by Pa Rock
Watcher
The fine art of television viewing has changed considerably since my youth. Instead of watching one episode of a favorite show once each week on a particular day at a regular time - with reruns in the summer - now many of us stream - or find a show that we like and then watch all of the episodes of each season in a reduced period of time - often just days. Viewers take in an entire season in a short bursts and then sit by for months-on-end until the next season is out and ready to watch. It is easy to lose the storyline and sense of continuity in a situation like that.
A couple of years ago I decided to check out the CW series "Riverdale" which I understood was a modern take on the old "Archie" comic strip, one of the favorites of my youth. I started the first episode but was quickly repulsed when the action focused on Archie, a popular high school student, having sex with his teacher, Miss Grundy, in her VW Beetle. That's right, Miss Grundy, once an old maid English teacher, had now morphed into a hot young music teacher who was providing individual, in-car tutoring to a strapping high school jock.
That just ain't right, I thought, and abandoned the series before I had completed the first episode. I was smart enough to know that this new "Archie" was never going to last.
Fast forward to this past spring: the pandemic was moving across the land, production of new shows was slowing, and I had already watched most of the shows that sounded promising. "Riverdale" was still in production with four seasons (seventy-seven episodes) in the can and waiting to be viewed. I decided to try it again. It was going to be a long project that would undoubtedly be a challenge to some of this old high school principal's core beliefs, but I determined to give the viewing my best effort. I persevered, and yesterday I finished episode number seventy-seven.
The "Riverdale" of my youth, the one where Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead - and all of their friends lived - and never aged - was an idyllic community that I assumed was somewhere in the Midwest where all of the "normal" people lived. They rode around in Archie's jalopy, relaxed at Pop's Malt Shop, enjoyed school dances, experienced small problems with their parents, and were perennial nuisances at school frustrating the work of Principal Weatherbee and teachers like Miss Grundy. It was a happy life without any of the "darkness" that seemed to crowd in on real life.
Change came slowly in that "Riverdale," and basically life stayed happy.
But the darkness that avoided the "Riverdale" of the comics is a steady presence in the contemporary "Riverdale" of the television series. This new "Riverdale" features all of the regular characters from the comic series - at least with their original names and general appearances - but beyond that the new group bears very little resemblance to their comic book ancestors.
In the first four seasons of the series, Archie is a red-headed romantic who likes the women, playing guitar and singing, playing football, and boxing. Not only does he bed his music teacher, he also has a prolonged sexual relationship with Veronica, as well as a brief affair with Josie (the lead singer in "Josie and the Pussycats"), and tries a couple of times to set up a relationship with Betty. Archie is a mediocre student who may not get to walk with his class at graduation, but his mother and her girlfriend have somehow managed to get him on a shortlist for admission to the Naval Academy.
Veronica Lodge and her family are basically a Mexican drug cartel that is in the process of branching out into more legitimate interests. Veronica begins breaking from her criminal family and eventually becomes the owner of Pop's Malt Shop. It turns out the Pop's sits above a large basement room which she turns into a "speakeasy" and gambling den - with Reggie acting as her manager and bouncer. By the time the fourth season has ended, Veronica's own small criminal empire is beginning to grow - and all of this is occurring while she is still a student in high school.
Betty Cooper is the daughter of the town's newspaper owners. She becomes a de facto investigative reporter as Riverdale's unique mysteries and criminal activities begin piling up. Betty's boyfriend is Jughead Jones, Archie's best friend. Jughead aspires to be a writer, and his relationship with Betty provides plenty of fertile ground for plot development for his stories.
"Riverdale" is dark - exceedingly dark - with storylines involving cults, serial killers, gangsters, evil nuns, gambling, murder, suicide, drugs, sex, satanic role-playing games, prison life, necrophilia, organ harvesting, bear attacks, and even a brief nod to cannibalism.
Music is also an important element of the new "Riverdale," but it, too, has dark overtones. One year the high school musical was Stephen King's "Carrie" and the following year it was a musical adaptation of the movie "Heathers." During the fourth season there was a student effort to present a show built around music from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."
