Riverdale‘s third season has finally come to its close. It’s been another mess of a season. But I think the direction was a bit better (and less meandering) than what we were given last season. A…slight return to form. Though I still don’t think these storylines lend themselves to the 22-episode format. When will networks ever learn?

“Chapter Fifty-Seven: Survive the Night” jumps straight into things. Penelope buys Betty from Edgar before she can get her skull opened. When Betty wakes up, she sees a note telling her to don a pink ballgown. When she goes downstairs, she sees Penelope at a dinner table with the Archie, Veronica and Jughead seated with her.

Penelope goes into a long explanatory speech about all the evil deeds she has done. She alone has orchestrated the mayhem the four have faced. She controls Hal (the Black Hood) and Chic (the Gargoyle King) all by herself.

I have to admit that I didn’t think Penelope was behind it all, despite all the heavy-handed clues throughout the season. But it’s a reveal that actually makes sense. Believe it or not, Riverdale has actually managed to make things come full circle.

Penelope has clearly lost her marbles, even dying Chic’s hair read and calling him “Jason”. But he seems totally ok with that, so that’s fine. She informs the four kids that she will be playing one last round of G&G with them.

She sends them off into the woods to each complete one-last quest. If they survive the night, they will have proved themselves worthy people and better than the stinking bog that is Riverdale.

The four run off into the woods, quickly spotting signs that point them in the right direction. The Red Paladin is the first to receive his quest: fight a juiced-up bear man. It goes well. Mostly because Archie is (slightly) resourceful with a bone. Any excuse to get KJ Apa flexing his muscle.

Now, before this even got started, I, semi-jokingly, wanted to see Veronica get a Vizzini-style puzzle. And lo-and-behold my prayers were answered! The Enchantress must choose her closest friend. Together they play spin-the-bottle and take turns drinking from a chalice. One of the chalices contains fast-acting poison.

In the end, Betty ends up with the supposedly poisoned chalice. But Veronica snatches it away and drinks it first, saving her friend. Penelope arrives and announces that Veronica passed, proving her loyalty. Then she also reveals that ALL the chalices were poisoned. The only way to get the antidote? SURVIVE THE NIGHT!

The Hellcaster basically just needs to take out the Gargoyle King. He does it pretty swiftly, it’s all pretty anti-climactic.

And that just leaves Betty. She’s given a gun with one bullet: she must shoot her own father. But Betty being Betty, doesn’t shoot to kill. She instead shoots off his fingers, proving that she’s not just like her father.

Penelope shoots Hal instead. She doesn’t let the gang off that easily. Archie manages to get the poison antidote quickly before the crew have to flee the Gargoyle gang.

They’re saved by Cheryl, Toni, the Pretty Poisons and the Serpents. And while they get out of the woods (literally), Betty learns that her mother hasn’t escaped the Farm.

The friends quickly make their way to the Farm. When they arrive, though, they only find a moping Kevin. He tells them that the Farm members have ascended. He was left behind in order to tell the story. But what ascension actually means, who knows? Moving on to the next town? Actually dying?

It’s unclear, but presumably that’s part of next season’s mystery.

As the season’s fantasy-theme madness winds down, Betty gets a visitor. The young man (with blond hair and blue eyes) informs her that Alice has been an informant for the FBI the entire time. And the FBI agent is her real bother: Charles. Oh and it’s also Jughead’s real brother. So that’s fun. And weird?

And what’s also fun? Cheryl hanging out with Jason’s corpse.

Each season thus far has had a distinct feeling: high school, serial killer drama, a vast RPG game. The finales always proved us with one last punch to set up the next plot: Fred being shot, Archie being arrested for murder. This time, we get a flash forward. Betty, Veronica and Archie call stand together in their underwear as they set fire to their clothes…and Jughead’s signature hat. Now it can be taken to imply that Jughead is dead, but I seriously doubt that. The core three certainly have more heart than that.

But it begs the question: if Jughead isn’t with them, where is it? The flash forward also takes place during spring break of their Senior year. Does that mean this is the set up for the show’s final season? High school shows going into a college season never works out fell. So maybe this is the grand ending approaching.

