Riverdale review: It’s an ‘Outbreak’ of folks getting tortured in chairs

Riverdale uses lots of scenes of people tied to chairs to reveal information we already know, but is new news to most of the characters.

In the midseason finale, Riverdale defies logic and common sense as it desperately tries to wrap up the first half of the season. The theme of “Chapter Forty-Three: Outbreak” is about villains spilling their guts while they are tied to chairs and getting interrogated with varying degrees of violence.

One of the things I love about this reason-averse show is its ability to completely flout what it’s audience knows or is willing to accept. They just go full throttle toward whatever improbability they’re trying to sell us, and they dare fans to question their methods and tactics. Of course, sometimes they leave us no choice, but in this delight of an episode, everything is coming at us so fast, we just don’t have time to feel skeptical.

Most of the narrative wrap-up comes from scenes in which our female characters are taking matters into their own hands, interrogating villains that are strapped to chairs. Here’s what they learned, and what we (mostly) already knew:

Gladys Jones takes care of Penny Peabody

I don’t want to speed past the appearance of Gina Gershon as Gladys Jones. She roars on screen as the badass hellcat we imagined FP deserves. When Jughead and Archie turn up at her Toledo junkyard, she immediately assumes they are a couple, and I laughed out loud at the cheekiness of it all.

It doesn’t take long for Archie to ruin everything, and is quickly taken hostage by Penny Peabody whose tracking him for the bounty. Jughead’s younger sister, the former Jelly Bean, and current JB, saves him with her slingshot, and Archie proves himself even more useless than an adolescent girl. He’s genuinely the worst, I swear.

Penny wakes up to find herself, naturally, tied to a chair. Gladys brandishes a knife, initially, to get retribution for the “pound of flesh” Penny took from Jughead all those episodes ago. We don’t get to see the actual torture scenes, but from the way Gladys is wiping her bloody hands, we can assume that things got ugly.

Penny reveals to Gladys that Hiram’s bounty extends not only to Archie, but to anyone near him or trying to help him. Archie and Jughead seemed surprised by this, but it feels like pretty common knowledge from what we know about Hiram.

Cheryl and Veronica use syrup (yes, syrup) to get details from Penelope Blossom

While Gladys Jones is wiping her bloody knife and telling FP they don’t have to worry about Penny anymore, these two fools are pouring syrup on Penelope. Although there is a crackling chemistry between Veronica and Cheryl, we deserve more than a faux-waterboarding scene using maple syrup. It’s silly and beneath us, and didn’t really tell us anything that the lovely Riley Keough didn’t tell us last week.

It’s confirmed: Hiram is in cahoots with the Blossoms to push drugs using the old Southside high school and current prison. Penelope is on board because she’s down for a new Riverdale in which everybody walks around whacked out of their mind on Fizzle Rocks and pays prostitutes for sex.

Betty Fashions a shiv to kidnap Sister Woodhouse

I know y’all get tired of hearing me say how much I love Betty, but she really is the consistent MVP of this show. Last week we thought she was going to succumb to the brainwashing, but she pukes up those drugs and hatches a plan to blow this popsicle stand. She recruits Ethel, whose deprogramming only took one night, and is now a complete ally. (Remember when I said this show defies logic? Exhibit A).

She uses a pencil shaved into a shiv, drags Sister Woodhouse down to the Gargoyle King’s lair, and forces her to tell her what the hell is going on. Of all the details “revealed” in this episode, this was the most helpful. We learn that Gryphons and Gargoyles started out as general hallucination of the most disturbed patients of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, and Hiram is responsible for setting it free. Hmmmm…

Betty transforms into the Gryphon Queen she’s always been in our hearts, and leads all those poor, brainwashed, high-on-drugs, women to freedom. Except “freedom” is an apocalyptic Riverdale that has been quarantined by the governor.

Things we didn’t already know:

• Reggie’s square jaw is good at sleuthing too. Even though most of the details he brings to Veronica were revealed in the last episode, we definitely didn’t know he was anything more than a pretty face. FYI: I slot Reggie for V’s new love interest since they’re dating IRL.
• High schoolers can apparently move into together. As much as we love and root for Choni, it is so wildly impractical for the writers to suggest they live together. Even if it gives us lines like, “My four poster bed is your four poster bed” and “As long as I get to be the big spoon,” it’s hard to look past.
• Veronica apparently thinks she has the power to depose a sitting elected official. Although I love the way she and Cheryl burst into her mother’s office with their little militia, declaring “Stop,” it’s super dumb to think she has any kind of power. She’s a damn child, for heaven’s sake.
• Archie sucks. Just kidding, we already knew that. But now he sucks with dark hair, which feels a little like jumping the shark. (Y’all remember Felicity, right?)
• There is actually a world outside of Riverdale, and Veronica actually acknowledges it, even if it’s just a way to make us understand the outside world can have no effect on Hiram’s plan.

Riverdale won’t return to us until January 16, but that leaves us a month to get ourselves together. To quote Veronica, “Drugs, gargoyles, mystery men in hazmat suits, and secret school board meetings. How does it all tie together?”