[S01.E07: Nepenthe]

I looked it up to be sure, and Troi's dead sister was named Kestra, too, which is a nice detail.

I liked this one, and don't have much to say about it. But the sequence I particularly enjoyed was the conversation between Soji and Troi, and then Picard and Troi, where Soji said that Troi being super nice to her made her seem less trustworthy rather than more, and then Troi told Picard that other people have had different experiences than he has, and their feelings can be just as valid.

I thought it captured what the show's trying to do (or what I think it's trying to do), and I got unexpectedly emotional about it, remembering times in my own life when someone dismissed what I was saying and I didn't have someone like Troi to back me up.

I'm so on the fence about this show.

[S04.E15: Chapter Seventy-Two: To Die For]

Glad to see Alice is still the worst journalist. Alternative title for her documentary: You know who's still alive? Kevin! ft. Reggie, Pop Tate, and not Jonathan, I guess.

I think my favourite part of the documentary was actually when she started interviewing Veronica about whether she thought Archie was going to cheat on her with Betty. Like, imagine if your best friend's mom was holding a camcorder and saying this to you.

13 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

I see that they're hinting at Barchie once again. Here's the thing; I wouldn't hate it if the show decided to mix things up for next season. 

If they jump forward in time, like some people are speculating, then I could see them mixing up all the pairings to give themselves a fresh start -- even if the ships ultimately come back to this arrangement in the end.

11 hours ago, Snookums said:

But yeah, that is super ridiculous. Hiram deciding on Jug's (fake) funeral as the place to tell FP to take some time is typically him and this show, but FP should never have been within a country mile of this entire thing from an investigating standpoint. Any actual lawyer would have pointed that out in a hot second.

I loved how, after FP went from 0 to "Screw you I quit!" Hiram just stood there and straightened his jacket like, "That went way, way better than I thought." Now he can just get a new Sheriff and he doesn't have to be responsible for ousting the old one.

11 hours ago, Snookums said:

Hi Pops! When are you going to see the light and move out of this lunatic asylum?

I loved how Pop looked so happy talking about Riverdale and Alice was just like, "That must make it extra hard to live with all the murders." You don't know that, Alice. Maybe he loves Riverdale because he loves living on the Hellmouth. Don't make assumptions.

New theory: Riverdale takes place in a hellish pocket universe created by the demon Pop to torture people for self-absorbed.

 

[S01.E06: The Impossible Box]

So, Narek's plan was to get the information from Soji without freaking her out, so that she wouldn't activate. Then, after talking to his sister, he tells her the thing that will most freak her out, and the whole thing ends with her activating. I think maybe he cares about her after all, and made her activate on purpose so she could protect herself from his sister, but he could still get the intel he wanted and have plausible deniability.

For the rest... I realized part way through that whatever this show tells me about Romulans isn't cannon to me.

Also, Picard has been on Borg ships lots of times since he was assimilated and he dealt with it. If anything, he should be freaking out because it reminds him of Data getting killed, but that's not the plot line they want to explore right now. I also still wish I got to hear what Seven of Nine thinks of this cube.

[S04.E14: Chapter Seventy-One: How to Get Away With Murder]

Conspiracies!

Hiram is sick conspiracy: Hiram isn't sick (obvs, we know that) but he doesn't know. Hermione and Hermosa are working together to make him think he's sick so he'll change his will. Why? I don't know. Maybe Hermosa is really a psychopath named Charles.

New Jughead conspiracy: Jughead got attacked by someone in the woods, but he didn't know who it was (maybe b/c he was wearing a stupid mask). He woke up and saw his friends there and was like, "Guys, someone tried to kill me! Go find out who it was while I pretend to be dead and hide in the sex bunker. Also burn my hat because I hate it."

They did that, but everyone except Jughead secretly believed that maybe Betty was the one who attacked him.

FP wasn't in on it at first but, once they needed to find the "body," they brought him in on it (probably in the morgue, after Betty pushed the preppies out and told them to go away).

I don't know why Archie ran into Brett's room and yelled "You killed Jughead" when no one had any reason to believe Jughead was dead yet, and I don't know why Brett wasn't smart enough to point that out, but maybe the scene got moved.

(I am genuinely enjoying the guessing game parts of the show).

9 hours ago, Snookums said:

In a "revealing to your captive audience that you've found them out via a novel read" context, everything plays out correctly. 

Maybe I'll finally get my wish and the whole series will retroactively be Jughead's novel.

9 hours ago, Snookums said:

A couple things stick out especially, like when Bernard is reviewing Ronnie's application, and her first thought is that the anonymous tipster isn't Hermosa?

Also, I forget which school is which, but didn't the admissions officer come and interview her at her bar? And maybe have to watch her sing a song first? Didn't she throw that back in Principal Honeybee's face when she was drunk that one time?

Unrelated detail: I really like the lace on her collar in the first Pop's scene.

