Once upon a time in the late ’00s, HBO provided a home for an unusual small-screen experiment called In Treatment. An Americanization of an Israeli series called BeTipul, the program ran in half-hour installments five days a week, with Monday through Thursday chronicling a therapist’s appointments with four of his patients, and Friday joining him as he checks in with his therapist. More novel than the unorthodox broadcast schedule was the format of each episode, which excised just about everything outside of the session, save a minute or two of setup. It was an ingenious gambit that played up the uniformly superb writing and acting (the cast included a pre-fame Mia Wasikowska, Dane DeHaan, and Alex Wolff, to name only a few), enabling the show to dig deeper and deeper into pure characterization with minimal intrusions from the outside world. Two people, two chairs and some dialogue — as in Dr. Melfi’s symbolic circular office on The Sopranos, there’s nowhere to hide in psychoanalysis.
Tessa Leigh Williams, the credited writer of this week’s Riverdale as well as the standout Carrie and Heathers musical highlights, clearly shares my abiding love for In Treatment and its innovative approach to dramaturgy. First cluing us in via the episode’s title, she adopts the earlier show’s structure in miniature with five brief visits to the guidance counselor Ms. Burble (guest star Gina Torres) packed into forty-one minutes. Mimicking a quiet, slow, minimalist drama may seem out of character for a show usually enamored of all things campy and over-the-top, but HBO’s boundary-busting cult classic proves to be a surprisingly productive point of reference. Working within those specific parameters results in the high point of the fourth season, an hour that augments the usual hilarity with clarity and maturity, two virtues largely alien to our beloved Hot Archie Who Fucks.
On the most basic foundational level, Williams’ choice to adopt this premise tends to the issue of disjointedness that’s been the primary bugaboo for the season thus far. Plotlines with no intersection — Veronica’s family troubles, Jughead’s sojourn off at Stonewall Prep — often leave individual episodes lacking in the ensemble feeling that initially made this show’s cast not just stars, but personalities that viewers would want to hang out with week in and week out. Williams knows better than to try to restore that much in the course of a single script, so she instead repurposes the isolation as a deliberate stylistic choice. For the first time, the self-contained plotlines feel like fully-formed short films instead of wisps seeking to link up with one another. She lays bare the divisions between the main cast, cycling through the entirety of one strand of story after the other instead of cross-cutting between them, and the episode’s a richer, more cohesive work for it.
More impressive still, these five vignettes set up Ms. Burble as a deconstructive force in the tradition of Frank Grimes, a sober-minded person inserted into an insane universe to put everyone’s behavior in perspective. The show often endeavors to take seriously the ridiculous circumstances that befall our teen pals, but it never sits quite right when it’s coming from these characters themselves. They’re all bound up in the internal illogic that keeps this show fueled and running, so it rings somewhat phony when they go from happily attuned to the madness to bearing its emotional weight. Coming from an outside agent like Ms. Burble, however, the response becomes that of our embedded surrogate. Characters keep stating the litanies of berserk nonsense visited upon them in plain, matter-of-fact terms, and she reacts with the same stunned, overwhelmed disbelief that we would. She’s just enough of a professional to couch it in a clinical back-and-forth, and Williams is enough of a professional to write her dialogue with plausible authority.
It’s pop-psych 101 buzzwords all the way down, from Veronica’s combo Oedipal/Elektra complex to the read of Archie’s dependency on patterns of dangerous thrill-seeking. Some diagnoses turn out to be more eyebrow-raising than others, welcome proof that even in an atypically grounded episode, there’s still room for the HAWF we cherish for its crazybones flights of fancy. Cheryl Blossom gets tested for chimerism — a negative result, phew! — while Betty and Alice go toe-to-toe after the mother discovers her daughter’s birth control and Yale rejection letter and rashly links the two. Their confrontation (the first segment, making the episode’s inability to really top it the lone flaw in an otherwise sterling outing) allows us to savor the line, “So you joining a cult, that was in my best interest? Not mentioning to me that you weren’t actually brainwashed the whole time, you were just undercover with the FBI working with my long-lost half-brother who I thought was dead, that was in my best interest?” Exquisite stuff, an expert execution of the reliable joke that is trying to explain Riverdale to someone else, but also a girl cracking under the comically outsized pressures heaped upon her.
