Riverdale season 4 episode 11 review: Quiz show fever

This week’s episode sees the fight between Riverdale and Stonewall (and Betty and Bret) continue as Quiz Show fever takes over the town.

Last week’s Riverdale saw the Bulldogs clash with Stonewall Prep in the state football game. The fight continues in this week’s episode as, per Jughead, Riverdale is seized with, “Quiz Show fever.” Before the nerdy showdown, though, there’s lots of other drama that unfolds.

Betty unfortunately didn’t get into Yale, her dream school, but thanks to a leg up from the swanky Stonewall Prep, Jughead did. It’s bad enough that Betty has to pretend to be happy for Jughead but when she learns that Bret is going, too, Dark Betty rears her beautiful head.

As she prepares to face off against Bret in the Quiz Show Finals, she asks Charles to dig up dirt on Bret, who also offers to see if he can learn why Betty didn’t get into Yale.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Charles–I think since the big Chic reveal–and boy does Riverdale just chug along like everything is normal. Gotta love it.

Charles soon learns that Betty didn’t get into Yale because they didn’t want the PR nightmare that is admitting the Black Hood’s daughter. Ouch.

Cue Betty literally sledgehammering her dad’s grave in the most teen angsty moment that I think is supposed to be ominous, but, instead, is actually hilarious.

Thankfully, Jughead now has enough pull with Yale as a fresh admit to invite a recruiter to Betty’s Quiz Show. With all the pressure on her shoulders, Alice gives her a little nudge in the form of the answers in her dressing room.

Of course, our Betty wins fair and square, Mean Girls callback and all. (“The limit does not exist!”) But someone (ahem, Bret) goes through the trash and finds the torn up answer sheet, and it was all for naught.

Meanwhile, Archie’s gruff Uncle Frank is still in town and has started working at Andrews Construction, replacing Tom Keller as the foreman. (If former Sheriff Keller was revealed to work at Andrews Construction before this episode, I have no memory of this very weird fact.)

I know the writers want to keep alive the legacy of Luke Perry/Fred and bringing in his brother seems like a compelling way to do that. …but Frank is not compelling.

Remove Frank from the episode and we essentially have the same story, which is about Archie learning how to run his dad’s business and therefore keep his dad’s legacy alive.

Molly Ringwald is so much more eminently watchable than any of these men, though, and it would honestly make way more sense for her to be helping out with administrative duties at Andrews Construction since she’s newly back in town and probably has a lot of time on her hands!

We at least got a Hot Dad’s (and Uncles) of Riverdale fight out of it, so I guess that’s something.

Over at La Bonne Nuit…sigh.

I mean, can we all agree that this rum storyline is one of the dumbest things Riverdale has ever done? And they’ve done a lot of stupid things. Veronica and Cheryl are in high school and are making and distributing rum.

It’s also exhausting how unending the competition with Hiram is. There have been about a thousand too many discussion of patents on a sexy teen drama. “You own the patent on molasses-based rum. Ours is maple based.” Writers of Riverdale, I implore you–no one cares!

(Sidebar:  if you are the one Riverdale viewer who is deeply invested in the rum storyline, please let me know.)

We need to take a moment now to talk about Kevin.

Another huge sigh.

This show does pretty alright with the female queer characters (mostly because it objectifies and sexualizes them) but it has no godly clue what to do with Kevin and I’m sick of it.

After not being seen in weeks, we pick back up with Kevin shamelessly scrolling through Grindr (excuse me, Grind’Em, perhaps the best fake name of all the fakes in Riverdale) at Pop’s. And maybe he should have just a little bit of shame. I mean, it is Grind’em.

Fangs comes up and tries to ask him for a second chance. They were super in love in the sex cult, after all. But Kevin blows him off and says, “Now’s not a good time, Fangs. I’m waiting for my Grind’em date.”

Aside from the fact that they were both brainwashed and that Kevin has no empathy or understanding of that, KEVIN HAS NO SHAME. You gotta respect it.

So, of course, his Grind’em date ends up being a total perv who give Kevin $5,000 to tickle and record him. Look, if we were in Kevin’s shoes, would we say no?

Yes. Yes, we would. I hope we would.

Kevin, lured in by the hot guys and cold hard cash (Seriously. They pay him in cash like it’s a drug deal.) seems to be ashamed and freaked out at first, which I think would be appropriate.

But then by the end of the episode, he’s luring Fang into this fetishistic pyramid scheme!

If this is how the show gets them back together, I am NOT OKAY WITH IT!

As Kevin himself wondered aloud, seemingly as a punchline, why do all of his dates end up so weird? In other words, why does the only gay male character on the show have to be the butt of the joke all the time? He has never been allowed to be in any kind of stable, happy relationship.

And once again, they’re in high school! This Grind’em video scandal feels a bit far-fetched. Even for Riverdale. Kevin’s dad is a former cop for God’s sake. If he doesn’t figure out by next week’s episode what is up with his son, I’ll be vey upset.

It seems like the show has tried to play off a lot of the self-hating behavior that Kevin goes through as being part of what happens when you are one of the only out gay people in a small town. And there is validity in that experience.

But take that same story and look at Eric on Sex Education by contrast. While Eric is by no means perfect, he is allowed to be an object of adoration, not just a joke, and his queerness is centered in a way that would never happen on Riverdale.

Overall, I’m finding this season a bit mediocre, as much as I hate to say it. I appreciate that the show is trying to get back to its softer, more earnest soapy high school roots. Everything was a bit crazy with the Black Hood and Gryphons & Gargoyles.

But that insanity is also what makes it Riverdale:  being able to point to one core, unfathomable mystery at the center of these teenagers and see how it develops around their lives each week.

What is that this season? We have the mystery of what’s happening to Jughead, but that’s being told in flash forwards. Are we ever going to actually get there? And then there are the weird VHS tapes. Are the two connected somehow? We’re halfway through the season–the mystery should be clear.

The show seems to be very heavily setting up for the culmination of the Dark Betty storyline. Which I honestly feel icky about and find to be so upsetting. It would make perfect sense for Riverdale if she killed Jughead, though.

But if that happens, the show has to start taking the mental health of its characters a bit more serioiusly (aside from one therapy session) or I may be peacing out and rewatching Buffy again, where at least the trauma was dealt with alongside the monsters of the week.

Our episode ends with Jughead confronting Bret, bringing some Serpents energy into the Quill and Skull society as he invokes the literal rule book so they can duel over Betty.

And we have another flash forward to four weeks later as Archie comforts a crying Betty because Jughead is gone. The question is, did Bret kill him or did she?

What did you think of the latest episode of Riverdale? Sound off in the comments.