Riverdale S5 E 19 (RIP?) - 5 Things I loved/ 3 Things to Consider.
5 Things I Loved
1. I just love Nana Rose telling that insane story about the witch burning and prodding the already unhinged Cheryl into a full blown meltdown. I kind of enjoy the fact that the show leaves it ambiguous as to whether Nana Blossom says and does all the things (the lying about mothmen, the meltdown about philandering men fathering feral Blossoms, whatever) because she is senile or because she’s just plain stirring shit up for kicks. How do we know Nana Rose didn’t just write that diary as a form of fanfiction about her own ancestors? We do not!
I love everything about this character design - after looking like a hippy during the 60s or whenever it was that Pop Tate had the alien visit hallucination, Nana Rose dresses completely like an Edwardian lady. I imagine that Nana Rose during menopause decided that modernity was not useful to her and dug out her grandmother’s old clothes from one of the many secret backroom cubbyholes on the Blossom estate and just started dressing like a stranded time traveler and nobody could stop her.
2.“Nay Cousin! What is decreed is decreed! Tata~ Come along, Britannia.” This is an astonishingly unhinged line and it was delivered with peak camp hysteria vibes and I was so very delighted. That Cheryl says this and the way she said it is a significant part of why I watch Riverdale.
I also wondered if the chaotic and self-serving way Cheryl fails to cope with any sort of nuance with the complicated legacies of the past is how the late Millenial/Gen Z political activism and attempts to grapple with history looks like to the Gen X people who make this show. Or is this a commentary of a different sort, that is trying to demonstrate that pat answers are impossible? She either thinks people are victims or perpetrators, and that an injustice endured wipes out the obligation to make recompense for bad acts perpetrated and it’s just not that simple. Oh and I loved that Britta’s name is BRITANNIA.
3. I don’t know why I love this, but I see the season finale pairings as a sort of gauntlet thrown by the makers and it fills me with anticipation of a good kind. A brilliant mutual who also watches this show with close attention pointed out to me that the values of Riverdale are actually very conservative, and the season finale pairings seemed to reflect this. The conservatism is expressed in the like-matched-with-like aspect of all the pairings:
- Jughead who is weird is with Tabitha who is weird and they are both arsonists. Jughead as a child was schooled in an eye-for-an-eye form of primitive justice, and Tabitha seems to have the same orientation (If you snark about my business going up in flames, I set you on fire!). Such pretty faces, such dark souls.
- Betty who is violent and self righteous is with Archie who is violent and self righteous. But also, I absolutely adored the way Betty bursts into laughter and giggles and touches Archie in that kitchen. Betty can be so incandescently charming and beautiful, and I was so happy to see her happy. She hasn’t laughed like that much this season.
- Toni and Fangs are both aspiring gang-leaders who cannot project menace whatsoever because they are completely hampered by being very doe-eyed, and they share a baby so they are now together. I mean, it’s possible to coparent without being in a relationship, but the Serpents are actually deeply conventional, and it makes me laugh whenever I see them together.
- City slicker Veronica is with small town slicker Reggie, and they are both all about the money and also indifferent honest, with near identical experiences in defeating their highly problematic fathers.
Sidebar: The out gays are alone which is really weird: Kevin is living with his dad and going to pursue his Broadway dreams, and Cheryl is living with her grandma and adopted(?) redhead child and pursuing witchcraft and revenge and atonement.
This is a big about-face from say, what Bughead was, which was the weirdo who really wants something conventional and solid getting together with a normatively conventional looking person with a lot of hidden weirdness, and trying to create something different from both (and, I would say, failing). Veronica sought out Archie’s company because she wanted to join Wholesome All Americana, but Archie is an oblivious gay who wants to just live with lots of virile bearded men so he’s not actually that wholesome or Americana.
In any case, I loved this neat lining up of the dominoes. I want to see how they fall.