[S01.E05: Stardust City Rag]

On 2/21/2020 at 2:33 PM, marinw said:

Good question. Q was driven by his whims, so who knows. Picard is loathe to ask Q for help with anything, and TPTB do have to be careful about using Q as a Deux Ex Machina too often. And they would need a way to explain John DeLancie's ageing, or have another Q visit Picard.

I think he just has to say that he watched Picard getting old, so he made himself look old, too, and then he can gloat about how it's not a real body for him so he doesn't have to deal with all the sad humiliations of actual aging.

12 hours ago, norcalgal said:

Man oh man, Nurse Ratchet played Kai Winn so menacingly, creepily well. I can't recall...did Kira finally mete out "justice" to Kai Winn?

No, my friend, Kai Winn died in a much more extreme and bizarre way:

Spoiler

She accidentally fell in love with Gul Dukat while he was in disguise, and then the two of them worked together to go release the evil aliens that lived inside Bajor, and then Dukat got possessed by the Bajoran Devil and Kai Winn was mad that the devil didn't possess her instead, so she tried to cancel the summoning and Gul Dukat killed her.

 

[S01.E05: Stardust City Rag]

LOL at past!me saying last week that I loved this show and hoped nothing happened to change that.

I still look forward to seeing Seven if/when she comes back again, but this transition feels weird to me. I know there was always some tension between her liking order because she was Borg vs her being kind of a rebel as a human, and it's valid to say that the rebel side won, but she's so different.

Also, when she killed Icheb and called him "my child," I know that what she meant was, "For those of you who didn't watch Voyager, or aren't huge nerds and don't remember, he was as a son to me," but what I heard was, "Remember how Kai Winn used to call everybody 'my child' before she did something really messed up?"

16 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

What happened to Chakotay ?

I want to know that too, mostly because that was such a weird pairing to begin with, and because I think Janeway was actively destroying the timeline to break them up. Gimme that 20-year-old tea, Star Trek: Picard.

16 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Not sure about Raffi's backstory either -- her estranged son, Gabriel Hwang, living on Freecloud with a pregnant Romulan wife.  Turns out Gabriel was born on Mars, and blames Raffi for what happened to Mars, though Raffi seems to know more about what happened with the synths than she has let on previously.  I wonder who Gabriel's father is.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled about Raffi's story in general, but I was interested in that one part where her son goaded her into yelling like a crazy person about how there was a massive conspiracy on Mars. We know that she's probably right, but it's easy to see why everyone else thinks she's wrong, which I like.

1 hour ago, Prower said:

Also great job, Seven, resorting to murdering your 'son' instead of disabling whatever was preventing beaming and getting him out of there. Or grabbing some of the medical equipment lying around and healing him.

Yeah, that seemed like a weirdly intense solution to me, given that she hadn't tried much of anything else, and it also didn't sound like they managed to actually remove his cortical implant when they pulled out his eye? I wasn't super paying attention, though, so maybe there's a reason he was going to die.

1 hour ago, Prower said:

The talk between Picard and Seven was stupid. He was part of the collective for a hot second. Sure, it traumatised him, but how would he have ever lost his humanity?

I was kind of bummed out by that, too. I thought these characters would be able to have a really interesting conversation about the Borg, because their experiences were so different. In fact, I was waiting to see how they would each relate to this Borg cube rehabilitation situation, since they had such different POVs. Maybe that will still happen, but saying that they're both former Borg, as the show does here, is a huge oversimplification.

[S01.E04: Absolute Candor]

I was undecided about this for the first three episodes, but now I love it, and I'm so scared that they'll do something to make me un-love it before the season's over.

I also went into it with zero spoilers or knowledge of what was going to happen, so it was a super happy surprise when Seven showed up at the end. Very excited to see a new take on that character.

On 2/14/2020 at 3:02 AM, thuganomics85 said:

Enjoyed this episode, even though it kind of is starting to feel like an RPG, with Picard have to acquire all of his party members first, before he can take on the big threat (and I'm sure he has a few side missions and quests to get through, so that he can get that XP and level up!) 

I particularly enjoy how he needs to recruit party members who hate him. That's kind of what happens on all the rag-tag misfit shows, but the fact that they deliberately spelled it out this time makes me laugh.

On 2/14/2020 at 3:02 AM, thuganomics85 said:

Narek's still trying to work Soji, but is still going to slow, so Rizzo is doing what most siblings would do in this situation: slink into his bed and be all creepy.  Yep, they really are the Trek version of the Lannisters.

This is my least favourite story line. I think parts of the Narek/Soji Romance of Deception work okay but also belong on a different show. The sister stuff doesn't need to be here at all. Like, why not just make her his girlfriend and create the love triangle that way? Why do they need to be related?

[S04.E13: Chapter Seventy: The Ides of March]

This one was really funny in exactly the way I like. To me, the best part was when Jughead's teacher told him 10 pages of thinly-veiled autobiography about how much he hates his classmates wouldn't help him and he was like, "Joke's on you -- it'll be more than 10 pages!"

I went to creative writing school and that scene felt very true to me.

