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Riverdale Season 2 (Spoilers)

What a compelling episode this week! I felt sorry for Veronica. While she had good intentions for running for school council president, nobody wanted to support her, not even Josie, and her running mate Betty dropped out after she found out V had kept something from her and her friends. At this point, it appears the Lodges aren't very well liked, even as Hermione is running for mayor.

It was refreshing to see Molly Ringwald come back and stand by her man. What an interesting new development as Fred revealed to his family his intent to run for mayor against Hermione, especially since, unbeknownst to them, Archie was responsible for releasing him (Fred) from his contract with Hiram.

Was Cheryl just being paranoid, or was she justified in believing her mom and Uncle Claudius wanted to murder Nana? We'll find out next week.
 
Gryffindorian said:
What a compelling episode this week! I felt sorry for Veronica. While she had good intentions for running for school council president, nobody wanted to support her, not even Josie, and her running mate Betty dropped out after she found out V had kept something from her and her friends. At this point, it appears the Lodges aren't very well liked, even as Hermione is running for mayor.
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It's sad to see Ronnie so compromised by her parents. She was such a heroic character last season. True, she agreed to work with her parents for a benevolent motive; she believed she could keep them in check, keep them honest. Instead, she's let them undermine her own integrity. She overestimated her ability to control them. After all, she is still a teenager and they're her parents, so why would they let her take the lead? I just hope she comes to her senses soon and comes up with some devious master plan to thwart their schemes and save the town and win back her friends' trust.


Was Cheryl just being paranoid, or was she justified in believing her mom and Uncle Claudius wanted to murder Nana? We'll find out next week.
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You can rarely go wrong expecting the worst of the adult Blossoms. I mean, these are people who were willing to subject their daughter to the tortures of "conversion therapy" at the faintest suspicion that she had lesbian leanings. She hadn't even come out yet, or even managed to kiss Toni yet.
 
^ Conversion therapy! How could that have gone over my head? Duh! I thought she was committed because Penelope said "You've gone completely mad." Up until a few episodes ago, I never really knew whom Cheryl was attracted to. I don't recall her having dated anyone (girl or guy).
 
Gryffindorian said:
^ Conversion therapy! How could that have gone over my head? Duh! I thought she was committed because Penelope said "You've gone completely mad."
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The nun in the final scene explicitly said that they were about to begin the "conversion." Although I admit, I might've missed that if conversion therapy hadn't been in the news recently thanks to John Oliver's bestelling parody of Mike Pence's daughter's children's book, which was created as a protest of Pence's support for an anti-LGBT group that practices conversion therapy.

Still, Cheryl did tell that story a couple of weeks back about how her mother freaked out on finding her alone in her room with another girl and told her she was depraved. So we knew that Penelope Blossom is a raging homophobe who vehemently condemns the slightest hint of her daughter showing interest in another girl.


Up until a few episodes ago, I never really knew whom Cheryl was attracted to. I don't recall her having dated anyone (girl or guy).
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Well, in season 1, she was shown to be disquietingly devoted to her late twin brother, with incestuous implications. Otherwise, she was basically in love with herself.
 
Alliances are forged in the face of threats and seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Kudos to Jughead and the Serpents for vanquishing the blackmailers at the Coopers' household. I was surprised Alice was all too willing to give the hush money to the riffraff when it wasn't clear whether those goons knew anything about the missing guy. Although Chic had guilt written all over his face, it didn't mean Alice or Betty was involved in any cover-up.

Archie convinced Reggie and his pals to help him deal with the mobsters who wanted a share of Hiram's prison enterprise. Gutsy move by Archie. He gets bolder every episode.

Meanwhile, Ronnie, Toni, and Kevin broke Cheryl out of the Sisters of Mercy institution. True lesbian love prevails! :D
 
This show is at its best when it embraces its sheer insanity and campy melodrama, and this episode was a pinnacle of that. It was totally crazy in the best way, right from the start with the ancient anti-deviance scare film that somehow starred Kevin and Moose. And it's amazingly absurd that Veronica and Toni dressed up in sexy cleavage-window outfits to go on a stealth mission to rescue Cheryl from a nunnery and this was treated as somehow entirely unremarkable. (What a shame Josie backed out before things reached this point...) Although it was fun to see Cheryl and Toni making out right in front of the people watching the film condemning gayness. I wanted to see one of the people in the audience saying, "Umm, is this part of the show?" And then a moment later I wanted to see the girls lead a mass breakout and lead all the captives to freedom. But I guess they didn't have the guest budget for that.

Ooh, and let's not forget Nana Rose dragging herself across the floor to reach the antique candlestick phone (which is amazingly still connected) to call Toni at the school and tell her where Cheryl is being held. Amazing! Plus, Toni's full name is Antoinette Topaz. Amazing.