I suppose we’ll find out in a few months time. But that’s it for me and Riverdale recaps. In the autumn, I’ll be switching over to watching the CW’s new Nancy Drew show. If there’s one thing I love more than Archie Comics, it’s the Drew Crew.

But I will still be watching next season. Bring on the insanity of Senior year!

Was last week’s prom not over-the-top enough for you? Do you want organ harvesting and fake-out deaths? Well good! Riverdale is here to serve you everything in your insane dreams!

Now in the belly of the beast, Betty continues her investigation into The Farm. She’s mostly ostracized by the others (go figure). But straight away it’s clear why Edgar extended the invite to Betty.

Alice sits down with the family and admits “the truth” to Betty. She tells her daughter that she has the “serial killer gene” that no one else in the family has. After this bombshell, Edgar suggests hypnotising Betty so that she can, I don’t know, come to peace with herself?

Betty agrees, mostly because she’s a really thorough detective. In her hypnosis, Betty meets her “other self” one that tells Betty that she pushed Polly down the stairs and drowned her cat. When she wakes, she seems fairly unshaken. Which can only mean 1.) she’s totally crazy or 2.) she’s clever enough to spot a lie a mile away.

She calls Juggie about the new addition to her routine. She also sets him on the mission to hunt down the chain of people that delivered the letter to her on the night of the prom. The trail leads Jughead to his sister, then Little Ricky, and on to Princess Ethel.

When Jughead finds Ethel in the bunker, she seems pretty upset. She tells Jughead that while she left the “false king” of the Sisters, she’s still in love with the Gargoyle King. He convinces her to leave and take her to safety, along with a gang of Lost Boys (aka the seemingly feral boy scouts). They go to retrieve the littlest Lost Boy and come face-to-face with the hooked Black Hood.

Jughead eventually escapes with Ethel and the boys, which gains Ethel’s trust. She blesses him with the true name of the Gargoyle King: Jason Blossom.

When Jughead shares the news with Betty, she barely bats an eye. She’s in full-on Riverdale mode and is as unsurprised as we all are at this point. Plus Betty has something bigger and more pressing to deal with: The Farm’s organ harvesting.

Betty had started to become suspicious when the others at The Farm told her that Edgar took their emotional pair and channeled it into something physical. Er, win win?

She later sees Evelyn sitting in a chair to receive dialysis. She also notices that the woman is receiving anti-rejection medication. The type taken by someone who has had an organ transplant.

Also, all the stars for the Easter egg of Evelyn reading The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Betty later gets into the room with all the organs. She immediately takes it to Cheryl (who was on the cusp of losing faith anyway after the whole “you-can’t-run-for-prom-queen thing”), who believes her cousin when she sees the organ in the ice chest.

Cheryl immediately helps Toni escape, at the expense of her own freedom. And Betty is tackled by Fangs and Kevin, who hand her over to be Edgar’s next victim.

Meanwhile, a little closer to reality, Archie meets with his mom’s FBI friend! (I did say a little.) Together, the FBI agent and Veronica begin working together to arrest Hiram, who is apparently going to buy Riverdale. As if that’s a thing.

Veronica, the FBI and Archie work together to get Hiram. Archie challenges Hiram to a match. Le Bonne Noit (which Hiram technically owns) takes illegal bets. FBI raids Le Bonne Noit. Hiram gets arrested during the illegal boxing match.

And it all seemingly goes without a hitch.

But after his mother’s coaxing, Archie goes to see Veronica and admit his feelings for her. Only when he arrives, he learns that he’s been beaten by Reggie. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. But I’ve always thought Archie was better off without Ronnie (that’s both in this TV show and in the comics in general – and I’ll stand by that).

So the kids are seemingly close to wrapping up their mysteries. But somehow, it’s not that likely that things can be so simple. Could it really be Jason this whole time? Well, in Riverdale Land, it’s very well possible. But we saw his body at the funeral, as a rotten corpse, and shot in the head in a video. Sure it could all be fake, and it takes a show like Riverdale to just tell us that “it’s possible!”

There’s some shifty shenanigans going on that are sure to make us scream in next week’s finale. I doubt that Hiram will be down for long. And I’m sure he’s already cooking up delicious revenge.

