#ethelhead

Riverdale Episode 6.5 (Rivervale Finale)

In the final chapter of this fanfic-within-the-canon that has been the ride through Rivervale, there’s a truly Herculian effort to resolve the in-AU storylines that have received varying levels of development, and an attempt to tie it all back to Riverdale, to which we will return. And a lot of it is very witty and so much of this episode encapsulates what I so love about Riverdale the show as a piece of entertainment.   

There are six elements that serve as tentpoles to this AU finale, and they are:

1. Just Go With It
2. It was All A Dream
3. It Hath Been Foretold
4. Fanservice/ Fan Provocation
5. Jughead Jones is Always Ready to Die
6. Riverdale Writers Find Writing Very Hard & Want You To Know

Here we go!

1. Just Go With It

Narration Jughead opens the episode with the very portentous statement that “The following isn’t an imaginary story. It happened” but then we jump immediately to - “Archie Andrews has *somehow* just come back from the dead.”   No explanation, no attempt at curiosity as to how - he just has. SOMEHOW is the answer, OK?

The Barchie Wedding is introduced with this same Just Go With It energy.  Jughead is himself and not himself, and so when everyone has to explain to him what they (inclusive of Jughead) have been aware of for weeks, they all give him appropriately weird looks. 

When the piling on of narrative elements gets too unwieldy (trust me - trying to SUMMARIZE this episode proved to be too much for me, and I’m pretty intrepid)  Jughead just tells you that “The rules of this universe were making less sense every day.”  I suppose you could call this a cop out, or bad writing, but then you’re no fun and you lack Just Go With It energy.

Because Jughead Narrator is a Bughead Stan and does not want to even LOOK AT the Barchie Wedding (though he does want to have Betty rescue him in a wedding gown by literally shooting Archie from behind - remember that nightmare Jughead had about stabbing Archie in the back when he ‘got’ Betty??  I mean. Jughead Jones as a writer is not subtle!)  we don’t get any of those scenes.  Even more blatantly, Betty, after preparing a wedding, getting dressed up and made up, being stood up at the altar in front of all her friends by her childhood first love and best friend, calmly says: I JUST KNEW TO COME HERE to explain her timely appearance. We need to just go with it.

 2.  It was all a dream

There’s a super easy trope for off-universe off-piste adventures often deployed in both professional and amateur storytelling: It Was All A Dream.   Betty, Fangs, Veronica, Reggie, the Blossom women - everyone wakes up to say they had ‘a dream’ about their particular episode.  

The one apparent exception to this, because Jughead is Narrator and Author and accordingly made himself the most important person in this universe, Jughead von Rivervale jolts awake from a dream he has about an explosion that happened in Prime Universe Riverdale to Jughead von Riverdale (who didn’t actually experience the explosion in that way).

And yet!  Was he really sleeping?  Did he really wake up? Or does Jughead think he woke up only to keep on dreaming? 

Coming to in Archie’s garage, Jughead von Rivervale walks all the way home to where he lives with Tabitha and they have the weirdest conversation ever. Or maybe it’s just me.  If someone I live with walked in barefoot, disheveled and clearly not having slept in their own bed when they almost always do, I would never have had the ho-hum no-reaction reaction that Tabitha has.  It’s just such a telling choice, to have her as ‘HOW DID YOU SLEEP’ when he just walked in through the front door.  See? This might be Jughead’s dream still, mind you, so this is a fun quirky way to destabilize the narrative to make room for all the shenanigans that are coming down the pipeline.

Archie’s actions too seem to be fueled by dream-logic more than anything else, as well.  Archie murders, in sequence, two women (Veronica and Cheryl) and then his lesbian coded friend Jughead in order to get his Daddy back.  Herr Freud?  Sind Sie da??  Archie being the one who has figured out the rules of “this universe” and says things like, “I am on the threshold of revelation.”  This statement strongly argues for This Was All A Dream because Archie Andrews is just not bright like that and just does not talk like that.

3. It Has Been Written/ Foretold and /or ‘Tis Inevitable!

Jughead starts to read the 95 issues of Riverdale, the comics, and the comic covers say things like:  America’s Typical Teenagers.  Rivervale.  What is the Jughead Paradox.   And they even show Barchie in a wedding setting.   Jughead is a faithful reader (Hermione Coded!) and reads to solve every problem.  I got a big kick out of the Neverending Story reference, where the next ‘chapters’ or ‘frames’ of the book remain blank unless Jughead of Rivervale, the Object that Thinks He’s a Subject, lives it. 

Subheading:  Physics is Magic is God. Despite the efforts of brilliant eminent physicists, most of us just don’t understand physics.  Not any more than previous generations of people really understood theology.  We just go with it because we’re told smart people figured it out, and we benefit from bridges and tunnels and airplanes and satellites that use physics and they work.  So Riverdale writers use the same tropes to just push us to accept that whatever they’re doing is supposed to happen by reaching for physics. When Ethelhead and Dilton are figuring things out, the board in the room says Physics Words like: observer (effect??), Einstein tensor defined, a space time interval.  Vacume(? misspelling)  law of special? relativity - all so that we can rest assured this has all been foretold and is inevitable.