4. I loved that Hiram Lodge’s inner soundtrack is Goldberg Variations. I was so shocked by this - Hiram Lodge listens to Bach?? And then Archie just somehow punches down his hotel door like the Koolaid Man. Is this how Hiram sees his relationship with Archie? It’s possible. He’s just sitting peacefully in his nice room in his nice life calmly imbibing good rum and thinking along with Bach’s thoughts, and then Archie Andrews bursts in uninvited. This made me laugh.
5. I love the way Reggie says that “he almost passed” the test. I was raised to view tests of all types as either I got 100% or I FAILED so this was immensely liberating for me to hear, and I’m gonna just apply this to everything I do now. ‘I almost did the dishes” or “I almost told a funny joke.” I mean I love Reggie in general but I especially love him with Veronica. They’re both so pretty (such EYES on the two of them) and so full of ideas. I don’t come from entrepreneurial stock, so I love actual and fictional people who just come up with the next thing to try, nonstop.
3 Things to Consider.
a) “The Serpents are a Joke.” Guess why. GUESS WHY.
Say it with me:
Sweet Pea Is GONE!!!!!! (#cult of sweet pea #is forever)
But I mean seriously - Fangs and Toni are even less scary than Jughead during his failrun as Serpent King because at minimum he had a feral unhinged energy that could believably escalate. I really don’t know where they’re gonna go with this and really can’t find any reason for it. Are Toni and Fangs just trying to cope with their cognitive dissonance in how conventional they actually are? Outwardly they look like a nice straight couple with a baby and stable jobs. Maybe they need to just lean into that identity?
b) They Need An Adult: The show brought back Pop Tate, and the Core Four nominated two completely insane middle aged people to sit on the council. The lost young people of Riverdale still feel very lost, and they feel the need for adults even though they are a year older. Alice Cooper is not stable, has never been stable, and Uncle Fucking Frank is a war criminal who skipped town after fucking over his brother, the Sainted Fred Andrews. But Betty and Archie, out of all of them, are the most trapped by their childhood personae, and really do need adults. It’s a very dark message, isn’t it, that unless you’re fully abandoned by the shitty people that raised you (Jughead) or you do the immensely difficult work of rejecting them wholesale (Veronica, Reggie, possibly also Tabitha?), you are going to revert to reaching out to the very people who locked you into the worst parts of your life. (Rescue Betty Cooper from Alice pLeAsE.)
c) Hiram walking into the wilderness after being rejected by his daughter, and his departure bringing in the witch wind or whatever that was, was interesting. Was Hiram that powerful all this time? Or was his type of villainy - to do with gentrification, real estate, capitalistic greed, drugs decimating communities, the draw of organized crime in economically depressed areas, municipal politics - something the show doesn’t want to cope with anymore?
Riverdale S5 E16 (Band of Brothers) - 5 Things I Loved / 3 Things to Consider
5 Things I loved:
The word that came to me for some reason after the end of this episode was Götterdämmerung ( collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder) even though most of what happens in the episode is so very quiet and mostly in intimate conversations, and the episode was punctuated by moments of levity.
1. I loved how momentous and monumental the tete-a-tete between Betty and Jughead in the bunker felt. This conversation was a very serious attempt at permanently destabilizing the centrality of Bughead in favor of - to my surprise - Jughead’s journey, in coming into an identity as simply Forsythe P. Jones III, and not a writer, not Betty’s support, not Archie’s mythologizer.
But before we get to that - I was frankly shocked at how brutally the show drove home the point that Bughead 1.0 is no more. Y’all, that was mean.
By the time they are meeting in the bunker, Jughead knows that Betty gave away his manuscript wholesale to Jessica, and has effectively ended his budding career as a writer. The contempt shown to his work by a woman he thinks of as his guardian angel makes him give up on close to everything - his sobriety and his ethics.
Jughead apologizes to her about the one act of aggression he’s ever perpetrated on her (the voicemail) partly because he’s actually sorry (because he’s Jughead, and he’s always sorry) but mostly to model behavior for Betty: When you fuck up with someone you care about, this is how you apologize. He says he’s “trying to clean up my side of the tracks” - hinting in the broadest possible way that she has something on her side to clean up as well. Then he does something that I’ve never seen him do before. Jughead observes Betty clinically, eyes cold & clear. It was reminiscent of how he looked at Gladys once he realized what she was up to.