Let’s just hope that this time, they can cook up a good storyline for him.

Why am I still watching this show? Furthermore, why am I recapping it?

Each week we get further along into season 3, I’m finding Riverdale more and more tedious. Is it a bad show? Nope. It’s just as wacky as ever. But there really isn’t something working, and it’s maybe time for a long good-bye.

Now. This week’s episode was good. It was very airtight. But, there were several things about it that only solidified why I’m increasingly over this show.

But the big one: “Chapter Fifty-Four” marks Luke Perry’s last episode on Riverdale. Perry a few great moments with KJ Apa here, and it reflects the relationship Archie and Fred had in season 1. But it also proves how much Perry was wasted for much of season 2 and 3.

As the show became more lofty, it ignored everything that anchored it to the ground. Much of Archie’s character has been rebuilt on during the latter half of the season. It’s been working well, but it’s still not the guitar-playing sweetheart to loved working with his dad. The core four are superheroes now. Not characters we can really enjoy spending time with.

A large port of it, I think, is that this show does not benefit from the 22-episode series format. Season 1 was snappy: there was a murder and 13 episodes later we solved said murder. Many of the plots here are good, but they’re stretched beyond their best-by dates.

I miss the season 1 silliness. It was teen, but it had bite. It wasn’t Veronica running around like a boss CEO. It was fun when she was more human. When she made more mistakes. Her storylines are so boring. She’s constantly swooping in and sorting messes when she should be cheering with the Vixens and wearing dramatic capes.

Josie’s send off this week was incredibly anticlimactic. We get to see her interacting with her father again, which was incredibly sweet. But she too had been stripped of everything about her character. Her Pussycats. Her mother. She was Archie’s girlfriend (which she played well) and someone who popped up for a good musical number.

Betty, as always, is chasing after The Farm. But this cult hasn’t been interesting for weeks now. I was hardly disturbed when Evelyn was revealed to be Edgar’s actual wife (let’s just pretend we don’t notice the 10+ year gap between Murray and Grand Maison). The babies are split up. The aunt takes one. I don’t know. Betty – just get a new fucking hobby.

Hopefully the escape…I mean “death” of Hal in the bus accident wakes her up. We all know this is some Michael Myers Halloween shit so let’s just move on to it already.

But I think what I’m getting to is this:

If you’re not having fun anymore, why are you still here?

And it’s question I’m asking myself every week. I love Archie comics, and will continue to support them and their zany ways, but I think it’s time for a long, long break. I’ll be finishing off season 3, and then just watching Riverdale in my own free time of my own free will.

Maybe we will have a story arch where we fall in love again. Maybe I’ll just be shipped off to the spin-off. But whatever it is, I’m so relieved there’s only three episodes left.

Kids, cults are a dangerous thing. When you’re a child, you should be taught this, just as much as you learn “look both ways before crossing the street” and “don’t play with fire”.

Clearly all lessons that you don’t learn when you’re in the Cooper family (but I suppose when one parent is a serial killer, maybe you’re off the hook).

Betty has decided, though, to go against all common sense and really go for the Farm. After attending an opening day at the Farm with Veronica, she manages to convince Cheryl to go to the Farm as her spy. Betty thinks this is a good idea because Evelyn already tried to sign-up Cheryl for the cult fun squad.

But this is of course a very bad idea just because Evelyn already tried to recruit Cheryl.

Cheryl enters the Farm premises with full determination to learn more about her head brother, Jason. She wears a mic to her interview where she manages to have a chat with Edgar. He listens to her, and he gets to the heart of her issues following Jason’s death. Betty learns from listening in that Edgar records all of his conversations with the Farm members.

And, unsurprisingly, Cheryl becomes infatuated with the cult. Betty tries to get Cheryl to leave to no avail. But she does break into the Farm and steal back the tapes from her family and Cheryl. But even when she tries to get Cheryl to leave, Cheryl admits she doesn’t want to go because she’s “seen” and spoken to Jason in the flesh.

Which, considering how long he’s been dead doesn’t really sound ideal.

