Riverdale Review: Chapter Seventy-Six: Killing Mr. Honey (Season 4 Episode 19)

Well, that wasn’t exactly the ending we were hoping for.

Riverdale Season 4 Episode 19, “Chapter Seventy-Six: Killing Mr. Honey” melds fantasy with reality, forcing its characters to take an introspective look into the traumatic effects of their towns longstanding treachery. 

It isn’t exactly a strong finale, but that’s probably because it was never meant to be one.

Ending the season prematurely was never the plan, and the show does the best it can with the material it has. There are undoubtedly questions that go unanswered, but the episode still contains compelling attributes that at the very least, allow it to work as a suitable stand-in for an actual season-ender.

Shockingly, the episode allows all of Riverdale’s characters to exist within the same space for once; resulting in some absolutely hilarious interactions. Betty and Reggie, for example, have not spoken more than three words to each other over the course of this series, so watching them cover up a murder together as an unexpected delight.

Where “Killing Mr. Honey” also succeeds — and where Riverdale tends to fail — is in the ability to ground mystery elements in reality, while still planting the outrageous moments the show has become known for; it just does so in dream sequences, instead. 

The videotape stalkers, and their taste for recreating Riverdale’s bloodiest controversies, are by far the most hauntingly dark storyline we’ve seen, and it works wonders for the integrity of the series. These voyeurs, beyond being generally twisted, feel like a potential reality for small-town America.

With that edge of realism, comes a whole new level of intrigue.

Honey’s shocking (and brutal) death in the final moments of the episode tie in perfectly with the show’s new faceless enemies.

Riverdale often stretches itself to the point of nonsense when attempting to find a connection between storylines, but this seemingly fun and offbeat story of revenge ends up seamlessly weaving its way into the bigger picture.

The focus on Mr. Honey is a desirable, and well-structured move for Riverdale. For one, the show has grossly underused the exceptional talent of Kerr Smith all season, who knocks his performance out of the park.

More so, it’s always felt as if Mr. Honey was hated just a little too intensely in juxtaposition to the positions he took with the Riverdale High gang, which is why the payoff feels earned when his true intentions are revealed. 

His secretly decent nature truly does feel planned all along, and it forces the characters — mainly Jughead — to recognize how hardened they’ve become to all the bloodshed that haunts their home town. 

No one can blame them, and it’s fairly heartbreaking to watch these teenagers come to terms with how traumatized they are. It’s also an imperative process for them all to go through if they plan on moving forward with their lives after high school. 

This is even more true if we’re facing down a multi-year time jump come Season 5. 

The darkness Riverdale radiates has to cease, if only briefly. If the characters are never allowed to come up for air, they’ll stay stunted as individuals, and the show will force itself into a repetitively stale loop.  

Perhaps the most ingenious part of “Killing Mr. Honey” is how such an important episode, gets disguised within such a fun premise.

Any high school drama worth its salt is going to involve an epic senior prank, and Riverdale manages to integrate a classic teen trope with a perfectly dark and delectable twist. There are seemingly no real stakes here; Honey is only dead in Jughead’s revenge fantasy, after all.

In reality, he’s just super glued to his office chair. 

Mädchen Amick does an absolutely fantastic job at her first time at directing, nailing the tone necessary to pull off an episode like this one, bringing a late ’90’s “Teaching Mrs. Tingle” undercurrent to the story.

While the fantasy portions could use a separate filter in order to avoid confusing the two simultaneous plot lines, the general directional choices and musical score are flawless.

The performances are equally as fantastic, with the actors regularly slipping between camp fantasy and earnest realism, depending on the episode’s current timeline.

Of course, if there’s one complaint, it’s how ill-timed an episode of this stature feels in the midst of the shows overarching character drama.

“Killing Mr. Honey” essentially erases the character conflict that has been brewing for the past few episodes, turning things back to the status quo, and leaving the audience hanging from a proverbial thread.

To a certain degree, it’s understandable there’s no fallout from “Barchie’s” kiss quite yet — there simply isn’t enough time to fit such a monumental plot point into such a specifically themed episode.

However, a simple awkwardly tense glance between Betty and Archie might placate the strange disconnect that exists in the air of group scenes, and allow this otherwise standalone story to serve as a bridge between heavy dramatic episodes.

All and all, “Killing Mr. Honey” may not be how I wanted to say goodbye to Riverdale Season 4, but it is a shining example of the general direction I want Riverdale to take as a series.

The episode is deceivingly fun, with an underbelly of truly great character-building moments. The plot is moved forward in a solid direction, and while the murder mystery is still very centralized, the story is grounded in chilling reality.

It’s bound to be a long hiatus before returning for Season 5, so as Kevin Keller would say: “let the fanfiction writing commence.”

Riverdale Thoughts And Questions:

• The kids running Mr. Honey, a man who actually cared for their well being, out of town, and straight to a school filled with people who literally murdered him in a single day is peak Riverdale.
• Interesting how Kevin Keller was a central cog in the real-life prank, but barely in Jughead’s fantasy story. Jughead really said, “Kevin Keller who?”
• It is still very strange to see Jughead and Betty interact simultaneously with their shared sibling Charles, who apparently has no qualms letting his younger siblings take lead on FBI level murder cases.
• Watch Kerr Smith on Dawson’s Creek if you want to see an iconic senior prank done right.
• Could we really not have found a place for Toni in all of this?
• Does Jughead think sending a manifesto to a University about how he wants to kill his principal is going to get him admittance?
• Why does Jughead choose to write all of the characters in his story so vastly different from their real-life counterparts?
• Archie dropping the news he is going to the Naval Academy and no one caring is outrageous.
• Do we think Jughead should go ahead and confirm the random lady who called him was actually an admissions counselor from the University of Iowa, or have we learned nothing from the Stonewall debacle?
• Lots of subtle dialogue regarding “cheating scandals” and “affairs” in this episode. I wonder why?

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

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

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