In all seriousness, though, when he forfeited the duel with Brett last week, I thought that meant he was already quitting the secret society and renouncing the book contract and that that was the point of the gesture and his snappy statements about how he didn't want to be part of their dumb rich kid club. But now, this week, he's surprised that he's getting kicked off both things? I honestly don't understand.

16 hours ago, Snookums said:

Serious question: can anybody at all remember why the Evil Ones at Stonewall Prep were so damn desperate to get Jughead into their precious rat's nest of a school in the first place? Was it only Mr. Chipping's idea? Because if that was true it's clear this cabal could have quashed the notion before Jug heard a whisper about it. And again, he and his family have been living here for three generations and neither he nor his dad had the slightest idea about all this Baxter Brothers nonsense at all, so why on earth do they care enough to go to this ludicrous amount of trouble to make him leave a school they could have so easily kept him out of?

I think the idea is that the school, as a whole, runs the Baxter Brothers empire to keep itself afloat, and they do that by scouting the outside world for vulnerable, talented youth, and then recruiting them and stealing their ideas. So, they read Jughead's story, and they were like, "He's our next victim," and they brought him into the school and set him up to win a "contest" to get the contract, which he then didn't read but which said any ideas he submitted were their IP, and then he wrote an okay book and they made up a reason to reject it so they could steal the core idea and have their own people (the rich students) re-work it without giving him credit or money. They wanted to get the Blackhood IP from him, too, but he wouldn't submit it, and then he'd outlived his usefulness because he and his girlfriend kept asking questions, so they made up another reason to terminate the contract and get rid of him.

So, basically, everyone was in on it from the beginning and the stuff about having a rivalry with Brett was mostly just theatre while they were fattening him up to steal his ideas.

15 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

But, hey, it was nice seeing Camila Mendes get more material here and I do think she is doing a great job with this silly, silly material.

I'm also enjoying that. I think having Veronica drunk all the time is making her give a bigger, louder, more exaggerated performance, and I'm here for it.

Also, you know what? If a teen runs an illegal booze empire, I feel like it makes sense that she has a drinking problem.

15 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Also, Donna claims that Evelyn (remember her?!) told her the real password to make Dark Betty go killer crazy, so that's why Betty supposedly "kills" Jughead.  I have no clue what in the hell is going on here, but I still think this is all part of Jughead's plan somehow.  

I like that this show is keeping me guessing every week about what's going on. Currently, my guess is that maybe that second trigger word makes Betty black out but not attack anyone, so the preppies took advantage of it to make her think she attacked Jughead when she didn't.

I don't know how that fits with Jughead's plan, But, perhaps he told her the plan during the blackout period, so she doesn't remember that he's faking his death? IDK. Still interested to fined out, though.

6 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

Archie...is not going to be able to graduate with his friends, which was kind of implied for a while now but I'm surprised they followed through with it. It shouldn't be surprising since he's working two other jobs and was imprisoned and then on the run last year for a few months.

At first, I was taken aback that Archie asked if he could walk across the stage anyway, even though he wasn't graduating, but then, with the additional context that he just needs to take some classes over the summer and graduate in the fall, it made more sense.

[S04.E12: Chapter Sixty-Nine: Men of Honor]

21 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

And, thus, the rum war is over...but what is the new battle going to be? Hiram lying about his illness? Or is he going to be cured? ...

It'll turn out he needs the blood of a red-haired working-class youth to heal.

My favorite detail is that they didn't even try to tell us what disease he has. They were just like, "All you need to know is that he's super, super sick and it's a non-specific thing you haven't heard of." Hermione either put a lot of forethought into that lie, or someone else put no thought into it. Time will tell.

[S04.E11: Chapter Sixty-Eight: Quiz Show]

Okay, my new guess is that Jughead has to disappear for some reason so that's why they all burn his clothes and say he died, and why Betty says he's never coming back in this flashforward. I have no idea why he has to disappear. I'm still tentatively intrigued to find out. Tentatively.

On 1/29/2020 at 9:16 PM, Lady Calypso said:

Frank better be a bad guy, because he's creepy, at the very least. He feels like he's easily playing Archie, and I want Archie to be wrong about Creepy Uncle. Frank keeps saying that Archie is so much like Fred, that it started to sound like a bad thing at the end. Well, in terms of how Frank may have really felt about Fred. I bet there's jealousy issues there. 

 

Yeah. This is actually a good example of where it makes sense to have a young character make a mistake. I'm super old, and I'm just like, "Uncle Scumbag isn't worth 800 chances. We know what he's about," but when I was 18 I would have felt differently. If I trusted the show more not to make Uncle Scumbag become a good guy, I'd be interested to see how this plays out.

I also completely missed that Mr. Keller worked at the construction site now and I get why they want to give the actor stuff to do, but it would make more sense if someone who had been there longer was the foreman.

On 1/29/2020 at 11:23 PM, thuganomics85 said:

Way to just fuck over your daughter, Alice!

I laughed so hard when that happened. It's like she can't help herself from sabotaging Betty whenever Betty's on the cusp of success...

