Hi friends! I hope you’re all well. Today I’m reviving TV Tuesday once again to talk about Riverdale one last time, here we go, the seventh and final season.

Here we go, the final season! I never thought we’d get here, but here we are. I honestly thought this show would just keep going, but I’m glad it’s finally ending. Now let’s see what it has in store for us.

We’re in 1955, and everyone is back to being a senior in high school… which I’m not really sure why because they really can’t pull off teenagers anymore, but alas.

Jughead is the only one who remembers the future, everyone else is completely oblivious. He wants to try and get them to remember, but they all think he’s a little crazy, especially Archie.

It’s Angel Tabitha who comes to visit Jughead and tells him that she needs to erase his memory because it could either drive him crazy or lead him to do something that could ruin them getting back to their future. So much for having him be the one to guide them back.

On top of this the show has taken a turn in direction a bit, I guess it’s their way of showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement because we learn about Emmett Till and how the students want to share the news and get justice for his murder. I get supporting the movement, I’m all for that, but did we really need to go back to the 1950s for that? We could have stayed in the present year since these things still, unfortunately, happen today.

It’s also interesting to see characters who we know are gay, be so hateful towards the LGBT community. I get it’s the times they’re in, just very interesting.

I kinda don’t like that we have to see all these characters start all over again with each other, like come one. Every character has practically been with one another throughout the entirety of this show, it’s getting old.

Although… I can’t say I hate Jughead and Ethel.

I also don’t like this Julian character they’ve brought in to be Cheryl’s twin brother. He screams trash, I can only imagine we’re going to get that from him.

All the 50s lingo has been super fun to listen to though because it feels so different.

So what is with all the sex talk and the obsession with it? We have one episode where everyone is making out with everyone and I’m totally confused and lost. Then we have another one where Cheryl and Archie “go all the way” (but they really don’t) and all of a sudden they have to get married?! They made it seem like the Cheryl was pregnant or something, it’s been wild.

Even Fangs and this new girl find out their pregnant because Toni knows how to do a home pregnancy test… the whole frog laying eggs thing was cool, but also super weird.

Like I said before, it’s like we’re starting from the beginning with all these characters. Cheryl is using Archie as a beard, essentially, but of course Toni tells her she can’t live her life as a lie.

Then there’s Kevin who’s using Betty, but Betty finds out. At first she’s hurt, but then she finds understanding because she got the hots for Archie… and I don’t know (or care) who he has the hots for anymore.

The couple I’m kinda liking and didn’t think I would, is Jughead and Veronica of all people. She apparently likes the same horror as him. They have this whole Creepshow like episode where he has to write a whole comic for the horror comic book company he started working for, and she helps him… until she realizes that he’s sees women as demonic in a way and she stops talking to him.

The plot with Ethel and whether she killed her parents was getting interesting until they shipped her off to that Sisters cult where they were exposed for doing experiments, so great.

Then we see Cheryl’s father, the school principal and one of the teachers meeting to discuss what they’re going to talk about in the paper because the parents on the PTA board have been complaining about Ethel and the sex and they’re like, in order to get them to stop talking about that, we’ll let get them to hate and complain about the horror comics. So strange.

Also, so something I thought was interesting. As soon as Jughead lost his past (future) memories, he became a loner. Like in the first few episodes, people knew who he was, and then as soon as he changes, no one paid him any mind… especially Archie who is supposed to be his best friend. 

So Jughead gets his name in print and the principal is furious. It comes to an ultimatum where he can write for the comic or continue to be a student… he can’t do both, which wow. It’s Ray Bradbury, of all people, who talks to the principal and cuts him a deal so he can do both.

It’s so crazy to me that Kevin’s dad is so hell-bent on turning his son straight that he arranges for him to have sex with a woman. You’d think he’d not want his son to have sex because all the other parents are so worried about it, but I guess he feels like his son being gay is worse, which is so infuriating to watch.

Speaking on this though, I didn’t really like the way that Toni has been trying to get Cheryl to admit she has feelings for her. It’s almost like Toni is bullying her and I’m like, the times are already hard enough as it is, why do you need to force her out of the closet like that?! It just doesn’t sit right with me, nor does it feel true to Toni’s character.

I’m also getting tired of the sex-mania that this show has taken on. I get that teens are curious, but geez, every episode has people either making out, talking about sex, or actually doing it. It seems that only Veronica and Jughead are the only two who are exempt from the craze. Jughead is too into his comics and Veronica has now started working at the movie theatre… a theatre her parents planned to buy and turn into a parking lot, well that’s very on brand. But of course, she plans to take it back and buy it from them. Can you say drama? Is Hiram Lodge going to come back from the dead?!

