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Even though the time is 1955 and some things have changed in Riverdale — Where’s Reggie? Where’s Moose? Oh hi, Midge! — one thing seems to have remained the same, past, present and future: Cheryl Blossom is the Queen Bee of Riverdale High. This week she is promoting — and producing — a Sock Hop at the school, with Kevin and the Crooners performing. But Cheryl is running into some interference from rival Toni Topaze who is pushing to get her Serpents pal Fangs Fogerty as the headliner. These two butting heads is obviously causing some sparks that Toni is fanning and Cheryl is trying to ignore.
But the idea of a Sock Hop is sparking romantic interests among just about everyone at Riverdale High, but the romantic entanglements are starting to become a bit more complicated, a bit more … modern, if you will. Archie has his sights set on Veronica as his date, and she accepts … on the condition that he’s not a bore and can engage in some intelligent conversation with her at the dance. Also, he has to be able to dance. In a bit of a panic, he goes to Betty for some dance lessons but his attempt at The Twist is all shoulders, no hips. His slow dancing skills are a little better (I mean, who can’t just sway?), but Alice barges into Betty’s bedroom and puts an end to all that … even though nothing was going on but a dance lesson. Later, though, Betty tells her mom that she felt a flutter while dancing with Archie and Alice chalked that up to Betty’s frustration with her boyfriend Kevin, who claims to be too distracted by the thought of performing at the dance to make out with her in the car. Kevin flies off the handle and calls her a ‘sex maniac’ because she wants a simple kiss (and to be ‘pinned’), so their relationship is coming toward the rocks. Alice intervenes and has a chat with Kevin, explaining that all he has to do is give Betty the pin (which is the high school pin Hal gave to her) and Betty will be fine. The pin is a promise, she says, and with it Betty will ease up on the making out. Kevin isn’t sure but he accepts the pin.
But Kevin is obviously more interested in cute newcomer Clay Walker, and the feeling is mutual. In fact, Clay is being pretty forthright with his desires to get to know Kevin better, and he can see Kevin feels the same way, but before his closet door can crack open too far, he quickly slams it shut and focuses on Betty again. But after Cheryl pays a visit to the ‘coffee house’ where the Serpents hang out, Toni convinces her to stay, hear Fangs sing, and get to know each other better. The plan worked and Kevin and the Crooners are out, so that puts him into a precarious situation at the dance now that he no longer has to focus on the performance. Clay, again, makes a not-so-subtle pass at Kevin and Kevin really wants to explore things, but he’s not ready to live his truth and he instead gives Betty the pin as Clay looks on from the sidelines. Also looking on is Toni, who convinced Cheryl to have one dance with her — and she did — but the scornful gaze of Principal Featherhead, and his words to Cheryl later that boys and girls dancing together as nature and God intended had the intended effect on Cheryl to make her feel shame.
Back to Archie pre-Sock Hop, he approached Veronica to give her a demonstration of his dance skills but she decided a stud like him certainly had the moves, but she needed to hear what kind of conversation they’d have so he should come to the Pembroke that evening for a chat. With Mary’s help, Archie gets dressed in one of his dad’s old suits and arrives for the date, with flowers and a poem he’d written (that Betty previewed and approved), only to find that Julian Blossom and some other boys were there. It wasn’t a date, it was an audition. After a while and some heated words with Julian over a Monet, Archie decided to pack it in, tossing up the crumbled paper on which he’d written the poem into the trash can in the hallway. Feeling bad about what had happened, Ronnie paid a visit to his house the next morning but was met by a very upset Mary Andrews who gave the girl a talking-to about her behavior and how she’s treating people in Riverdale, and being the child of celebrities is no excuse. And then she slammed the door in Ronnie’s face. At school, Betty asks Veronica if she liked Archie’s poem, and Betty was surprised she didn’t get it, and Archie decided to make amends for almost ruining her little party — she apologized for her behavior as well — and ask her to the dance again. Veronica politely declined, saying she was going stag and purposely said some pretty hurtful things to Archie to push him away. After the dance, Smithers knocked on the apartment door and gave her the piece of paper he found in the trash can, the poem she never received. Reading it, she realized that she may have made a huge mistake with Archie.
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The only Riverdale High student not bitten by the love bug is Jughead — now fully entrenched in the timeline as a 1955 teenager with his ‘gollys’ and ‘gee whizzes’ (but still no explanation as to why FP isn’t there) — who has another type of bug up his … ahem … it seems that he had submitted a story to Pep Comics, which is based in Riverdale, which was rejected but the latest issue of one of their comics seems to have used his story without credit. So Juggie marches himself to the company to let the publisher know exactly how he feels, gosh darn it! The publisher assures him that there are no new ideas and he has several file cabinets full of them to prove it, hundreds of his own ideas that have yet to make their way to the pages of Pep’s horror comics. But he throws Jughead a bone — if he can turn in a seven page story from a logline he’s given in the next 24 hours, and if it doesn’t want to make him puke he’s got the job. Thrown for a loop by this unexpected turn of events, Jughead accepts but now has to focus on getting the job done.
It seems in this timeline he and Ethel are close friends (and it’s nice to see Shannon Purser back in a substantial role) — she obviously feels they are closer than he does, much to her frustration — and he asks her to go over his story before he submits it. She thinks it’s amazing and says she’d love to have a chance to do the illustrations for the story. Acting as if he’s already got the job and it tight with the publisher, he offers to put in a good word for her. She even takes it upon herself to produce some drawings, which she shows to Jughead when he pays her a visit at her house. But Ethel’s mother ‘catches’ them in her bedroom and flies off the handle, saying it’s a good thing her father is working late. In school, Ethel is caught doing another drawing in class and is called to the Principal’s office where Featherhead and Dr. Werthers berate her about what kind of a sick mind could produce images like the one she was drawing in class. She assures them the drawing was for a zombie comic book and she had to finish it because she was trying to get a job with Pep Comics. The two men, who are obviously up to no good, put Ethel in detention for a week. But … she skips her first day to go with Jughead to meet the publisher, who is pleasantly surprised by her skills, giving both of them an opportunity to work for the company.
The good news is tempered when Ethel gets home and both of her parents start screaming at her about having a boy in her room, getting called to school because of her sick artwork, skipping detention … this is not how she was raised. Ethel fires back at her mother about her being drinking too much and her father being miserable all the time, and tells them she’s going to the Sock Hop. With Jughead. Her mother fires back with ‘Over my dead body you are.’ At the Sock Hop, Veronica decides to ask Archie to dance, but he turns her down to dance with his mother (who is chaperoning) instead. Jughead is just grooving out when he sees Ethel enter … covered in blood. She’s hysterical and tells him something terrible just happened.
But what? Did she get to the Sock Hop over her mother’s dead body? Is Ethel Muggs the newest killer in Riverdale? Or are there more nefarious forces at work? Stay tuned.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9:00 PM.
What did you think of the season premiere? Let us know in the comments section below.
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