Meanwhile, the Coopers get blackmailed by Azura Skye and the Serpents smash in the door to rescue them, and that single act magically erases two seasons' worth of Alice's vendetta against the Southside. And why did Chic think bringing Azura Skye to the Cooper house would "help?" Is he just stupid, or does he really have a sinister plan like Betty thinks?

Meanwhile, Archie is going full Frank Nitti, enthusiastically embracing mob life. (There's probably some Godfather character or something who's a better analogy, but I don't follow gangster films much.) It's starting to seem like he loves Hiram Lodge more than Veronica. It's hard to see how he'll be able to get back to the person he was.

If Hiram's crew is in Montreal, does that mean that Riverdale is in the Northeast US instead of the Pacific Northwest? Hmm, I guess that makes sense... I looked it up, and maple syrup production is mostly done in Northeast US states, mainly Vermont and Pennsylvania. If Riverdale is near Montreal, that means it's probably in either Vermont or upstate New York.
 
It's hilarious that Hiram's muscle is now a bunch of teenage boys. I'm looking forward to the Carrie musical episode in three weeks. That should be fun.
 
Enterprise is Great said:
I'm looking forward to the Carrie musical episode in three weeks. That should be fun.
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I've never read the book or seen the movie of Carrie, but I have a broad idea of the story, and I guess I can see some parallels to where Cheryl is -- a girl going through a sexual awakening that's condemned by her abusive, religious-conservative mother. Although in other respects, Cheryl has generally been on the opposite end of the school popularity hierarchy from Carrie -- the queen bee who does the bullying, rather than the outcast who gets bullied.
 
Christopher said:
If Hiram's crew is in Montreal, does that mean that Riverdale is in the Northeast US instead of the Pacific Northwest? Hmm, I guess that makes sense... I looked it up, and maple syrup production is mostly done in Northeast US states, mainly Vermont and Pennsylvania. If Riverdale is near Montreal, that means it's probably in either Vermont or upstate New York.
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I haven't seen enough of the series to know whether it's been carried over from the comics, but in the comics Riverdale is indeed intended to be somewhere on the east coast, probably northern New England. They can get to Wash. D.C. in a day or two by bus, yet have easy access to summer camps in the mountains, which are a day's drive away, while being a coastal town. I always figured it to be somewhere around Delaware or New Jersey, myself. Farther north is possible.
 
Well, cities in screen adaptations aren't always in the same place as they are in the comics. The Flash's Central City is on the West Coast even though the comics' version is Midwestern. Smallville put Metropolis in Kansas so it would be an easy commute from the title city. So I figured Riverdale was putting its setting in the Pacific Northwest because it's filmed in and around Vancouver. If it's set in Vermont or upstate NY, it'd seem more appropriate to shoot in Toronto, which is presumably closer in climate and vegetation.
 
I have yet to see an episode all the way through. I'm usually busy in the evening. So Riverdale in the series isn't a coastal town with its own beach? Interesting. That, to me, is a big change.
 
FormerLurker said:
So Riverdale in the series isn't a coastal town with its own beach? Interesting. That, to me, is a big change.
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Befitting its name, it's a riverside town. The river played a pretty major role in the first season.


You know, I should've realized a few weeks ago that the show was set in the Northeast. Veronica took the gang to that cottage in the hills, which she said was a place she'd often been to with her parents when they lived in New York City. I do recall wondering about the travel distances involved when I heard that, but I didn't think it through all the way.
 
What I remember from the comics, and this goes to reading back issues and stories from the early '50s on, is that the print Riverdale is a coastal town with a river through the middle of it, and several lakes nearby that they go ice skating on in the winter. One lake in particular, early on, was large enough that they could stage everything from figure skating and ice hockey matches to speed skating races, sometimes at the same time. Not much was ever done with the river in the stories I remember, though.
 
I've only read about the Archie comics rather than reading them, but I gather they have done beach stories from time to time, as would be expected from a comic steeped in teen-oriented romantic-comedy tropes. Indeed, as I understand it, Cheryl Blossom's debut in the comics was a beach story in which she scandalized the Riverdalians with her desire to sunbathe topless (though not on-panel, of course).
 
Nerys Myk said:
Comic book towns have everything: Mountains, lakes, rivers, ocean beaches, deserts....
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Then there's Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was a coastal city for most of the series but ended up in the middle of the desert in the series finale.
 
Well, this show is as zany as ever, but I kinda like the way they used the musical to drive some major advances in the character arcs. Although the idea of a musical based on Carrie, as well as some of those lines in the songs, is so bizarre that I would've thought the show made it up if I didn't know better. Still, it was pretty well-sung.

So the Black Hood wanted Cheryl out of the part of Carrie because he wanted someone else to be the sacrifice. So it's someone who wants Cheryl alive. I wonder who.

Of course, the absurdly ancient jalopy Archie bought to fix up with his dad is based on Archie's traditional car from the comics -- a reminder that the comics date back to the 1940s.
 
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