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| Archie and the Red Circle |
First, remember how the Black Hood shot and killed Moose Mason and Midge Klump last week? Turns out that reports of their deaths were highly exaggerated! Moose ended up shielding Midge from the Black Hood's bullets and even Moose himself survived the experience and now recovers safely in the local hospital.
Early in the episode, Hal and Alice Cooper received a dossier from someone claiming to be the Black Hood. He claims that he's attacking the hypocritical underbelly of Riverdale, including an adulterer (Fred Andrews), a child predator (Ms. Grundy), and two sex-crazed drug abusers (Midge and Moose). They turned the dossier over to Sheriff Keller -- but not before publishing a copy of the letter in their newspaper! This leads Polly Cooper to escape from the family home. After all, the Black Hood is after sinners and she's an unmarried teen mom who's pregnant with the children of her cousin!
Then there's this weird conflict between Veronica and Hermione Lodge over Hiram Lodge's attention. Honestly, I really don't get it. Both are being really petty towards each other. But this leads to a family dinner where Archie finally gets to meet Mr. Lodge. Hiram encourages Archie to more aggressive take the fight to the Black Hood.
Speaking of which... After learning of the attack on Moose and Midge, Archie organizes a vigilante group that he calls the Red Circle (the name of Archie Comics' old superhero line of comic books). They plan to keep an eye out for the Black Hood so that they can stop him from hurting more students and so that they can get the police involved more quickly in attacks. Sheriff Keller hates the Red Circle, but Principle Weatherbee gives it his blessing.
During one of their first missions, Archie and Reggie save Big Ethel from being attacked by somebody -- presumably the Black Hood. (I'm not convinced...) They're glad that they saved Ethel, but wished that they could have gotten there faster. After Mr. Lodge's pep talk, Archie decides to step up his game. He's tired of the Black Hood's fear tactics, so he and the other students post a video threatening to brutally (and possibly fatally) take down the Black Hood!
Meanwhile, Jughead is still going to school at Southside High School. He's busy avoiding the Southside Serpents and rebuilding the school's newspaper. However, the school's rival gang -- the Goolies -- won't let the son of FP Jones go unmolested and end up jumping him. This leads Jughead to allign himself the Serpents -- including Toni Topaz, Sweet Pea, and Fangs Fogarty. This promises to create problems with Betty, who doesn't want Juggy in the gang and who also now has a romantic rival via Toni Topaz!
Lastly, Kevin Keller is really struggling right now. It really sucks being the only openly gay teen at Riverdale High. We learn that he's been going on "night jogs" into the woods. Basically, he's cruising men for sex. It was during one of these night jogs that he heard the Black Hood shoot Moose and Midge and called for help.
Betty quickly realizes that he's hooking up with strange men and begins a campaign of convincing Kevin to stop cruising the woods. During one of those confrontations, he tells her to back off. That it's not her place to approve or disapprove of this option -- what he feels is his only option for finding connections. She ends up telling Kevin's dad about his night jogs, which leads to an emotional scene between father and son -- but it also creates a major wedge between Kevin and Betty. I'm sure that they'll get over it eventually, but he's pretty much pissed at her right now.
One last thing, we learned of the Goolies in this episode, but we don't know much about them. They are rivals for the Southside Serpents and they deal drugs at the school. But they also have their roots in an old "Sabrina the Teenage Witch Show" spin-off called the "Groovie Goolies!" You can watch their theme song here. Much like Jingle Jangle, I'm sure that the Goolies of "Riverdale" will have little to do with their namesakes.
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| Groovy Goolies |