At other times the musical interludes are lighter and more fun - somewhat reminiscent of the teen musical productions in the old series "Glee." The kids in "Riverdale" always seem to know when the time is right to change things up a bit.
There is also a lot of humor mixed into this dark dramedy, with much of the humor being slipped in as clever references. One local prison, for instance is "Shankshaw," again with a nod to Stephen King and his "Shawshank" prison. Archie, who falsely admits to killing a young man, is sentenced to the "Leopold and Loeb" Youth Correctional Facility - an institution undoubtedly named for Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, a pair of wealthy University of Chicago students who killed a fourteen-year-old boy in 1924 just for the thrill of it. Another exapmple is "Brett Weston Wallace," the psycho student leader of the private school, Stonewall Academy, whose name is strikingly similar to "Brett Easton Ellis," the acclaimed real writer and author of "American Psycho."
There's a lot to like in the CW's current version of "Riverdale." It takes an old and familiar group of friends and transports them into a modern (albeit a bit dystopian) setting. The storylines are contemporary and compelling, and the moral dilemmas profuse. "Riverdale" is one of those rare shows that that seldom has a dull moment, and if one seems imminent, the kids step in with a lively musical number. The constant fast action and steady stream of surprise situations can also be a bit mind-numbing - so again, cue the music!
The show is worth a watch. Old people, like me, will see a few familiar faces such as Luke Perry, Molly Ringwald, Robin Givens, and Skeet Ulrich, and younger viewers will be introduced to a broad group of actors who will undoubtedly go on to define their generation on the screen and in pop culture. And what rattles and shocks today will certainly be viewed as commonplace and even mundane by film watchers in the decades to come.
It's not my "Riverdale," and I'm not comfortable there. But I am smart enough to realize that my role in the world is diminishing, and that coming generations may inhabit the places where I roamed and lived, but they will experience those places in far different circumstances and ways than I did.
"Riverdale" had changed - but so has the world - and it's all going to keep changing.
I accept that.
Watcher
The fine art of television viewing has changed considerably since my youth. Instead of watching one episode of a favorite show once each week on a particular day at a regular time - with reruns in the summer - now many of us stream - or find a show that we like and then watch all of the episodes of each season in a reduced period of time - often just days. Viewers take in an entire season in a short bursts and then sit by for months-on-end until the next season is out and ready to watch. It is easy to lose the storyline and sense of continuity in a situation like that.
A couple of years ago I decided to check out the CW series "Riverdale" which I understood was a modern take on the old "Archie" comic strip, one of the favorites of my youth. I started the first episode but was quickly repulsed when the action focused on Archie, a popular high school student, having sex with his teacher, Miss Grundy, in her VW Beetle. That's right, Miss Grundy, once an old maid English teacher, had now morphed into a hot young music teacher who was providing individual, in-car tutoring to a strapping high school jock.
That just ain't right, I thought, and abandoned the series before I had completed the first episode. I was smart enough to know that this new "Archie" was never going to last.
Fast forward to this past spring: the pandemic was moving across the land, production of new shows was slowing, and I had already watched most of the shows that sounded promising. "Riverdale" was still in production with four seasons (seventy-seven episodes) in the can and waiting to be viewed. I decided to try it again. It was going to be a long project that would undoubtedly be a challenge to some of this old high school principal's core beliefs, but I determined to give the viewing my best effort. I persevered, and yesterday I finished episode number seventy-seven.
The "Riverdale" of my youth, the one where Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead - and all of their friends lived - and never aged - was an idyllic community that I assumed was somewhere in the Midwest where all of the "normal" people lived. They rode around in Archie's jalopy, relaxed at Pop's Malt Shop, enjoyed school dances, experienced small problems with their parents, and were perennial nuisances at school frustrating the work of Principal Weatherbee and teachers like Miss Grundy. It was a happy life without any of the "darkness" that seemed to crowd in on real life.
Change came slowly in that "Riverdale," and basically life stayed happy.