Betty’s meaningful non-responses were powerful and I LOVED the tension. Jughead tries to up the ante - I AM IN RECOVERY - and then takes a deliberate sip of alcohol. And then hammers it home - I’M AN ALCOHOLIC. No response. AN ADDICT. No response. Then she says, I think I’m an addict too. The net effect of which is: Enough about you, shut up now and listen to me talk about my problems.
This is so stunningly callous because Betty witnessed FP being a failed drunkard of a father to Jughead when they were children. She really doesn’t care. (Whether this is because she doesn’t want to care or because she can’t due to trauma is interpretation. The fact is that she doesn’t).
Jughead’s mounting despair that it’s NOT working, because trying to make Betty respond to him and his concerns is impossible, leads to a very double-entendre statement: Classic Cooper. His relationship with the Coopers as a whole isn’t friendly, and one of the mainstays of the Bughead relationship was that these two kids could form a new thing, without contamination from the elder Coopers and Joneses. Wincing with effort, Jughead gives being the Jughead of Bughead 1.0 one last go - being her support, being endlessly forgiving, while not saying what he needs to say, not asking the questions he needs to ask.
The absolute contempt Betty dealt Jughead in the time jump also shocked me. She chose her job over Jughead, which can happen, but it was so the natural order of things that this is what she should do, that she didn’t even explain why she couldn’t come. He defends his sanity by saying that “It’s ALL ancient history” mostly because the present is pretty miserable and this is a fresh wound.
The second that Jughead makes himself unavailable to make Betty’s concerns about herself his number one priority she jets. The privileged final reaction shot goes to Jughead, who really still can’t believe she’d do that. And she’s precisely why he lost the agent, the contract, the identity as a writer. And Jughead Jones, secular Bodhisattva, forgives even this and reverts to worrying about Betty.
2. I love the very gentle and subtle developments given to the Adult Jughead that serve as a corrective to his most self-harming traits. Jughead loses everything in this episode once again - his teaching job, the professionals-together adult relationship he liked so much with Waldo Weatherbee (he’s a troubled student once more), the relationship with his agent, his contract with his publishing house, his identity as a writer, and his seven days’ worth of sobriety. But as an adult he’s not plagued by the self-aggrandizing perfectionism that drove him to seek death (like Aslan, like Jesus) when things went awry. Now he’s a person who seeks support for the problem he has, and can resignedly cope with the idea that he’s at this point barely ‘a busboy.’ This is because he keeps exactly three small but not insignificant things - the last thread of his morals as a writer, his job at Pop’s which is his only real home, and his connection with Tabitha.
Sidebar: Tabitha Tate is designed to be very lovable, and she’s played with such charm and warmth by a beautiful actress, so of course I love her. But they did this to me with Jughead Jones, where they got my buy-in for the lovable boy he was, and then proceeded to, well, do all this to him, so I’m trying to guard my heart.
3. I loved the weirdness of the theology that Cheryl and Kevin are putting together, though I do not love that I am liking Kevin less and less. (insert that We Were All Rooting For You gif. See also my essays in support of Kevin as an unacknowledged alpha.) Catholicism (and all the other off shoots) was assembled, edited, revised and rebooted wholesale over time, and we’re seeing the Blossom Faith go through the same steps in its incipient stages. Riverdale, making interesting commentary on the evolution of all of Christianity. By the way, the misogyny built into what the two younger people are doing is stark. Cheryl shared a womb with The Holy Jason which makes her the greater authority. However, Penelope, the OWNER of the womb, the gestator of The Holy Jason, can be cast out. (Because Kevin has issues with his mother and Cheryl’s OTP gave birth and she is feeling some type of way about it).
