‘Riverdale’ Season 4, Episode 6 Recap: Betty Was Right About Charles
Each episode of Riverdale tends to raise questions for the characters and viewers. Fans are watching the drama unravel with an eerie feeling that something bad is about to happen. Several bad things happened in Hereditary, setting Riverdale’s kids (and parents) up for an uncertain future this senior year.
Jughead and Betty like to investigate but when they find what they’re not necessarily looking for, it’s like poking a hangry (yes, hangry) bear. Genes and family were a theme in the Nov. 13 episode, but here’s a look at what happened.
Archie and the El Royale
In the opening scene, the threat of the week is local Riverdale gangster Dodger, who is fuming that his supply of kids to exploit is dwindling. It follows Archie throughout the whole episode. Archie and Reggie discover that the gym has been vandalized and Archie implores Sheriff Jones to go after Dodger directly. They’re in a full-blown turf war but he’s adamant about protecting the kids that come to the community center.
Throughout the episode, Archie is worried about Dodger, and F.P. tells him they raided his arcade and found nothing. Now what? Archie tries to convince two boys to leave Dodger’s arcade and business alone and offers an alternative, but he needs help pulling everything together.
At one point, Hiram Lodge goes to see Archie to offer condolences and a charitable donation in the form of a blank check. Archie refuses, thinking he has a hidden agenda. In a separate scene, Veronica, the generous girlfriend, wants to recruit vendors to help get arcade machines into El Royale and food from Pop’s for the kids. She tells the kids, who become excited, and it’s enough to lure them away from Dodger.
Archie, Veronica, and crew pull off getting an arcade set up at El Royale, but Archie is confronted outside by Dodger. He knows Archie is the masked vigilante, and subtly declares war before the cops show up. Things escalate. Later in the episode, Archie comes home to find a mask nailed to the door, and before he can get his mom safely out the house, it gets shot up in a drive-by. It’s a drive-by in Riverdale, guys.
This is enough to prompt a desperate Archie to reach out to Hiram for help with Dodger. He refuses, saying he can’t help with his request to inflict violence against Dodger. Funny enough, close to the end of the show, Archie and Reggie arrive at El Royale and find a bloodied Dodger wrapped up in a rug. They call an ambulance.
Jughead
Jughead opens up to Betty about having writer’s block. He’s consumed with finding out about his grandfather’s time at Stonewall and that book series. He goes into investigator mode.
Jughead digs deeply into the book series and has discovered that the styles are too different to have the same writer. He can tell when a new ghostwriter takes over and believes his grandfather might have written the first edition in the series. He thinks Dupont did the rest but is taking credit for starting the “Baxter Boys.” Now he’s on a mission to prove it and tells Betty. They swap conspiracy theories.
Jughead finds out his grandfather has been erased from the annals of Stonewall history, but he tells Betty he went to Riverdale after leaving prep school. She offers to dig deeper. She finds some old short stories in the school’s piles of old stuff. He finds a clue.
The character “Bitsy Bane” is a giveaway that writer Frosty Pajamas—written as an anagram for Forsythe P. Jones—could have been Jughead’s grandfather, and the writing is similar to the first “Baxter Boys” book. That character is in the Riverdale High story and the “Baxter Boys.” It was published way before the first book.
Jughead confronts Dupont about the first volume of “Baxter Boys,” accusing him of only writing the last four. He puts Jughead’s grandfather down and said he’d never plagiarize. He goes on and insults Jughead’s family and tells him Stonewall Prep was built on his books. He then tells Jughead he’s lucky he doesn’t have him expelled.
Jughead asks his teacher to help prove Dupont is a plagiarizer, and he agrees. Is he being honest? Yes, but this proves to be a mistake for Mr. Chipping. Later in the episode, Chipping seems to be under the influence of something and jumps out a window to his death. The weird literary cult just sits there and watches without helping. It feels like the Gargoyle King hallucinations all over again.