4. Fan Service/ Fan Provocation

The one-two rapid punch of fan service (for portions of fandom) and fan provocation (apparently aimed at the entire fandom, sometimes) makes for a very dizzy 100th episode.

Fan service:  Nostalgia for Seasons Past.  This is a frank acknowledgment of the fact that a show has to have initial, early-season momentum that keeps viewers coming back.  So they play the song “Don’t you forget about me” and this weird time capsule thing happens - with the S1 Riverdale-style Veronica- Betty- Kevin walk through the corridor at Riverd(v)ale High.  Archie is with Grundy (implied), and Jughead is somehow still getting body checked by Reggie 2.0 (who didn’t really do this - that was Reggie 1.0).  But Reggie 2.0  seems to see the current and past and yet this just turns out to be the actor being interesting. Cheryl is a sneery cheerleader again, and Toni as she was first styled when Jughead first met her walks by.  Then Jughead sees himself.  

This whole bit reminded me of corps de ballet ballerina memoirs where they talk about fitting into the Swan Lake or Giselle wili costume from the year before - some can and some can’t. In the several years of this show, some of these actors really do look exactly the same and most don’t, so I wondered about the advisability of doing this as a production, but I still got a kick out of it. 

Fan Service:  Bringing back as many actors as they could from earlier seasons.

I LOVED IT. I am very sad of course at the omission of SWEET PEA and also MALACHAI but it is  what it is.   Ben Button showing up only to be told, point blank, BEN YOU DIED was PEAK Riverdale to me and I had such a good time.  Jughead, you can’t just tell people they died.   The comeback that Ben has is hilarious - being told ‘you’re dead’ - he answers, “You have symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia” and then wishes all a good day.   By the same token: Jason gets to talk!!!!  They really  owed it to this actor, I think, to give him a close up and some lines because of what they did to Jason’s corpse all these years.

Fan Service:  They address the Reggie Recasting.  Regarding the Reggie situation, Jughead calls it an ANOMALY but otherwise doesn’t attempt to explain how Reggie entered the anomaly by himself.  I prefer my own explanation - that  Reggie 2.0 speaking of himself in the third person (“How can Reggie make it all better?”) is what summons Reggie 1.0.  Reggie is such a fun character  (“I’m Reggie prime baby.” - “You’ve been in like three issues.”) and has similar Hermosa-Veronica vibes in terms of wanting to be the elder sibling if they can’t be the only child.  Reggie is also the only male character, really, that you could realistically send to be a stripper at a Bachelorette Party.  

Aside: The rules of American television are so weird:  Women getting off to a male stripper are not erotic, are not adult, it’s just SILLY, so this is not obscene, but a woman being a stripper for men would be all those things, so we get a boy stripper at a women’s party and then the young men at the Bachelor’s party having THE MOST sedate evening ever. 

The fact that the two Reggies kill each other instead of having a threesome with the very willing Veronica was a huge disservice to Veronica and I am very disappointed in the Reggies, but the fact that I can think these thoughts and then write them out is, in fact, very high quality fan service indeed.

Fan Service: Dilton is back!!  By the way, the librarian seems really furious that Dilton is alive  and never returned the library books but also has never asked for them apparently was more dream logic.  Can I just say - Dilton has the most excellent hair.  Dilton does the same kind of interesting ornate hand gestures as Jughead  when he delivers lines like “peaceful coexistence with one another” and “Stop trying to figure out the secrets to the universe. You have a good life here Jughead.”

The absolutely cursed items of clothing that they keep giving Jughead this season (what the fuck are these PATTERNS people??) have had me silently cursing the costume department but they get something absolutely right on Dilton here: HE WEARS A BOWTIE FOR NO REASON. Dudes who do this, wear bowties casually like it’s a normal thing to do, are villains. Absolute villains.  VILLAINS!  In real life.  So if you see one, watch out, friend.  (End of public service announcement.)  So anyway Dilton gives a villain laugh and then he dies a second time, by murder, again - this time at Ethel’s hands and we will be talking about Ethel in a bit. 

Fan Provocation: They bring Hal back to be a nice dad.  NOBODY WANTED THIS. This is harmful to EVERYONE.  Death to Hal in all universes please.  And this is paired with the fact that they killed Hiram - OFF SCREEN.  This is pure provocation. 

Fan Service/ Provocation:  A Barchie Wedding!  Betty has been talking about getting married to Archie since her early childhood (interestingly, I don’t recall Betty planning to MARRY Jughead, but just being with him) so it’s fitting that she is shown in a wedding dress for the 100th episode.  That’s what happens when you’re the female lead. This is Barchie fanservice but blatant Bughead provocation, and they tried to have their cake and eat it because they show both Betty and Archie in their lovely wedding outfits, but we never see the venue or how it was decorated or the VERY dramatic fact of Archie standing Betty up.  This AU’s narrator, though, is a pro-Bughead Jughead so it made me laugh that he was UNWILLING to imagine the Barchie wedding in great detail (though he used to imagine exactly what Veronica and Archie did together in bed down to the last kiss lol).

