betty in the conservatory. Penelope has progressed to having her face clear of bandages. Jughead has come to ask the Blossom women to testify in court for his father. If they ask for leniency, his father’s sentence could be drastically reduced.
Both refuse, saying they blame FP for the murder and for not telling the truth sooner. They don’t want to be reminded of Jason’s death every time they see him around town. Betty and Juggie remind Cheryl and Penelope that Clifford was the actual murderer, but they are as logical as Blossoms ever are, and won’t budge.
As they’re leaving Thistle House, Betty asks Jughead what they should do next. He suggests blackmail or extortion, but doesn’t really mean it, since they are a widow and an orphan. Cheryl isn’t an orphan, unless Jughead knows something about her parentage that we don’t, which is entirely possible.
Alice pays off the medical examiner for the results of Grundy’s autopsy. It was a crime of passion. The killer wanted to feel her suffering. Alice denies knowing Grundy.
Archie sees a guy in a ski mask outside his window at night, and attacks. It turns out to be Reggie, delivering Archie’s uppers. Reggie says it was just a prank and Archie’s insane. What did he think Archie would do? He was just shot at by a guy who looked like that. Really stupid prank if you value your life, Reggie.
Alice gives Archie the autopsy results. He knows that the crimes are connected when he hears that Grundy was strangled with the cello bow that Archie gave her. Alice also says that Grundy knew her killer.
Later, Archie checks in with the sheriff to suggest that Grundy’s ex-husband is the killer. Keller informs him that the Greendale authorities have already checked out the ex-husband. He has an air-tight alibi.
Jug and Betty have burgers and fires at Pop’s and discuss the sale of the diner. The buyer is Chugmo, a liquor store chain. That should make the mayor feel better about the neighborhood.
Jug asks Pop to make FP’s favorite meal for his last supper in Riverdale before he’s sent up to the big house. Pop remembers that it’s fried chicken cornbread, onion rings, and orange freeze. The kids are impressed with Pop’s memory. Pop says he’s been doing this a long time, and hoped to do it until the day he died.
Why does that sound like both foreshadowing and a reason for the shooting to me? The grudge holder blames Pop, too, or at least didn’t mind if he was collateral damage. And how far away is the day Pop dies?
Betty can’t stand to hear both Pop and Jug being so fatalistic. She decides to do whatever it takes to make things better. She finds Cheryl in the school locker room, conveniently wearing only a bra on top, and blackmails her into testifying for FP. She also demands that the Vixens perform at Retro Night, the fundraiser for Pop’s.
Betty threatens to release the video of Clifford murdering Jason to the public if Cheryl refuses. Cheryl agrees, as long as she gets the video in exchange. The combination of Alice’s and Blossom blood in Betty makes her hard to beat when she goes Dark. Hope she keeps a copy of the recording.
Cheryl gives her testimony at FP’s trial, which she considers perjury, but which is actually the truth: “FP’s guilt has been blown out of proportion to satiate what my father’s suicide denied us: closure.”
The judge won’t consider leniency since there were no extenuating circumstances (??).
Cheryl jumps in and says: “My father threatened him. I overheard them talking and Daddy said he would hurt Jughead if FP didn’t comply. Is that extenuating enough?”
Which is true, but was somehow conveniently left out of the official record. The judge decides to reevaluate the facts of the case, in light of this new evidence.
Retro Night at Pop’s starts out slow, but people gradually trickle in. The kids are acting as servers, all dressed up for the part. Alice comes to watch as Pop’s dies a slow death and write her story, Requiem for Pops. I want to create titles like Alice when I grow up as a writer. Three words that say everything. 😍
The Pussycats are next, with a complaint that Betty advertised them as the entertainment for the night without their consent. Betty knows the mayor wouldn’t give Josie permission to perform, so she decided to do an end run around Josie’s mom. Val is also down with a norovirus, so Cheryl offers to step in as a replacement pussycat. Mayor McCoy also wouldn’t appreciate that, since the Pussycats are supposed to be women of color. Let’s hope that Alice leaves them out of her requiem.
Did Veronica quit the Pussycats?
Archie visits Pop’s for the first time since the shooting, and fights his flashbacks. Veronica helps him calm down.
After the concert, Hiram and Hermione stop by. Veronica tells Hiram that she wants to try being a happy family again. Jughead reminded her earlier that she might not always have a father, so she should try to appreciate him while she can, and she’s taken that to heart. Hiram offers to make a donation to Pop’s as a peace-offering. Veronica accepts.
Jughead’s South Side Serpent pals show up, looking sinister. They sit in a booth and try not to committ any obvious crimes.