A forehead stigmata would ruin Cheryl’s exquisite eye make up so she went with the mascara-friendly hand-stigmata. Further, neither Kevin nor Cheryl actually studied religion in any sort of way, so I think they actually don’t know about Crown of Thorns stigmata. There’s also a very funny hidden joke in there about Cheryl secretly researching canonization between her first and last conversations with Kevin. She starts the episode saying “being canonized is a life goal” of hers, but by the end she’s googled that the Catholic way of counting saints’ miracles starts with THEIR DEATH because it’s supposed to be proof that they’re in heaven, so she rolls her eyes at the idea of being “a living saint” like she knew this bit all along. She also was confusing angels with saints (saints don’t get wings). And in any case, she had such a good time during the masses that she and Kevin held that she’s decided she wants to be the Jesus/Jason herself rather than anointed by such. What I’m not clear on however, is why they all went with Catholicism as the base, because Cheryl’s ecstatic, shivery “Queen of the Beeeeees” seemed much more charismatic revivalist sort of a thing. Maybe she’ll pivot in that direction.
Sidebar: Penelope Blossom saying “Jason was a young man of few words” made me guffaw and then feel very bad for the actor cast to be Jason Blossom. What a weird job this must be.
Second Sidebar: Did anyone else notice that Penelope can control fire? When she says STOP to rescue us from the Andrew Lloyd Musical medley that Cheryl & Kevin want to perpetuate, the fireplace roars in agreement.
4. Reggie’s line deliveries were, each of them, absolutely delicious. I mean, Reggie has always been a dish but he’s got a knack for spicing things up! (I’m sorry I’ll stop with this now). He’s SUCH a fun character. And why is Hiram creating these intensely Freudian relationships with young people all the time? Reggie wanted to be Hiram’s Son-He-Never-Had, but also has fucked both his daughters. Reggie getting increasingly squeaky as he has to tell Veronica that he’s been with Hermosa was funny, and I was truly amused by the way he walked back into frame after that conversation with Hermosa like he’d just strained his groin muscle. His jazzy slide into the seat that Hiram sat in for the auction for palladium doubloons was terrific but I wish it had been in focus.
5. I love that the show insists Archie’s fate is to be always written about and presented to others in ways he doesn’t feel fit with who and how he really is. He has to constantly cope with not matching up to what someone else wrote him as being. The letters that his platoon’s men sent home about Archie indicate that this urge to write words about Archie is not unique to Jughead Jones. I also wondered at the war-deads’ families acting like their brother or son was a puppy they left at Archie’s dogwalking service. How the hell is a single sergeant supposed to determine whether an active combatant soldier makes it home or not? But all that is pinned on Archie’s shoulders because he can’t help but inspire this hero-worship, protagonist-making scribbling.
3 Things to Consider
a) One of the Götterdämmerung, things fall apart, bits could’ve been Archie’s disillusionment with the army. That’s where it started, in this season, with the clearly villainous general and then the army censoring the free press, rewarding the wrong people, neglecting veterans and families of the war dead. But I guess because this is Hollywood and you’re not allowed to say anything truly critical about the American military in a Hollywood production, UNCLE FUCKING FRANK has to say the line THE ARMY GOT IT RIGHT. I hate Uncle Fucking Frank and how they use him. Bringing him in at all was an act of cowardice and make-do by the show (they never quite know what to do with Archie so he needs some sort of daddy to talk things out with), and now he is the mouthpiece for this stupid piece of acquiescence to the military industrial complex.
b) Veronica is going through her own transition as well, but because Hiram has been such a monster in so many ways it’s a little hard to invest a lot of concern into her slow transition into becoming Hiram altogether. She isn’t defeating her father, she’s becoming him. Her consistent reliance on the eye-for-an-eye method of coping feels less than triumphant, even when she appears to ‘win.’
c) The show’s wry sharp commentary about writers, writing and publication continues. Consider Cora - she had to stalk Jughead Jones, risk rejection by coming up to him in a bar, become a groupie, and then still had to rely on the sudden appearance of knee-cap breaking debt collectors to even make Jughead take (and not read) her manuscript. And she missed having her work stolen from her wholesale by a hair - the last vestiges of Jughead Jones’ sense of self and morals, which he was only able to hang on to by the miracle that is the care and concern of one Tabitha Tate.
Riverdale S5 E14 (The Rabies Episode) - 5 Things I loved/ 3 Things to Consider.
