If you’ve ever watched Chilling
Adventures Of Sabrina on Netflix
then it’s probable that, like me, you’ve been followed around by Riverdale when browsing for
the next boxset to jump into. There it
is, in the Popular On Netflix list, in the Trending Now list, or in the Because
You Watched Sabrina list. It even came
up in my Because You Watched Making A Murderer
list. Just give in to it. I did.
There’s no point delaying the inevitable: we’re all weak. While Sabrina’s characters, residing in nearby
Greendale, refer liberally to Riverdale (joining both shows’ origins in their Archie Comics roots), it
wasn’t until I journeyed there myself that I uncovered something truly
entertaining. Episode one makes every
effort to hook you in with such force that you wonder how subsequent
instalments will ever maintain the level: there’s mystery, there’s style and
atmosphere, there are throwaway lines so witty that you can practically feel
the writers air-punching as they thought of them. Warning: some of the dialogue sparkle does
die away as the drama progresses, but it’s taken over by the endless mystery
and ever more stylised atmosphere of Riverdale town, until the place and its
inhabitants take on an alternative universe quality, offering just the escapism
you might need from your pointless life.
The trick is to immerse yourself in Riverdale and accept it
for the nonsense that it is. The first
barrier is the hair dye. Lead character,
Archie, is supposed to be ginger, but apparently they couldn’t find enough male
actors with red hair. KJ Apa, naturally dark-haired,
was hired for other reasons, it seems, as the poor lad’s clothes are constantly
getting torn off to prove to everyone he has done all his sit ups (and to
distract you from his dodgy barnet). If
this makes you wonder how much steaminess the show purveys, then I can tell you
that there is romping aplenty. All the
Riverdale High Schoolers are pretty active in this department, as are some of
the parents. It’s not really a family
show, but the line is drawn at the female nipple, with below the waist out of
bounds. Sex and relationships are a big
part of the plots, but it seems there’s no need to be explicit. For one thing, it would look out of place
next to Riverdale’s drug culture. This
idyllic forest town eschews your standard class As and Bs for its own brands of
narcotics. Try sounding dangerous when
you’re talking about jingle jangle, which basically looks like pixie
sticks. Or if you want the harder stuff,
there are fizzle rocks. We’re shown
stabbings and shootings over and over, and a growing body count is paraded in
front of our eyeballs, but illicit substances take on a Wonka-esque whimsy that’s
just part of the Riverdale experience.
But the weird names don’t stop there. Archie’s best friend is referred to as
Jughead by the rest of the cast, all while they manage to keep straight
faces. His sister is called
Jellybean. Their dad is FP. There’s Midge and Moose. You just get used to it, but I have to
mention that Jughead’s hat is perhaps the most displeasing thing in the whole
show. I can only tolerate its tattiness
and contrived kookiness because it seems to be in homage to the original Archie
Comics characters, with Wikipedia reliably informing me that they first
appeared in 1941. Americana nostalgia
frames a lot of the action: the teens consume thousands of calories of
milkshakes in Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe (the ur-diner of diners, but with a weird
name), Riverdale High is all letterman jackets and cheerleaders, gang members
are identified by their leather jackets.
The gangs! Alongside
the jingle jangle, Riverdale gang culture has also been through the PG
process. The South Side Serpents (the
South Side is the bad part of town: there is litter and graffiti there) drink
in a dive bar and ride motorbikes, but they also do some sterling work in the
community and just want to live their trailer park lives while clad in leather
no matter the weather. That said, they’ll
pack some punches whenever the Ghoulies come to town to push fizzle rocks,
resulting in dialogue that feels more CBeebies
than The Wire. I’ve decided they’re the male equivalents of
tarts with hearts. One is even called
Sweet Pea (see earlier snarky comment about Riverdale nomenclature).
What actually happens, then?
Each series revolves around a mystery, from Jason Blossom’s death, to
the Black Hood, who lingers unwelcome into season three’s Gryphons and
Gargoyles boardgame-based shenanigans (no idea why it’s not spelled griffins,
but think Cones of Dunshire from the amazing Parks
& Recreation, only with more death and fewer cones). Archie and Jughead form a central quartet
with Betty Cooper (ornamental collars) and Veronica Lodge (pearls), supported
by a handful of other teens who tend to get the better lines whilst coming and
going. The mysteries actually feel less
interesting than the day-to-day relationships between the cast, but they
contrive hard to drive tension between the kids and their parents. In a stroke of self-referencing, the parents,
who are of course as photogenic as their beautiful offspring, are played by
high school movie royalty. Step into
shot Luke Perry, Skeey Ulrich and Molly Ringwald. This reference loop almost inverts itself in
a throwback episode when the young actors play their parents’ characters in a The Breakfast Club-inspired
exposition of the Gryphons and Gargoyles’ origins. It doesn’t matter, as the parents’ behaviour is
often much more puerile than any of their children’s, partly because the
writers aren’t shy of wild u-turns to drive the plot forward.
So, take a trip with me to Riverdale. It’s not like the real world. I’m literally going to coin an adjective here:
Riverdalian. It’s Riverdalian not to
swear or say the real names of drugs or to be called Fangs. It’s Riverdalian almost never to be seen in
class at school because you’re too busy solving mysteries. It’s Riverdalian that the episode where the
students put on a musical (of Carrie) is a
musical episode itself. It’s Riverdalian
to be melodramatic, far-fetched, heavily stylised and aesthetically cast. But then it’s also Riverdalian to indulge in
this guilty pleasure and not to be sorry about it.