16 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

I keep thinking of the college cheating scandal when Betty’s story comes up.   The show made a point of saying she had a 4.2 GPA and extracurriculars so it was sketchy why she didn’t get in.   Jughead barely attended school. Probably has some gang activity on his file.   But has a singular talent in writing.  Before Shady prep school he might have gotten into Yale on a hella scholarship but now because of the prep school he gets in and Betty doesn’t.   

It also bothers me that, in the midst of all that, Jughead is profiting from Betty's personal tragedy at the exact same time that she's being punished for it. There's a lot of gendered stuff happening here and I wish the show hadn't just swept it out of the way with a romantic hug / "I'm here for you."

12 hours ago, HeatLifer said:

And, yes, we know Jughead isn’t dead. Cole isn’t leaving, etc, etc. But a part of me knows the writers acknowledge we know this —it’s whether or not they care to write a story that doesn’t just end with “He’s alive” that’s the question. Did they develop this as a story that goes beyond the “Is Jug dead or alive” question.

Maybe he's dead, but Betty keeps his body in the house and makes everyone eat breakfast with it. She is part Blossom.

10 hours ago, rmontro said:

So it turns out that Veronica and Cheryl are actually fermenting maple syrup to make the rum.  According to a link from Affogato in the last episode thread, that is not practical.  But hey, Riverdale stretching credibilty?  Say it isn't so.  I love that high school students are now running not only their own speakeasy and rum business, but have now taken over the local brothel and turned it into a gentlemen's club.

Imagine how cool it would have been if they had turned it into a club for affluent women who like to drink rum instead.

10 hours ago, opus said:

I'm not googling, but those tickle videos are real thing, right?

Yeah. There was a popular documentary last year called Tickled, and I'm pretty sure this story line is based on it. Basically, there's this one creepy rich guy who is alleged to have paid a ton of money to build up a tickle porn empire to satisfy his own fetish, and he allegedly acts really weird and aggressive when people challenge him about it, and sends fake ranting emails from his alter egos, etc. I don't think that's where Riverdale's going with it, but the setup with people being lured into the hotel room and talked into filming the videos is very similar.

[S03.E08: Chapter Twenty-Eight: Sabrina is Legend]

I agree that this part was less fun than parts 1-2, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Weirdly, I find myself much more interested in the version of Sabrina that was just like, "Cool, someone else is taking care of my family, so I can live my best life as the queen of hell."

On 1/25/2020 at 11:14 PM, Sakura12 said:

Sabrina is definitely a Moringstar with her hubris. Her never thinking and just acting always comes back to bite her and ends up hurting everyone else. Creating a time paradox is probably going to cause another apocalypse. 

I hate it when time travel doesn't make sense, but I really laughed about it this time. As soon as future!Sabrina told regular Sabrina that she absolutely had to be responsible and remember to come back and go inside the rock I was like, "Oh, no. Don't tell her what she has to do. Now she's gonna do the opposite for sure."

[S03.E06: Chapter Twenty-Six: All of Them Witches]

On 1/24/2020 at 5:30 PM, Harvey said:

Zelda turning Lilith away was so unnecessarily cruel, come on now! Specially when she could use all the help she can get against those pagans...but I did like the united power of those wayward witches channelled into Sabrina, she did so well against them.

I thought Lilith had a fair point with how they apparently worship her, now. But, then, they got rid of the last dude they worshiped, too.

On 1/26/2020 at 6:30 AM, pootlus said:

I get distracted every time Salem is on screen, he is such a beautiful cat (and yes I realise he's not really a cat).

 

Salem is so cute!! And I love that something cute can co-exist with all the horror elements without it breaking the mood.

[S03.E03: Chapter Twenty-Three: Heavy is the Crown]

On 1/25/2020 at 2:04 PM, AnimeMania said:

I am surprised the denizens of Hell would allow Caliban to just run in while Sabrina is fighting King Herod for rightful ownership of the crown, to just pick the crown up off the ground and go running back to hell with it. Wouldn't the royalty of hell want more from a leader than just being a sneaky weasel?

I actually feel like that's the kind of thing they would like -- a leader who has no respect for process, rules, decency, sportsmanship, etc and just swoops in to steal the victory from a someone who actually tried. TBH, I was surprised it wasn't okay for Lilith and Sabrina to just yoink the crown away from him and take it for themselves when it fell on the ground or whatever. (Which is maybe a problem with this plot line, if it's assuming that the hell lords are all about respecting this contest for some reason).

[S03.E04: Chapter Twenty-Four: The Hare Moon]

Okay, cool. The carnival pagans are terrifying and I hate them.

I do like that there's a down side to turning against Satan, in that you lose your powers. It would have been too easy if they could just leave him in the basement.

I'm unsure of whether we're supposed to think Nick's demon sex scene is shocking, since it seems like BDSM is probably pretty normal within the witch world? I do find it a little bit icky that we're being asked to see this as trauma but also invited to leer at it.