Things I loved
1)What good are you? What do you even do? - I’m a writer! I tell stories!
I love the interesting and frankly, very funny thoughts that Riverdale the show keeps putting out about writing, the ethics of fiction, and how it feels to be a fiction creator through the character of Jughead. The writers of Riverdale are describing us the viewers to be these overwhelming, demanding RATS (and as ‘customers’ of their product we are ‘King’) that have trapped them in a tunnel (of the writer’s room? RAS, maybe you need to update their furniture?) hollering at them to entertain us while they desperately try to tell us a story so we don’t kill them. I hope this doesn’t court controversy but I was much more appeased by this depiction of me than the BBC Sherlock thing that portrayed its own fans as crazy pathetic loons. Riverdale writers think we’re insane too, but they find us scary and they want to please us. Very gratifying. (I’m a happy customer.)
2) Related: I LOVED that Jughead is not a snob about genre. Getting published and read by a lot of people is the point! I love that about him. So he did maybe learn something in his one year at college.
3) I loved the variation on ‘darkness’ and ‘dark hole’ that they worked out for each of Betty, Jughead and Archie. It’s literal and metaphor (they can’t see where they’re going, they can’t easily escape, the air is close and poisoned, there’s danger in the dark hole and so on). The literary dorkiness of the episode structure was fabulous.
For Jughead it’s a mirror image replica of what happened to him before - Jughead falls into an abandoned subway tunnel via a sudden sinkhole that opens up underneath him during a period of life that’s supposed to be triumphant, exactly like how as he’d finally finished with high school and was about to embark on college like his dad always wanted, Betty took the security of his relationship with her away from him and he descended to a state of absolute homelessness in the bunker.
For Archie, the boy who tried to be all the things everyone around him wanted him to be, becoming a miner comes about because someone else (Cheryl) wanted to defeat Hiram Lodge (which Archie is always up for) and all the other boys in his ‘gang’ are looking for economic opportunities and a group project (which Archie is also always up for).
For Betty, the hubristic violent girl who denies how much she enjoys violence and always just goes wading into danger, the scale of the consequences she faces for her reckless brand of courage has gotten much more serious, because she’s an adult. From having a serial killer (Hal, her father) very interested in her and then being in a game set up by a different serial killer (Penelope, her aunt by marriage), Betty’s ‘hole’ moment is to be the sole prey of a serial killer who will not grant her freedom of movement, and isn’t trying to make some sort of moral point or work out a piece of their own psychology. TBK purely wants Betty to suffer and die - there’s nothing for her to figure out with her intellect.
4) I loved that the show firmly concludes that there is no talking and feeling your way through to somewhere better with a misogynist. It’s not that misogynist women killers don’t know that women are people, that women have pasts and a right to live and all of that. They know. They like trampling on the thing that is precious and beautiful, and it’s fun for them to hurt women. This is very dark, but on really bad days I can fall into this thinking, and I felt seen. Same goes for Alice giving into despair and advising Betty to just kill the bastard. I know how that feels too.
5) This is another weird thing to love, but I love that Archie’s fundamental decency and kindness is not enough to overcome the weight of his war trauma. And yet he’s capable when it comes to an emergency. The tendency that Archie has to run towards the screaming is similar to what Kevin used to be like, and I admire this about him. I very much appreciated that Eric and Uncle Fucking Frank and all the guys who down in the mine want Archie to get professional help for his problems.
3 Things to Think About
a. Jughead never graduated from college. So he set himself up for the social isolation and failure in New York City. To have no job to go to, to have no cluster of acquaintances you can carry over from being students in the same institution for two to four years, or being a part of a religion, in a major city, is kind of dooming yourself to failure in this regard. I’ve thought Jughead no longer wanted to go to college but had gone purely for FP (with whom he no longer speaks much) which is why he finds it so unrewarding.
b. Cheryl is an ‘author’ in the same way Jughead is, but she seems to see the darkest possible side of the people she ‘portrays’ and ‘frames’ which is in direct opposition to Jughead, who ‘writes’ people the way he wishes they could be, as their best selves. Then he falls in love with his creation and believes in it so hard that he hallucinates his own subconscious and intuition in their image (Betty).
c. I’m very interested in the Jess-Jughead relationship. When he goes to visit her after their breakup (when she still has his manuscript I think??) her apartment is well appointed and tidy. So it’s Jughead that’s the slob, and Jessica was just vengefully matching him debris for debris.
