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This week’s movie themed title is obviously an homage to the 1994 film of the same name and on one of those rare occasions, part of the episode actually relates to the subject matter of the movie. Quiz Show was about the game show rigging in the 1950s where answers were given to a contestant on more than one game show. So with Betty leading the Riverdale High quiz bowl team against Brett and Stonewall, of course there had to be some cheating involved.
Where the cheating actually came from was quite surprising, baffling and stupefying. Taking Riverdale High to the RIVW Quiz Show was Betty’s one way to get back at Brett for being a giant douche. I really want to punch that guy in the face. Brett was going to any means to get under Betty’s skin to throw her off her game, and if that included throwing Jughead under the bus so be it. Betty discovered, with the help of Charles (Oh, hi Charles, long time no see), that Brett has done nothing exemplary to get into Stonewall Academy except have a rich daddy who bought his way into the school … and apparently to Yale as well. But when confronted with this information, Brett quickly deflected to Jughead pitching a new Baxter Brothers story to the ‘Brotherhood’ (because they didn’t think his ‘boy in the river’ story was fresh enough so how about … serial killers) which was a thinly veiled account of The Black Hood.
Betty wasn’t happy that Jughead was going to exploit her family tragedy, at least not without telling her first, but Juggie assured her that he only used that as a pitch when he was against a wall with them and was going to tell her. With that little emotional injury, Charles added some insult to it when he learned Betty was rejected from Yale because of … The Black Hood. The university feared if people knew who her father was, it would be a huge distraction. Betty ended up taking out her frustrations with a sledge hammer on her father’s headstone. But Jughead came to massage her nerves and even thought he could help with her Yale quest.
At the Quiz Show, Jughead introduced her to the Yale scout that he had spoken with thinking that seeing Betty in action would be a motivation to reverse her rejection. Alice (Oh, hi Alice, long time no see) was very excited about the scout being there and told Betty she had a little gift for her in the green room. Checking it out, Betty found an envelope which contained a sheet with all of the questions and answers for the show. Okay, seriously … would Alice really put Betty’s education in jeopardy by doing something so stupid? She knows how hard Betty studied so why stoop to something like this? It seems very out of character and just a really dumb plot device by the writers.
Riverdale High did win in sudden death and Brett skulked off the set. The next day at school, Principal Honey presented Betty with the ripped up piece of paper reassembled — courtesy of Brett, no doubt — voiding the school’s win and putting Betty on suspension pending an investigation. Alice was also suspended from her job because of her dumb move, so Brett wins again. But there’s more … in a minute.
The rum wars story is starting to get a little tiresome already with Veronica and Cheryl thinking they can re-open the speakeasy as a dance club and give out shots of their maple-based rum (which is just far enough away chemically from Hiram’s to not encroach on his copyright. But somehow he was still able to bust into the new club to shut them down and destroy the rum that they’re selling, even though they have no liquor license. Except … they weren’t selling the shots, they were giving them away as samples and then taking orders for bottles of rum to be distributed later. So Hiram really had no cause to destroy their stock. This whole thing made little sense, but it lead to Cheryl cooking up the idea that they could use Penelope’s former brothel as their new club for high end buyers, and it also gave Penelope a chance to live somewhere other than a ‘teenage sex bunker’. Penelope did have funniest line of the night when she addressed Cheryl as ‘Nightmare Child’. The only catch is that Penelope has to wear a porcelain mask during operating hours so no one knows who she is. Ummmm, isn’t that mask going to raise more suspicions and won’t people at least recognize Penelope’s hair?
Kevin Keller got some screen time — and dialog — this week after being literally benched last week. Hooking up with guys on a dating app, Kevin brushes off Fangs at Pop’s and goes back to The Five Seasons with his new date. Except it’s not really a date. The guy has a webcam business and wants to couple Kevin up with one of his money-makers to … be tickled. And he doesn’t even have to take his shirt off. And he gets $5000 per video. (Tickling is a thing, there’s even a documentary about it but it takes a very dark turn.) Kevin says it’s just a one-time thing, but the guy convinces him he can make a lot of money so, not wanting to work with the same guy, he goes to the next best thing: Fangs. These two have been through enough already with The Farm, so will their tickling adventure go the same route as the actual documentary? Keep in mind that, as far as we know, Kevin and Fangs (and Veronica and Cheryl for that matter) are still minors who probably should not be involved in such things as tickling videos and rum running.
Archie is making waves by installing Uncle Frank as the new company foreman … without bothering to tell current foreman Tom Keller (Oh, hi Tom, long time no see) who is not too happy about ne’er-do-well Frank Andrews taking over. But Frank has made quick friends with the crew and Tom discovers no one received their holiday bonuses. To make matters worse, Archie turns down a job at Hiram’s prison, a government contract that would have helped get the company out of the red. Then Tom discovers $200 missing from petty cash. Frank says he took it as an advance against his next paycheck, then admits to Archie he had a hot tip for a sure thing at the track, so he could win the money to help cover the bonuses. Archie was furious, especially after Frank and Tom got into an altercation which led to Tom quitting the company, and Frank told Archie that a 40-year-old shouldn’t be asking a teenager, his nephew, for a loan. But the tip did come in, Frank walked away with $10,000, and he swore to Archie that he’d never do such a thing again. Uh huh.
Now back to Jughead and Brett. Enraged that Brett exposed Betty and Alice’s misdeed, he challenged Brett to a duel, as per the Quill & Skull rule book. Cut to four weeks later and Archie meets Betty at Pop’s, Betty saying she can’t go on like this any longer, and Archie telling her they’ll get through it. Archie takes Betty’s hands and the scene ends. So, does whatever happened to Jughead have to do with the duel? Brett said Betty killed Jughead in a previous flash forward. but did he mean literally? Or was it a figurative term as Jughead was standing up for Betty in the wake of the cheating scandal? I would say we may find out in four weeks, but I think all of the flash forwards since the show came back from the holiday break have been four weeks in the future. But that would put us into February sweeps and a time in the dead of winter when many schools have their ‘spring breaks’. But they surely cannot ‘kill off’ Jughead in February with eleven more episodes ahead … can they?
What did you think of this episode? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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