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Throughout this season, I’ve talked a lot about Riverdale‘s Riverdale-ness. (Yes, it makes sense.) The over-the-top, cheeky nature of the show can sometimes be too much, and there have been a number of moments this season that went too far (like a certain striptease). However, I want to say something about this episode: This felt like the right amount of Riverdale craziness. There were multiple absurd moments — Chic holding that baby! A grown man who goes by the name “War Baby!” Clifford has a twin! — and Jughead turned his dramatic exposition up to 11, but you know what? It was the kind of crazy that makes Riverdale, well, Riverdale. If we’re looking at Riverdale as a scale, this was a balanced episode. Not the best, not the worst. Balanced.

We start at the trailer park, where Jug has created a murder board on a kitchen wall in an attempt to piece together Hiram’s big bad plan for the town. Only, there’s no amount of string that will help him figure this out. Especially when he doesn’t even realize what’s happening across town: The Lodges invited Fred and Archie to dinner in order to ask Fred to run for mayor. It seems that Mayor McCoy’s deputy mayor is on the verge of stepping down, and when that happens, there will be a “special election.” The Lodges think Fred would be an ideal candidate.

I know what you’re thinking: Absolutely nothing about Fred Andrews screams “I want to be mayor,” and yet, this show has decided that long ago, Fred dreamt of becoming mayor. Yes, the guy who wears nothing but flannel and rarely talks to anyone other than his son wanted to get into politics! And furthermore, he once envisioned Riverdale as a futuristic town with a monorail! Sure, Riverdale, why not?!

Ultimately, Archie is the one who doesn’t like the plan. He doesn’t want his dad becoming more entangled with the Lodges, so he’s determined to find a way to convince Fred not to do it…all the while Veronica is bringing over designs for campaign slogans. Because all good relationships involve manipulating your boyfriend’s father in order to further your family’s plan!

And speaking of good relationships, it’s time to check in with Hal, who shows up at the Cooper house officially asking for a divorce. He wants one FAST, and if Alice agrees to move quickly, he offers her half the money he made when he sold the Riverdale Register to Hiram. You know a relationship’s over when it turns into a negotiation! (Well, unless you’re a Lodge, in which case negotiation is the first stage of true love.)

With Archie trying to do everything in his power to stop his father from running for office, he decides it’s time to take down Hiram, so he tells Jug the truth about Pop’s: that Hiram bought it. Only, when Jug goes to Pop’s to confirm the information, the oh-so-adorable Pop uses his adorableness and asks Jug not to publish that information until his mother has passed. He did what he had to do to keep the business alive, but it would break his mother’s heart if she found out that the Chock’lit Shoppe is no longer in the family’s name. And so Jug agrees…but thankfully, Pop isn’t the only adorable man in town who’s ready to talk.

When Jug gets a call from Smithers (!!!), he heads to the Riverdale Bus Terminal to talk to the bus driver. There, Smithers tells him that he used to coordinate transportation to and from Shankshaw Prison. It seems Hiram has been talking to the warden over there…but why? Well, let’s ask War Baby! Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently FP has an inside man in Shankshaw, and his name is WAR BABY. And the second Jug and FP pay him a visit, they learn the truth about Hiram’s plan.

But before we get there, we have to deal with a very public will reading. It seems Clifford Blossom left a secret will that he requested be read in public because he’s Clifford Blossom. So with Toni by her side, Cheryl attends the reading, along with Hal, Betty, Polly — she’s home! — and a few others. The takeaway? Thistle House remains with the immortal Roseanne Blossom, and Penelope gets ownership of Thornhill, a.k.a. the place that burned down. As for all Clifford’s remaining assets, they will be divided in half, with half going to Cheryl and Jason (so Cheryl) and half going to anyone who can prove with medical authentication that even one drop of Blossom blood flows through their veins. So that means Betty, Polly, Hal, and maybe Chic? (Next: Hiram and Archie perform a blood oath)

Annnnd cue Alice storming into the will reading and screaming about how Hal wanted a fast divorce in order to cheat her out of his Blossom payday. Eventually, they remove Alice from the premises so that Cheryl can take the podium for a totally unprompted and highly unnecessary speech about how there should be “no more blood, no more madness, no more horror” in Riverdale. And guess what? Clifford’s twin agrees!

Oh sorry, let me explain: A man who looks a lot like Clifford Blossom walks in during Cheryl’s speech, which causes her to faint. And by the time she wakes up, she’s introduced to Claudius, her father’s twin. It seems that Claudius was being primed to inherit the Blossom empire, so when he and Clifford were 14, Clifford did the only logical thing he could do: He pointed a rifle at his brother and told him about the Blossom curse. You know, the thing where one twin always dies, typically at the hands at the other? Well, after Clifford “spared” his brother’s life — wasn’t Clifford so nice? — Claudius joined the Merchant Marines, where he sailed the seas and explored many islands, like the island of Lesbos, for example, which he promptly brings up when Cheryl invites Toni to family dinner. As for Claudius, he’ll be staying in the room above the garage and, according to his final conversation with Penelope, helping her deal with “Nana then Cheryl” in an attempt to get their house in order. Only then can they take revenge on the Lodges.

As for Betty, she spends the hour meeting Polly’s twins and trying to figure out why Chic doesn’t want to get his blood tested if it means he could get money. “Needles trigger me,” Chic says, but Betty’s not having it. When her plan to have Kevin get to know Chic’s secrets by being one of his webcam clients doesn’t work, she heads into Chic’s bathroom and steals a piece of his dental floss.

One thing Betty doesn’t need dental floss in order to find out? That her brother is soooo creepy as he talks to her about how life was better without Polly and how love is finite and people run out of it eventually. Needless to say, Polly freaks out when Chic takes her babies on an unchaperoned walk. (Way to go, Alice!) Thankfully, the babies seem to be fine. Chic, however, is not who he says he is. At least that’s what Betty says to him when she hands him the results to his DNA test.

And that brings us back to the mayoral race. Or I guess this is the pre-race? Whatever. Archie tries to use Mayor McCoy to talk Fred out of running — she tells him all about filling potholes, collecting trash, and the terrible salary — but in the end, Fred decides to run. At least until Hiram finds out about Jughead’s visit to Shankshaw and decides to reveal his plan to Fred and Archie before it hits the front page of the Blue and Gold (which it won’t because Weatherby shuts it down).

Brief-but-important side note: Veronica took the fall for Archie on leaking the fact that the Lodges own the Chock’lit Shoppe, thereby saving her boyfriend from her father’s wrath.

Other brief-but-important side note: Veronica then yelled at Archie about leaking her family’s private information while he did shirtless pull-ups.

Okay, to the dinner! Hiram tells Fred that his plan is to turn Southside High into a private, for-profit prison. That means all the housing they’re building will be home to the new employees of the prison. I know, I know, it sounds very boring. But Fred, upon hearing this, storms out and refuses to run for mayor. Meanwhile, Arch stays behind to perform some sort of blood oath ritual with Hiram. They both slice their hands with a VERY large knife, drip their blood onto what I think is Archie’s journal — which is filled with Hiram’s secrets — and then toss said journal into the fire. “We come first,” Hiram tells Archie, thereby uttering one of the series’ creepiest sentences. Did Archie essentially just marry Hiram? Who’s the we: Hiram, the Lodges, all men everywhere? This all feels like a bad idea.

Also, I’m going to need shows to stop acting like these aren’t major cuts that will need stitches.

As for the next mayor of Riverdale, Hermione is running. And as Jug puts it, the Lodges win. For now, at least.

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