Dispatches from the Riverdale Register: "Sex Education"
Welcome back, Riverdale-heads! Before we get into the recap proper, I want to take a moment to plug cinema cauldron and their incisive piece, Archie’s Weird Multi-Media Fantasy.
Archie's Weird Multi-Media Fantasy
The line between television and film has been blurry since the ‘60s and ‘70s, after Walt Disney smudged it beyond recognition it in the ‘50s with the Wonderful World of Disney program. While Papa Rat can hardly be credited with pioneering the television movie - let alone putting movies o…
a year ago · madeline!
The entire thing is aces, but the specific points I want to lift up are Madeline’s run-down of Roberto Aguirre-Sarcasa’s writing background and influences, and how that swirling mixture contributes to something as daring as Riverdale. Side note: I have my own complicated relationship with Aguirre-Sarcasa’s work, stemming from the countless hours I sat in the booth running the sound board for a production of his sequel to The Crucible, Abigail/1702…but that is a story for another day.
This right here—the possibility of stories, and the relationship between different mediums—is why I started Bildungsroman Blitz. And it’s why I love Riverdale.
Let’s just cut to the chase. This episode is all about sex, baby. In a decision that is hilarious when you think about the future of horror movies, Riverdale High School’s resident authority figures Principal Featherhead and Dr. Werthers decide that the perfect thing to distract from the gruesome murder of Ethel Muggs’ parents is to go ahead with the planned sex-ed curriculum. And boy, are our Riverdale High School teens ready to plow forward into this subject area, if you know what I mean.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that teenagers onscreen are hardly ever played by teenagers in real life. Riverdale’s teens were played by adults in 2017, and are played by even older adults now in 2023. However, the show has been routinely criticized for over-sexualizing its teen characters, who have been anywhere between 15 and 17 during much of the show.
Teen Vogue published the first notable op-ed on this topic during the show’s second season, which you can read here. Some highlights are the fact that Riverdale often features sex scenes that could be considered gratuitous—they don’t move the plot forward, all they do is show the very attractive cast members shirtless (usually this is Archie and Veronica). I do agree that, for my money, Riverdale has twice as many sex scenes as the teen dramas of my youth did, such as The O.C. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I don’t think showing sex scenes between teenage characters, gratuitous or not, is inherently wrong.
Another point made by Teen Vogue is that the characters who are teenage girls are put in sexualized situations that are inappropriate for them to be in. Betty does a pole dance in a bar full of adults; Veronica, Cheryl and Toni are at various times dancing provocatively on stage in Veronica’s speakeasy, again, in front of adults. I do agree with this point. It can be chalked up to the fact that the intrepid teens of Riverdale really do run around acting like little adults (running multiple businesses, solving multiple murders, etc.), but it doesn’t mean that behaving like a sexual adult should be part of the heightened fantasy.
I say all this because “Sex Education” feels like a definite response to the critique of earlier seasons. It addresses the “little adult” thing by making all of the teens respond to sex and puberty like…well, teens. Some aren’t interested (Jughead), some are excited to the point of embarrassment (Archie), and some are aroused, but not by their sweethearts (Betty, Kevin, Cheryl). I cringed a lot during this episode, in a good way.
And yet, the episode also pushes back a little by indulging in a multiplayer fantasy dream sequence where our characters, clad in nothing but their underwear, get steamy in a humid jungle with plenty of partner switching. I am dying to know how much the writer’s room was influenced by “The Orgy” from Reefer Madness:
This sequence is partially why I declared this Riverdale’s horniest episode ever…everyone (especially the shirtless guys) is filmed for you to eat them up like eye candy. To me, this is the show embracing the fact that a) these actors are all really comfortable with each other at this point, and b) these characters, in a certain way, are actually adults trapped in teen bodies (you know, the Tabitha sending our adult Riverdale friends back in time to live as teens thing).
I’ll dish out more of my individual thoughts on the various couplings in the Stray observations section, but now it’s time to talk about the part of Riverdale we love the most—murder!
