Thirsty for a chance to prove himself, Archie gets his shot when mysterious monster attacks keep disturbing Riverdale. While investigating, he comes across a company selling a new sports drink, Zoom. After several nights of more chaos, Archie discovers that Zoom contains a mutagen that interacts with DNA, turning one out of a thousand people into a monster. Now that he's cracked the case, will the young reporter break the news?
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Ambition Is Evil: Played With; Archie's desire to prove himself as a reporter and a hero is understandable, and it wouldn't prove much of a problem if Zoom Co. was irresponsible. However, they do the right thing and Archie nearly creates a lot of trouble by spilling the story unnecessarily.
- Buy Them Off: Played With; the Zoom company does pay the people who were mutated into monsters and ask them to keep quiet. However, they already fixed the formula and just don't want the bad publicity to close their business and put thousands of people in Riverdale out of work.
- Cassandra Truth: Archie and Jughead see a monster. However, the newspaper doesn't report on it, and Archie can't get others (especially Reggie) to take him seriously.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Subverted. The executive did buy the silence of the victims, but only because his company did end up fixing the formula problem that was causing mutations and wanted to prevent the negative press from closing the new Riverdale plant, which would create hundreds of jobs for the town.
- Double Take: Jughead spends a few minutes talking about Archie's ambitions before seeing the monster sinks in.
- Foreshadowing: When Archie and Jughead discuss what they love about the film they watched, Archie states he loved it how the "mild-mannered hero saved his hometown from a monster". In the end, that's how Archie saves the day with the company. He saved his town by refusing to expose the mutagenic bottle of Zoom in his hand, the monster being himself who would ruin the economy of Riverdale for being famous.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: People mutated into monsters gain glowing yellow eyes, including Archie.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Archie tracks down evidence of a weird mystery that could vindicate him and his reporting work: a company selling a sports drink that infrequently turns people monstrous. However, one of the corporation's executives tells him that they already fixed the problem and destroyed the mutagenic variety of Zoom, except for the bottle Archie has. If he goes public now, it will destroy the company and the jobs it would create. Archie decides that's more important than his becoming famous and destroys the evidence.
- He Knows Too Much: Subverted; two executives listen to Archie's message on their hotline and declare that he can't be allowed to bust Zoom Co. to the public. They actually just want to buy the last bottle of the old, mutagenic formula back from him and their agent leaves him alone once he pours out the bottle.
- Irony: As he and Betty chase down a monster Archie, Jughead points out the irony on how Archie has no idea that he's the monster that's terrorizing Riverdale.
- Literal Soapbox Speech: Archie climbs onto one of the tables at Pop's Chok'lit Shoppe to declare that he's going to prove the existence of the monster and go down in history as the guy who saved Riverdale.
- Persona Non Grata: After Archie climbs on the table to declare he's going to crack the case, Reggie quips that he'll always remember Archie as the guy who got kicked out of the Chok'lit Shoppe. Archie looks across the room to see Pop Tate scowling in disapproval. However, Archie doesn't actually get banned.
- Rule of Three: Jughead states that Archie needs three things for him to be famous for revealing a paranormal incident in Riverdale: evidence, a news crew for him to report it, and a monster to tackle.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The Zoom Energy Drink saleswoman who hands Archie a free sample makes Archie turn into a hideous monster whenever he ingests it.
- Wham Shot: Betty and Jughead are trying to find Archie because there's a monster sighting...just as the scene cuts to a donut devouring monster that has Archie's hair and jacket.
