Riverdale season 4, episode 11 review: Quiz Show

Is a long-time ship about to set sail on Riverdale? Plus, Betty finds out why she didn’t get into Yale, and Frank stirs up trouble at Andrews Construction.

As always the limit of drama doesn’t exist on Riverdale. Tonight’s episode alone found teenagers transforming their speakeasy into a dance club, so they could secretly start up a rum business on the side at a secondary location; a teenager randomly getting into camming; a teenager legit challenging another teenager to a duel; and a negligent mother finally being there for her teenage daughter but somehow still leaving her worse off.

Plus, are a certain teenager and a certain other teenager really getting together a little ways down the road??

Here’s a look at what went down in “Quiz Show.”

The Black Hood Of It All

Hal Cooper may be dead, but it turns out his memory lives in more ways than one. Charles does some digging and finds out that Yale rejected Betty solely on the grounds of her being the Black Hood’s daughter for fear that his notoriety and her attendance would equal bad press for the school.

Understandably, Betty is even more devastated by her rejection than she was before, leading Jughead and Alice to intervene. Having been accepted, Jug uses his cred to get a recruiter to watch Betty compete in the final round of the Quiz Show. Alice, unfortunately, has a more, shall we say, Aunt Becky plan in mind. She somehow gets a hold of the answers to all the questions and leaves the envelope for Betty in the green room.

Betty ends up leading Team Riverdale to victory without assistance, having torn up the cheat sheet and thrown it in a trash can. All is well, until someone (*cough* Bret *cough*) digs through the trash, tapes the sheet back together and hands it to Principal Honey, who suspends Betty and has Riverdale’s victory overturned. Plus, Alice, who tries to advocate for Betty to no avail, is suspended from work, which is actually pretty fair.

Alice isn’t the only person who screws over Betty. For all his principles, Jug is real quick to sell out when the big wigs of the Baxter Brothers franchise decide his story concept is too tame. They want a serial killer saga. Jug initially turns to Charles for research help, staunchly refusing to draw from his own life. But then, the big wigs reject all his serial killer ideas, too… until he proposes the “Brown Hood.”

When Bret spills the tea on Jug exploiting Betty’s real-life trauma for the sake of his literary career, Bughead has their first major fight in a while, ending with Betty asserting that Jug only got into Yale because he goes to Stonewall.

They reconcile soon enough… to the point that Jug literally challenges Bret to a fight to the death after he finds out Bret accused Betty of cheating — because, you know, that will help Betty. Anyway, the point is Bughead seem to be back in a good place for now, but…

Is Barchie rising??

This week’s flash-forward (again to four weeks in the future) finds Archie and Betty meeting up at Pop’s, and Betty admitting she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to keep going, knowing that Jughead will “never come back.” Then, Barchie hold hand and share a decidedly long gaze.

So are they really going somewhere or was that just bait? We’ll have to wait and see. What I can say for certain is that, either way, a portion of Riverdale‘s fandom will be very happy and another portion will be very unhappy.

Operation Selling Rum While Underaged When Your Dad is Mayor

After Hiram raids newly-minted dance club La Bonne Nuit and destroys Veronica and Cheryl’s rum supply, Cheryl devises a new plan: keep La Bonne Nuit open as a “distraction,” so Hiram can keep raiding it only to find mocktails, and sell the actual alcohol out of Penelope’s defunct brothel The Maple Club.

Cheryl also decides to free her mother from the bunker, so Penelope can manage the club while they’re at school… because, of course, they’re still teenagers. But Penelope has to wear a mask to conceal her identity and an ankle monitor.

Constructing Chaos

Tom Keller is none too pleased when Archie abruptly demotes him so Frank can be the new foreman of Andrews Construction. But, overall, Frank makes a good first impression on the crew — first being the operative word. The tide starts to turn when Archie turns down an opportunity for the crew to do work on Hiram’s prison. Tom tries to vouch for it, but Frank back his nephew.

Soon, the crew starts threatening to quit; and things go from bad to worse when Tom accuses Frank of stealing money, and Frank punches him, leading to a full-on brawl. As it turns out, Frank did “borrow the money from his future salary” in an attempt to bet it and make enough to pay the crew their bonuses.

His plan works, but Archie puts his foot down, feeling that Frank disrespected Fred and tells him to never take money from the company again. Archie also apologizes to Tom and offers him his old job as foreman back, but Tom refuses to work with Frank.

Fifty Shades of Tickling

Kevin’s Grindr date takes a strange turn when the guy suggests he film Kevin and other guy tickling each other shirtless. He promises a big pay day, so Kevin hesitantly accepts… just as a one-time thing. But when Kevin gets his cut and his date continues to insist there’s a lot of money to be made in camming, Kevin decides he’ll give it another go.

But he has a new partner in mind, one he’ll feel more comfortable with: Fangs, who just so happened to try to mend fences at the beginning of the episode and ask Kevin out. Kevin still doesn’t want to date Fangs but suggests camming as a way for them to both make some money. This feels like they’re getting back on the path to endgame, though, right? But maybe with some actual character development this time.

Riverdale returns next week for a special crossover episode with spin-off series Katy Keene. Did you enjoy this week’s episode? Let us know in the comments below!