Betty and Jughead argue during the "Kiss of Death" episode
Usually the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the “Archie” comics is Betty and Veronica fighting over the seemingly perfect Archie, Jughead humorously gulping down hamburgers and Ms. Grundy getting angry at all of their antics. Not cheesily-named vengeful psycho-murderers and unnecessarily complicated crime family blueprints — which is basically all of Riverdale Season 2. So how did the show end up with such ridiculous melodrama?
To start with, Riverdale spends too much time on the overly complex and cliche plot and not enough time developing the characters. The “Archie” comics provide the show with all the necessary resources to make the characters lovable, real, well-rounded and flawed-yet-redeemable — and the show uses none of them.
For the most part, each of the four main characters is frustrating and makes bad choices based on skewed values — as teenagers in CW shows always do — but the difference here is that they don’t make enough good decisions to offset that. Even Damon in “The Vampire Diaries” had his moments of selflessness and enough emotional outbursts to redeem himself from the many people he murdered. Unfortunately, can’t say the same for the Riverdale crew.
Even Betty, who was originally the moral pillar of the four ended up becoming accessory to murder more than once. OK, one time might be forgivable and provide some room for her growth, but two or three times just seems careless. It’s unauthentic, and the plot points are less interesting as much as they are put there to be shock factors, and hope that the audience gasps in disbelief as yet another ‘unbelievable’ thing happens.
The show was always doomed to cheesiness and melodrama as well, which is such a shame because the idea behind it was great. Basing a part drama, part murder mystery show on beloved comics that already had character frameworks premade is the Holy Grail of young adult television — except that TV shows are supposed to raise the stakes as they continue, and when a show starts off with a murder, what else is there to be lost?
And that is how Season 2 ended up with The Black Hood. If they didn’t introduce another mystery to solve, and more drama that would put everything at stake for the high schoolers, the show wouldn’t have had anywhere to go. They needed to start the season off with more murders, because if they started with something else, like the Lodge plans to overtake the Southside, there wouldn’t be enough drama to make it interesting. But that is the format of these shows, because CW programs are merely soap operas for teenagers anyway.
Another irksome trait of the second season is how predictable it is. From the moment that Mr. Svenson came into the picture, when Josie found another creepy gift from her admirer, it was obvious by his forcefulness with Chuck and weird involvement with the students that he was to play a bigger part than just being the friendly janitor. If there were only a few predictable things throughout the whole season, it would be forgivable, but the problem is that the show is almost predictably unpredictable and it’s usually easy to read the characters and what decisions they’ll make.
Of course, most people who have seen the show can also comment on the melodrama and unrealistic nature of all the characters and plot. So why is Riverdale still so popular? Because although the show is objectively bad, that makes it ultimately good. It’s addicting, entertaining and even if the characters suck, they’re attractive and it’s easy to get wrapped up in each of their stories. In the end, as far as guilty-pleasure shows go, Riverdale is one of the best.
