Riverdale Review: Chapter Twenty-Six: The Tell-Tale Heart (Season 2 Episode 13)

Oh, Archiekins.

On Riverdale Season 2 Episode 13, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Archie finds himself at odds with Agent Adams, only to learn in the hour’s final moments that — as I’m guessing pretty much every viewer had already at least suspected —the so-called FBI agent wasn’t at all what he seemed. But the details of the Agent Adam twist are actually so much better than I expected.

Why? Because the twist serves to underscore the fact that one of Riverdale‘s many complicated mothers is actually the baddest bitch of them all.

But let’s back up a bit and take things from the beginning.

Away from Archie and all his Lodge family drama, Betty and the Cooper family have drama of their own. And it’s somehow even more serious than the mafia!

“The Tell-Tale Heart” picks up right where Riverdale Season 2 Episode 12 left off — with Betty returning home from her ~sexy~ reunion with Jughead to the ultimate buzzkill: her mother cleaning buckets of blood off the floor because, oh hey, there’s a dead dude.

Betty spends the episode dealing with some very understandable PTSD and frantically scrambling to cover up the crime (while also doing some inexplicably dumb things, like going back to the body in broad daylight and calling people from the dead guy’s phone).

I do, however, take issue with the fact that the Coopers don’t just report the murder as self-defense in the first place. Whatever Chic is doing must be super illegal for Alice to have opted to keep it hidden and cover up the killing rather than just admit what Chic was doing that led this sketchy stranger to attack them.

As much of an obviously-bad decision not going to the police is, two very good things do come out of the debacle.

One is that this storyline manages to bring the recently-reunited Bughead even closer and gives fans of that ship some prime “Jughead protects Betty” moments.

Maybe I’m just a weirdo when it comes to TV ships, but is there anything more romantic than a guy willingly becoming an accomplice to a murder cover-up in order to help you? Probably not.

And that’s exactly what Jughead does when he, without hesitation, lies and tells the traffic cop that the dead drug dealer’s car parked in front of the Coopers’ house is his. And then helps Betty sink said car in the lake.

(As an aside: how cute is it that Jughead is all concerned that the sex was bad, thinking that’s why Betty is acting all distant and twitchy, before she comes clean about the murder?)

The second bonus is that the murder cover-up gives us some delicious, delicious FP/Alice action. I’ve seen the show refer to them on Twitter as “Falice,” which is awful, so I’m gonna stick with another, better ship name I’ve seen fans using: Snake Parents.

There’s a lot that’s great about the Coopers + Joneses aspect of this episode. I love that, despite their recent arguments and differences, Jughead immediately knows to go to his dad when he learns about the murder. Jug realizes that they’re all way above their paygrade on this whole cover-up thing. But conveniently enough, FP has already done this.

And how macabrely sweet is it that FP (who only just got out of jail for his part in Jason Blossom’s murder cover-up) is willing to risk it all and do it again for Jughead (and Alice)?

On the bright side, at least he knows better now what to do to dispose of a body: dissolve it in lye.

As for Chic… what is up with this dude? When Betty (foolishly) retrieves the dead dude’s phone, she finds out that he’s not a client of Chic’s, as Alice was told — he’s a drug dealer.

Chic immediately starts letting lose the fakest fake-crying on earth, which Betty rightfully calls him out on. Then he creepily smiles through his fake-tears while Betty and Alice are arguing. Then he creepily cuts Hal out of a family photo at the end of the hour.

What is going on here? Is Chic straight-up cray? Simply unhinged? Damaged? Misunderstood? I’m still banking on the eventual reveal that he is FP’s, not Hal’s, son with Alice. But we’ll just need to wait and see whether that will be his biggest secret.

It’s probably not a huge surprise that I strongly prefer the Bughead/Snake Parents portions of this episode to the extremely silly Archie/”Agent” Adams bits. That said, there are a few things I do like about that storyline, particularly when it comes to the Lodges’ involvement and their increasingly twisty inter-family dynamic.

Veronica’s relationship with her parents continues to be fraught, and it’s only going to get worse when they find out she did warn the mayor that Hiram and Hermione were going to destroy her by outing her affair with Sheriff Keller — and then lied to them about it.

Decisions like this make Veronica one of the more morally complex and interesting characters.

She wants her family’s approval, and she genuinely wants to be a part of the “family business,” but she’s not willing to take it so far as to destroy Sierra’s life. Veronica does the right thing by tipping Sierra off about the dirt Hiram and Hermione have on her. This rebellion also seems to be a direct reaction to Veronica’s (correct) belief that her dad had Papa Poutine killed.

Here’s the thing: Archie knows that Hiram did have Poutine killed. So why is he lying to Veronica and telling her Hiram didn’t do that? Why is he covering this up for Hiram? Why does nothing Archie ever does make any sense or arise from logical thought processes?

Anyway. Trust is squashed between Veronica and her parents. But trust is, apparently, at an all-time high between Archie and Veronica’s parents, since “Agent” Adams turns out to have been Hermione’s mole — her “capo” — sent in to test Archie’s trustworthiness and resolve.

This reveal, in the final moments, establishes once and for all that Hermione is cold as ice. Also, does this mean that Hermione (not Hiram) is the one truly in charge? I’m not sure; but if so, I like it. A lot.

Other Thoughts:

• Cheryl serves some SERIOUS looks on this episode. That casually-practicing-archery ensemble? Amazing. The fact that Cheryl randomly practices archery? Also amazing.
• Alice used to hang out near a sewer pipe as a child? And remembered it fondly enough to be like, “Hey, this is a great place to hide a body”?
• The way “Agent” Adams says “capo” had me wanting to punch him right in the face. Hoping this twist means we won’t be seeing him anymore, because god, he is awful.
• This episode is directed by Julie Plec of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals fame. Or could you not tell from all the blood? In all seriousness, though, the directing is very distinctive, and I think Plec handles the visual aspect of Betty’s PTSD flashbacks to the murder scene particularly well.
• Hal randomly becoming involved with Penelope (and it being “real,” not part of her whole “modern-day Moll Flanders” thing) is so out of left-field and such a thin excuse to free Alice up to get with FP. But because I’m 100% here for Snake Parents, I’ll allow it.
• On another Hal-related note, why couldn’t Papa Cooper just go to the pharmacy to get new toiletries? Isn’t there a single damn CVS in Riverdale?
• Are Veronica and Betty just… not friends anymore? I feel as if I’ve seen absolutely no meaningful interaction between the two in weeks. At the very least, give us an intense scene where they hash out the Barchie kiss. How has this not happened yet?
• OK, so, Sierra is no longer the mayor, courtesy of Hiram and Hermione’s blackmail. That leaves an opening. Who will her successor be?

What did you think of this episode of Riverdale? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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