1.This week's episode was a welcome reprieve from the goings on of Season 5 — from the rat king to the trash bag killer to the mining expeditions for palladium. Instead we went back to the Season 1 basics: Josie, Melody, and Valerie (aka the Pussycats!) are BACK, and it honestly felt so good.
2.We first catch up with Melody and Valerie, who are still best friends and roommates.
3.Melody is also a thriving YA author with a successful book called Summer Storm that has piqued the interest of Tyler Perry for a movie adaptation. I have NO idea what it's about, but I guarantee you it's better than Jughead's.
4.Meanwhile, Josie has become a massive pop star who goes MIA in the midst of her world tour — but she's not missing for too long. Josie shows up at Pop's, and instead of getting a regular and boring update on her life, we get a montage set to her belting "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" by Celine Dion, because of course we do.
5.Honestly, Josie in this whole episode was such a breath of fresh air and an absolute delight. For example, this happened, and I want it tattooed on my forehead:
6.Then, Josie pays a visit to the school where her once-and-possibly-still stepbrother Kevin brings her to say hello to Mr. Weatherbee and encourages her to teach a music class in THE music room (one of Riverdale's premiere sex spots, second only to the sex bunker).
7.Josie reunites with Archie, who utters this sentence as though it's completely normal:
8.So anyway, Josie decides to visit the Whyte Wyrm, but instead of trying to catch up normally, her former friends instantly try to use her in their campaign to "save Riverdale," even though they haven't spoken to her in over seven years. And Josie absolutely called each and every one of them out. It was truly ART. From Veronica...
9.To Jughead and Betty:
10.And then, when Cheryl tried to intervene, Josie delivered, frankly, the line of the episode:
11.Then, the show remembers Sweet Pea, and he hooks up with Josie, and honestly I loved every second of it.
12.For what felt like the 17th musical number of the episode, Tabitha, Alexandra Cabot, and Toni (yay, she's back!) perform a rendition of "Little Shop of Horrors" whilst Toni is quite literally 9-plus months pregnant:
13.I now interrupt this recap for a word from our sponsor, Old Navy:
14.But enough about Old Navy, amirite? Back to the plot! Josie meets up with Melody and Valerie, and after she called out everyone else, it was Josie's turn to hear the impact of how she treated her friends.
15.We quickly learn two very important things: 1) What Dr. Curdle Jr. looks like out of scrubs and not in a morgue and 2) that he and Mr. Weatherbee are MASSIVE Josie stans.
16.Anyway, Josie and the Pussycats puts on an AMAZING show...
17....and then Toni goes into labor in the middle, leading to the second funniest line in the episode:
18.Cheryl sweetly ends up volunteering to help Fangs deliver the baby, but did anyone else notice how she just like casually flung her dirty gloves at Pop's...AN EATING ESTABLISHMENT?? No, thanks!
19.Josie, Melody, and Valerie debrief the chaotic night, but ultimately decide it was a fairly uneventful night by Riverdale standards:
20.We briefly meet Toni's baby...Tony (!!!!), and everything is happy for a brief moment.
21.But, alas, this is Riverdale, which means there simply had to be a murder mystery. At the end of the episode, a musical artist named Toots Sweet who toured with Josie's dad approaches Sierra and Josie because........he thinks his death wasn't an accident. (Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnnnn.)
22.I mean, we even have a LOGO. It feels like this is going to happen, right? RIGHT?
23.In conclusion: When it comes to the Pussycats, I am Dr. Curdle Jr.