[S03.E01: Chapter Twenty-One: The Hellbound Heart]

I like that they didn't waste any time and just sent Sabrina on her rescue mission immediately. I wish the art direction in hell was different, though. I know they have a budget and they can't blow it on making the throne room look cool but... the throne everyone's fighting over seems pretty plain.

In general, though, I dig this reset where Zelda's in charge of the school and everyone prays to Lilith. I also like that they immediately found a way to make Lilith and Sabrina frenemies again, since that's a fun dynamic.

[S03.E02: Chapter Twenty-Two: Drag Me to Hell]

The cheer leading pop song stuff was so cringey and embarrassing, but there was my girl Lilith, scowling through the whole thing, looking as miserable and judgemental as I felt. She is perfect in every way, and I'm sorry a singing teenager stole her throne.

Otherwise, I'm glad that Prudence and Ambrose are back with the other characters. I like them, but, when they went off by themselves, I kept forgetting they existed. I also forgot that it was a problem to secretly keep Satan in the basement, until Zelda pointed it out. I'm not really on my game.

[S04.E10: Chapter Sixty-Seven: Varsity Blues]

Oh, man. The plot line where Jughead got into Yale makes me so stressed. Partly because I think it's darkly realistic -- some young white dude lets rich people pull strings for him and goes, "This is my just reward for being talented." I know he gets fake!murdered at the end, so it's not all roses, but, still... ugh.

Also, I laughed so hard at the initiation scene. All of those stories were such a WTF thing to share with classmates you barely know and don't like, but Jughead's came out of nowhere and seems like something we should have known about if it were true. Was everyone in that circle lying? Is this a party where privileged people pass a skull around and make up stories about traumatic things that didn't happen to them? Am I reading too much into it? It was so weird.

3 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

Well, at least it seems like Veronica will be sharing more scenes with basically anyone but her "Daddy", and at least Cheryl gets a new acting partner for a bit, with this maple rum business....so that's a plus to the Veronica storyline. I was NOT missing Hiram at all and groaned when he showed up halfway through the episode.

...

Evil cheerleading coach! Who...right now, isn't all that bad. A bit annoying, but not an issue yet. I mean, if I had a choice between this and dead corpse Jason, I'll take evil cheerleading coach. 

 

I like the idea of having Veronica go into business with Cheryl, because bringing those two plot lines together gives them more reason to interact. At the same time, this episode is when I realized that the show sort of started out as a YA story about relatable teens trying to solve a mystery, and it's become a different YA genre about the fantasy of being ultra-rich. Which is how we have 17-year-old multi-millionaire business moguls merging their empires together. I guess this is the same complaint I always have, but I wish the show would pick a lane and lean into it instead of swerving all over the place.

I thought the cheerleading coach was rude, and it made me wish that there were adults on this show who actually seemed to have social skills -- but I also think it makes sense that a school activity would have a staff member to supervise it and that a sport would have a coach. And I laughed when she said they should learn cheers instead of performing pop songs.

41 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

i do not trust Riverdale’s  new principal (is his name Honey?) -t all but I found his scene with Betty where she cans up with the idea to become captain of their schools quiz teen fascinating.   On any other show I might just see it as a teenager finally figuring out how to scheme in an adult world and get what you want from someone with their own agenda....but then their is this Jughead Murder mystery so there must be more going on. 

He was extra creepy to me in this scene, but, if only he hadn't been, it would have been a nice moment where Betty showed maturity and figured out how to get him on her side by cooperating with him. I assume something messed-up will happen.

[S04.E09: Chapter Sixty-Six: Tangerine]

LMFAO. They get Cheryl's mom out of the wall and ask her why she was tormenting Cheryl, and the reason is "I saw you living with your brother's corpse, and I wanted that life for me!!"

And then they leave her in the gross sex bunker because it's worse than death.

22 hours ago, Snookums said:

Speaking of Jughead, up until the last scene the entire "no, the guy didn't thieve your legacy" thing was a breath of fresh air. His teacher didn't steal, he legally purchased what FP Senior was willing to sell because his own demons had run him to ground. That Granddad couldn't get his shit together and caused a legacy of pain and bad choice making wasn't on Dupont. The disappointment and resignation on FP's face and Jughead finally realizing he's got to choose or not without hiding behind old feuds was well done.

And then of course they blow it all to hell by having the idiot get a note saying "Go out into the dark woods" and just go! And see a bunch of torches and rings drawn in the dirt and not take off! Total Archie move! Why would you join this gang of puff adders, Jug? 

I also enjoyed that twist, and how the explanation was more mundane and depressing than whatever conspiracy Jughead was imagining. Also, I know it's not cool to take advantage of a teenager and buy their intellectual property rights, free Taylor Swift, etc, but I feel like $5000 wasn't a bad price for a book two generations ago.

My bigger concern is that I'm 99% sure Jughead didn't bother reading the contract before he signed it, and there's going to be some weird clause that comes back to bite him later.

18 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Winter finale ends with another flash-forward, that is now hinting Betty kills Jughead in a trance.  Yeah, I'm still thinking this is some kind big con by the Core Four to expose what is going down with Chipping's death and whatnot.

