This week on Riverdale, we are introduced to Katy Keene, who is the newest member of the Riverdale universe and her spin-off series also aired this week. Since this episode has so many storylines, let’s split it up by each of the main characters!
Archie
Archie and Uncle Frank are wrapping up a workday when Ted Bishop, an old friend who served with Frank, shows up to deliver some bad news: Someone named Greg died. As Ted puts it, cancer rotted him. Archie invites him over to his house for dinner, where he asks him to stay the night.
When another old friend calls Frank saying someone else died, Frank realises something is off just in time when Ted tries to stab him. Archie hits Ted over the head with a frying pan, but Ted runs off. Frank explains that after the war, Ted hired Frank to work at a private security firm and they were mercenaries. Now, Frank thinks Ted has been sent to tie up the company’s loose ends and Ted isn’t going to stop until Frank is dead. Archie gets FP involved and the plan is to use Frank as bait and then have FP arrest Ted, and at first it works, until Ted tells Frank that he broke the code, which means ‘all bets are off now.’
Just as Frank decides to run away to Alaska, Ted breaks out of prison because Riverdale cops aren’t good at their jobs. Ted then attacks Archie at school, where the guy slams Archie’s head into a mirror and then throws his body through a porcelain sink (um how is he still conscious?). Kevin walks in and distracts Ted, giving Archie an opportunity to knock him out with the toilet lid. The guy gets up again like three seconds later and chases the two of them down. He knocks Kevin out with one push into the lockers and starts strangling Archie before Frank returns and knocks him out with a trophy. And somehow, that works. (This is Riverdale, we just go with it.)
They turn Ted over to the feds, and Archie convinces Frank to turn himself in as well but Frank doesn’t listen. Instead, he leaves Riverdale and Archie behind.
Veronica
Veronica heads to New York with her parents as they’re going on business and she has an interview at Barnard. She meets up with her old friend Katy Keene, who is into fashion so she’s the obvious choice to help Veronica pick out the perfect college interview outfit.
After this, Katy takes Veronica to a drag show and they catch up. Katy asks if Archie will follow Veronica to college, and she says Riverdale wouldn’t survive without him, so their plan is to do the long-distance thing. Katy then reveals that her mother is sick and though we don’t know her yet, the news somehow ties into the episode.
It turns out that Hermione and Hiram didn’t go to New York for business. They went to see a specialist. Hiram has a neuromuscular disorder that will weaken him and cause him to lose his motor skills. They did catch it early, so maybe there’s a chance he’ll be okay. Veronica changes her name back to Lodge and tells her parents that she’s been accepted to Barnard.
Cheryl
Cheryl finally fills Toni in on her past with Nick St. Clair when he shows up at the Maple Club. Toni sees this as an opportunity for revenge: she drugs Nick and enlists Kevin and Fangs to make a video with Nick to use as blackmail if he ever sets foot in Riverdale or assaults another woman again. I am not okay with this storyline, but again, it’s Riverdale.
Betty and Jughead
Jughead and Bret duel in this episode. They agree to the terms: there will be a fencing match, a ‘bare-knuckle brawl’, and a chess match as a tiebreaker (if necessary). They’re each allowed to choose a ‘second’ to help them, and Jughead chooses Donna for some reason.
The fencing match goes down in the seminar room and Bret wins and we move to the brawl, which Jughead wins with one punch (huh!).
While all of this is going on, Alice is trying to fix her mistake: She tells Mr. Honey that she acted alone in getting the quiz show answers, but he doesn’t believe her. Instead, he suspends Betty for a week, strips her of her editor-in-chief title at the paper, and bans her from her senior prom. Oh and Bret also took out a restraining order against Betty.
But Betty has other things to work on: she enlists her mother in looking into Mr. Chipping’s death. They start by talking to Mrs. Chipping, who doesn’t believe for one second that her husband was having an affair with a student. All she knows is that Mr. Chipping wished he never got the Baxter Brothers contract, so why would he kill himself when he was so close to being done? Mrs. Chipping has a lot of questions, and she leaves behind a box of her late husband’s personal things so Betty and Alice can look through it and find army pamphlets.
This brings us to Moose who reveals that not only did Chipping suggests the army, but he was actually the person who recruited Moose to play football for Stonewall Prep in the first place. Then, when the story came out about Moose, Chipping practically shoved Moose out the door. Apparently, he learned that Bret had videotaped Moose having sex with a classmate in their dorm and added it to ‘his collection.’
So, Betty and Alice head to the dorm to see if they can find said collection. Instead, they find Bret, who denies any knowledge of such tapes. That leads to Plan B: while Jughead and Bret play chess in the seminar room, Betty and Alice will search the school’s basement where the Quill and Skull meetings take place.
And Betty does find a tape collection there, but it’s not what she thinks. When Bret gets alerted that the Quill and Skull alarm is going off, they pause the game and head downstairs, where he reveals that all Betty has found are the tapes of every Quill and Skull member’s initiation testimony. So she hands them over and he and Jug get back to their game, at least until Jughead throws it. It seems Jughead is no longer interested in honour the way Stonewall defines it.
Once back home, Betty reveals that she managed to sneak Donna’s tape out and her confession is similar to the story she told Betty about her affair with Mr. Chipping, except her tape is about an affair with a different teacher. Turns out, Donna’s been lying this whole time. Her story about Mr. Chipping was a rehearsed speech that she’s given at least twice.
Final Thoughts?
I really liked seeing Katy Keene for the first time, and I’m excited to see what the rest of the season has in store for us!
