In the Riverdale recap, Archie stands at odds with his father and best friend while Veronica tries to make a run for office but finds out her family’s name isn’t helping her cause…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The battle lines have officially been drawn in the sleepy little town of Riverdale after last week’s revelation that Hiram Lodge plans to demolish the southside and then build a massive for-profit prison complete with housing for all the new employees that will be working at the facility.
As this week’s episode kicks off, Archie is now at odds with his own father and best friend thanks to his blind loyalty to Hiram Lodge and his belief that the prison will make Riverdale a safer place, especially after he saw his father get shot in broad daylight just a few months ago.
Of course, Jughead isn’t going down without a fight — or at least a protest — while Veronica is stuck in the middle after helping to orchestrate her family’s plans and now she’s dealing with the fallout at school.
Meanwhile, Betty is still facing a faux brother at home, who just keeps getting creepier and creepier by the week while poor Cheryl is undergoing a sexual awakening at the same exact time she’s starting to feel like somebody is watching her at all times.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Riverdale titled ‘Chapter Twenty-Nine: Primary Colors’…
Run for Your Life
With Hermoine Lodge kicking her campaign into high gear — including a random endorsement from some guy who hosts a show on Bravo — the fallout from Hiram’s revelation about a prison being built in town starts to result in some backlash from the townspeople. While Hiram tries to spin it as the prison will produce jobs and security for the town, many people believe this is just a cash grab that will ruin the heart of Riverdale.
Veronica is desperate to finally carve out her own piece of the pie after playing the dutiful daughter for several months while concealing her parents’ plans but they want her to lay low and avoid the spotlight.
Instead, Veronica decides to run for class president but that ends in disaster.
First she gets a strawberry milkshake poured on her head courtesy of Ethel Muggs, who is still seeking revenge after Hiram Lodge ran a Ponzi scheme on her father that left him out of a job and the entire family penniless. Rather than fire back, Veronica takes the high road and invites Betty to share her political ticket as best friends. Betty accepts and Veronica is back on track until she runs into Reggie, who is also running for class president and his snide remarks about Hiram building a prison where he might soon reside is just too much for her to handle.
She ends up knocking out Reggie with one punch, much to the chagrin of her parents who are not happy that Veronica is upsetting the apple cart right now.
Still, Veronica is determined to run for office so she tries one more tactic by bribing Josie to be her “celebrity endorsement” at school and that plans seems to work — complete with a random duet by the two of them in the middle of the day — but that strategy also backfires. It seems Josie was secretly pumping information to Ethel about all the nefarious dealings that Veronica has been making behind everybody’s backs and she prints out a sheet filled with those lies and starts handing them out to all the students.
Veronica is horrified but worse yet she loses Betty as a running mate when her bestie finds out that she knew all along about Southside High being closed down thanks to her father. Veronica finally confesses to her mother that she was only running for president to get the students on her side so she wouldn’t be viewed as the daughter of criminals but that’s all she’s known as at Riverdale High now.
Loyalty
While Veronica was trying to be president, Jughead was determined to stop Hiram from tearing down Southside High with his first plan of attack being a hunger strike (that seemingly lasted for about six hours). When that didn’t get anybody’s attention, Jughead convinces the rest of the Southside Serpents at school to join him in a protest where they chain themselves to the school to prevent the demolition.
To make matters worse on Jughead, he doesn’t have any support from his best friend as Archie continues to stick up for Hiram at every turn.
Not only does Archie personally deliver the demolition notice to Jughead about Southside High being torn down, but he even battles with his own father about Hiram’s plan to build a prison in town despite everybody’s objections.
As for Fred, he tells Archie that he’s severing all ties with the Lodge family from his construction contracts to the ownership stake he sold to them. He wants nothing to do with the Lodge’s or their dirty money.
To help facilitate the split, Fred calls in the big guns — his ex-wife Mary, who is a hot shot attorney living in Chicago. Mary’s arrival is not only a surprise for Archie but she also gives her hot-headed son a stern warning about revolting against his father and choosing to be on Hiram’s side in this fight. Mary won’t tell her son to stop supporting Hiram but she’ll be damned if he’s going to talk back to his father with such disrespect.
