Fizzle Rocks have invaded Riverdale and from the looks of it everyone is hooked. Moose and Kev are chugging them and making out in school. People from scene to scene are giggling. You know it’s weird when Reggie looks like the most sober character.
Walking down the halls of school, a group of Vixens including Ronnie and Toni simultaneously break out into a seizure. Ruh-roh.
At the Sisters, the girls are all playing G&G. It looks like Betty’s not as turned as the end of the last episode has us believe. She’s puking out her fizzle rocks in the girls room and playing some sort of long con.
Jughead and Archie make it to Jughead’s mom’s junkyard. We get our first sighting of Jellybean, Jughead’s sister! She’s like a pint sized Rosie the Riveter.
Veronica wakes up in bed from seizure to the sound of her parents arguing. Hermione yells, “I believed you, Hiram!” Believe him about what? Veronica interrupts and we get our first mija of the episode. Mija Tracker: 1. Hermione wants to send Veronica to New York, but Veronica is having none of it.
A fizzle rocked out of their gourds RROTC giggle their way into Pops. Reggie explains to Veronica that fizzle rocks have replaced jingle jangle and the ghoulies aren’t dealing, a new gang is: the gargoyles. Also, everytime I type the words “fizzle rocks,” I here the Fraggle Rock theme song in my head. “Down in Fizzle Rocks! ::clap clap:: Down in Fizzle Rocks!”
Out at the junkyard, we meet Jughead’s mom and it’s Gina Gershon! You know, considering his dad is Skeet Ulrich, casting Gina Gershon as Jughead’s mom Gladys seems like perfect casting. They’re in Toledo, and since we know that Archie and Jughead don’t get that far when they run away, is it safe to assume that Riverdale is in Ohio?
Gladys tells Jughead he looks like a bag of tire irons. This will not be the last time this episode that I wonder, “Who talks like that?” Archie is definitely checking out Jughead’s mom. Keep it in your pants, Archie. Though Gladys does a good job diffusing that by assuming that Jughead and Archie are finally a couple.
Gladys brags about being a legitimate business owner just as one of the kids working at the junkyard wanders over with some obviously stolen car radios. Whoops.
Alice meets with Betty at the Sisters and fills her in about the group seizure at school. When Betty asks if Veronica is okay, Alice answers, “She’s one of the fallen” and I once again think who talks like that?
Betty gets the idea to tell the other girls that the Gargoyle King is all into her now, and that she’s his new favorite. Ethel does not take this news well and gets all up in Betty’s face. I half-expected Ethel to choke slam Betty here.
This was all a trick on Betty’s part to get Ethel to let her into the Gargoyle King’s chambers, since Ethel has the keys. As Ethel opens the door to the Gargoyle King’s office, Betty pushes Ethel inside and locks her in. She’s planning on fast-tracking Ethel’s detox from fizzle rocks. Will Ethel be detoxed when we get back from the title card?
The commercial break detox worked! Ethel is clean! And the Gargoyle King is just a statue. A very creepy statue, sitting on a pillar of skulls. Betty gives Ethel the 411 about Hiram working some kind of scheme with the Sisters to test his drugs on the patients here. Betty recruits Ethel into her new straight edge army.
Weatherbee shuts down the student lounge and cancels all sports and extracurriculars. Cheryl fills V in that her parents are leading the charge to shut down the school. Weatherbee leads a team of hazmat suit clad men into the school and points out Veronica, yelling “That’s one of the infected!” Welcome to Pandemic: Riverdale. Side note: I would totally playtest Pandemic: Riverdale in case anyone from Z-Man games reads these recaps.
Reggie and Veronica’s conversations are great recaps of things we’ve just seen on the screen. I’m starting to feel like Veronica is my competition in recapping Riverdale. Reggie says that fizzle rocks are coming from the south side, from the the prison that Hiram is building. The same prison that all the men from Athens, the town from last week, were working. Which means Archie and Jughead really did not make it far out of town at all last episode. Didn’t they hop a train between episodes 7 and 8? What, did they hop, the local?
Veronica and Cheryl crash the school board meeting just as Hermione announces she’s shutting down Riverdale High. Five more kids had seizures today. Veronica flat out accuses her dad of being a drug producer in the middle of the meeting and no one bats an eyelash. Remember last episode when Veronica was saying her dad wasn’t that bad? Hiram says the next thing Veronica is going to say is that he’s the Gargoyle King, which makes me think even more that Hiram is definitely not the Gargoyle King. Mark Consuelos is too good as Hiram to be the villain that gets booted from the show at the end of the season.
Speaking of my own personal main suspect, Hermione and Penelope share a look and a nod as Cheryl gets heated, demanding answers in the meeting. After nodding to Hermione, Penelope, stands up, turns to her daughter and falls down in a seizure. Nothing suspicious there!
