Riverdale - A Touch of Evil - Advanced Preview - A Crumbling House of Cards

After a let's say interesting premiere, Riverdale continues to dig deeper into the lives of our favorite Riverdale inmates. "A touch of evil" is a slight upgrade to the premiere adding more edge and substance to the main cast while keeping up with the darkish tone and mood introduced in the series opener.

Continuing her standout performance from the Pilot episode, Lili Reinhart once again kicks a*s in this one. The simplicity of her story combined with the sincere acting from Lili gives Betty the necessary edge to head line this episode. After dismissing Archie and Veronica from her life Betty is turning towards Cheryl for some normal human interaction. This, of course, backfires in an epic cat fight fashion revealing a new side of Betty.

Cheryl meanwhile, continues to be the weirdest grieving person I've ever met. At this point, I'm really not sure if she is just keeping up a great act to protect herself from others or being just a cutout psycho. Either way, I'm truly entertained by her performance and look forward to seeing more of her, especially after witnessing the Pep rally she prepped Jason.

On the other side of Riverdale, our main/male lead Archie is getting more interesting or better said less dull than in last week's episode, and I'm not referring to the boxer shorts/shirtless scenes (yes perfect gif material). The guilt about being at the Sweetwater river with Mrs. Grundy the day when Jason disappeared was eating him alive but things got even more complicated when the writers added Jughead to the equation. The show really needed the upgrade it got with the addition of Jughead to the main story. His scenes with Archie were strong and forced KJ Apa to elevate his acting a bit. I personally never caught a single episode of Cole Sprouse Disney channel show, but he really was a great casting choice and this week's episode proved it.

For all the Veronica fans out there, she was more in a supporting role to Archie's and Betty's stories this week but had her fair share of meaningful scenes, especially one with Archie where she explains what Betty means to her. I liked the way they used her in this episode, not forcefully pushing her into the stories yet let her just be a part of the story.

Thankfully the show sidelined the parents this week, I'm personally not a fan of either introduced parent so far, they feel too pushy to me and please someone send Luke Perry to get that facial hair fixed. Still, each of them appeared in a couple of scenes but didn't get enough time to be annoying. Once again Josie was sadly underused and Kevin Keller didn't get too much screen time either.

As promised at the end of the premiere episode an arrest in Jason Blossom's case will be made and it is a surprising one. I hope I intrigued you enough to tune into this week's Riverdale episode. Feel free to drop a comment or two in the comment section and don't forget to tune in on Thursday 9/8 central on the CW for a new adventure in Riverdale.