Riverdale‘s Black Hood killer has been captured — we think — but this week’s winter premiere gave the gang plenty of new problems to worry about.
With no Black Hood to unmask, and no Jughead to cuddle with, Betty decides to stir up some family drama to pass the time. Her sister Polly had her twins — offscreen, for some reason — and doesn’t want any contact with their parents, so Betty thinks it’s the perfect time to track down her long-lost brother. (Remember? Alice gave birth to a son back in high school and gave him up for adoption.) Betty digs up an address for a “Charles Smith” who lives two towns over, and even though Hal doesn’t approve, Alice admits she would like to meet her son. So she and Betty head to a seedy motel to meet him… and yeah, it doesn’t go great.
“Charles” is actually Chic: a gaunt, defensive loner with years of resentment built up against the Coopers. (“You’re lucky they wanted to keep you,” he sneers at Betty.) He also has some creepy business going on with a video camera set up in his motel room — “fantasy fulfillment,” he calls it — and his rude welcome sends Alice running out in tears. Betty’s not ready to give up on him, though, and when she returns to the motel, she finds Chic right in the middle of getting stabbed and pepper-sprays his assailant, taking Chic back home to safety. The Coopers nurse him back to health, and it looks like this family might be coming together after all… until we see Betty sleeping peacefully, and Chic looming over her bed like a psycho. Yikes. Can’t Betty go a week without some lunatic obsessing over her?
But there was plenty of non-Cooper drama in “The Blackboard Jungle,” too..
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