Up at Gladys’s, Jellybean lets her crush on Archie be known. When Jughead tells her to rein it in, Jellybean lets him know it’s JB now, and she calls Jughead Kerouac. Jellybean is well read. Point: Jellybean.
Penny jumps Archie. How’d she find him? They’re at least zero states away from Riverdale right now!
Wait, it’s Jellybean to the rescue! Jellybean’s got a mouth on her. She calls Penny a bitch before dropping her with her slingshot. Jellybean immediately becomes my new favorite character on the show.
Gladys interrogates Penny. She’s planning on paying Penny back for cutting up her son. Jughead and Archie don’t object, they just want Gladys to get some G&G info from Penny during the torture session. When did Jughead become Jack Bauer?
Hiram commends Veronica for the gusto she showed in that meeting, and “for being right on all of it, well most of it. It’s so much bigger than you’re giving me credit for.” He says what’s coming next is years in the making. Hiram wants Veronica to take a seat at his right hand to oversee the new order. He makes a cryptic comment of Veronica not wearing pearls anymore and hopes he’ll see her in them again. Okayyyyyy…
We don’t see what happened to Penny, only Gladys cleaning her very bloodied hands afterwards. “Out, out, damn spot!” Gladys tells Jughead he’s been played by Hiram. Hiram didn’t want Archie, he wanted Jughead off the board when he made his big play, so he tricked Jughead and Archie into fleeing town. Because of course the business magnate/mob boss is afraid of an on-again off-again homeless teen who’s really into journaling.
Jughead asks Gladys if Archie is safe here, and she says “of course,” which really means of course not.
Betty takes a shiv to Sister Agnes’s neck and amazingly nobody notices. Then again, 95% of the room is hopped up on fizzle rocks.
Gladys wakes up Jugs. Hiram’s bounty is on Archie and anyone who helps him. Gladys wants Jughead to cut him loose. Archie agrees. Archie is going to head to the border. Does Ohio border Canada?
Betty and Ethel have Sister Agnes tied up in the Gargoyle King’s chambers. They want answers. Did the Sisters create G&G? Nope. That statue has been there since the place opened and was used to scare misbehaving girls. Some of the girls made a game out of it. Hmmm, who used to live here? Oh right, Penelope! And didn’t Hermione go to school here?
Betty and Ethel leave Sister Agnes tied up in the basement.
Meanwhile, Veronica and Cheryl are using Chinese water torture on Penelope to get her to talk. Well, it’s more like Blossom syrup torture. Riverdale really is home to the most warped kids in the country.
Cheryl calls Penelope a ghoulunitic and Penelope makes this face.
Yikes.
The girls don’t want to escape. So much for that plan, Betty. Wait, the brainwashed drug addicted kids don’t want to leave? Betty and Ethel use G&G to get the girls to want to escape. Forget the Gargoyle King. Betty is the Gryphon Queen!
Luke Perry picked up Archie and Skeets reunites Jughead with his Serpents jacket.
Gladys says they don’t have much to worry about with Penny anymore and I get the feeling that Skeet is the less scary Jones parents.
Ethel tells the girls their new quest is to escape the Gargoyle King’s fortress. They’ll be led to freedom by the Gryphon Queen. Betty enters, looking like she raided David Bowie’s closet.
Archie dyed his hair! Wait, is this what KJ Apa looks like when his hair isn’t that most unnatural shade of orange?
Fred Andrews suggests that he join his son north of the border, and Archie goofs about them living together at a cabin in the woods…which makes infinitely more sense than sending your high school aged son off by himself into the unknown, Fred! Fred gives Archie his dog Vegas to take with him, because when you’re living on your own in the woods, it’s always good to have another living thing you need to have to care for. I don’t trust Archie raising a dog in the suburbs, much less when he’s on the lam.
It just occurred to me that KJ Apa has kept his shirt on all episode. I don’t even know what show I’m watching anymore.
Veronica, Cheryl and the RROTC storm into Mayor Lodge’s office to stage a coupe and relieve her of duty. Is Riverdale actually in the United States? Hermione says they’re too late. And with that, sirens blare around town and everyone’s phones ring.
Sweet Doctor Strange cosplay, Betty.
Alice arrives to get Betty out just as she finishes breaking out everyone. I don’t think they’re all going to fit in Alice’s car.
Armed sheriff’s deputies have the roads in and out of Riverdale closed. The Joneses can’t get back in. Many guns are pointed in their faces and they’re told to turn around.
Riverdale is under quarantine!
In his office, Hiram thanks the Governor on the phone for locking down Riverdale and toasts the Gargoyle King…
…who is just hanging out in his office.
RIVERDALE
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