Veronica’s powers are controlled by her emotions. What if Jughead goes into her mind and finds a way to calm her down? In a moment where she experiences intense fear or sadness that she cannot control? Omg
That would be a good way to make them closer quicker
Jughead consoling Veronica about her powers like we thought❌
Jughead consoling Veronica about her awful ex ✅
-
Not what I expected at all but I LOVE that we got this!
There’s more Jeronica next week too so it’s possible we’ll get at least one more scene where they confide in each other. Maybe about their powers? A long overdue conversation about what Archie and Betty did to them? (extremely unlikely with these writers though obviously) OR like this episode, something else we have never really thought of before.
Has anyone ever thought of magic show Jeronica before? I feel like we’ve thought of everything but! It makes so much sense.
I love that it embraces both their natural cunning. Just like their detective noir episode. They THRIVE in brainy contexts together! (We know they’re scheming from the synopsis)
Hope Veronica opens up about her power to Jughead as well. Her power is extremely isolating. Arguably the most curse like. It would give Jughead an opportunity to help her and comfort her.
I don’t want to get too excited because we’ve been down similar roads before but we will be FED content for once . So ready!
Jughead and Veronica were looking at each other SO MUCH in every scene they shared this episode. They were also stood or sat next to each other a lot. Not to mention the two being the only characters who chose not to burn their totems. Looks like we’re finally getting scenes of their mutual understanding and connection again!
They’ve always understood each other in a way Betty and Archie cannot. They are the brains to their brawn for sure.
(Funny note: Not that we would ever even get another kiss … but it is typical Riverdale that Veronica would get the power of a murderous kiss right before we get a Jeronica storyline episode)
There must be a reason they didn’t show their faces!! If it’s a Rivervale scene Reggie and Archie are technically dead?? If it’s a Riverdale scene why would they not show Reggie or Archie’s faces here??!
I love that it looks like Veronica and Jughead will be the only ones to know about/ work together on the parallel universe stuff! It makes sense, they’re the smartest and are so similar in their methods of intellect aaaahhhh
Who had the real reason being alternate universe/old actor Reggie as the reveal of this scene on their bingo cards?
You should probably watch Riverdale. If you like small town murder, retro aesthetic and trashy teen drama, you should absolutely watch Riverdale. If you don’t have the same appreciation for that combination as I do though, you should still probably watch it. Soon, if you can. Not because it’s flawless (oh, it’s flawed) or because all the characters are complex and nuanced (oh boy are they not) or because the writing is always smart and deft (oh dear me), but because Riverdale has something television could use a lot more of. Style.
I’m not talking about the pseudo-lynchian vibe or the way the town itself feels stuck decades in the past despite a modern setting, though those are both part of it. I’ve heard the show described as both a Twin Peaks-like and a poor man’s Stranger Things, and while neither of those classifications are entirely wrong, I think they do Riverdale’s unique contributions to the medium a disservice. Where these other shows cemented themselves in sci-fi and cosmic horror, Riverdalefeels almost gothic. It never touches the level of John Carpenter nostalgia of the latter, nor the shiver-inducing surreal quality of the former. What it does do is look very, very pretty.
Riverdale’s spectacular use of color shows from frame one, when two red-headed teens in snow-white garb appear on screen and walk slowly towards a shimmering waterline. The whole scene jumps. Pulses. Vibrates. And it only gets better from there. From the neon-lit booths of Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe to the snowy maple woods of the Blossom family syrup empire, the entire show oozes style like sap from a vein. Even simple shots – a house, a car, a bedroom – blast out brilliantly, whites on reds on greens, subtle sepia tints, perfect architectural symmetry. It’s gorgeous.