But it does get to the heart about why people are obsessed with the cult. Betty adds the new information together and realises that her mother is so attached to the cult because she gets to see her dead son.

Archie, meanwhile, reunites with his old cellmate, Mad Dog. He gets a call from the boy, alerting him that the inmates at the juvenile detention centre are being moved to Hiram’s new prison. Apparently filling up the cells for opening day is a big deal (but all that says to me is that Hiram just really didn’t plan for future development and growth! Who wants to be completely filled immediately? Poor business planning, everyone.)

Archie, with Veronica’s help, manages to convince the governor to release the young men. The boys all go to stay at Archie’s new boxing gym. Giving them a home, but not really any purpose.

But Mad Dog brings worse news: his family’s apartment have been taken over by drug-making Gargoyles.

Jughead agrees to help Archie remove the gang from the building. This is one of the dumbest ideas that the boys have ever had. Jughead continues to be in hot water with his parents. One for trying to destroy her drug business and the other for getting in the way of his drug-busting.

But the boys go into the apartment building anyway. And it’s hardly surprising when the Gargoyles react with guns a-blazin’. Nothing really comes of it other than a lot of scrapes and bruises.

Following the unsuccessful purge, Mad Dog admits to Archie that he wants to box for Elio. He gets a house out of it for his grandma and little brother. AND he gets paid! For an ex-con, it doesn’t actually sound like a bad deal. Even if Archie isn’t convinced.

Why aren’t we getting any scenes of Veronica acting as a child? She’s always been the most mature of the group, but parading around as a business woman while trying to salvage her parents’ marriage is a little bit tedious. The mafia plotline of season 2 was definitely the worst, and continues to be the worst thing about season 3.

I JUST CAN’T CARE AND I’M OVER IT.

She decides to send dead fish to her mother, in hopes of convincing her father to stay and “protect” Hermione. This apparently works, but I suppose if you’re in a mafia, you deal with the fallout?

Either way, no one made the best decisions they could this week. Jughead in particular is getting a bit tedious. What happened to the “I’m a weirdo” weirdo? This birthday-hating child has become a full-on blockhead almost to the point where his motives don’t make sense anymore.

But where would Riverdale be without characters making silly decisions? I suppose our lives would all be more simple and happier… Sort of sounds like a certain comic book series I’ve heard of…

This is a late one, kids. I’ve had a busy week going to glamorous (not really) literacy parties and generally recuperating from some health issues.

But it really feels like Riverdale has been gone for ages. There’s been a lot of breaks this season, and it isn’t for the better. The story keeps losing steam, but if it was watched in one go, I might have a different opinion on things.

Alice is being baptized into the farm. While Alice tries to shut Betty out, Jughead suggests that Betty try accepting (or pretending to) what Alice has decided.

Betty reluctantly agrees to play along, until she learns that Alice has to sign a weaver form. When Betty sees the forms, she notices that there is a possibility of death in the baptism.

She later interviews the people who have defected from the Farm. But only one woman agrees to speak to her. When Betty learns that the woman’s sister died during the baptism, Betty runs to her mother’s help. She manages to save Alice just in time before she drowns.

But when Alice comes to, she claims herself to be “reborn”. And she informs Betty that she wants to sell their house so they can all move to the farm full-time.

Meanwhile, Archie attempts to repair his broken character by trying to take up boxing. Archie overhears Elio one day, looking for someone to fight his boxer. Archie agrees to fight him. But Elio stipulates that Archie must lose the fight. While Good Archie immediately says no, he’s won over by the fact that he will receive $5,000 for his “help”.

He feels like this is a good idea until he tells Josie. She reminds him that this is a bad idea, but he’s unable to back out. Tom Keller offers to help Archie and together they nearly win the fight the fair way.

(Completely irrelevant, but Archie and Josie together is a Very Good Thing. Shame that Josie’s character has been confirmed for the Katy Keene spin-off.)

Gladys and Veronica make an unlikely pair when they form a working relationship. Gladys suggests that Veronica spy on Hiram for her. Since Veronica wants to protect her madre, who sold Hiram’s drug trade to Gladys. Veronica decides that she wants her family out of drugs, so she reluctantly agrees to help Gladys.