Pressure — to achieve scholastically, to live up to the examples set for us by our parents, to attain an arbitrary standard of normalcy — emerges as the guiding theme for Williams’ larger creative enterprise. It’s the biggest stressor facing Gen Z, the presumptive audience for this show (the word “presumptive” doing a lot of work here) and the group of young people expected to pick up the mess created by the boomers, shrugged off by Gen X, and currently crushing the life out of the millennials. Veronica and Betty consider themselves top students, and both of them accept Ms. Burble’s advice as they chart new paths into higher academia for themselves. Likewise, Cheryl Blossom comes to grips with the fact that being the HBIC of the River Vixens may not be as important as keeping both of her feet planted firmly in the realm of the mentally well. Albeit a bit clumsily under the time constraints, this episode does in one night what the actual In Treatment spread out over its dense seasons, guiding someone in need of help to a better version of themselves.
The interlocking ideas about trauma and processing, the unhurried clip and plausibly penned speech of the therapy scenes, it’s all of a piece with an episode that excels on every front. We get some of K.J. Apa’s most committed acting yet, we get a flash-forward morsel that finally sheds some real light on what’s afoot, and credited director Michael Goi brings his A-game with crafty Hitchcock zooms and camera tricks aping the effect of a split diopter. It’s hard to imagine the rest of this season unseating this week’s installment as the high-water mark, but I’d love nothing more than to be proven wrong.
Stray observations:
- Cheryl Blossom was on fire this week, busting out her best verbal lashings to cow Ms. Burble like they’re fine china for visiting guests. First prize: “I don’t eat nougat, I don’t take bribes, and I don’t talk to trade-school flunkies about my feelings.” (Who doesn’t eat nougat? It’s just sugar and eggs!) Runner-up: retorting to the suggestion that Julian may be trying to drive her insane with “Of course! He’s a Blossom!” Honorary mention: clarifying that she’s being gaslit by asking “Like Ingrid Bergman?” No, Cheryl Blossom, like the other Golden Age Hollywood idol famous for starring in the movie Gaslight. Good on Torres for the muted note of exasperation there, the faculty member’s default response to a kid trying to nonchalantly show off how much she knows.
- This week brought a windfall of fake brand-name stand-ins, with the sweet-toothed Ms. Burble stocking such candies as Skit-Skat, Three Buccaneers, and Butterflinger.
- Sorry, Veronica, but when you run around all “daddy” this and “daddy” that, you don’t get to act indignant when a shrink pegs you for a classic case of daddy issues within five minutes.
51 Comments
Jasmine!
She is a mocchachino goddess
The second I saw it was Gina I was all she’s either the last sane adult in this universe or a giant vampire bat.
She certainly seemed like a sane adult all episode but I don’t really buy it either, I lean toward giant vampire bat
Wow I hate the Veronica-Hiram storyline. For a shining moment I actually thought she was going to take Gina Torres’ advice and walk away from her daddy issues, but no It took Cheryl long enough to realize she was being gaslit. You would think she would know all the angles with that as she has done it to both Josie and Toni
I was amused that Veronica’s interpretation of how to get away from her father was to “kill” him by entering into high-stakes business competition with him.
She still sees “winning” as the only way to be free of him, unfortunately. But as Canada Bill Jones said when it was pointed out to him that the poker game he was in was rigged; “I know, but it’s the only game in town.” Veronica (and let’s not forget she’s eighteen and has been raised by utterly morally bankrupt scumbags) can’t walk away because she can’t fathom not playing the game.
Basically, none of these people actually took Burble’s advice.
Hey now, Cheryl, Alice, and Jughead apparently did. Or well, Cheryl didn’t have much choice about the Vixens, but she quite happily got the chimera test and agreed that someone is gaslighting her.
Well, Alice gave Betty her money back.
The cleverest foxes are the easiest to corner once you use their own tactics.As for Veronica, while yes, I want her to blow this popstand forever and ever amen, let’s face it; she is Daddy’s Little Girl. Just grasping that this is the case and developing the coping skills/entire new core personality to actually walk away from that kind of enmeshed relationship is something else entirely. She learned, to quote Betty, from the best, after all. Got to give a shout out to Conseulos’s commitment to being the best worst daddy out there–this kind of soapy fury only works when the actor agrees to devote him/herself to working up the lather.