And the style doesn’t stop at the colors. It reaches from the 80s synth underscoring and the dreamlike flashbacks to Cole Sprouse’s gloomy teenage narration. Riverdale could not have a more appropriate name, as the town itself quickly becomes the show’s most intriguing and dynamic character.
Now it doesn’t all work all the time. The slow motion football plays and cheer squad numbers feel like they fell out of alternate universe where Zach Snyder directs teenage romcoms, much of the dialogue falls painfully short of that beautiful, so-scripted-it’s-perfect high school zen that Buffy the Vampire Slayer played off so deftly, and it can be hard to distinguish when the drama is parody from when it’s just bad writing. Make no mistake, Riverdale does not succeed in all its ambitions. But damn if it ain’t something to look at.
Of course there are other shows that gain major props on behalf of their style, but they don’t quite hit the same marks. For all they’re comic book inspiration, Arrow, Supergirl andThe Flash just don’t leap and dance the way Riverdaledoes.Game of Thrones has incredible production values and a gloriously realized world. No one would argue that. But the goal of that world and that production is to make a fantastical place feel grounded. The same can be said of HBO’s Westworld. This is not a knock against them. I have a strong love for Westworld,and of course these shows have moments of incredible grandeur. But their main objective, at which they succeed, is realism in the midst of total unreality.
Riverdale’sgoal is the opposite. It takes the Archie Comics universe of girl-next-door Americana and makes it feel like some beautiful, wild fantasy world of biker gangs and shady businessmen. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes so much that you’ll laugh. But ultimately, the vision of the storytelling and the talent of the cast make it feel fresh and exciting. So please watch Riverdale. TV’s never looked this good.
For as long as I could remember Sweet Pea and I had been best friends. Even up to this moment.
“God DAMMIT, (Y/N)! Just pick one! I don’t think you realize how much you are hurting yourself! You are constantly agonizing us and it’s stressing you the fuck out!” Sweet Pea yelled, grabbing ahold of my shoulders, a pleading look in his eyes.
“And I don’t know this?!” I yell back, pushing him away.
“You have until midnight. I’ll be at the Wyrm. You don’t show and I will know your answer.” He says, kissing my forehead and walking away.
Maybe I should back up though.
I guess this all truly started when I joined the Serpents. Jug had just been crowned King of Serpents.
I finished my dance and smiled as Jughead came up onto the stage. He hugged me and put my jacket around my shoulders. I walked off stage in my black pumps, red and black lingerie and my Serpent jacket. I looked over my shoulder at Jughead, he winks at me and I feel my face heat up. All of a sudden I am pulled off the ground and being swung in a circle.
“My girl is finally a serpent!” Sweet Pea exclaims as he hugs me. I smile up at him as he puts me down.
“I know. Feels like it took forever.” I say, trying to cover my blush.
“Who’s got you blushing?” Sweet Pea teases. “Is it Jones?”
When I didn’t answer Sweet Pea just scoffs. “Didn’t take you for the type to go after guys like him.”
“Okay, we can fight about this tomorrow,” I say putting my hand in his and yanking him to the bar. His hand was huge around mine but it was warm and felt nice. I see him try to fight a smirk then he gives in and smiles and my stomach did a flip. One thing that always made me weak in the knees was Sweet’s smile.
That was 3 months ago. In that time I had grown to have a crush on Jughead and Sweet Pea. When I was with Jughead I felt like I was on top of the world.
“Come on, scaredy cat. You will be safe, I promise.” Jughead says pulling my hand to lead me to his motorcycle. He handed me his only helmet and I glared at him.
“I’m not wearing that if you don’t have a helmet,” I say, crossing my arms.
He rolls his eyes and plants the helmet on my head. He gets on his bike and nods to the seat behind him. I sigh, buckling the helmet and get on the bike. We sped out of the trailer park and to Sweet Water River. We got off the bike and I sat the helmet on the seat.
“Do you ever think of what happens after we die?” Jughead asks me. I look at him and raise an eyebrow. We were laying on a blanket on a giant rock, looking up at the stars.
