The 6 Craziest Things That Happened On Riverdale Tonight
Three episodes into the third season, I'm beginning to wonder if every single person in the town of Riverdale has lost their goddamn mind. There were so many insane decisions being made in tonight's episode, even by people who can generally be relied on as the voice of reason (looking at you, Betty Cooper!) Meanwhile, Archie appears to have been sentenced to two years not in juvie, but in somebody's Fight Club porn parody. Here, the six most insane things that happened in "As Above, So Below."
1) FP and Alice have officially rekindled the flame.
Okay, this wasn’t so much insane as insanely hot and overdue, TBH. Less than two minutes into the episode, the good ship Falice makes its presence known with a glorious scene in which FP and Alice lie around in post-coital bliss and make pillow talk about cults. Adorable! It turns out there really might be an upside to The Farm, because according to FP it “opened Alice up to the possibility of us”.
The only downside to this scene: the Betty/Jughead bedroom scene that immediately followed it, because the less time we all spend thinking about that awkward vaguely incestuous relationship parallel, the better.
2. Betty and Jughead making Dilton’s bunker their new love nest.
You know, the super cozy, not-at-all creepy underground lair where Dilton was storing all of his satanic artefacts in the months before he committed suicide. If this place doesn’t scream “sexy time”, I don’t know what does! This whole thing was bad enough in the beginning of the episode, but later on it gets even worse when Ethel Muggs insists on meeting Jughead at the bunker for a Griffins & Gargoyles initiation ceremony, and drinks poison in front of him. Even after this horrifying interlude, Bughead are still shown using the bunker as their romantic hideaway! I get that privacy is hard to come by, but I just think there has to be a better option out there.
3. Archie is forced to join a secret prison fight club.
Are… Are we sure that Archie wasn’t accidentally taken to a maximum security prison, because nothing about this place seems like a juvenile detention facility. I get that Hiram essentially owns the entire local justice system, but shouldn’t there be a little more oversight than this? Shouldn’t Fred be showing up to check on Archie in reality, not just in his dreams? Is anybody calling their representatives in this town? This cannot be constitutional.
In any case, the cartoonishly evil warden forces Archie to take Joaquin’s place in the fight club, and Archie appears to have casually developed superhuman fighting abilities, so acquits himself extremely well. He seems to get a little too into character, screaming at one opponent “Come at me, wuss, make me bleed!” It’s altogether… a lot. “The only way any of us are getting out of here is in a body bag,” a fellow inmate says, but Archie is determined to make it back to the world. (Important question: Does KJ Apa have a shirtlessness clause in his contract this season, between the slow-mo fighting here and the slow-mo hose down last week?)
4. Jughead willingly plays Russian roulette with a poisoned chalice.
JUGHEAD. What?!?! Did I miss something in this scene, because I was trying to figure out any way in which Jughead might have somehow known which chalice was poisoned. But I think he genuinely had a 50-50 shot, which is extra insane considering he’s the one who found Dilton and Ben! Is getting a hold of the rulebook really this important? Almost weirder than Jughead’s casual disregard for his own life is Betty’s total lack of reaction to it later on – the two of them are cracking jokes about it at Veronica’s speakeasy! “You’ve still got some Fresh-Aid on your lips,” she says, affectionately, without a hint of worry at the realization that her boyfriend almost drank poison. Am I reading too much into this, or do Bughead seem a little… brainwashed?
5. Jughead says the words “It’s over.”
J U G H E A D. What are you doing? You never say ‘It’s over” about a horror movie situation, unless you want to guarantee that it most certainly is not over! FP burns the only copy of the Griffins & Gargoyles rulebook, prompting Jughead and Betty to shrug and figure all their Gargoyle King troubles are behind them. Cut to: the next day at school, when a copy of the rulebook has been left in every single student’s locker courtesy of Ethel.
6. Ethel drinks the Fresh-Aid and summons the Gargoyle King.
This was probably the least insane thing anybody did in this episode, honestly. At least Ethel has a clear objective! Betty and Jughead also began to suspect that there’s a connection between The Farm and the game – and more specifically that Edgar Evernever may be the Gargoyle King – but when Betty brings it up with some “Farmies”, it turns out that Alice is the one who’s introduced the game to the group. Going into next week’s flashback episode, it’s pretty clear that this dark event in the parents’ collective past involves Griffins & Gargoyles. Can’t wait to find out what insanely terrible decisions the teenage FP, Alice, Fred & co make in a week’s time!
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