Back to the sex craze though, Betty has been really curious and when she can’t get it from Kevin, she and Archie start a thing… through their window. All they’re doing is looking at each other and everyone is in an uproar.

I hate that she’s looked down upon, while Archie is cheered on, it’s so gross – true of the times, but so gross nonetheless.

I do like that he gets frustrated that their parents are controlling their thoughts and actions. He and Betty want to start taking back everything. But of course, now the principal has a new target in Betty now that he’s done with Jughead.

So after basically bullying Cheryl into admitting feelings… Toni breaks up with her?! WTF?!

Reggie is back! But if course because it’s 1955, we have to depict how racist everyone is to him. I’m telling you, we really didn’t need to go back in time for this… it happens still today.

Also, I’ve been wondering how all of this is going to relate to the comet and getting back to the present/future. Tabitha comes back and is very chummy with Jughead – they are quite cute, but she brings him a story about a comet… could this be their way back?!

I also don’t get why they killed Ray Bradbury off? I had to literally Google him to see if he actually died in the 50s by suicide, no he died in 2012 to an illness. I didn’t get why they changed his story. The show could have easily made up a fictional author for Jughead to look up to who had a secret black wife. Why did it have to be Bradbury?

As much as I’m not into all the obsession with sex, I do like that they’re trying to flip it on its head by making it the girl who’s obsessed with sex and not the boy. Although, I’m not a fan of the third degree Betty is getting about it, because boys wouldn’t get this treatment. Like her own mother disowns her… crazy!

For a town that isn’t into Halloween, they sure did decorate and celebrate.

On Halloween night, four of the basketball players end up into the river and it’s Reggie who saves them. I find it weird how attached Cheryl is to her brother Julian when he winds up in a coma – like doesn’t she realize he’s a douchebag.

Now Cheryl’s father wants to replace Reggie on the basketball team for a more “American” boy. Alright. I do like that when Cheryl finds out, she tells Archie who then does his Archie thing by saying the team will walk off if they cut Reggie loose… that solves that.

I do like that they’re keeping up with the Milkman killer. Because when they realize Bradbury didn’t kill himself… they asked Jughead to help solve the case… and they realize it was the Milkman. Then Ethel runs away from the Sisters because they’re abusing her and the Milkman finds her… but she kills him.

Now she can’t stop writing about it, even when she’s told not to. So I’m curious where this is going to keep going. It hasn’t been that spooky, but it’s been an interesting plotline – a better one than the sex ones if you ask me.

This show just took a turn… we’ve been dealing with a lot of social justice topics this season… but now the amount of times they’ve started to say “it’s not American” is getting gross.

Hiram is back from the dead!!! And he wants back in Veronica’s good graces… come on can we move past this plot? So, the only reason he wants back is for her help because the FBI think he’s a communist. I have to say, claiming everyone as a communist came out of left field. I mean, I guess that was of the times, but there was no lead up to it, it just happened.

OMG THEY BROUGHT GRUNDY BACK FROM SEASON ONE!?!?! After accusing the previous English teacher, who was working with Archie, a communist (the new thing apparently) they bring Grundy back to be the English teacher… are they going to have an affair again? I’m so glad they didn’t go down that road again.

I like that Archie wanted to explore writing and poetry. I hated that his uncle Frank was not into it. I was really getting tired of uncle Frank, I’m glad Archie’s mom told him to leave because ugh!

I thought there wouldn’t be a musical episode this season… but I was wrong. Oh man did I hate it. I only half watched the episode because I just couldn’t. What I got out of it was that Kevin’s dad disowned him (that was freakin’ sad) and Betty and Veronica finally kiss. They’ve been teasing it all season so it finally happened.

They have a beauty contest, where Midge, a new character, is thrown out for being pregnant and so Ethel decides to compete with Betty’s help. Obviously her mother can’t stand that because she doesn’t represent “the best of Riverdale” but I’m glad the girls band together to help keep her in because in the end she wins, how sweet!

Wait a minute… Betty actually won, but her mother said Ethel’s name instead. What a change of heart her mother had. I know her mother, deep down, wants best for women, but she’s stuck in the repressive state of the world that she doesn’t know exactly how to break out of it. She’s scared of the repercussions and so she sticks to the status quo, but seeing her break out like this a step in the right direction and I liked that. This plot turned out better than I thought it would.

It feels a little weird to have the follow up episode to lasts because Betty’s mom is all suppressed in herself again. So they bring Polly back this season and she’s a burlesque dancer and their mom is obviously ashamed of her.