Obviously, I don't think Jughead is dead, but I admit that this is the first flash-forward that's throwing me off, because it seems like such a weird detail for the four of them to be alone and somehow pretending that Betty killed Jughead. I don't get how it all fits together.

The only thing I can think is that maybe Betty went Dark!Betty (ugh) to defend Jughead from whoever actually tried to kill him and she doesn't remember, so she and everyone else mistakenly believes that she attacked Jughead... but it still doesn't add up.

I'm completely sure that I'll hate whatever the solution to this mystery is, but it is indeed very mysterious.

(Also I was legitimately scared of her when she smashed that mirror and went to bed like it was no big deal).

13 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

As for the Betty stuff....the return of the Farm stuff and Evelyn. I was convinced for a good while that Tangerine wasn't the actual activate word...but it was. And she thinks she got rid of Dark Betty, which...hopefully, they did?

Oh, yeah -- I was also legitimately scared of Evelyn when she said "Tangerine" three times in the visitor's room. This was a spooky episode.

10 hours ago, Snookums said:

Speaking of incompetent, I want to go to Shankshaw Prison if I ever commit a crime, because apparently they let convicted cult members/murderers/organ theft ring heads make rando phone calls to anyone whenever they want to! I wonder if it's occurred to Evelyn that she's probably got a whole bat colony of trigger words in her own noggin--it would be a riot if she's out in the yard and somebody says "Dustbuster, blanket, ceiling fan" and she just goes on a rampage.

At first, I was going to complain that Alice should have known she was getting a call from prison, because the phone system announces it when people call out. But then I was like, "They probably get calls from prison because of serial killer dad, so maybe they don't really think about it anymore."

What I find more remarkable about Shankshaw is that prisoners feel free to confess their newest crimes in the visiting area. And that they always do it immediately, as soon as someone asks. If only all interrogations took place in that room...

[S04.E08: Chapter Sixty-Five: In Treatment]

Aw, it's not a genre show without Gina Torres. I'm always so stoked when she shows up.

I kind of wished that they had leaned into the absurd fourth-wall-breaking nature of the psychotherapy sessions more but, depending how this murder mystery turns out, I guess I'll suspend judgement. I think that might be absurd and fourth-wall-breaking enough.

10 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

That being said...his therapy session was the best in terms of emotional payoff. KJ did an excellent job in that scene. It was probably a therapeutic grief counselling session that Archie probably never had when he lost Fred.

I'm learning that KJ Apa is one of those actors who gives it his all no matter what kind of show he's on or what kind of material he's getting, and I respect that. I hope I get to see him in lots of other stuff after this.

8 hours ago, Snookums said:

So was anyone else waiting for Ms. Burble to transform into a giant bat or have Principal Honey run into a Core Four member, hear them praise her, turn pale and say that Ms. Burble died in a train wreck fifteen years ago this very day, or something?

I thought for sure she was the video stalker and posing as a therapist was her way of taking the next step closer and invading people's lives.

7 hours ago, Snookums said:

Apa's performance in his therapy session. When he finally snaps that he's not an idiot and he gets mad when he's treated like a moron, instead of laughing (I mean, come on) I went you know what? Yeah.

...

Veronica, despite how weary the entire Daddy And Me: The Longest Day that is her storyline makes me, also makes sense considering that she was raised by two morally bankrupt scumbags and in the most enmeshed relationship since My Sweet Audrina. Telling her to walk away is like telling her to jump off a cliff--it's not a choice she's going to make. No wonder she and Archie seem so made for each other--both are addicted to variations on keeping themselves locked onto a target they can never reach.

1) You're a better person than me.

2) The Veronica thing bothered me a little, because the therapist's advice was "Go to Harvard but also alienate your dad so he won't pay for you to go to Harvard." I know it's not as sexy and scandalous as an Oedipus complex, but there are real, material reasons why teenagers don't want to get disowned by their parents and not having money to pay for stuff is one of them.

In Veronica's case, yes, she's locked into this struggle with her dad where she flatly refuses advice to walk away and instead leans into making her entire life about him (and his recently important rum business that we've never heard about before this season). But also you're asking someone who grew up expecting to be rich to suddenly choose being poor. That isn't such an easy thing.

5 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

So, now it is looking like Cheryl is being gaslit instead of being haunted.  I guess the question now is who is behind it?  Safe bet would be Penelope, since I have to imagine she would still have ways to sneak in the mansion and screw around.  Can't see it being Nana Rose, even though she lives there.  Maybe this is some bizarre game/revenge from Mr. Honey?  Of course, the ultimate betrayal would be if it was Toni for some reason.

Maybe because that's what she did to Toni when the doll was first introduced?

I thought it was a nice detail that Cheryl knew what gaslighting was right away as well as the movie it comes from, and that they didn't re-explain it to the audience.

4 hours ago, ruby24 said:

Wait, did the show forget there was an episode in a past season where Alice finds out Betty's having sex with Jughead and freaks out about it? Because that literally already happened on the show.

That whole plot point seemed insane. And also pointless when there are so many other things for them to argue about.

