Riverdale Review: Chapter Fifty-Six: The Dark Secret of Harvest House (Season 3 Episode 21)

On Riverdale Season 3 Episode 21, “Chapter Fifty-Six:: The Dark Secret of Harvest House,” the series is poised to go out with a confounding and disappointing whimper at the close of another uneven season.

Leave it to the Riverdale writers to come up with a completely off-the-wall explanation for the Farm. Viewers had many suspicions about Edgar’s motives, but harvesting organs from living subjects wasn’t one of them. There’s so much wrong with this entire outcome, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Let’s start with the painfully obvious. Transplants are a BFD, and nobody is going to take a nap, wake up, and go about their business after being sawed in half by Edgar and his cracker jack medical team. Also, organs require a degree of freshness to be viable.

Anyone who’s watched any medical drama knows it’s a race to retrieve a kidney, stick it in dry ice (not with ice cubes from the local 7-Eleven), and get it into the recipient’s body ASAP. Riverdale’s showrunner might have considered keeping Grey’s Anatomy on in the background when constructing this disaster of a plot twist. 

Human organs aren’t like chicken nuggets. You can’t stick them in the freezer, and defrost when nobody feels like cooking real food. If the subject of black market organ retrieval intrigues you, try Turistas or Dirty Pretty Things.

Even if Betty has some genetic markers that make her more prone to violence, it will be nurture and not nature that drives her over the edge. So Polly gets pushed down some stairs. If there’s a first-runner up for “Creepiest Cooper,” it’s Polly, not Betty. Run of the mill sibling rivalry leads to worse injuries than that. 

While the Cooper women have an assortment of issues, Hal, “Black Hood,” Cooper is just wandering around Riverdale with his hook hand. At least the first time around, Hal has a plan, an agenda, a purpose. Now he’s content to commit oddly random yet well-timed random acts of violence in broad daylight. 

Hal’s adopted a carpe * attitude. He knows he’s going to get caught or killed but doesn’t care. Hey, YOLO, Hal. 

The only remotely promising morsel to come out of “Chapter Fifty-Six: The Dark Secret of Harvest House,” is the revelation Jason Blossom is the Gargoyle King. Well, he’s not the Gargoyle King Alice encounters in 1992, but he likely knows who is. 

There is the pesky problem of Jason Blossom being dead, and viewers seeing his corpse on the pilot. Somewhere between discovering Jason on the river bank and putting him the ground, Jason’s body goes missing.

One possible explanation is genetics. Twins run in the Blossom family: Claudius and Clifford, Juniper and Dagwood, and Cheryl and Jason. But what if Cheryl and Jason have another sibling? Anything resembling a reasonable explanation is off the table with the harvesting of organs passing as plausible storytelling.

Riverdale is silly and should never be taken seriously, but this level of nonsense can turn a hit show into a pop culture punchline. 

The final straw is Ronnie’s takedown of her father. We know law enforcement on any level is entirely inept which is why teenagers solve the town’s problems. But Ronnie’s so excited about besting Hiram, she seems to forget she and Hermione are broke. Unless, the mayor of Riverdale makes some fat bank.

I also wasn’t aware entire towns can be bought and sold unless it’s possibly Stepford-y or the work of Disney. 

With the grand finale left, maybe Riverdale will pull up from this nosedive. Maybe Betty will wake up, and it will have all been a very, very bad dream.

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

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Riverdale Season 3 Finale airs Wednesday, May 15 at 9/8c on The CW.

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