'Riverdale' Season 4 Episode 9 'Tangerine' Review: We finally have answer to 'Is Jughead dead?' mystery
This review contains spoilers for 'Riverdale' Season 4 Episode 9 'Tangerine'
While fans have waited long enough — since the Season 3 finale to be exact — 'Tangerine' has managed to reveal details about what happened to Jughead by merging plotlines with current characters with a few of their routine flash-forwards and flashbacks. The thing is Riverdale is a place where everything is always moving with a murderer on the loose, so each of the characters seems to have personal vendettas that are still connected to the town's roots. With this episode giving more than just the therapy spewed in the last episode, major puzzle pieces are found, with of course yet more puzzles.
The episode opens with Jughead winning the Baxter Brothers contract and then in classic Jones detective-style sets out to find his grandfather before signing the ghostwriting contract. In case you forgot, this would also be Charles' grandfather. So they both team up to find Forsythe Pendleton Jones I in Seaside. Following the continuing morbid nature of the town's secrets, Forsythe reveals that he did write the Baxter Brothers story but then sold it to Dupont for $5000 not realizing it would be a hit. When it did become a hit, he released his anger on his family. Jughead can safely make the assumption that Dupont is probably not a murderer. Also, his grandfather disappeared, so there's that. Maybe Jughead will recruit Betty (Lili Reinhart) on the case.
Veronica (Camila Mendes) is head-to-head with Hiram again — an obsession their counselor called it. She finds out that Le Bonne Nuit’s liquor license has been taken away by the man himself. On her trip to make sure to curb her father at every turn, she invites her grandmother into the daunting town. Hiram gets his share of sternness from his mother while Veronica gets the Lodge family's top-secret rum recipe.
But of course, Hiram, being the sadistic mob boss he is, has a patent on the recipe making it completely useless for his daughter. On the more relevant front of college life, Veronica charms a Columbia representative invited by her father. Yes, even after the Harvard stunt he pulled that got her upset, after performing 'Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting' at the speakeasy's final bash before the liquor license is revoked. Apparently, the Lodge grandmother has no problems with teenage girls drinking ether, but we can't say the same about Hiram, who gloated guilty feelings in his daughter.
You guys might remember Jason's corpse, well that's finally gone. With an unknown lunatic bothering Cheryl, she stages a suicide attempt: roach bombs in her home, but are we really surprised? Guess who comes out of the smoke: Penelope Blossom. An answer finally in hand, a trial ensues with a spotlight on Penelope for the attempted murder of Riverdale's finest four, the murder of Claudius, Clifford and Hal Cooper and others, we lost the count. Cheryl persists her mother to find out why she was hurting her children when Penelope disses the closeness of Jason and Cheryl, replying "You don’t get what I can’t have". By this time if you've watched Riverdale, you'd know Penelope in all her fashionable dark glory cares about her 'endgame'. Oh, the corpse! Jason's body was put on a boat on Sweetwater River and set on fire, finally.
Meanwhile, Betty in her house of horrors is woken up by Alice who tells her that Polly nearly clawed the face off a nurse, we were waiting for that Cooper sibling to unleash physical madness — here it is. While Polly claims to have no memory of it, Betty figures out the possible reason behind the freaky blackouts after her mother picks up a phone call at home. In a trance, she tries to kill Betty but snapping apparently works to get people out of trances? The episode gets its name from the mystery behind this phone call — in short, Evelyn says a trigger word 'Tangerine' three times and in facetious fashion, the words allow for Alice and Polly to become Betty, which gives them the aggressive urge to kill 'dark Betty' A tad bit of a twist to the 'Bloody Mary' facade from our youth. The words make Betty hallucinate her younger self on the day she killed Caramel, her cat, and in her trance-like state stops the past killing, hoping to halt the birth of 'Dark Betty'. That, of course, is not true because as true as crimes can get, a flashforward to weeks into the future, Betty is standing over Jughead (Cole Sprouse) with a rock while Archies (KJ Apa) says “He’s dead. What did you do, Betty!” Is the Dark Betty one to kill the love of her counterpart's life? That depends, which part of her is Betty trying to get rid of?
FP Jones, our favorite serpent-turned-Sheriff, flashes the serpent jacket once more to help Archie take down Dodger on one condition — Archie and his vigilante antics need to stop. Yes, then there's a fight and team keep-Riverdale-safe wins only for FP to get shot at Pops. Let's not discuss Archie's PTSD about shooting at Pop's! No, FP isn't dead but Archie has an 'am I a monster?' epiphany after he watches his kids watch him beat Dodger to a pulp.
So we got answers about Jughead's death, people were 'dealt' with and we're still sure that the characters are going to continue to develop their inner monsters. How could you not in Riverdale were dark halves seem to be the norm?
'Riverdale' Season 4 airs on Wednesdays at 8 pm on The CW. Episode 9 'Tangerine' was the mid-season finale, stay tuned on updates about when to catch the rest of Season 4.
