S05.E18: Chapter Ninety-Four: Next to Normal

[Bort]

Refusing to accept what’s going on around her, Alice creates an imaginary musical fantasy world in which the Coopers are one big happy family again. But as her mother continues to spiral, Betty does her best to pull her back to reality. Tabitha ropes Jughead into a family dinner with her parents. Veronica and Archie make a big decision about their future.

Airdate: 29 Sep 2021

[ruby24]

Ok, so judging by the preview, Reggie and Veronica are a go after all, which has at least had some build up, but now we ARE going back to Betty and Archie? Really? 

I don't quite get that...it makes me think there's some truth to the rumor (fact?) that Cole and Lily aren't into having scenes together anymore, so the show might actually really be done with Betty/Jughead for good? 

That seems hard to believe. But there has been zero hint that Betty has any feelings at all anymore for Jughead this season. But since they quit the Betty/Archie thing, neither of them have been pining for each other either. 

If they're going back to Betty/Archie again, after revealing yet again to us this season how upset Jughead was about that, it's a bit weird to see them ever getting back together. Huh. 

I guess I just find it odd that they were the central couple on this show for so long- rarely does a show jettison its central couple like that unless fans weren't into it (or something happened behind the scenes).

[Artsda]

I guess with Betty saying she's not leaving her mom again and Archie telling Veronica he's not seeing himself outside of Riverdale, it makes sense. They were one of the seasons more interesting stories, the start of season was good then it went back in same old.

[SourK]

I didn't watch the previews or anything, but, as soon as Betty said her mom was listening to a musical, I went, "Oh, no."

FWIW, I don't like the musical episodes, but I feel like this was the best one? Because it at least somewhat related to the story? I'm not into the rock opera thing where the only way to express emotion is to be really loud, so I still wasn't really into this, but it seemed to work better.

Without having seen Next to Normal it seemed like maybe Betty was being cast as both the child and the husband, which is such an apt reading of her relationship with Alice, and so amazingly unhealthy for both of them, if it's true. She should be able to move away and live her own life -- she should be able to do that no matter what, but even more so because Alice drops her like a hot coal whenever she finds someone else to cling to.

I'm fine with Archie and Veronica breaking up. I also thought the conflict was pretty normal and relatable -- one of them wants a serious relationship and to start thinking long-term about moving in together, planning for the future, building their careers, etc -- one of them wants to keep living with a bunch of random roommates and stay casual. Neither is wrong, but they don't work together.

Also, it seemed like Archie was sleeping at the fire station to avoid her. So, there's that.

[rmontro]

My first reaction to this was "What?  Another musical episode?  Didn't they just do one a few weeks ago?"  Then it took me to realize that Next to Normal was actually a real musical, I had to look it up because I had never heard of it.  Is this show slowly morphing into Glee now?  Not much this show does would shock me.  

This has been a very disjointed season, it's been all over the place.

Am I the only one concerned about leaving Britta with Cheryl?  Cheryl's got her own particular brand of craziness, the poor kid's probably going to grow up scarred.  Oh well, she'll grow up in a nice house at least.  For a minute I thought Fangs and Toni were going to take her in.

Speaking of which, I thought Fangs and Toni were gay, now suddenly they're in love?  This younger generation's orientations sure are fluid.

[Lady Calypso]

1 hour ago, rmontro said:

Speaking of which, I thought Fangs and Toni were gay, now suddenly they're in love?  This younger generation's orientations sure are fluid.

Toni has always been bisexual. I don't know when Fangs came out as bisexual, but they re-established that this season.

[thuganomics85]

Should have known they would use what happened to Polly as a way to have another musical episode.  Not familiar with "Next to Normal" and I guess it worked well enough for this particular theme, but I still wasn't wild about it.  I just want them to go all out one of these days and do something completely out of left field.  Like Cats!  Or Hamilton!  I can just picture Lin-Manuel Miranda spitting out his drink when he hears that news and watches as Jughead does his best attempt of "The Room Where it Happens"...

It was kind of fun at least seeing both Tiera Skovbye and Wyatt Nash again as Alice's fantastical versions of Polly and Charles.

Archie and Veronica break up again.  To be fair, I think it makes sense on a lot of levels, but it's just feeling a bit tiring now.  I wonder if this will lead to Veronica making another go of it with Reggie instead.

With all due respect to Toni and Fangs, I don't think having an abandoned and vulnerable teenager stay with someone who just recently was running a cult... err, "ministry" and thinks she's a living, breathing saint is the right call here.  I guess other options were limited, but still.

