Riverdale Review: Chapter Seventy-Nine: Graduation (Season 5 Episode 3)

Can someone please hand me some tissues? Because I am EMOTIONAL.

The would-be Season 4 finale, Riverdale Season 5 Episode 3, “Chapter Seventy-Nine: Graduation,” serves as a love letter to its fans, delivering an emotional hour of brevity after four long seasons spent in a little town of terrors.

It’s a surprising episode; Riverdale tends to opt for the highest levels of dramatics they can conceive, leaving little time for heartfelt moments, genuine character growth, or happy feel-good endings.

Suffice to say, it’s a rare occurrence I cry while watching an episode of this show. 

In fact, Riverdale’s Season 4 premiere — also serving as a real-life goodbye to actor Luke Perry — is the only notable exception to my dry eye rule; an episode that slowed down and tossed the drama and mystery aside, it was an honest goodbye to a beloved icon. 

“Chapter Seventy-Nine” adds itself to that shortlist of truly moving episodes, proving it isn’t that Riverdale can’t emote with the best of them, they’d usually just rather not. 

There’s no mystery in “Graduation,” no unsightly murders, drug rival gangs, or mob boss fathers beating up on teens. It’s just a group of kids who have been through more than most of us can say, trying to make sense of the last four years.

Subverting to typical soapy teen drama form, “Graduation” even opts for a change in directional choices. Generic pop tunes play over cheesy, slow-moving montages, and Riverdales signature darker tones are swapped out for softer golden lighting, beaming down on characters like angelic halos.

Perhaps the shocking amount of genuinely heartfelt moments are what makes the episode work as well as it does, but it’s more so the meticulous care Riverdale puts into every single moment of “Graduation.”

FP’s goodbye packs one of the hour’s biggest unexpected gut punches — second only to the surprise cameo of Fred Andrews. He’s not only the first character to leave, but his decision to hear Jellybean’s cry for help makes for the best possible exit.

We meet FP as an alcoholic, absentee father. When we leave him, he’s grown into a man with pure integrity; someone who puts his kids first, before anything else.

His growth — even with limited screen time — has been immense over the seasons, and his exit provides comfortable room for a return if Skeet Ulrich should choose to come back. 

While FP’s departure is hard on viewers, it’s earth-shattering for Alice. It’s heart-wrenching to watch the two put another pause on a romance that’s already spanned decades, but it does allow moments of solace between Alice and Betty — another relationship that has evolved in immense, and profound ways.

Ulrich’s exit also provides an introspective look at the meaning behind Jellybean’s reveal as the voyeur. While an insane idea upon the first introduction, her outburst brings the town together — leaving them determined to give the next generation a brighter and better life.

Seamlessly enough, it will clearly serve as a catalyst in bringing the characters back to Riverdale seven years in the future, by fulfilling their promise of making sure Riverdale thrives for those who come after them. 

That’s exactly how all of “Graduation,” unfolds, really — harmoniously on every level, wrapping up storylines and providing full-circle moments for each and every character. 

Cheryl’s decision to reinstate the Blossom name is a beautifully executed choice. The humor that comes along with her family’s outrageous antics tends to overshadow the genuine trauma she’s experienced the past four years. 

Taking charge of the very thing that broke her, feels exactly right somehow; serving as both a healing mechanism and a gaping wide storytelling opportunity regarding the Blossom’s checkered past.

It also means saying goodbye to girlfriend Toni.

It may be necessary for the characters to part ways (for now) in order to let Toni grow as an individual, but the decision to deprive the women of a final love scene feels like a gigantic blunder of epic proportions.

Everyone else certainly gets time to bid farewell to their romantic counterparts — even those who parted ways two episodes ago. Archie and Veronica wanting one last night together is a feeling anyone in a long term high school relationship will remember vividly, and understand whole-heartedly.

In fact, not giving those two characters a romantic final moment would feel odd, given what they’ve been through. 

The same is true for Betty and Jughead.

Watching Jughead swiftly move past the revelation that Betty and Archie kissed feels immediately outrageous. However, it quickly becomes clear Jughead is simply desperate to spend what little time he has left with the woman he loves.

The choice for Betty and Jughead not to talk about the kiss — the complete opposite reaction from when it happened in Season 2 — says a lot about the status of their relationship, and the growing distance between them. 

Timing is everything, however, and theirs is running out. Goodbyes are looming near, and the idea of wasting what’s left on petty fights over damage that’s already been done feels fruitless for both of them. 

It’s an excruciating way to watch a relationship end — a stark juxtaposition to the quick and rash breakup of Veronica and Archie, but a painfully realistic glimpse of two people who love each other deeply but are unable to stop themselves from sinking.

At the very least, the two are given one last love scene — one last moment of true intimacy — before things begin to slowly unravel.

Cheryl and Toni — a relationship that hasn’t been soiled by cheating or dishonesty — not being given that same respect, is both a missed opportunity and a disservice to the relationship itself.

Luckily, the underwhelming Choni goodbye is the only thing that doesn’t make sense in “Graduation” (well, other than Betty and Archie not getting their own goodbye scene after being best friends for 15 years, but, we’ll argue about that another day).

Archie’s decision to join the army is perfectly in line with who he’s become (and perhaps who he’s always been). Fighting for what’s right, and defending his home Is something Archie has done from the very beginning. In the army, he’ll simply be doing it on a much bigger scale. 

Rash decisions are also his wheelhouse, so it makes sense he’d jump into a life-altering commitment in a matter of seconds.

There’s also Betty, who heads off Yale, destined to do great things, and Veronica, who returns to the city that defined her, sans any pearls or debts owed to daddy Hiram. It’s a small gesture, but a humongous step forward for Veronica as a character.

Then there’s Jughead, who opens the episode exactly the way he opened the pilot, four long years ago.

This time around, we’re not waiting until the final scene for him to make his entrance. If anything, it can be argued that Jughead has become the center of Riverdale; the underdog turned protagonist of this entire story. 

There’s both an irony and a poignancy in that fact. When we first meet Jughead, he despises Riverdale so passionately, he’s written a resentful novel about it all, itching furiously to escape his tortured life.

When we leave him in “Graduation,” he’s not only the last to leave Riverdale, but the only one to come back a year later in hopes of reconnecting with his friends.

It may upset some fans to see Jughead as the person leading us through the (temporary) goodbyes — many believe Archie belongs at the center of the Riverdale universe, but in retrospect? There isn’t a single better way to end it. 

Jugheads migration from the Cooper house back to the bunker  — a callback to his Season 1 nomadic existence — provides the painstaking gravitas necessary to emulate the loneliness we all can relate to in the last days of that final summer, when you’re no longer a high school kid, but haven’t quite begun your next chapter. 

It’s the feeling of your home town transforming into memories of a life you can’t quite touch anymore, no matter how hard you try to keep them alive.

When Jughead finally moves on, past Pop (and a teenage couple that looks eerily like Betty and Archie), it feels as if we as an audience, are ready to move on, too.

And so, with Jughead, we say goodbye to all the murder, deception, violence, and mystery that Riverdale brought upon us.

Until it does it again, of course. 

See you all in seven years. 

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

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