[S04.E07: Chapter Sixty-Four: The Ice Storm]

LMFAO "If Hiram can be the mayor and a kingpin, why can't I be the sheriff and a Serpent?"

Also LMFAO at Alice having dinner with FP, Hermione, and Hiram and "joking" that they're all terrible parents while they smile awkwardly. That's some fan service, right there.

I can't deal with the Cheryl plotline, though. I'm okay with her being bananas and playing a super macabre prank on someone, but I'd like it to be a prank that's actually smart. All she did was give her relatives everything they need to blow up her life.

Also not loving the thing where a teenage girl accuses her teacher of statutory rape and the message is that we shouldn't believe her.

[S04.E06: Chapter Sixty-Three: Hereditary]

My favourite part was when Jughead's teacher saw the monster from Bird Box and violently flung himself out the window. My second favourite part was being told (reminded?) that Betty's fake, evil brothers are boning, because of course they are.

My least favourite part was that Toni's still in this relationship, even when there's a corpse in the house and she has to help her girlfriend imprison a haunted doll instead of going to school. I guess she doesn't have anywhere else to go?

I'm 100% against trying to declare women crazy so you can steal their stuff, but I also feel like maybe Cheryl does need a psychiatrist.

12 hours ago, UNOSEZ said:

Even when they're in the right this show writes Betty and jughead with such an air of entitlement that its hard to root for them... Betty is again all up in Charles'  business having him take a polygraph.. And I know the show will have her be right.. Like she was with chick.. But it doesn't negate that her methodology is all outta wack...  And Jug man.. Summoning the author of the books to accuse him of plagiarism and then going to Mr. Chipping and demanding he help even tho it may harm the school and him personally... Smh

Word. I also don't see who it helps to expose whatever plagiarism happened. Like, it's premature to be that confrontational when all you have is a story written under a pen name and no other details about something that happened decades ago (and when your argument is "the tone is really similar" WTF) -- but also, if the school's funding is built on this, Jughead's grandfather isn't in the picture anymore, and this other dude did write 4/5 books himself, the point of exposing him now is... what? Who benefits from it?

I find it hard to buy into this as a moral truth-telling crusade when we don't even know what happened.

[S04.E05: Chapter Sixty-Two: Witness for the Prosecution]

On 11/6/2019 at 9:04 PM, Star Gazer said:

The gang kid asking what happen when Archie graduates because months away comes up fast.

I loved that that random kid was trying to explain to him that six months is a short amount of time and he can't just count on someone who doesn't have a longer plan than that. His choices for a role model right now are: "kind but dumb," "mean but stable," and "Mad Dog doesn't get any lines."

On 11/6/2019 at 9:08 PM, Chaos Theory said:

Once again I want to reiterate how I believe Riverdale benefits when it leans into the Dark Betty one bad day away from killing everyone storyline.   I really like her as a jr student in the FBI and that she doesn’t believe brother Charles for a minute.

I love how Charles tried to comfort her by saying, "I have the genes too, and I'm not a bad person," and her takeaway message was, "Charles is a serial killer, too."

I don't love that this show is trying to tell people that your genes can give you "dark urges" that drive you to crime. That's kind of... not how genes work and not how crime works.

On 11/6/2019 at 10:53 PM, MollyWebber said:

Calling it now, this is Jughead's "perfect murder" and I'm here for it. And his friends and family are in on it. There's no way Betty and FP would be reacting so controlled.

I like to think Jughead gave him stage directions like, "Just pretend you don't care, and then everyone will buy it."

On 11/6/2019 at 11:14 PM, thuganomics85 said:

Got to love Archie basically being all "Come after me, and you will have to deal with my mommy lawyer and BFF's dad sheriff!" during his grand speech.  Yep, he's just leaning right into how he's lucky he knows all of the important people in the town.  He should have just gone all in and said "And if you really get on my bad side, I might even be willing to align myself with my girlfriend's mobster father again!"  Normally I would have found all of that annoyingly arrogant, but since its Archie, I was just "Aww, you silly kid!" instead.

Or he could have said "I am the bat man," or something, 'cause he hits stuff with his bat.

But, seriously, I thought it was funny that FP told him to reach out to the community and make friends, and his response was to threaten everyone.

On 11/7/2019 at 10:03 AM, Lady Calypso said:

LOL at Veronica having a half sister. It's funny how, since Hiram couldn't get his favourite daughter to be on his side, he had to settle with some other daughter that lived in Florida who he obviously couldn't care less about...

Yeah, I think it's a Tiffany Trump joke but, knowing this show, I'm not sure.

[S04.E04: Chapter Sixty-One: Halloween]

21 hours ago, Snookums said:

Honestly if you have to be told that massive property destruction is NOT the way to connect with troubled youth you really need a refresher course in, like, life.