Props to the actor playing Tabitha's dad because he made the most out of his screen time.  I would so watch scenes of just him and Hiram together, sipping whiskey and plotting their daughters boyfriends' demises!

[Diapason Untuned]

It's so odd that despite Riverdale residents known weakness to cults, it's Cheryl's run of the mill nature worshipping that they turn their stink eye on.

I've been known to wear some questionable outfits before, but if I went to a fancy restaraunt with my f=girlfriend's parents dressed the way Jughead was, my girlfriend would have killed me.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Diapason Untuned

[angora]

It seems the key for me to really enjoy Riverdale's musical episodes is to be largely unfamiliar with the show and its music going in. I thought the Heathers episode was fun and angsty and delightfully cracked, while I had a hard time getting over how the Hedwig episode chopped a key song to ribbons and contorted others to only maybe sort-of-fit the context of the story.

With Next to Normal, a lot of the emotional content worked and there were some good performances, especially from Lili, Madchen, and Erinn Westbrook, but it was so weird for me to have these songs so divorced from the central story of the show, which is how the mom's mental illness (she's bipolar) affects her and everyone in the family. To name a couple examples, "I Miss the Mountains" is about the mom struggling with feeling numb under her medication and missing the "mountains" of intense emotion from her manic and depressive periods (Take a look at these lyrics one more time under that context: "Mountains make you crazy - / Here it's safe and sound. / My mind is somewhere hazy, / My feet are on the ground. / Everything is balanced here / And on an even keel. / Everything is perfect - / Nothing's real." "Superboy and the Invisible Girl" is about the daughter feeling like the mom cares more about her fantasy version of the son who died than the real/living daughter in front of her (and includes the heartbreaking line of the mom telling the daughter, "I love you as much as I can.") Even when Betty was explaining the show to the others at the start of the episode, there was NO mention of the mom being bipolar, which was so weird to me.

19 hours ago, SourK said:

Without having seen Next to Normal it seemed like maybe Betty was being cast as both the child and the husband, which is such an apt reading of her relationship with Alice, and so amazingly unhealthy for both of them, if it's true. She should be able to move away and live her own life -- she should be able to do that no matter what, but even more so because Alice drops her like a hot coal whenever she finds someone else to cling to.

Right. Betty was framed as the daughter but mostly given the husband's songs. And the daughter's songs that she DID have were the ones that were more supportive/mature (her parts in "Next to Normal" and the final number, "Light.") Any songs that really show how messed-up the daughter feels were given to other characters. Not that the husband doesn't have his own struggles, but it's much more about the fears he's masking behind the facade of keeping everything together, which, like you said, is not a responsibility a daughter should have to have. On the one hand, points for accuracy on how unhealthy the Betty-Alice relationship is, but on the other, it positions Betty as so focused on taking care of her mom that she's kind of robbed of her own reaction to everything that's going on.

By the way, I was actually just revisiting Next to Normal's performance from the 2009 Tony Awards - seeing Aaron Tveit with the cast of Moulin Rouge! at this year's Tonys reminded me, like seeing him always does, of how great he was as the hallucination of the son in this show.

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by angora
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[tennisgurl]

So we have fully become Glee now I guess, just with slightly more murder and a darker pallet tone. I now that this show has always loved his big musical numbers, but at least in seasons past it was usually part of a show or some kind, now its just full on Diegetic with characters just singing their feels away and I have no idea how to take it. So are we supposed to think that Veronica is actually singing her heart out over the kitchen sink or is it just a metaphor for how she's feeling? We know that Alice was singing for real on her new piano, but was Betty singing with her? Of course, the biggest questions of all...why am I still asking questions about this shows logic? 

I am actually familiar with Next to Normal, never seen the show but have heard the music and seen clips online, and I feel bad for anyone trying to glean what the plot of the play is from this episode, because they really do not explain a lot. They never even mention that the mom in the play is bipolar and having hallucinations of her dead son, which is a huge part of the show, so Alice seeing her dead daughter makes sense to me, but I think that might be lost on other people. They also do a lot of really wonky Glee style things to the music, like making I Miss the Mountains, a song about the mom missing her bipolar mood swings after taking her meds, about actual literal mountains. I guess they wanted to focus on the parts of the play about grief and trying to avoid dealing with it by pretending that everything is fine, which is certainly a big part of the show, but ignoring the mental health aspect so much really undermines a lot of the songs. I did also notice that the show gave Betty a bunch of the dad's songs to Betty, mostly about how he has to always take care of his wife to the point where he feels like he cant show any cracks, which is a sad statement on their relationship I feel like. I wish they had given her a few more of the daughters angrier songs about her issues with her mom, I think then we could have explored Betty's grief over losing Polly more instead of her having to put her feelings aside to deal with her mom.