Together, they get Hiram to agree to focus on his prison, and forget about the “candy trade”. Hiram eventually becomes suspicious of Hermione, but it’s Veronica who takes the fall – owing her father $75,000.

Veronica tells Gladys that Hiram plans on getting the Ghoulies on his side without Penny Peabody around. So the fight begins to see who gets to the Ghoulies first: Hiram or Gladys.

There’s a lame subplot about the Pretty Poisons and the Serpents. Toni refuses to rejoin the old gang because she wants to be a leader. I will always be of the opinion that the gang storylines have always been the most cringey. This new one is one of the worst. It was probably created to pay homage to the Betty & Veronica Vixens comic and to sell some Hot Topic shirts. Otherwise, this one is pretty bad.

But Gladys suggests to Jughead that in order to get more Serpent turf, he needs to side with the Ghoulies. Jughead agrees, weirdly, and goes to FP for his help. FP agrees to claim that the Serpents get immunity from the law.

When Jughead meets the Gargoyles’ leader, Kurt, he quickly realises that the drug-riddled, G&G-obsessed gang are not the type he wants attached to the Serpents. Gladys steps in an makes her own decision without Jughead’s kindness. She enlists the help of the Ghoulies/Gargoyles, much to Jughead’s disappointment.

While this week’s episode is by no means bad, it sort of feels like the season is floundering a bit. Usually there’s a goal: finding Jason’s murderer, catching the Black Hood. But I’m really not sure what this season is doing right now. But hopefully within the next few weeks we start to feel a direction and purpose again.

And fingers crossed there are more Archie and Josie scenes. What a pair of cuties.

“Chapter Forty-Seven: Bizarrodale” is one of the more aptly-named episodes yet. It was a complete change of tone from the earlier episodes in the season, and for that – it was both bizarre and incredibly needed.

Josie and Kevin’s parents finally decide to get hitched but under one condition: it has to be a small affair. And considering Josie and Kevin are the most dramatic students in Riverdale outside of the Blossom family, they’re both left disappointed. But they do mange to convince their parents to have an after party.

So both Josie and Kevin reach out to find dates to the wedding, and both come up short. While Josie finds solace in Archie (who helpfully drives her to her ill-fated Juilliard audition), Kevin is left in the cold by Moose – who insists on staying in the closet.

When Cheryl comforts a frustrated Kevin, she devises a little plan to semi-out Moose over the school announcements. She calls it a “little push” but girlfriend Toni immediately calls her out on her bullshit and privilege. And Cheryl must really love Toni, because she’s the one person she’ll listen to.

Cheryl goes about fixing the mess she made. Though her silly move actually worked in getting Moose to come out to his dad. A move which he feels jubliant about. But like everything in Riverdale: it’s just not that easy.

Meanwhile, Sierra and Tom receive a bit of a ‘congratulatory’ note from the Gargoyle King – informing them that the Midnight Club must reassemble with the Midnight Club and go to Riverdale High to complete their ascension.

The Midnight Club all assemble and begin to look for the chalices, and quickly realise they’ve been had. And a trap can only mean one thing: their children are the targets. Tom Keller quickly realises that only Kevin doesn’t respond. That’s because his son is too busy snuggling up with Moose in the now not-so-secret bunker.

As the boys enjoy the first night alone together, the Gargoyle Gang arrive and take the boys away. They’re dragged to the feet of the Gargoyle King to flip for their fate. But before Kevin can drink, the police arrive (and Cheryl with her bow and arrow). The gang and the king are unmasked, and it’s revealed that it’s Moose’s father and the boys from the RROTC.

In his interview with Sheriff FP, Moose’s father admits that he had been in love with Tom, who didn’t return his feelings. After some conversion therapy with the Sisters, he tried to move on. But the announcement of Tom and Sierra broke him. It was even worse seeing his son in love with Kevin, who looked just like his father (weird).

But Jughead doesn’t seem convinced that we still don’t have our real Gargoyle King, and he’s probably right.

With his mom back in the picture, things are sure to get complicated. And it officially looks like we have our newest parental enemy. Gladys Jones is revealed to be the buyer of Hermione’s drug empire. You know, the one that Veronica and Reggie set on fire?