It explains why her mom is so worried about her, but I thought we were making progress. Nope. Because she refuses to see Polly when she performs and then slaps Betty when she says she wants to follow in Polly’s footsteps.

On the flip side of that, we’ve got all the characters now experimenting with each other, like Archie and Reggie are I’m not really sure what, but hey they do them.

We also have Cheryl and Toni do a sexy photoshoot. They’re looking at these photos out in public, then Cheryl paints one and leaves it out in the open, so of course her mother finds it. They really do a terrible job of hiding things if that’s what they’re trying to do.

With only a few more episodes to go… I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever make it back to present day.

Plots are starting to wrap up and boy do we get a whole dump of info and does it come quick.

The milkman storyline is back. Jughead starts to put all the pieces together. He believes that Doiley’s dad knows more than he’s saying about an atomic bomb hitting Riverdale. Doiley says it has to do with the plutonium his dad found in the mines… the mines that just happen to belong to the Blossoms. So he asks Cheryl to do some digging.

1. She finds her parents speaking Russian, which I thought was SO out of left field
2. She also finds a hidden room full of milkman costumes.

It turns out, everyone who died from the ‘milkman’ had worked for Mr. Blossom at one point or another and had gotten too close to information, so they had to be dealt with. We then learn that the Blossoms were Russian spies? Alright then. So that ends that as they’re arrested.

Then we get a whole backstory on Ethel. Betty stumbles upon a photo of her dad holding a baby and a bunch of receipts, like her dad was paying Ethel’s family off. WELL, turns out Ethel’s mom was their housekeeper who had an affair with Mr. Cooper and so that was their way to cover the child support costs.

This is then supposed to explain why Mrs. Cooper has been the way she has towards Betty and Polly – it was never anything they did, but of the shame she herself felt. She didn’t want her daughters to ever be in that position. That’s still really shitty and unfair, if you ask me.

Ah so ‘Angel Tabitha’ the Tabitha from the future, comes back and she has to explain to him who she is. Then she makes him watch all of Riverdale (how meta, I’m glad we didn’t have to watch it). Then she tells him, she can’t bring anyone back to 2023. All she can do is let everyone watch their memories (the show) and let them decide if they’d like to remember their ‘old’ memories or not.

Most wanted to see, Kevin said no because Clay wasn’t in it (I didn’t think he was in previous seasons) and Julian didn’t either (they said it was because he was a doll, which is true, but he was also named Jason and was dead for most of the show). I have to say I don’t remember the Doiley character before this season. I looked it up, he was in season 1 episode 1 and that was it before this season. Strange that they brought him back. I do have to say, most of this season they’ve really stereotyped him and didn’t treat him right, and I’ve hated how he was brought in to be the punching bag, especially for the basketball team.

Veronica asks Angel Tabitha if they can only remember the good memories and of course they can! So that’s what they all go back and watch. Jughead chooses to remember both the good and bad.

And just like that Riverdale is over. I think it was supposed to be sad but I thought it was just ok. I feel like I’m past the point of truly caring about these characters.

So I guess I get why we went back in time, but I don’t like that it took until the finale to figure it out. We’re now in the ‘present’ 2023 and Betty is 86 years old and the last one from her high school friends to be alive. She’s telling her granddaughter all she wants is to go back to Riverdale one last time. Then bam! Young Jughead shows up and tells her he can take her.

He takes her back to a day she missed, the last day of senior year; seeing all her friends one last time; getting to say goodbye to them and having them sign her yearbook. As she says goodbye to them, Jughead tells her how each of the character’s lives went, which I thought was clever. Most had really good, rich lives, with families and careers, some shorter than others. What I didn’t like was that Betty told Archie his future, like why do that to him? She didn’t tell anyone else theirs.

We get the big ‘reveal’ how Archie, Betty, Jughead and Veronica were in a quad relationship their senior year, which is anyone surprised at this point? I knew before I started season 7, but after watching this season, and everyone being together and making out, it seems pretty obvious.

After Betty has said goodbye to everyone, Jughead brings her back to the present. Then her granddaughter does bring her back to Riverdale so she can see it one last time. Just as they reach Pop’s it looks like she’s sleeping, but really she’s passed on.

At least she’s reunited with everyone back at Pop’s where they are all seventeen forever in death. So that’s why they jumped to the past, so everyone could live out their lives and their characters could be put to rest, quite literally.

I have to say Archie joking about all their lives was pretty hilarious. I’m not really going to miss this show in terms of content, but I will miss writing about it and how crazy things got. I made it; it’s been a rollercoaster, but I made it.