Riverdale Season 3: 3 Ups & 5 Downs From 'Jawbreaker'

1. Dead Ain't Dead... Apparently

One of the more intriguing narrative threads concerning The Farm was the revelation that the group somehow allows its members to spend time with their lost loved ones. At last, we had some clarity as to why countless people were signing up to be a part of the cult and, at the very least, it explained why Alice and Cheryl were so quickly enthralled by it. Despite the season's issues, this actually made sense. Well, at least it did until this week.

'Jawbreaker' saw Betty realise that, in order to convince Alice and Cheryl that The Farm was brainwashing them, she had to prove that their deceased relatives, Charles and Jason, were actually deceased. What, what? No, that's ridiculous Betty, surely they are well-aware of the fact that their loved ones are dead - that's why they are desperate to spend time with them at The Farm, right? Wrong apparently.

In a ridiculous twist, Alice and Cheryl were not only convinced that they had been seeing their lost loved ones but that Charles and Jason, in fact, never died. To make matters worse, Cheryl was convinced that the footage of Jason's murder (which the entirety of Season 1 was based upon) was fabricated by technology. Seems legit.

While brainwashing isn't exactly unheard of for cults, the fact that Cheryl went from completely unconvinced to defying logic in the space of a single episode (that picked right up from the previous one) is just too far of a stretch.

Too often, the Riverdale writers think that telling us information is a valid excuse for not showing us important events, and that was clearer than ever here. If (and that's a big if) we saw how Alice and Cheryl got to this point, maybe their unusual beliefs would have been a little more convincing. Right now, though, it just feels like it's been done for nothing more than shock value.

-

Did you enjoy this week's episode of Riverdale? Tell us in the comment section below.