“I mean, I assume we either go to Heaven or Hell. Just depends on how you were throughout your life.” I feel a hand wrap around mine. I look down and see our fingers intertwine. I smile as his thumb rubs my hand.
“You believe in God?” He asks me a little shocked. I look at him and chuckle.
“Of course I do. Don’t you?” I ask, sitting up to wrap my arms around my knees.
“I don’t know. I go back and forth with it.” He answers, sitting up and pushing a strand of hair out of my face. I gulp and lean into his hand. He smiles at me and leans in, our lips almost touching. Before I can help myself, I grab his jacket and yank him towards me kissing him. Our lips moved slow and I felt butterflies erupt in my stomach. We pull back from each other and I smile at him.
But when I was with Sweet Pea, I felt like I could accomplish anything.
“Oh come on chicken shit!” Sweet Pea says laughing and tugging on my hand.
“No! My luck will be I fall off!” I yell as Sweet Pea picked me up, throws me over his shoulder and sits me beside him in the cart on the roller coaster. I had a really bad fear of heights and Sweet Pea knew that.
“You are gonna be fine, babe. I got you and I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” He says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. I smile and then feel the cart started moving. I grip the handle tightly as the ride starts.
We got going and I was fine. Until we got to the top of a hill and I saw everything below. I start to breathe really heavily and I feel like my stomach is tightening up.
“Hey. Hey! Babe, I am right here.” He pulls my face towards him and I lock eyes with him. I felt my breathing slow and it felt like the whole world melted away. Once our lips touched I felt sparks fly through me, with butterflies erupting in my stomach. The kiss was cut short when the ride shot down the hill. I gripped his arm tightly as I let out a blood-curdling scream.
So needless to say, this choice was a hard one. I could see myself with both guys and it killed me. I plop down on my couch when I hear my door open and Jughead comes barging through.
“What in the hell is going on?! Are you actually seeing me andSweet Pea?” He says angrily and crossing his arms.
“I thought you knew..” I say quietly.
“You…You thought I knew!!?” He says laughing and throwing his beanie across the room. “When the fuck did you tell me, (Y/N)? Or when were you planning to?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t think it through!” I yell at him. “I love both of you idiots!”
“No, that is bullshit!” He yells just as Sweet Pea walks in. He looks from Jughead to me and sighs.
“How did you find out she was seeing both of us?” He asks, leaning against my kitchen counter.
“Y-You knew?! What the hell?” Jughead exclaims.
“Yes, I knew! I didn’t tell you because I knew you would flip out. Like you are now.” Sweet Pea answers.
“No. No, (Y/N), you may say you love both of us but you have to love one of us more. You better figure it out.” Jughead says, grabbing his beanie and slamming the door on his way out.
I didn’t even give Sweet Pea the time to say anything before jumping in my car and speeding out of the trailer park only to hear my phone ring. I answer it and sigh.
“Hello?”
“Slow the fuck down. I know you are upset. I know you are mad but speeding and wrecking aren’t gonna help you choose.” I hear Toni say on the other end. “I heard you guys yelling in the trailer. You gotta choose, babe.”
“I can’t Tone. I love them both.” I say, feeling tears trail down my face.
“Hon, you love one more. Just gotta figure out who that one is. If you need me call.” She says and I hear the line click. I sigh and pull into the old drive in. I hear my phone vibrate and I unlock it to read the text.
‘I know this is hard on you. Just know, whoever you choose I will love you. You will never lose me.’
And that is how I found out, I knew who I loved more.
I knew it was going to be a long shot, but I was hoping he would still be there. I sped up to the trailer park and saw him getting on his bike. I throw the car in park as I jump out.
“Sweet Pea! Wait!” I yell as I run towards him. He turns and sees me, a confused look on his face. I run into his arms and pull his face to mine. The kiss was amazing. HIs lips felt like fire on mine, our lips moved together perfectly.
“I love you. I am so sorry.” I say, tears running down my face. He smiles at me and kisses my nose.
“I love you too. I will never let you go and I will never let anything happen to you.” He says kissing me again.