But the darkness that avoided the "Riverdale" of the comics is a steady presence in the contemporary "Riverdale" of the television series. This new "Riverdale" features all of the regular characters from the comic series - at least with their original names and general appearances - but beyond that the new group bears very little resemblance to their comic book ancestors.
In the first four seasons of the series, Archie is a red-headed romantic who likes the women, playing guitar and singing, playing football, and boxing. Not only does he bed his music teacher, he also has a prolonged sexual relationship with Veronica, as well as a brief affair with Josie (the lead singer in "Josie and the Pussycats"), and tries a couple of times to set up a relationship with Betty. Archie is a mediocre student who may not get to walk with his class at graduation, but his mother and her girlfriend have somehow managed to get him on a shortlist for admission to the Naval Academy.
Veronica Lodge and her family are basically a Mexican drug cartel that is in the process of branching out into more legitimate interests. Veronica begins breaking from her criminal family and eventually becomes the owner of Pop's Malt Shop. It turns out the Pop's sits above a large basement room which she turns into a "speakeasy" and gambling den - with Reggie acting as her manager and bouncer. By the time the fourth season has ended, Veronica's own small criminal empire is beginning to grow - and all of this is occurring while she is still a student in high school.
Betty Cooper is the daughter of the town's newspaper owners. She becomes a de facto investigative reporter as Riverdale's unique mysteries and criminal activities begin piling up. Betty's boyfriend is Jughead Jones, Archie's best friend. Jughead aspires to be a writer, and his relationship with Betty provides plenty of fertile ground for plot development for his stories.
"Riverdale" is dark - exceedingly dark - with storylines involving cults, serial killers, gangsters, evil nuns, gambling, murder, suicide, drugs, sex, satanic role-playing games, prison life, necrophilia, organ harvesting, bear attacks, and even a brief nod to cannibalism.
Music is also an important element of the new "Riverdale," but it, too, has dark overtones. One year the high school musical was Stephen King's "Carrie" and the following year it was a musical adaptation of the movie "Heathers." During the fourth season there was a student effort to present a show built around music from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."
At other times the musical interludes are lighter and more fun - somewhat reminiscent of the teen musical productions in the old series "Glee." The kids in "Riverdale" always seem to know when the time is right to change things up a bit.
There is also a lot of humor mixed into this dark dramedy, with much of the humor being slipped in as clever references. One local prison, for instance is "Shankshaw," again with a nod to Stephen King and his "Shawshank" prison. Archie, who falsely admits to killing a young man, is sentenced to the "Leopold and Loeb" Youth Correctional Facility - an institution undoubtedly named for Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, a pair of wealthy University of Chicago students who killed a fourteen-year-old boy in 1924 just for the thrill of it. Another exapmple is "Brett Weston Wallace," the psycho student leader of the private school, Stonewall Academy, whose name is strikingly similar to "Brett Easton Ellis," the acclaimed real writer and author of "American Psycho."
There's a lot to like in the CW's current version of "Riverdale." It takes an old and familiar group of friends and transports them into a modern (albeit a bit dystopian) setting. The storylines are contemporary and compelling, and the moral dilemmas profuse. "Riverdale" is one of those rare shows that that seldom has a dull moment, and if one seems imminent, the kids step in with a lively musical number. The constant fast action and steady stream of surprise situations can also be a bit mind-numbing - so again, cue the music!
The show is worth a watch. Old people, like me, will see a few familiar faces such as Luke Perry, Molly Ringwald, Robin Givens, and Skeet Ulrich, and younger viewers will be introduced to a broad group of actors who will undoubtedly go on to define their generation on the screen and in pop culture. And what rattles and shocks today will certainly be viewed as commonplace and even mundane by film watchers in the decades to come.
It's not my "Riverdale," and I'm not comfortable there. But I am smart enough to realize that my role in the world is diminishing, and that coming generations may inhabit the places where I roamed and lived, but they will experience those places in far different circumstances and ways than I did.
"Riverdale" had changed - but so has the world - and it's all going to keep changing.
I accept that.
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