S05.E16: Chapter Ninety-Two: Band of Brothers

[rmontro]

Quote

After hearing some unexpected news about his former commanding officer, Archie opens up to Uncle Frank about his time in the Army;  Veronica comes up with a clever way to raise funds after Chad calls the SEC on her.

Airdate: 15 Sep 2021

[SourK]

Kay. Veronica's in financial trouble because her finances are mixed together with her husband's, and they're still not divorced, and the reason she owes money is actually because he owes money, and the whole reason she's scheming is to pay off his debts. So then he calls her and tells her he has a way to pay off his debt, and she's like, "No, I don't need your help. I'd rather pay all of your debts by myself." And then she purposely torpedoes the business he started -- presumably still with their money, since they are still married?

Also LMAO, when she said she needed "one more person" for the auction, I assumed it would be a representative from an auction house. But no, it was Cheryl, and the auction was just randomly hosted by Veronica. I assume you can't just ignore one of the bidders in a real auction but, if anyone knows the rules, I'd love to hear.

Archie's story also didn't make sense, but it annoyed me more because we were supposed to think it was righteous.

I laughed at the part where Cheryl was queen of the bees. I know this won't happen, but I wish she'd just become a witch and turn this into Sabrina.

[rmontro]

41 minutes ago, SourK said:

Kay. Veronica's in financial trouble because her finances are mixed together with her husband's, and they're still not divorced, and the reason she owes money is actually because he owes money, and the whole reason she's scheming is to pay off his debts. So then he calls her and tells her he has a way to pay off his debt, and she's like, "No, I don't need your help. I'd rather pay all of your debts by myself." And then she purposely torpedoes the business he started -- presumably still with their money, since they are still married?

You're right, that made no sense at all.  Wow, I'd hate to be a person of significance in Veronica's life, seems like she'd spend all her time and energy trying to destroy my life.  She destroys her husband's business dealings, and I can't even count all the terrible things she's done to her father.  Her brawny unfaithful boyfriend gets a pass, however.  

When Betty was on the Lonely Highway, I think she must have been wearing three or four push up bras.

Jughead made a good point, Tabitha really did not do a good job of watching him while he was on those mushrooms.  Thankfully, he did not go through with stealing the grad student's book.  That probably wouldn't have ended well.  

Cheryl is crazy as ever.

[thuganomics85]

I swear, it's like every time this show actually has a good (at least by their standards) episode, they make sure to follow it with the most batshit insane one they possibly can, complete with incoherent decisions and massive, massive tonal shifts.

Just when I think Cheryl and Kevin's cult, I'm sorry, "ministry" can't get even more outlandish, not only do they overthrow Penelope by performing parlor tricks to convince their followers that they are performing actual miracles, but now Cheryl has deluded herself into thinking she might actually be a living, breathing saint now.  Because, of course, Cheryl's ego would totally make herself believe that!  How Madelaine Petsch and Casey Cott managed to get through filming without devolving into a fit of giggles is beyond me.  To be fair, I guess at this point the entire Riverdale cast has learned how to just roll with the crazy punches.

Meanwhile, Veronica is scorching the Earth to stick it to both Chad and Hiram, but while I'm clearly suppose to think this is some big "Hell yeah, get them, V" moment, I just keep thinking that the only reason she has to do this most of the time is because she gets herself in these situations by blabbing things and letting her opponents know whats up.  Hell, even in this episode, she does it again by feeling the need to let Hiram know she replaced his real minerals with fake ones, and he likely would have been none the wiser for a bit.  So, even though she "won" one battle, she's likely already escalated another one.

Of course Betty is now making herself bait for the Highway Killer, and Tabitha clearly knows the score when it comes to convincing her to stop, so she's just like "Well, if I can't beat her, I might as well join her!"

Jughead briefly dabbles with plagiarism, but stops himself at the very end.  But he's clearly still in a dark place now.  Too bad his supposed friends seem to mainly be off doing whatever batshit thing the writers got cooked up for him.

Finally, Archie continues to be off on his own little world, that is tonally completely different from every other thing that is happening here.  At least K.J. Apa, Ryan Robbins, and Sommer Carbuccia (Jackson) are doing what they can to earnestly sell all of this, but wow, due I get whiplash every time we go back to this story.

[rmontro]

3 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Finally, Archie continues to be off on his own little world, that is tonally completely different from every other thing that is happening here.  At least K.J. Apa, Ryan Robbins, and Sommer Carbuccia (Jackson) are doing what they can to earnestly sell all of this, but wow, due I get whiplash every time we go back to this story.

Good point.  Archie's adventures almost seem like he's on a different show (and a different century lol).  It reminds me of some of the earlier seasons, where Archie was off more doing his own thing.

Cheryl is so superstitious, she probably actually believes that Jason is feeding her spiritual power from beyond.  Or from the box in her bedroom, or wherever she has his remains stashed.  

[ruby24]

Was it me or did Reggie seem to be delivering his lines in super slow motion in this ep?

Also, why did Veronica tell her dad she stole his palladium? What's that gonna do except make him want revenge?

Betty didn't care at all that Jughead confessed his alcoholism and addiction problems while drinking in front of her. And I continue to wonder why no one brings up his father regarding this situation. I thought she was going to say, "like your dad?" or reference the Jones history but she didn't.

[rmontro]

14 hours ago, ruby24 said:

Also, why did Veronica tell her dad she stole his palladium? What's that gonna do except make him want revenge?

Let's face it, that particular relationship is very sick and twisted.

[tennisgurl]

This season is giving me such whiplash, its like for every shockingly good episode we have to have at least one more stupid episode, I just cant keep up with it. This episode wasn't awful I guess, but it was mostly just annoying. Nothing that crazy even happened, other than Cheryl possibly being a witch (which I think we all saw coming) it was just a bunch of random things happening. 

The plot that seems like we actually got progress on was Archie and his time in the trenches of WWI (seriously show, I just cant sometimes) which probably only worked as well as it did because the acting was all really solid, while I have been sort of cold on this whole post war thing with Archie, KJ is just giving it his absolute all, which I can appreciate. Its also the only plot that seems to sort of feel like a real thing and not something utterly ridiculous, which at least makes it the most interesting story this week. Which is also a problems as, like with a lot of Archie subplots, the show seems to be actually playing things straight while the rest of the plots are over the top gothic camp, which can lead to some serious whiplash. So we go from Archie somberly musing on losing the men under his command to Cheryl starting a honeybee cult, its just really taxing to make those kinds of tonal leaps. 

So Veronica's big badass plan is to...not let her husband get their money back and instead just tank his new business out of spite? And to continue her never ending pissing contest with her dad? This is clearly supposed to be super awesome, but showing up to brag about how she one upped Hiram just seems like its giving him time to strike back, just because she wanted to be petty.

Jugheads not really wrong about Tabitha doing a bad job at watching him while he was high and giving his book to his weirdo ex, and he did at least talk himself out of plagiarism. Now would sure be a good time to get some support from his friends, who are all unfortunately on different shows right now. The show is really falling back into doing that thing is does where every single character is in their own subplot totally divorced from everyone else to the point where they feel like they're on totally different shows, and its annoying.

The best thing about Cheryl and Kevin's stupid cult is that super melodramatic Phantom of the Opera style music that plays every time Penelope shows up, which is hilarious every single time.

[rmontro]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Its also the only plot that seems to sort of feel like a real thing and not something utterly ridiculous

Except for the fact that it's in WWI lol.  What happened, did someone assassinate the Archduke Francis Ferdinand?