Gina Torres: You’ve got an unhealthy relationship with your father.Veronica: Yes.Gina Torres: One that the two of you keep dragging out longer, and longer, with his manipulative bullshit and your willingness to keep going back no matter what he does.
Veronica: Yes.Gina Torres: Though you hate him, you’re basically modelling your life after his.Veronica: Yes.Gina Torres: So if he’s as irredeemably evil as you say, then clearly the solution is to just walk away. Go to Harvard, and cut off your relationship with him. Break the cycle.
Veronica: So you’re saying I should turn down Harvard, and set up a rival business for the sole purpose of making his business venture look inferior? Thanks doc, you’ve cured me!
Seriously though, I did not realise that Veronica was actually 18 – I’d thought she just running out the clock until she could legally get her own place. Really proves Bumble’s point.
This would have been the perfect episode for Veronica to finally, finally stop calling Hiram “Daddy.” She drank his prized rum, she could have called him by his name and really hurt his feelings.
I wish Hiram would just freakin’ vanish. The show started declining when he appeared. He’s not even annoying. Just a dead weight.
His departure would give Marisol Nichols as Hermione’s character more room to breathe, too. She was way more interesting in s1 with Fred
Waaah, my daddy got me into Harvard! :(:(
My only disappointment is that Hiram did not have a more comically appalled reaction when Veronica said she was going to Yale.Honorary mention: clarifying that she’s being gaslit by asking “Like Ingrid Bergman?” No, Cheryl Blossom, like the other Golden Age Hollywood idol famous for starring in the movie Gaslight.
Diana Wynyard?
Rory Gilmore snubbed Harvard for Yale. I’ll add his ignorance of this to the list of why he’s the shittest antagonist on TV at the moment.
Is “Gilmore Girls” even a thing in the Riverdale universe? If it were, wouldn’t it would have an alternate name, like “Fillmore Girls”? And Veronica might know that Tory Fillmore rejected Harvard for Yale (where she was a legacy), but would Hiram know that?
I know that the show doesn’t consider his struggles “sexy” the way they do for say, their pinup of perfection Dark Betty, but considering Kevin was part of a cult, gave up a kidney, has had a series of terrible romantic relationships with partners who end up dead or banished, wouldn’t he make sense for this type of episode? Is he even on the show at this point?
And has been abandoned utterly by all his parental figures?
Wait, he has? I thought his dad and stepmother were still around, just offscreen.
Well, in theory, yes (his dad is still married to Attorney McCoy) but I find it amusing/disturbing that they’ve been totally offscreen/absent during this entire cult debacle! He is MISSING A KIDNEY!
Ah, okay, thank you. I was wondering if I’d missed some dialogue about them leaving town.
We had a glimpse of Kevin out running with his dad in the first episode this season. Since then, no Keller/McCoy parents in evidence.
Also, is his new step mom even around? I know Robin Gaven has another show she’s joined.
Why must there be a “what about Kevin?!” complaint every single week?Kevin Keller, while an interesting character, is by any measure a very recent addition to the Archie franchise. Why should he get to be one of the stars? Reggie, a character who’s been around since the 1940s, barely gets any focus in the show either, but I don’t see anyone complaining incessantly about that. (Nor should they: the show has *always* been structured around Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica and Cheryl. That’s it. Those five.)I’ll assume that these constant “where’s Kevin, make him the star!” whinges are due to fan appreciation for the character himself as a person, not for other reasons which I needn’t elaborate on, because *obviously* they aren’t motivating the complaints.
I have zero expectation of Kevin being the star, and considering how rotgut the writing is for the “stars,” I’m happy he isn’t. However, since he is a regular character, then I would think he will have a role at some point, and an episode like this would have made sense. The show chose to make Kevin more than the sassy gay friend to Betty and Veronica, they chose to put him into nonsensical stories involving cults and kidneys. They might as well do something with the material they created.
If recent additions are a reason to limit his presence, why doesn’t that apply to Cheryl?