Jughead reassures Betty about the Serpents, then they kiss, only to be interrupted by Cheryl, who wants her flash drive. Betty hands it over. I was waiting for Jughead to say, “You made a copy, right?” and Betty to nod her head, “yes”. Since that didn’t happen, we’ll insert a fantasy head nod and Betty leaning forward so that Jughead can peak into her bra to see the spare flash drive that’s hidden there. At least the real show let them cuddle up to each other for a bit.
Meanwhile, Alice is happily snapping shots of all of the illicit activities going on tonight. There’s the Serpents in the dining room, who knows what with the Lodges, and Reggie passing of Jingle Jangle in the parking lot.
Pop makes a thank you speech to everyone who helped save the restaurant, especially Betty and the Lodges. Hiram confesses to Hermione that he didn’t donate to the restaurant, he bought it. He’s letting Pop stay on as manager as payment for his silence about the deal.
When the Lodges get home, Veronica discovers that Smithers has been replaced by a young, cute doorman, Andre. Smithers has been called overseas to care for his ill mother. Or has he…?
Cheryl shows the video of Jason’s murder to Penelope, who’s taken to dressing like Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard. She’s almost ready for her close up, Mr DeMille.
In the middle of the night, Archie meets Dilton Doiley on a misty, atmospheric bridge over Sweetwater River to buy Chekhov’s gun. Strictly for protecting his father, he says. Dilton looks like he believes it as much as we do.
Moose and Midge go parking, and try out the Jingle Jangle, which comes in a pixie stick wrapper. The masked shooter finds them in the car, high and making out, and shoots them both, while the Donovan song Season of the Witch plays.
Jingle Jangle is the drug that Sheriff Keller mentioned last week when he was talking to Archie and Juggie about Fred’s shooting. He said usage is on the uprise. Reggie said it’s an upper in more ways than one. *Wink* It’s also a 1969 song by The Archies.
I appreciate the gender parity of getting both of the young, hot gingers, Archie and Cheryl, shirtless. However, I think I speak for the majority when I say that, given the choice of pairing, WE WANT BUGHEAD SHIRTLESS!!!!! Together. Or, at least Cole Sprouse. Betty can watch him lug stuff around the backroom at Pop’s, if necessary. But, that’s the perfect set up for a steamy sex scene. Just sayin’.
This week’s movie reference is Nightmare on Elm Street 3, in which Freddy Krueger invades dreams to induce suicide, on top of his usual vendetta against the children of the people who killed him. The dream warriors are the children of the parents who burned Freddy. They have ended up in a mental hospital today, and learn to work together to use their dream powers to fight him.
Dream powers sound like a metaphor for drugs, but this could also be part of a build up to the introduction of Sabrina. Fred also had multiple dreams while he was unconscious last week, including his suspicious dream about Archie taking over the business, while Fred’s brother and father waited for him to join them in death. Then there’s the sledge hammer foreshadowing of Season of the Witch.
Speaking of last week, did Hiram send Smithers away, was he really visiting his mom, or is Smithers the killer??? He’s the right age, ethnicity and body type. And he was conveniently absent from work at the time of this week’s murders.
Jughead took my advice and went to work at Pop’s. Just sayin’. 😘
Josie is now a Vixen, as long as she gets to be in front.
Let’s talk’s Cheryl’s greeting to Bughead, and her new home. We have the Frankenstein and Clue references. Hobos were homeless migrant laborers who hopped freight trains for transportation between jobs, a dangerous, often deadly lifestyle that is frequently romanticized in fiction. Thistle House is a real life period-style B&B in western Scotland that sits across Loch Fyne from centuries old Inverary Castle. No doubt many a dark and stormy night takes place there, with ghosts galore haunting the grounds. Sort of like the way Riverdale is across the river from Greendale, where Sabrina the teenage witch lives. Just sayin’.
Jughead refers to Cheryl as fabulous batman villain and ecoterrorist Poison Ivy when she won’t help his dad. Is this a hint? She grows maple trees, met them in the conservatory, is now named an ecoterrorist? Probably not, but I’m so here for greenwitch Cheryl fighting pollution and making the world a better place for the plants.
The Norma Desmond look suggests that Penelope has lost touch with reality, and that she killed Clifford in the barn, then made it look like a suicide. The Clue reference fits with the theory of multiple murders and murderers in the Blossom family. So far we potentially have Clifford in the basement with the gun, and Penelope in the barn with the rope.
But where is Polly? How hard can it be to keep track of a woman who’s very pregnant with twins? Even if she was put on bedrest overnight, shouldn’t they have told us?
Moose discovered Jason’s body in the pilot at the beginning of season 1. Now someone will discover his body early in season 2. 😫 He seemed like a nice boy, and Midge was so adorable. 😫 😫
Metawitches 
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