Fan Service/ Provocation:  ETHELHEAD.   I’m a pro Ethel, pro Ethelhead person.  Mostly because the extremely meanspirited way canon scoffed with such contempt at the idea that Ethel could ever EVER get Jughead (who’s literally, Jughead hello) rubbed me the wrong way.   So the fan service to people like me came in the form of Ethel getting to say things like, “I can save Riverdale.”  And Ethel and Jughead explaining back and forth to each other  that Barchie Love is  THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF GOODNESS in the UNIVERSE cracked me up. 

Ethel also gets to have a really important thing in common with Jughead - she is ready to accept a reality in which her existence is not of primary importance.  Jughead Jones is in fact the only being of her generation that would calmly accept and agree with statements like WE WERE NOT MEANT TO EXIST and WE ARE ABERRATIONS.  See? SEE?? They belong together!!!

Ethelhead get to hatch an insane scheme together too.  Jughead says,  We just need to detonate a bomb under Archie’s bed (This is the guy who lay under the bed while Barchie made out on top of it on the bunker!)  but refuses to actually blow up Barchie (because he doesn’t hate them!  Bless!).  And Ethel gets to be told she’s brilliant. 

Fan Service:  We Miss Fred Andrews  Everyone wants Fred back - this is a GREAT motivation for Archie to do anything.  . 

Fan Service:  Heaven to Jughead is the Diner.  I mean -  this is funny.  Some fanfic writers literally create a whole universe but others reuse things. It’s hard to imagine what heaven is like but you can just send Jughead to the one place he always consistently seemed to like going to and that’s the diner.

Fan Provocation:  Archie BEATS DOWN THE DOOR WITH A BAT while the terrified off-key Bughead combo of Narrator Jughead and Betty cling to each other in panic. This was the funniest thing I’ve seen on this show.  This is apparently how the Barchie-Bughead fandom dynamics look like to the Riverdale writers - that the Bugheads feel literally imperiled, with the armed and dangerous Barchies violently knocking down the door.  I have no idea if this is accurate, because to me both sets of fandoms have people who get kind of scary about it and an equal number of people who just wanna vibe with their ship and pretend the other one is not a thing.  And I will note that the thing that ends the world is Archie attacking Jughead.   

Fan Provocation:  Jeronica Is Not Allowed. It’s not even called Jeronica, which is such a better name than Vughead (NOBODY CALLS IT THAT).

There is an acknowledgment that textually, Jeronica are set up to be counterparts to Barchie.  Jughead is willing to die to save billions in a world that may or may not exist, and so is Veronica and this is a prime Jeronica moment.   She says, “Let’s make out to save the universe.”  While THIS IS THE MOST FANFIC THING TO EVER SAY, the way they have Veronica say it like she’d really rather just eat dog poop, that was rude 

 5. Jughead Jones is Always Ready To Die

 Jughead dies in some way every season, and this AU arc is no exception. It’s not any sort of Riverdale finale when Jughead isn’t dead on a slab.  Except - and this was truly delightful - for the first time ever, Jughead gets to see HIMSELF dead on a slab.

Jughead’s been pretend-dead on this slab before. Now one of him is actually dead. And he’s standing looking at it.  And Curdle looks freaked out but also calmly accepting (shades of Tabitha).  And literal cracks appear in reality when Jughead of Rivervale sees a Jughead Jones dead on the slab.

Jughead is so ready to be dead at all times that he just asks “How did I- How did HE die?” without much freaking out. (If I saw Me dead on the slab I would mourn so hard, people, you don’t even KNOW.)    When Jughead the Alive goes to see the Rivervale sign, there’s an infinity sign on it and the phrase, “There’s No Place Like Home’ - just like Wizard of Oz maybe, except everything is in dank green and blues.  The RiverDALE sigh though, on the reverse side, says THE TOWN WITH POP’S (not the town with Pep!) HUH!!  

The consistency of characterization is very important in creating credible alternate universes, and since Canon Jughead is someone who wouldn’t center himself, it makes sense Rivervale Jughead accepts the idea that his world (Vale) is the parallel reflection rather than being world-prime. (Despite Tabitha giving him a You are cRaZy look.)

6. Writing is Really, Really Hard, you guys

So this is how Riverdale writers summarize what Riverdale the show is, and they have Jughead say it:   It’s a universe of high school dances and masked serial killers,of football and milkshakes and musicals and cults,  diabolical board games and murderous nuns. 

Note the wording.  It’s not A STORY ABOUT a boy and a girl and whatever.  It’s not about some sort of narrative thread. It’s about these elements someone wanted to smoosh into a show and stir.

Anyway they really want you to know that writing is extraordinarily important, that writers are people who grind their very bones into dust, sealed into an underground bunker with nobody for company but people they don’t want to have sex with, being used as living batteries to generate the very world in which we all live. 

“Soon you will forget about Jughead’ the writers’ sacrifice for you and for us and hethey will fade from memory.” 

Honeys, you wish.  We know what you did. WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID.  You only wish you could fade from memory.