I told myself I was done tormenting my kind and non-Riverdale-watching mutuals, and besides, I am too old and weathered for this fandom anyway, but really, the final, final thoughts on this finale and season as a whole:

First, and separately, does anything that happened after the characters got their memories back make sense? What was the point of it? They seemed completely unaffected by anything and happy to roleplay 50s teens. Were they even teens? Were they twenty-somethings sticking around high school like the vampires from Twilight for no explicable reason? Also, I'm sorry if you want to play the sentimental card, but if I was one of a handful of people who had traveled back in time and was stuck living in the past for 60 years or what have you, I would not lose contact with the others who also had. You would go insane! What did Archie tell his Modesto wife and child? Was Veronica picking up options on scripts she already knew would win Oscars? Did Jughead and Betty rewrite old issues of Mad and Ms. they might have read in the past? And is Gloria Steinem okay??? Also Betty and Jughead should remember they kind of hated each other in the future after the cheating and the voicemail, and Veronica should be so jealous of Betty for getting Archie, and Jughead should be so jealous of Archie for getting Betty, and my brain is hurting -

Almost more irritating were a) this idea that Archies are fundamentally stuck in the 50s (I owned the decade collections as a kid and the 60s and 70s were by far my favorites - very groovy), and b) the presumption that they did anything to address, expose, and or/fix actual problems of the 50s. Let us recap:

The school is already desegregated and this is never, ever discussed. The Black students are allowed to compete in beauty pageants, form their own literary club, dance on an integrated TV show, and join cheerleader squads, and this all happens with zero fight from the villains of the season. Fake Ray Bradbury and Fake Ray Bradbury's sweet but stupid wife think they could have settled in the south as a married couple in the forties. But? This is Riverdale, you say? They fixed everything? Sorry, you don't get to use Emmett Till to open the season and then eat your cake too.

Homophobia seemed to be the writers focus this season - except that every other episode someone would threaten Cheryl or Kevin, and then the next episode it would be an open secret at school with zero repercussions. Also, of course only the bad guys are homophobic (sorry Evelyn); our heroes are as forward thinking as they come. Hell, even Buffy had a moment to be wigged out by Willow and this was 1999! Anyway, look up what Lou Reed's parents did to him ('don't you know they're gonna kill your sons')

Let us not even discuss Reggie, who conquers racism through the power of athletics. Look up Richie Allen. Heck, watch the actual School Ties. It doesn't work out so well for David Greene in the end.

And then there's Fangs and Midge: first, rock and roll was seen as a huge menace, Fangs should've been on the school's hit list. Second, the writers obviously never read up on rock and rollers (who were generally older) and teen girls if they thought that was a good storyline. Third, they definitely never read any memoirs written by women in the 1950s, which all feature back alley abortions, slimy lovers, and shady doctors. (We don't even have time to get into Betty's idea of feminism being about sex all the time, everywhere, and becoming a burlesque dancer rather than, like, equal pay. Who knows, maybe she could have been the one harping on non-stop about the Beats and seen the cold face of her future there).

They didn't change anything. EC (sorry, Pep Comics) shut down. The Comics Code Authority won. So apparently all those artists who never worked again were just fine, right Tabitha?