Gladys seems willing to forgive Reggie and Veronica for showing up to the trade-off with a bag of inked currency. But it’s clear the lady is up to no good. She was, after all, preparing to buy a whole drug operation.

It was pretty refreshing getting spending more time with characters outside the core four. Betty (who has stolen the show ever since last season) was barely present. It was great to see both Kevin and Josie get plotlines they are worthy of. Both characters have been shafted by the last two season, and they could finally come back to life for the first time since season one.

Riverdale has got a lot of shit over how it handles its characters’ sexuality, but this episode really set out to set things right. And I honestly felt that this sweet, little episode did a lot to correct the mistakes of the show’s past.

Also, Pretty Poisons is the show’s lamest gang name in Riverdale yet. Good luck with that one, Toni.

One (major) thing I forgot to mention in last week’s recap was that Tall Boy was killed by his fellow Serpents. On accident, of course. Leaving Jughead to cover their tracks.

This death (that I conveniently forgot) was key in this week’s episode of Riverdale, which was an hour-long, not-so-subtle homage to the noir genre.

With Hiram in the hospital and Claudius dead, the children scramble to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Everyone but Archie, that is, who spends most of his screen time starting fights and getting drunk.

Veronica, on the other hand, gets straight to work trying to find out who shot her father. She goes to Jughead to pay him for his help, and he willingly agrees. His first stop is Hermione, who is rather open about the affair that Hiram was having with another woman, which was why Veronica heard her parents arguing one day.

Jughead heads out with Betty to locate the blond mistress. Instead, they come across the members-only Maple Club, run by Ms Penelope Blossom herself. Betty tries to interrogate Penelope about Claudius’s death, but the kids are eventually turned out.

But a quick visit to Betty’s favourite medical examiner. She learns that Clifford Blossom had a secret autopsy done on his body before it was cremated. The examiner tells Betty that he died of poisoning, not too different a fate from his own brother. When Betty confronts Penelope again, this time armed with hard evidence, Penelope admits to murdering all the horrible men in her life.

She explains to Betty that Claudius was poisoning Sweetwater River with the run off from producing Fizzle Rocks. With the water tainted, the women of Riverdale had begun to experience seizures as a side effect (Mystery #1 solved). When she lays out her reasoning, Betty starts to understand the woman more. And even more – Betty doesn’t turn Penelope (“The Scarlet Dahlia”) in.

Mystery #2 solved.

Jughead eventually corners the Hiram’s lady (played by actor Mark Consuelos’s real-life wife Kelly Ripa). He confronts her with the information he had about river, siting that the environmental impact work had been forged – by her, a health and safety inspector. By not denying anything, she confirms his suspicion: she was paid by Hiram to keep things quiet.

After, Jughead receives a call from Sweetpea, who had been tailing Hermione. Together the two follow her to a cabin where the see her together with none other than the dead sheriff himself: Minetta. While eavesdropping, the Serpent boys learn that Hermione gave FP the sheriff job for one reason – to frame him.

When Jughead goes to warn his father, FP admits that he was paid by Hermione to shoot Hiram. But conveniently Jughead has Tall Boy’s dead body to get rid of. The Jones men work together with Alice to pretend that Tall Boy had been killed in a confrontation with police after shooting Hiram.

Mystery #3 is also in the books.

And that leaves only Archie left. After a pep talk from Josie, Archie decides to pay his nemesis a visit the hospital…while bringing a gun. But after his revenge monologue, an actual black hooded hitman waltzes in. And before he can shoot Hiram, Archie gets the man in the arm.

Veronica is more than please, and thus willing to forgive Archie to a point. While Archie makes his peace with Hiram, Veronica sneaks off to burn her parents’ very-expensive stockpile of Fizzle Rocks before it can be sold to a new dealer.

While many of the shows mysteries are solved in this episode, many of the characters are left unsatisfied. Left in a place of limbo. And so is the show. While it keeps its constant style-changing ways, it really feels like Riverdale is trying to wind back down to something smaller. Poor Archie is being given the absolute scraps from the writing room. Someone please figure out what to do with his poor boy.