Riverdale Review: Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion (Season 1 Episode 9)

Almost every subplot on the show is touched upon on Riverdale Season 1 Episode 9, “Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion,” making the episode just a bit overstuffed.

The A-plot, which follows Archie getting caught up in Blossom family business, ties in the boring construction project from the last episode, the Jason Blossom murder mystery, pregnant Polly, Archie’s musical ambitions, Archie’s relationship with Valerie, and, in a twist, Hiram Lodge’s arrest.

That is just the A-plot.

The B- and C-plots, meanwhile, bring back Ethel Muggs, dive further into Hiram Lodge’s scandal, and catch up with the feuding Cooper parents.

Some of the subplots are only mentioned briefly or in one scene, but still, it’s an awful lot of new information crammed into one episode.

The A-plot starts out well enough. It’s another glimpse into the strange life of Blossom family, their lucrative maple syrup business, and Penelope and Cheryl’s weird fixation on Archie as a replacement for Jason.

Since Archie is Archie, he goes along with all the weirdness, partially because he’s just trying to be a nice person and partially to benefit himself and his music (and later, his father’s business).

As has been the case all season, Archie doesn’t really actively get involved in anything that doesn’t revolve around his own issues on “Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion.” He just ends up stumbling into things that his friends have been concerned about this whole time.

Tacking on a few additional subplots — like Polly, the murder mystery, his music and Val — may have helped to make things more intriguing and flesh the story out a little bit, but piling on the information about Hiram Lodge and the construction project bloats the story until it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s going on.

Plus, it all moves so quickly that you barely have time to process it all. It’s hard to care about something like Cheryl’s failed attempt to seduce Archie when Polly just revealed that she’s only staying with the Blossoms because she thinks she’ll be able to do some snooping into Jason’s murder while she’s there.

The constant mini-bombshells don’t just come from the A-plot, either.

The B-plot starts with Veronica reaching out to Ethel, and I was relieved that Veronica was going to be back in a storyline with her peers and friends for an episode, since she’s spent so much time wrapped up in adult affairs recently.

Then it’s revealed that Ethel’s dad was tied up in Hiram’s bad business, and Veronica’s storyline ends up being all about her father, again.

Of course it’s interesting to see how Veronica processes and copes with what her father did, but it also isolates her, since she never seems to turn to Betty or Archie to talk about her problems. She’s talked to Kevin on occasion, and she talked to Josie about it a little bit, but it feels like it’s been ages since she and Betty had a real heart-to-heart.

Betty, though, obviously has quite a lot going on in her own life, as she tries and fails to get in touch with her sister while trying to keep her mother from doing something that will just push Polly away even more.

For a brief moment early in the episode, it seems like all of the development we saw in Alice on the last episode has been undone, but thankfully, it’s just a mask to hide her pain, and Alice may continue on the path from terrible Riverdale parent to decent Riverdale parent.

The season is getting closer to the end, so it’s understandable that storylines are going to start to converge, but packing them all into one episode is a reminder of just how much there is going on on this show.

The episode isn’t unenjoyable or not entertaining, but getting rid of a thread or two may have given it a little bit of breathing room so we could really delight in the Blossoms and their creepy, ridiculous family ways.

OTHER NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS:

• Hal Cooper fires his wife from her job at the paper to retaliate for her kicking him out, which is a very poor decision on his part. Alice does not react well.
• Val and Archie are done. She dumps him for ignoring her (we have seen a lot less of her since they got together), and because he was willing to use the Blossoms’ influence to get into a prestigious summer music program, rather than just trying to earn the spot with his talent.
• Fred and Hermione are also done. He breaks things off with her after she comes clean about the Lodges’ connection to the construction project and the fact that Hiram sent those thugs from “Chapter Eight: The Outsiders” when he found out about Fred and Hermione’s relationship.
• Clifford Blossom is the one who sent Hiram Lodge to jail, which, as Jughead points out, could have provoked Hiram to get revenge by, say, murdering Clifford’s son. I wonder how Veronica would feel if she saw her dad’s name on the Jason Blossom murder board.
• The episode ends with Cheryl viciously scribbling over Archie and Polly’s faces on a family photo, which is just the slightest bit disconcerting.

What did you think of “Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion”? Share with us in the comments below!

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Riverdale airs Thursdays at 9/8c on the CW.

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