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Riverdale took a brief break from its overarching Season 5 storyline — in a way, although one important plot point drives this episode — by giving us the Hiram Lodge backstory we didn’t know we wanted. Since his introduction into the series, Hiram has been a sort of one-dimensional villain, no matter how many times he’s been reformed or redeemed. He always goes back to being the show’s ‘Big Bad’, but this week’s episode titled ‘Citizen Lodge’ managed to give us some new layers to the town mob boss.
And it all starts with Reggie. We know now that he works for Hiram because Lodge lent his father a ton of money to keep his business afloat. Now Reggie has paid him off but … he wants to keep working for Lodge because his relationship with his father still has some old wounds that have never healed, and even when his dad almost pushes a customer away and Reggie closes the sale, his dad still doesn’t appreciate his son’s up-to-date approach when dealing with customers. (He was doing fine until he told the customer the car he and his son were looking at was the car his boy was going to get laid in, which clinched the deal but upset the elder Mantle.) But Reggie wants an accounting job with Lodge, no more being the guy pressuring others to do Hiram’s bidding. He’s got a deal after he does one more thing for the big man — get him a ‘ghost gun’, one that can’t be traced. Reggie is on it.
But Reggie also tells his dad that their partnership is done, which prompts Mr. Lodge to pay a visit to Hiram to tell him to let his son go. Lodge says Reggie is old enough to make his own decisions and before Mantle can say something he’ll regret, Hiram suggests he leave the office. Later, Hiram tells Reggie about his father’s visit, and that leads into Reggie asking about Hiram’s father. Being in a generous mood, Hiram relates the story of his family coming to Riverdale. Coming from humble beginnings shining shoes on street corners with his father (Mark Consuelos now playing the elder Luna), a customer who obviously doesn’t want to pay for the shine offers the two Luna men something better: a piece of that mysterious mineral Palladium, telling them a small town up north, Riverdale, is rich with the stuff. So yes, the Palladium Hiram has been trying to mine is what brought the Luna family to town in the late 1980s … even though stylistically it feels like the mid-1950s.
The elder Luna goes to work in a mine, but it collapses so it’s back to shining shoes outside Pop’s, and getting stiffed by customers yet again. But young Javi shines the shoes of a local named Vito, who pays and tips with a $100 bill. With that kind of money and a name like Vito, it’s obvious to everyone but Javi that the guy is a gangster. But after being dissed by his classmate Hermione (Camila Mendes) at school because her mother (guest star Marisol Nichols) doesn’t think he’s good enough for her, he seeks out Vito to get a job and earn more of those Benjamins. He starts making deliveries, and impresses Hermione with his new clothes that she ‘allows’ him to buy her dinner at Pop’s. But the date is short-lived as the cops show up to arrest Javi for distributing drugs. Refusing to give up his boss, Javi is tossed in jail, and it’s Hermione who goes to Vito for help. Before you know it, the bail is paid and Javi is free, but his father is none too pleased about this turn of events. Javi spits back that he’s embarrassed to be his father’s son, something that he may come to regret saying.
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But now he has to win back Hermione, and all it takes is a ride in his new car. Parked outside Pop’s, Javi tells her that he’s changing his name. He likes Hiram because it sounds strong and powerful (oooo-kay … does it though?), and he’s changing Luna to Lott because that’s what he’s going to have, a lot. Hermione isn’t feeling that and says he needs to think something more grand and palatial so how about Lodge? He’s buying what she’s selling, and it’s interesting to see how she has always been his equal with her contribution to the name. Now he insists everyone call him Hiram Lodge, and he tells Vito he’d like to move up in the organization. So instead of making deliveries, Hiram will now be doing the collections. Hiram’s father, however, wants his son out of this business and pays Vito a visit, delivering him an ultimatum to let his son go, or else. Not something you want to say to a gangster. But Vito says he’ll sleep on it and get back to him. Of course by ‘get back to you’ he means he’ll send his henchmen to the shoeshine stand and riddle the old man with bullets.
At the funeral, Vito pays a visit, tells Hiram and his mother that if they need anything to give him a call, and that Hiram can take some time off to be with his mother. A nice gesture after having his father murdered. Hiram didn’t even put those pieces together until the funeral visit, but once he did he was hellbent for revenge. Heading to Vito’s to deliver his own message, the boss was out but Hiram had a gun and he killed all three men, wiping down the gun and leaving it on the table. Vito never returned to town and Hiram took over the business and that’s how he became Riverdale’s mob boss. But after marrying Hermione and having a baby, she told him it was time to stick to his promise of moving to New York City, and they did. But it was the Palladium that finally brought them back, and that’s why Hiram built the prison. But the vein yielded a very small amount and Hiram now needs to get to the vein that runs under the Blossom maple tree grove.
But there’s still the matter of that ‘ghost gun’ Hiram requested, and he asks Reggie to drive him to a nursing home where he has someone to visit. Of course the person he’s visiting is Vito. Hiram has been trying to track him down for years and he’s found him, finally ready to deliver that payback for the murder of his father. Before the frail former gangster can sound an alarm, Hiram puts a pillow over the old man’s face, and points the gun at his head, pulling the trigger. On the way home, Hiram tells Reggie he no longer needs his services, and admonishes him to patch things up with his own father before it’s too late. Heartbroken, Reggie goes back to the car lot, and his father actually apologizes for his terrible treatment (remember in previous episodes, it was revealed that Reggie’s father was physically abusive). Reggie accepts the apology and says they can still be partners, but his dad has to let him do things his way. Marty is agreeable to the arrangement and the two share an embrace like they probably never have before.
But telling Reggie his story and getting closure, finally, with his father’s murder, Hiram lays in bed eating ice cream and watching what appears to be an episode of the ‘Real Housewives’ show that Hermione and Veronica are on, listening to some harsh realities as they speak about him. But the phone rings and we learn that the voice on the other end is … Hermosa, his other daughter. She’s the one who found Vito for him. Now that that is behind him, the plan now is to focus on the Palladium, and he assures her that once he has that he’ll get back everything he’s lost.
When I first saw this was going to be a Hiram-centric episode, I thought it was going to be a chore to sit through, but it was actually very engaging. It’s always fun to see the regular cast play the teen versions of their parents, and Mark Consuelos was terrific playing Hiram’s father who is a complete 180 from who Hiram is, i.e. a decent human being. And while he’s made appearances in the flashback episodes as young Hiram, Michael Consuelos gave an uncanny performance as his father’s younger character. His brief appearances in the past felt a bit like stunt casting, and that Michael resembles his father so much made it a no-brainer to cast him, this time he really got to stretch as an actor, doing a great impression of his father but not making it feel like he was doing an impression. He really made young Hiram his own character while still making it a believable transition to the older character in the present. ‘Citizen Lodge’ could have been one of the season’s weaker episodes, but everyone involved managed to make it maybe the best episode of the season so far.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8:00 PM.
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