Jughead just running for the garage so he wouldn't have to talk to Veronica was funny and sad, I was actually curious as to what they would talk about, I cant even remember the last time the two of them had a scene one on one. The core four are supposed to be super close friends, even after being apart for years, but they are all often in such different plots they hardly seem like they know each other a lot of times.

Veronica and Archie break up and I don't really care that much at this point. At least it wasn't some huge dramatic thing, just they want different things right now and that's fine.

[SourK]

3 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

So are we supposed to think that Veronica is actually singing her heart out over the kitchen sink or is it just a metaphor for how she's feeling?

...

Jughead just running for the garage so he wouldn't have to talk to Veronica was funny and sad, I was actually curious as to what they would talk about, I cant even remember the last time the two of them had a scene one on one. The core four are supposed to be super close friends, even after being apart for years, but they are all often in such different plots they hardly seem like they know each other a lot of times.

Okay, but now imagine he ran to the garage and she just started screaming show tunes about how she always comes second to Archie. That would make me like her so much more.

I agree with you, though -- it's confusing what singing "represents" on this show. Is it happening in people's imaginations? Are we meant to understand that they're having a normal conversation but it's being translated into song for us, as viewers? Is it like the musical episode of Buffy and everyone's cursed to sing their feelings even if they don't know the source material? Is this a spell that Cheryl cast because she's a witch? I'm pretty sure it's the last one, but it's unclear.

[Dobian]

And another ordinary day in Gleedale...

With this episode, can we finally move Riverdale out of of the Drama category and into Genre where it has always belonged?  :)

Edited October 6, 2021 by Dobian

[ketose]

Could they do Dear Evan Hansen next? I don't want to pay to see it.

[LadyChaos]

Of course its all Betty's fault....Because how dare she go to college and get a career and leave her mothers control...Yes she promised to come home....but they all knew that she wanted to go into the FBI and the FBI tells their agents where to go, the agents don't get to tell the FBI where they'll go....so, coming home to Riverdale only would've happened if she didn't follow her dreams...

With as much as Alice makes passive aggressive remarks about Betty never being there for them......does she even know what happened to her daughter?

Edited August 16, 2022 by LadyChaos

[LadyChaos]

On 10/1/2021 at 1:47 PM, tennisgurl said:

I did also notice that the show gave Betty a bunch of the dad's songs to Betty, mostly about how he has to always take care of his wife to the point where he feels like he cant show any cracks, which is a sad statement on their relationship I feel like. I wish they had given her a few more of the daughters angrier songs about her issues with her mom, I think then we could have explored Betty's grief over losing Polly more instead of her having to put her feelings aside to deal with her mom.

I never saw NTN, but I think giving her the dad's songs was spot on, from what I understand from reading about it ....in the beginning of the series it was brought up often about Betty being the perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect friend, etc.....and one of the first moments we really see what she feels is when she tells Archie in s1 that she hates the word perfect and highlights the pressure she is very well aware she is under to be perfect(which is why I think the whole thing with Chuck happened)...for so much of the people around her she kept her emotions to herself and was strong for everyone and helping them bare their burdens......

To me the biggest thing was in s3 when Jug left with Archie to run away.....then shortly after Alice had the SOQM come and haul her away and lock her up....and after Jug tried multiple times to get a hold of her with no luck, his conversation with Archie went down something like this:

Archie: maybe you should go back and make sure she is okay.

Jug: No, whatever she is dealing with, Im sure she can handle herself.

I thought it was interesting that in s2, after Cheryl didn't post to insta for like 3 days they knew she was in trouble and Veronica, Toni, and Kev went on a mission to find her and break her out of SOQM......but Betty was gone for weeks and no one batted an eye and just assumed she could handle herself....I mean, yeah, her mom told Veronica that Betty went to the farm to visit Polly....but given how outspoken Betty was about the farm and her outspokenness about them, they should have known she wouldn't have even gone there willingly, not to mention without her phone...since we know the farm doesn't take their phone away...