Riverdale Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Tales From The Darkside

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Riverdale has been exceeding our expectations ever since it debuted earlier this year by taking the classic characters we know and putting it in a much darker series.

For the most part though, the actual episode structure has been pretty standard throughout, but now the second season's seventh episode has shaken that up with "Tales From The Darkside."

Typically in your 60 minute episode including commercials, you have probably three ongoing plots but they go back and forth between one another throughout the episode, as they are occurring chronologically.

This week's episode decides to go a different route with the anthology theme as there are three separate stories here that each take up about 1/3 of the episode.

We get a very creepy intro here that is almost like an old documentary talking about the Black Hood, where it was revealed that a letter was left at Pop's from him saying the town had 48 hours to prove they weren't all sinners.

If they are able to prove they are pure of heart, he will stop killing.

We get a quick intro here with Jughead and Betty, which ends up with him getting a call from the Southside Serpents' lawyer Penny Peabody, who is calling in that favor she owes him.

After meeting at Pops, she asks him to transport what we know is some sort of drugs, though they refer to as pancake mix here, so that Jughead can get a cut to help Penny get his dad out of jail.

This then leads into the first segment, Archie and Jughead.

Jughead goes to Archie to ask for his help, as he has to deliver this crate of "pancake mix" to Greendale that night and he needs Archie's dad's truck.

The two embark and get the crate, but get a flat tire in the meantime.

They try to decide what to do when a guy in a truck comes up and offers to take Jughead and the crate to Greendale for the $18 Jughead has with him.

This was a nice cameo by Tony Todd, who has been around for years, but CW fans may recognize him as the voice of Zoom from The Flash in season two. He definitely plays the creepy role well, which fit the theme of this episode.

They end up stopping at a gas station and diner and eating, which the guy then tries to make Jughead pay for the meal, saying he used the $18 on the gas already.

He tries to screw him over and leave Jughead there while taking the crate for himself, but Archie shows up after getting the tire fixed and offers to pay and they are off on their way again.

They get to the location to drop off the crate, where the person there knows exactly who Jughead is.

Evidently, Penny Peabody has now got the Serpents running drugs with the Ghoulies all locked up right now, and she said Jughead will be running more for them.

Archie and Jughead end up at Pops talking, when Jughead decides to go visit his dad since Penny had told him he got beaten up badly in jail.

When he gets there and sees that he is fine, he goes to Penny and finds out that she is now blackmailing them.

She will force him to keep doing this for her, or she will release the video showing both him and Archie delivering the drugs, ending this first part of the episode.

The second portion of the episode stars Josie, which is more filler than anything here.

The main story of this segment is that Josie is staying at the school late at night practicing her music, when it appears she has some sort of stalker, with items being left behind for her.

We get various characters like the janitor showing up acting creepy, and then we get the return of Chuck Clayton, who is most known for getting the bad side of Betty in season one when she went full Dark Betty.

Chuck seems to have a crush on Josie though and asks her out, in which she says no. However, another night she asks him for a ride home and they end up at Pops having a great time dancing together.

Her mom shows up freaking out with Sheriff Keller looking for her.

When they get home, she reveals she's been getting death threats and Josie was part of one of them as well, so she was so worried when she didn't answer her phone.

The messages and everything get weirder though, with a drawing left behind saying that says "If I can't have you, no one can," along with a pig's heart in a box. The episode makes us think it's the creepy janitor, though Chuck gets the blame for it. Sheriff Keller doesn't seem to think Chuck actually did it in the end.

Josie then has a horrible nightmare where the Black Hood slits her throat, with her waking up struggling to breath.

Then, the segment concludes with it implying that it was really Cheryl, who appears to have a creepy crush on Josie as she is drawing pictures of the two with the exact same art style as the other. This

The final segment follows Betty and Veronica, where Betty starts to put clues together that makes her believe Sheriff Keller may be the Black Hood.

This starts with how no one should have been able to get into the prison to kill the Sugar Man last episode besides him.

Betty gets Veronica to help her investigate things, which leads to Veronica sleeping over at Kevin's as she believes the sheriff is having an affair.

While searching the house, she finds Keller in the basement working out, showing he definitely has the strong body to be the Black Hood.

On the way, she discovers his study is locked, and later noticing that he left for hours during the night.

This leads to Betty going during the day the next day and using a hidden key at the house to get in and break into the study, where she found a giant wall of information on the Black Hood and the seven deadly sins, as well as a Black Hood in the drawer. Sheriff Keller comes home here and finds her, where he brings in her dad.

He explains that all of that is just his case notes on everything and the black hood is the one found in Archie's locker.

In addition, he shows her his logbook that shows where he was during all the previous attacks.

Betty still doesn't believe him though, so her and Veronica go on a stake out that night to find out where he's going every night.

They track him to a motel, where Betty thinks he's going to kill his next victim. Instead, they discover he is actually sneaking around with Mayor McCoy, Josie's mother, instead, while his wife is stationed overseas.

This leads back to the scene we saw part of earlier at Pop's where Archie and Jughead are sitting there at near daylight. Betty and Veronica are at another booth, while Josie and Cheryl are at another.

After Jughead leaves to go visit his dad as we saw earlier, the phone rings and Pop answers it.

It is the Black Hood on the line and he says Riverdale has failed his challenge and that the "The reckoning is upon us."

"Tales from the Darkside" was a very different, but yet very enlightening episode of Riverdale.

Even with the more fillerish Josie plot, we got some potential for what could be a new relationship there, while the other two helped to push forward the main plot in a very unique way.

The CW