YMMV. I'm not trying to stump for the Obviously Evil principal, who will probably turn out to be a crime lord or something, but I do think that a principal whose attitude is "you eff with me, I eff with you" can earn respect from certain types of students. And I don't honestly think that's the wrong approach in every case, especially when the alternatives on offer are "I call the police" or "I expel you so you can't graduate." Blithely wrecking someone's life is a lot worse to me than wrecking their car, and I've seen a lot of administrators who seem creepily eager to do the first thing.

[S04.E04: Chapter Sixty-One: Halloween]

I think the thing I'd like most is for Riverdale to choose a tone and stick with it. Even within individual episodes. Even within individual scenes.

Like, the scene were Veronica hears the news broadcast telling her the trucker is a serial killer -- was that supposed to be funny or scary? The radio broadcast seemed satirical, like I was supposed to laugh at it, but then his facial expression was really threatening and she dropped all her dishes and ran away like she was seriously afraid, so...

On 10/30/2019 at 11:15 PM, Bulldog said:

I know Archie isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but you would think that even he would be able to figure out that if (1) you have a kid telling you they have nowhere to go after the gym closes each night, and (2) you recently started living alone in a big ol' house that presumably has multiple bedrooms, then there is a fairly obvious solution to that problem. (Hint, its not becoming a vigilante -- and yes, I know in real life, there would be all kinds of hoops to jump thru to take in a kid, but this is Riverdale.)

This is a good point. In the universe Riverdale takes place in, Archie could turn his house into a foster home or something. At this point, there's a pattern where Archie's soltion to everything is violence, and the show isn't really acknowledging that that could be a problem.

On 10/31/2019 at 12:18 AM, Snookums said:

Gawd, even for Archie and Vee Archie was a dumbass and Veronica massively entitled this go round.  Just volunteer your friend in New York to whip up two custom costumes including boots and accessories with like ten minutes notice, Ronnie, jeez!

I actually thought at first that she was volunteering her friend to make costumes for the kids, because some of them probably can't afford to buy costumes and stuff. But, of course, this was just the latest game of dress-up with her boyfriend. I think it's kind of an icky dynamic but I guess at this point it's in character for them -- she likes bossing people and he likes being bossed, so she manages the aesthetics of whatever he's trying to do.

On 10/31/2019 at 8:46 AM, Lady Calypso said:

She was acting like it was an annoyance, rather than a really, really big problem. And then, yeah, apparently a doll is creepier than a corpse that, quite frankly, should be decomposing already. Because I know nothing about embalming, would that allow a body like this, that's been dead for at least two years, be this put together still? Because this may be more ridiculous than Edgar's Rocket.

...

I honestly thought it was going to end up being Charles, and I'm still not ruling him out. I'm fine if they keep Charles as actual Charles, though. 

I think it could be funny if Betty just keeps getting new brothers named Charles and they all turn out to be creeps.

The corpse thing might be the moment the show jumped the shark for me. It goes back to what I said about tone -- if the whole show were purely satire or consistently taking place in a hyper-reality where weird shit like this always happened, I'd be okay with it. But I'm being asked to accept that they've just been hanging out with a dead body for the past few weeks at the same time as I'm being asked to accept that Reggie has an actual, real world issue with his abusive dad. It feels strange.

On 10/31/2019 at 2:13 PM, tennisgurl said:

What the hell was up with the new principle? His scenes with Reggie and Kevin were somehow unsettling, but its hard to put my finger on why.

I 100% believe he's being set up to be evil somehow because that's what happens to every new character on this show, but I think it would be interesting if he were just some tough love principal who got sent to Riverdale because he's good at relating to troubled youth, and this was a case of him sincerely trying to connect with Reggie by holding him accountable for his actions in a super hardcore way that doesn't jeopardize his ability to graduate or go to college.

I'm not saying I think smashing someone's car windows is okay -- just wouldn't it be an interesting curveball for this show if the principal didn't turn out to be evil? (Knowing he's 100% going to turn out evil).

[S04.E03: Chapter Sixty: Dog Day Afternoon]

My favourite part was when Betty stole a beret to complete her disguise. Even though she and her mom are famous enemies of the cult and everyone would have recognized them anyway -- it was a good look.

Also, I guess Jason and Cheryl were part of triplets and maybe that explains some stuff? Unsure whether triplet three is dead in the basement or alive somewhere, because I'm not super paying attention.

My least favourite part is that everyone keeps doing wacky things that don't make sense. Like, I'd be down for the wacky things if they had some kind of internal logic, but, here, people are making choices that seem unrelated to whatever they just learned. Archie doesn't want to go beat up the arcade guys, then his mom tells him she'll pay for him to go to college, then he does beat up the arcade guys WHAT.

In the scene with Polly, they acted like she was a suicide bomber, then they acted like she was strapped to a bomb she didn't want to be attached to -- pick one.

10 hours ago, Snookums said:

(Query; does the FBI need a governor's permission to conduct a raid? I can see where it might be politic but they aren't using National or State Guards, plus these are federal crimes. Also, those other agents were really quite super chill about a teenager being in on the entire operation and defusing a bomb. )

Also, Charles said the Governor was sending mercenaries in. WTF. I'm not American, but I feel like that's not normal.