In the final scene, days after Chipping’s death, Jughead is surprised that his writing classmates are happy the teacher is gone because they’ll all receive 4.0 grades, and Dupont is taking over as teacher.
Betty
Betty is still suspicious about Charles, and Kevin is convinced he’s “just a lonely gay guy” and not a mysterious serial killer. So she does what she thinks is right and visits Chic for answers. He tells her a story about Charles. He said they took jingle jangle together and Charles went dark and stabbed someone to death with scissors. She accuses him of lying but Chic says to ask Charles.
Charles and Betty chat and she runs down Chic’s story of him stabbing a man with scissors. She wants him to take a lie detector test, and he reluctantly agrees. When asked if he was hiding anything, he got nervous. But his answer is that he’s a recovering addict who goes to meetings. She feels bad.
But this comes back up later when Alice tells Betty Chic contacted the FBI to report a murder at their house and the location of Dwayne the dead drug dealer’s body. This leads F.P. to clean up the mess by digging up the body with the help of Charles, who just so happens to be leading the “investigation.” Hands are dirty.
At the end of the episode, we see Chic and Charles are in on a scheme together, calling each other “babe” during a prison visit. Charles is at the prison telling him that F.P. led him to the dead body, and that Betty and everyone are buying his story. What are they up to?
Cheryl
Cheryl is startled from her sleep by a nightmare about her family members showing up and Julian possessing her body. Didn’t Toni warn her that having Jason and Julian around was weird? Toni tries to convince Cheryl to stop cutting school to stay home with the babies, but she’s scared of leaving them in the same house as the creepy doll Julian. As a deterrent, she puts a salt circle around the doll to keep the evil entity from escaping, then goes to school.
Cheryl is called down to the office and learns that Dagwood choked on a ping pong ball and is in the hospital. She goes to Thistle House and sees the salt circle has been broken. Jason has the doll and she’s freaking out. She goes upstairs and sees her aunt and uncle (who were in her dream) are now at the house.
Cheryl’s family wants to sell the maple syrup business and need her ok. At first, she says she’ll consider it. They then ask to visit the chapel to light a candle for the ancestors, and she goes off, kicking them out and saying no one is allowed in the chapel. Cheryl then tries to stop Julian’s dummy reign of terror by drowning him in an aluminum tub with a brick.
The family returns to confront Cheryl, with her uncle being particularly aggressive. Cheryl’s family wants to have her declared unfit as she has the chapel gates chained up and won’t agree to sell the business. They have sinister plans.
Later on, Uncle Bedford finds out Cheryl has been keeping Jason’s body in the chapel. He wants to turn her in, and while he has her hemmed up against the wall, Toni cracks him in the head with a heavy, blunt object. He’s bleeding out on the floor. Now what?
Veronica
For Veronica’s arc this episode, Hiram tells her and Hermione that he wants to start a rum outpost in Riverdale and will put the half sister in charge of the operation. Ronnie is not happy about that and kicks them out of her and her mom’s house. This doesn’t last too long.
A day or so later, Hiram breaks into the house at night and gets frisky with Hermione, and they threaten each other before “making up.” He’s back in and Ronnie isn’t happy about him moving back in either. She’s mad, and he accuses her of being jealous of Hermosa.
At Pop’s, Veronica gets a visit from her sister who explains how her mom was a singer in Miami who wound up pregnant. Their dad took care of the mom until her death and Hermosa too. She then invites Veronica to Hiram and Hermione’s vow renewal.
Elsewhere in the episode, Veronica walks into her father’s office and sees Hermosa sitting in his chair with a portrait of herself hanging up behind her. Veronica’s been replaced! She taunts Ronnie by saying their dad calls her the “apple of his eye,” and Veronica gets angry. She refuses to attend the vow ceremony and basically tells Hermosa to stick it.
Next week, the plot gets thicker with Jughead’s writing cult drama, Cheryl’s family death saga, Archie’s rift with Dodger, and Betty and Charles.
