K-SCORE: 22
Creator: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Starring: KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes, Cole Sprouse, Madelaine Petsch, Luke Perry, Casey Cott, Marisol Nichols, Ashleigh Murray, Mark Consuelos, Skeet Ulrich
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“miscarried malformed red on red fetuses taxidermied in the closet”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I shouldn’t have watched it. I know. I knew after a few minutes that this was in the genre of Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries and is barely a half step above soap opera. Lots about the genre confuses me, but nothing so much as their desire to have every single scene be a dramatic reading of newly discovered exposition delivered in a whisper-yells on the brink of tears, regardless of the circumstances. “Maybe being a member of the cheer squad isn’t important to you mother, but it’s important to me, and you know what, Archie may have rejected me, but at least I know he actually cares!” Scowl, cry, walk away. Same exact filmic tone as, “Jason is dead, father! Don’t you get that! No, of course you don’t because you never cared about him; all you care about is preserving the image of your precious company!” Scowl, cry, walk away. Why do people want to watch that exact scene in ten-thousand iterations over the course of a crazy number of hours. 10 hours to make it through season one. It was a haul, but I made it, and I like to think I’ve become a better man as a result.
I don’t regret my time with Riverdale though, because the show teaches a very important lesson. At the start of the first episode, twin redheads Jason and Cheryl Blossom, dressed all in white, take a rowboat out to a river, and then later Jason Blossom is found with a bullet hole in his head. Their mother is a redhead and along with their father, who is weirdly pointed out to be a wig-wearer, as if you should suspect that he too was a redhead before going bald, embark on a town-wide hunt to find Jason’s killer. The main character, Archie Andrews, is a redhead wannabe musician and football team star. His estranged mother - redhead. And all the other characters set out on this overly long detective mission to find out who killed Jason Blossom and why.
Um… hello! There’s a mystery as to who killed him, but there’s no mystery as to why. This town has far too many redheads! It’s like half of all characters. And it’s not a crime; it’s just a good samaritan thinning out the redheadfestation. So who really cares? They should just come out in one of their many public gatherings with speeches and original songs by Archie and the three town black people and ask, “Hey, by the way, who killed Jason?” and then someone can stand up and say, “Oh, that was me.” And then that guy can go, “By the way, out by the river, I dropped my wallet? Did anyone find that near the corpse I left?” and then snoopy Archie can say, “Oh yeah, Betty and I found that while we were investigating Jason’s murder,” and then someone else can say, “Shut the hell up, redhead! You’ll speak when spoken to.”
When they introduced another redhead mid-season, I thought: okay, surely that’s it. That’s the end of this madness, but no. No more redhead murders all season long. It’s no wonder everyone’s so on edge all the time? Riverdale is not a safe place. There’s a gang called The Serpents that appears to be attempting to do their part to aid the community with the problem, but everyone else is making it worse. They’re sending away brunettes to other towns, exiling dirty-blonde teachers, and ruining the life a black football player with a girlfriend and social media account by accusing him of being a slut-shamer, handcuffing him, and attempting to drown him in a hot tub. We need him! Not only is he the only black character that doesn’t spend all his/her time talking about being black, he’s the only man in town who we know for sure isn’t carrying the redheaded virus. His sperm is a Riverdale vaccine for future generations. And the blonde girl and the brunette girl stole his diary and poured maple syrup on his head.
Not only does the story try to hook you with this redhead euthanasia, but it blithely ignores the fact that Cheryl Blossom escapes the river scot-free. And you can clearly see over the course of the season that she isn’t some halfbreed with good intentions and a penchant for emo guitar. She’s a pure blood, red-hot and crazy. She’s Cersei Lannister if someone took away the cunning and set her head ablaze. There’s a joke made at one point about her having inappropriate relations with her dead twin brother and when I heard it, I was confused. I assumed there was a mountain of miscarried malformed red on red fetuses taxidermied in the closet of her stately red princess bedroom. The other characters didn’t make this assumption, evidently. And at the very end, she burns down her house and tries to kill herself in the best way possible, purgation through frozen river, and all the other high school kids stand back and watch as Archie takes up his mantle as archvillain and pulls that fiery-haired banshee right out of the water and dragon breathes life back into her.
Step your game up, Riverdale High! If we have a repeat performance in season two like we had in season one, there won’t be anyone but redheads left alive for season three. And don’t plead ignorance. Yeah, you’re all in high school, supposedly using your adolescent years to figure out what really matters in life, but anyone who doesn’t have red hair can clearly see that not a one of you is younger than twenty-four. Learn the lesson they should’ve taught you in those classes we never saw: control your redhead population lest it control you.