Of course, Archie is still being tormented with his decision to back Hiram but he finally gets something out of the deal when his benefactor asks him to remove Jughead and the other protesters from in front of Southside High.
In exchange for essentially turning on his best friend, Archie gets Hiram to release his father from any contractual obligation they might have had previously. Hiram follows through and so does Archie as he arrives at the school with the rest of the wrestling team to unchain the protesters and remove them so demolition can begin.
The good news is Archie’s dad is free and clear of the Lodge family but that only opens a path for Fred to do what he’s always wanted — he’s running to become the new mayor of Riverdale.
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
At the Cooper house, Betty confronts her creepy brother Chic with the DNA test results that prove that he doesn’t have any Blossom blood running through his veins. As it turns out that only proves that Chic isn’t related to Betty’s father, Hal Cooper, which also explains why he’s been so against this kid from the first day he arrived at their house.
Alice comes clean to her daughter that Chic isn’t Hal’s son while also admitting that she has a past with F.P. Jones but she refuses to acknowledge that there’s any chance he’s the father of that illegitimate child.
Meanwhile, Betty’s plan to catfish Chic backfires when she finds Kevin in her kitchen sharing milk and cookies with her half-brother. Not only did Kevin come over to hang out with Chic but he actually ratted her out and told him about the plan to find out as much as they could while using his online chat service.
That only puts Betty in an even darker place so she finally decides to offer a rather ominous warning to her brother late one night after waking up him with a flickering lighter in his face.
Betty tells Chic that she knows something is off about him but she’ll eventually find out what it is and when she does he’s going down. Betty is really good at bringing bad men down. She exposed Clifford Blossom. She tracked down the Black Hood. And as a not so subtle reminder to Chic, Betty mentions that all of her past foes are dead.
The next day, Chic confesses all of this to Alice while handing over one of Betty’s wigs that she uses when she goes dark. He also tells her that Betty is having sex with Jughead, which only sets off an even deeper mother/daughter conversation about always playing safe.
Betty tries to find peace with her brother but then Chic mentions the dead body that turned up in the Cooper house one night and how all the evidence — from fingerprints to DNA — would point back at Betty and Alice, not him.
Betty is deterred for now but she’s far from finished. She does decide to stay with Jughead for now because she can’t stand being in that house with Chic any longer. That also leads to a new pairing for school president after Jughead decides to fight back against Hiram on a different level and he’ll do so with his girlfriend by his side.
I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me
Cheryl Blossom is convinced that her mother and new uncle Claudius are out to get her and those suspicions are nearly confirmed when she finds the door to her room being rattled late one night.
To combat her growing paranoia about what’s happening at home, Cheryl invites Betty, Veronica, Jose and Toni to her house for a sleepover. It’s there where Cheryl divulges her fears over what’s been happening since Claudius suddenly arrived in town. The girls aren’t sure if she’s serious or just freaking out over nothing.
Later that night while sharing a bed with her new gal pal Toni, Cheryl comes clean that she really only wanted this to be a two person sleepover but her mother would have freaked out. Just when Cheryl leans in for a kiss with Toni, everybody is woken up by a loud crash in the hallway.
It seems Nana Rose has fallen down the steps and she needs to be rushed to the hospital.
Cheryl is convinced that Penelope and Claudius poisoned her grandmother and her suspicious are confirmed when the doctors find a trace amount of a substance that puts a person into a paralytic state. Of course, Penelope explains that Nana Rose just likes chewing on that particular root from her garden and apparently it resulted in her taking a tumble down those stairs.
Still, Cheryl isn’t buying it so she finally confronts her mother but of course she denies all of it. To make matters worse, Penelope then tells Cheryl that she needs to pack her back because they are sending her for help.
When Toni arrives to check on Cheryl, Penelope says she’s been sent away to some posh, private school in Switzerland. Toni doesn’t believe her mother and with good reason.
It turns out, Penelope had Cheryl committed to the Sister of the Quiet Mercy monastery (the same one where Polly was taken after Jason Blossom’s murder) to help with her gay conversion therapy. As she prepares for the first treatment, Cheryl is horrified at what may be happening now that she’s gone from home, especially when it concerns her grandmother Rose.
Penelope and Claudius are up to no good but now who’s going to be around to stop them?
A new episode of Riverdale will debut next Tuesday night at 8pm ET around the world.
