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What’s a CW show without a random town event for weekly hi-jinks to ensue? Here’s the newest Riverdale Recap for “Chapter Twenty-Four: The Wrestler”.
Riverdale Recap: “Chapter Twenty- Four: The Wrestler”
Airdate: January 24, 2018
Greg Araki directed the episode written by Britta Lundin & Brian E. Paterson (#211).
Riverdale is honoring General Pickens in Picken’s park where a ginormous statue of him resides. The Lodges want to use this annual celebration as a marketing tool for their SoDale project. Trying to be inclusive and all, they offer to hire the Serpents to act as security. Resident Social Justice Warrior, Jughead, is already miffed about the non-invite to Picken’s day, but ups the angst when he interviews Toni’s grandpappy for a school project. Apparently, General Pickens isn’t quite the hero the town portrays him as and was hired by Barnabus Blossom to slaughter 400 of the Uktena tribe that lived on the land. Besides being the first people of Riverdale, the Uktena are also the founders of the Southside Serpents. Much to Cheryl, Jughead, and all the other white people in town’s shock and dismay, the indigenous people of the area were pushed out and murdered by Pickens and Blossom.
Jughead puts his pen where his mouth is and writes an article for the Register exposing the truth about Pickens which sets Toni off. She’s pissed at Jughead’s portrayal of her grandfather as some helpless victim and reminds him this wasn’t his story to tell. Jughead apologizes to Toni’s grandfather who expresses that an old wound has been opened and now they need to heal it. Great. The decision is made to stage a form of silent protest during the Picken’s Day festival. Toni takes the mic but doesn’t get much out before Hiram Kanye West’s her Taylor Swift and the Serpents are virtually ignored. By episodes end, someone has decapitated the statue and Hiram suggests to Mayor McCoy and Sheriff Keller it’s clearly the Serpents. Oh boy.
Photo: Dean Buscher/The CW — é 2018 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
Archie is still playing FBI informant with “Agent Adams” who produces some bogus paperwork stating Fred will be immune to any criminal proceedings. I still don’t believe this dude is actually an FBI Agent. Archie’s new mission is to get close to Hiram which proves difficult considering Hiram doesn’t think Archie is good enough for Veronica, which he tells him to his face. Gotta love a straightforward Dad. Archie joins the wrestling team to cozy up to Hiram (Hiram was a wrestling star in High School) and finds he isn’t as adept at it as he expected to be. Hiram and Archie engage in some displays of masculinity which ends in Hiram telling Archie he’ll tolerate him for Veronica’s sake until she moves on from this phase. Archie takes this as a challenge and the next day at wrestling tryouts, he manages to pin Chuck Clayton much to the chagrin of Hiram. Aside, while I believe Archie may be faster than Chuck, no way he’s stronger, but I digress. Hiram, impressed with Archie’s performance, invites him over and offers to tutor him in business. After all, if he’s to be dating his daughter, he must be worthy of her.
Besides wrangling the heavy nose breathing men in her life, Veronica is also trying to organize a duet with Josie and the Pussycats for the Picken’s Day event. Josie is compliant until her mother tells her that Veronica is just a pawn in a bigger Lodge game and is using Josie. Josie isn’t interested in being manipulated by a Lodge and ditches Veronica. This pisses of Hermione and we get a bit of foreshadowing concerning some Mama McCoy/Mama Lodge beef to come. At the Picken’s Day festival, just to rub salt in the wound between Josie and her former band mates, the performance gets announced as Veronica and the Pussycats! I certainly hope a near future episode will find Josie reconciling with her girls. Also I hope Val and Melodie get some more screen time and POV.
Photo: Shane Harvey/The CW — é 2018 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
Speaking of beef, I’m happy to inform you, Chic has not murdered and mutilated his family in the middle of the night, so that’s a plus. Hal, however, is not pleased with Chic’s presence at the dinner table. On the one hand, I have to agree with him; this person is a stranger, and a creepy one at that. On the other hand, this is his “son” right? He’s being awful harsh to a stranger he knows nothing about that is his offspring… The slightly irrational yelling and his going off with Penelope at the Picken’s Day event give me the feeling this is all some heavy handed character assassination of Hal so we won’t be mad later on when Alice has an affair with FP and we find out Chic is actually his so. Cause that’s probably where this is going, right?
Chic hasn’t murdered anyone that we know of, but Kevin informs Betty he’s seen Chic on these fantasy porn webcam sites. Betty is so intrigued by her new sibling because she thinks they share “the darkness”. They have some tense moments this episode, but Chic finally admits to Betty he snuck into her room the first night he was there. He couldn’t figure out why she came back for him, but now he thinks its because she feels alone in the house. Alone with her darkness. He explains to her that he webcams not just to make cash, but to escape. Betty in turn asks him to show her how to do it. Dark Betty’s about to be a web-caming porn mistress. And you thought the Serpent strip tease was too much.
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