RIVERDALE 3.17 Review “The Raid”
This post contains spoilers for Riverdale.
Check out our last review here.
There’s a sort of unspoken understanding with well-known adaptations that the main characters are going to make it. You know that no matter how many times Jughead Jones goes through a window, or how often Archie Andrews finds himself in weird life-or-death moments, they’re both going to be a-okay. Because of that shows like Riverdale don’t always succeed at moments of suspense.
“The Raid” pulled it off with flying colors. Two of the three main arcs of the episode focus on high stakes missions, and both of those plotlines make you lean forward in your chair. The first is Jughead and the Serpents on their mission to take down Gladys Jones and the resurrected drug trade in Riverdale. The tension in this part of the story might play so well because the Serpents throw off a drug bust halfway through the episode. It might also have worked well because there were so many tertiary characters that we’ve actually been made to care for helping in the raid of the apartment building. Either way, their mission to get the Gargoyles out was a stressful one! At least for now.
While Jughead deals with a mother who’s arming kids to shoot her son and the rest of the Serpents, Betty continues to try and crack the case of The Farm and Edgar Evernever. With Veronica wrapped up in her parents’ divorce, Betty enlists the help of darling cousin Cheryl, but it doesn’t take long for Evernever to win her over. Thankfully for Betty, Cheryl doesn’t give a damn about cult rules. Once she tells Betty she’s done being her spy, she also reveals that Edgar let her see her dead brother, Jason. Looks like Betty finally knows why Polly and Alice are so obsessed with the place.
There’s a strange duality to Betty and Veronica’s stories this week. V’s battling to keep her family together by whatever means necessary, while Alice has abandoned her very much alive youngest daughter to be with her dead son. Hiram comes through for his daughter, despite knowing that his (now ex) wife tried to have him killed twice. Meanwhile, when Alice sees Betty she simply reminds her who forsook whom, and goes on her merry way. Alice Cooper’s gone hard to be worst parent this season. That includes Gladys.
The final offering of “The Raid” is a surprisingly decent Archie storyline. The boys of Leopold and Loeb detention center are set to be transferred to a juvenile wing of Hiram’s new prison, where all of their old guards will be following and intend to start up the fight ring again. Veronica and Archie blackmail the governor, letting him know that if he doesn’t release the boys, they’ll go to the media, and the rest of the detainees are willing to testify in court against him. The boys are freed and basically left in Archie’s charge.
Baby Teeth basically dies immediately. But, in Arch’s defense, he never should have just been left five teenage boys to look after. I guess he could have, you know, not immediately taken said boys to a drug raid, but they all wanted to help Mad Dog look out for his family! It’s unfortunate that Mad Dog won’t be remaining at Archie’s gym, and will instead be fighting for Elio as a means to an end. He has consistently been the only scene partner to make Archie Andrews’ story interesting.
The reveals from The Farm, the tension of the Jones’ and the finality of the annulment of the Lodges’ marriage give us all quite a bit to chew on for the next few weeks. Riverdale will be taking a little Spring break, returning on April 17th. When it does, there’ll be drug busts, death threats, and gargoyles (oh my!). You know what to do if you had thoughts on this week’s episode while you wait!