I loved how Ms. Burble took a look at this crew and realized that if she was going to do any good, she had to acknowledge the context of crazy that is Riverdale. These people are reacting sanely to crazy, absurd situations.Archie, for instance, when he finally snaps and says he’s not an idiot, and he gets mad when he’s treated like a moron? Yes. Yes. As stupidly as he behaves, as shortsighted as his choices are, they are plausible considering the heap of lunacy he has tote around like a sherpa in some never ending climb up a Mount Everest of Issues with no end in sight. That doesn’t mean his reliance on his martyr complex and violent rampages aren’t infuriating and ridiculous, it means he’s got a neurotic attachment/addiction to dealing with his problems in that way.Same for the rest of them. It’s not like Veronica/Betty/Jughead/Cheryl don’t get what’s driving them like a pack of Rent-A-Center furies over hill and dale around and around this crazy town. They can intellectually grasp what’s going on. But grasping and dealing with the morasses of problems that are your life while you’re still in the middle of living it are two different things.
I loved the listing of all the things Cheryl has gone through too. Some of the choices they’ve had her made are still appalling (see Josie) but they’re definitely matched by all the shit the writers have put her through.
I really hope Toni isn’t revealed as the gaslighter, though. Maybe it’s Penelope, who has been living in the walls of Thistlehouse all this time, terrorizing her daughter.
My money is on Penelope or maaaaybe Nana Rose. But please not Toni. Cheryl desperately needs true love.
Gina Torres is phenomenal. It takes a strong performer to come in and make all this foolishness work, and she handles that load admirably. The kids actually come off more like kids than ever before, whiny and petulant and stubborn, in the face of her calm authority. There are only two possibilities for who’s gaslighting Cheryl: Toni or Nana. As much as I think Toni would be the more interesting choice, I don’t see that happening, since she seems just as weirded out by everything as Cheryl is. Also, why do Alice and FP not have custody of Dagwood and Juniper? Wouldn’t their adult grandmother be a more suitable guardian than their teenage aunt whose mental fitness is in question?
Don’t forget Penelope!And yes, the idea that two seventeen/eighteen year olds are the sole caretakers for two infants and an elderly woman would have every CPS agent and elder abuse attorney in the tri-state area kicking down the Thistle House door. In any real universe. As it is Alice seems to have forgotten not only Polly but her grandchildren as well.
Oh yeah, I guess Penelope could be behind the gaslighting too, since her whereabouts are currently unknown. Alice definitely remembers Polly; she apparently just likes Betty more. 🙄
It’s Riverdale. So of course two teens and a senile great-grandmother get custody of the twins. Riverdale logic.
So who do you guys think is gaslighting Cheryl? My money’s on her mother.
Burble’s words really made me appreciate how far FP has come as a character
How come Kevin didn’t get a segment? It’s not like the guy doesn’t have a lot of stuff to get off his chest.
I was wondering if this was going to go the way of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s In Treatment episode, with the poor unsuspecting shrink unprepared for the fire hose of insanity suddenly dumped in her lap, but Mrs Bumble took all the stuff about serial-killer genes and organ-harvesting cults and so on like an absolute champ – clearly she already knew a lot of what’s been going on in Riverdale, so it wasn’t a total swerve.I did notice Gina Torres breaking just a little when asking whether Cheryl really thinks it’s logical for the spirit of her dead brother’s devoured fetus to be inhabiting a creepy doll. No shame, Gina Torres – Riverdale dialogue must be difficult to deliver straight-faced. I’m particularly impressed that Madeline Petsch manages so well, she always gets the most ridiculous shit to say.It’s either sweet or naive that Cheryl realises someone is gaslighting her by moving the doll around the house, and immediately tells Toni.
Like as a viewer, I agree that Toni is the least likely culprit and think that it’s probably Julian living in the walls and secretly moving the doll around – but from Cheryl’s perspective, it’d almost certainly be either Toni or Nana Rose, right? Given she doesn’t realise there’s anyone else over the age of two living in the house?I’m kind of glad that the show pointed out that yeah, Alice isn’t a villain, but she’s still a pretty fucking shitty parent by any standard other than Riverdale’s. Betty will probably be a lot safer once she’s turned 18 and she can control her own life, because her mother has *terrible* decision making skills.
I was 50/50 on Gina Torres being secretly in league with one of the show’s villains. Nothing so far, but they could always be holding that reveal back for later.
I was excited to read in the morning Riverdale that the Carcosa Carnival (pride of Louisiana) will be coming to Riverdale.
It’s too much to hope for that Archie gamely tries to help out with the Crisis crossover, isn’t it?
