A corpse keeps stealing Betty and Jughead’s spotlight in SNL’s hilarious Riverdale sketch

It’s hard to maintain all that juicy Riverdale melodrama when one of your bit actors insists on playing things super-straight — even if it means stealing the whole show to remind people of just how noisily (and hilariously) unpleasant the dead can be.

In Saturday Night Live’s recent take on The CW’s flagship Archie Comics series, Keenan Thompson’s beleaguered director just wants to film a typical sizzle scene for the season finale; the kind where Betty can cry on Jughead’s shoulder while her deceased cousin’s lifeless body lies peacefully under a robe. But the super-serious actor (Pete Davidson) whose one job is simply to lie still on the morgue slab while Betty spills out her weepy eulogy — well, he just takes his job a little too seriously:

Davidson’s insistence on totally embodying the role of a real dead guy even ends up winning over Betty (musical guest Halsey) and Jughead (Beck Bennett), who totally forget they’re in a comic book show and give themselves over completely to the cadaver’s whole method acting trip. Thompson’s director finally throws his hands up in disgust — not at the dead body’s burbling and thrashing, but at the realization that he’s fighting an idiotic battle he just can’t win.

Maybe he’s just directing the wrong Archie Comics series. Tweak the scene just a tad, and that corpse that won’t lie still might look right at home in an Archie Horror spinoff like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Then again, we better not give Netflix any ideas: after all, we keep hearing that Thompson might just be looking for a new acting gig. 

You can catch new episodes of the real Riverdale — minus all the re-dead convulsing — when Season 3 continues at The CW on Feb. 27.