Ethel’s parents are confirmed to be dead, both stabbed to death. Ethel says that a milkman killed them, which Sheriff Tom Keller is skeptical about. At least Ethel has Jughead in her corner. She’s especially worried about the sheriff finding an incriminating drawing she made of her putting her parents through a meat grinder. Jughead, good friend that he is, offers to sneak into Ethel’s room and take it before Sheriff Keller finds it. He also grabs a copy of a horror comic called The Milkman Cometh, which tells a tale eerily similar to what Ethel says happened to her parents. Alas, Jughead is spotted and when his home is later searched, both Jughead and Ethel are called in for questioning.
I dug up something interesting on The Milkman Cometh. The comic is not real, but it is the name of an episode of Tales from the Darkside, George A. Romero’s horror anthology show from the 80s. The episode is about a mysterious milkman who seems to be able to grant anyone’s wish that they write down on a slip of paper and leave by the front door. What the protagonist soon learns is that each wish is granted with an unknown price—a classic monkey’s paw situation. We know that Ethel surely wanted to be out from under the thumb of her parents. Could she have wished for freedom from her parents, and the milkman granted it by killing them in front of her? Is Ethel just in denial about what she did? Or does Hal Cooper have a milkman costume lying around somewhere? Only time will tell.
Stray observations
Alice insists that Ethel stay with the Coopers after what happened, seemingly just out the goodness of her heart. My experience with Alice Cooper leaves me suspicious but I thought that was touching.
Betty says Ethel can stay in “my sister’s old room”. Where is Polly?!?
I wished that Betty and Ethel hung out more in this episode. Also, it’s not fair that Ethel doesn’t get invited to Veronica’s makeout party - she’s the one reading the sex ed book that Betty ends up stealing!
I forgot to mention this in the season premiere recap: Penelope Blossom is, of course, styled to look like Joan Crawford, particularly Faye Dunaway-as-Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.
Archie continues to be my absolute favorite. Watching his little mind be blown at the spoken word poetry performance, learning the poems don’t have to rhyme…never change, Andrews.
I was primed for a Betty and Jughead (MORE ON THAT IN A BIT) teen detective reunion when they both were headed to snoop in Ethel’s bedroom. Alas, they were just ships that pass in the night.
Possibly the wildest filmmaking choice ever on Riverdale is the cut from a horny Archie’s excitement about Veronica’s makeout party to nature footage of a flower and a bee.
Possibly wildest gag choice ever on Riverdale is Archie grabbing Betty’s teddy bear to cover up an unexpected boner. This never would have happened in Season One!
Clay boldly outs himself to Kevin, and asks Kevin to keep it a secret. I was not expecting that!
Post Office, the kissing game they play at Veronica’s, is a real thing. The fact that Kevin and Midge have to kiss, given their original timeline connection to Moose, is hilarious.
Jughead says tells Betty that it’s “nice to meet her” right before they kiss at the makeout party. I am so confused about Jughead’s relationship to everybody now! Archie and Betty are childhood friends, Archie and Jughead are childhood friends, why aren’t they all childhood friends?!? I need everyone to hang out with everybody going forward.
That being said, I really dug the Jughead and Veronica friendship scene! Something they never really developed in the earlier seasons, despite the fact that they share a similar taste in pop culture and literary references. Veronica also says, “You just hit the jackpot, Holden Caulfield”, which I take to be a nod to Mary Jane Watson’s famous line in The Amazing Spiderman (“Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot.”)
Sheriff Keller to Jughead denying he was at Ethel’s: “A neighbor spotted a teenager wearing a crown.”
Off-brand product names: Kingsley’s Guide to Human Sexuality is certainly the off-brand name of Alfred Kinsey and his two books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Toni is friends with a greaser girl named Lizzo, which is less a reference to the singer than it is a reference to Rizzo from Grease.
Real life product name: High Point Coffee…which is weird, because it hadn’t been invented yet. But I found this reddit post that proves Riverdale has referenced this as its instant coffee brand of choice before.
Who do we think killed Ethel’s parents? Share your theories in the comments!
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