Another fake brand-name stand-in I liked was whatever the hell they came up for Forbes. Can’t remember what Veronica said but the reference was clear. Also, anyone remember the goofy vigilante name they came up with for Archie last week? I can’t for the life of me remember it.
Lastly, I really suspected maybe Ms. Burble was a plant or something working for Hiram. If I’m right he now has a lot of dirt on the Riverdale kids. Although when she encouraged Veronica to ghost him my theory kinda went out the window.Rocket ship watch: Sadly, no.
Fibes. Or Fives. Veronica mentioned it last season, too.
Another fake brand-name stand-in I liked was whatever the hell they came up for Forbes. Can’t remember what Veronica said but the reference was clear.I wanna say “Five-bes” or “Fives.” But don’t worry: forfty per cent of all people missed that.
I’m surprised they didn’t go with ‘Blarvard.’
I immensely enjoyed Betty’s confrontation with Alice. I’ve been waiting for it since Season 1. (Why no, I have no unresolved mommy issues. None.) Alice seems to have reverted to her Season 1 persona: super-controlling, concerned about Betty’s academic performance, and well…everything. Her freaking out about discovering Betty’s birth control just seemed bizarre. For one thing, as Betty points out, she and Jughead sleep in the same bed. For another, Alice found out in Season 2 that Betty and Jughead were doing it (thanks, Chic) and simply asked Betty if they were “being safe.” Starting sometime in Season 2, Alice seemed to have mellowed a bit, and then of course in Season 3 she went completely bonkers when she joined the Farm. So now that’s all worn off and she’s back to being the Mom from Hell? Yeah, sorta. But that makes more sense than I initially thought. That is to say, it’s not totally unmotivated.
So the kids are 18? I know they have mentioned that they are seniors so far this season. My memory is kind of fuzzy on the timeline….. how many years have elapsed in the Riverdale Universe? I really hope that next next season, they skip ahead a few years so that we can see them in their early 20s.
Obviously no one was going to take Jasmine’s advise. Like others, I thought it would turn out she was a plant by a bad guy like Hariam or Betty fake FBI brother.
These traumatized teens finally get into therapy! (They directly
address Reggie being abused by his dad earlier, only to resolve it by
the two sharing their feelings offscreen after Reggie vengefully
vandalizes his prize automobile?) Hearing the kids summarize all the trauma they’ve endured is unintentional comedy gold! Riverdale, but this is one of the few each season that’s a diamond in the rough.
Of course just because Cheryl is being manipulated doesn’t mean she
shouldn’t seek treatment for an underlying disorder. By dissociating
from reality through her dead siblings, Cheryl exhibits more symptoms of
borderline personality disorder or even schizophrenia. If this was a
better series like She-Ra or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,
I’d say these signs were weaved in organically. Then I remembered they
quickly abandoned Betty’s dissociative identity so she could just use
the bob wig for sexytimes. So I’m betting any realistic nuance was
accidental. Some of the cast have been open about their own mental health issues,
which just emphasizes how the disconnect of this teen-targeted show’s
approach.
Over a month late on this, but thanks for the write-up Charles. Excellent as always.I actually thought Cheryl had the best segment this ep. A great showcase for all of the character’s sides: her strangely-specifically dated cultural references, her amazing quips and one-liners, and her resilience in the face of trauma and how her upbringing has left with her a strong need to feel in control (which unfortunately sometimes spills over into her being controlling). Betty and Alice hashing out some of their issues was great and overdue, but the set-up was clunky and shoe-horned. Whereas Cheryl’s therapy felt very of a piece with her character arc this season and last, especially.Meanwhile Tessa Leigh Williams wrote a great episode but somehow neglected to take a minute and google what exactly an Elektra complex is, because ELEKTRA DIDN’T MURDER AGAMEMNON. At its core, Oedipus complex=love mom, kill dad; Elektra complex=love dad, kill mom. Veronica doesn’t fall neatly into either category. If she were male, Oedipus would suit her better, but there’s a lot of “daddy’s little girl” to the Hiram-Veronica relationship. Meanwhile she doesn’t hate her mother or think her mother isn’t good enough for Hiram, so she’s not an Elektra. (Nor is she a Cordelia from Lear, although she at least got the literary allusions correct in that case.)