For the past two years, there has been one tradition that I have every Wednesday. As I finish up my day and prepare for the latest primetime TV, I turn on The CW and find myself making the flippant joke “This is the week that Riverdale will make sense.”
If you’re anyone who watches the show, you’ll know how ridiculous this request is. It’s easier said than done. While season one produced one of the tightest teen noir shows of the 2010s, everything that’s followed has been a long and winding road of infamous absurdity. In season two they tackled a murder cult called The Black Hood, then in season three things got so confusing that not only were they fighting a Dungeons & Dragons-style organization (again, a murder cult), but there was “The Farm” who serves as a religious cult, brainwashing characters along the way. It was, without dispute, too much.
But what keeps me coming back to this show? I clearly have an endless amount of options when finding shows that I could be staying up to date with. For whatever reason, Riverdale and its complicated web of reason have always been fascinating, servicing as the one comic book series that has allowed itself to expand into a melodrama that is equal parts dark and hilarious, with endless YouTube cringe videos being compiled to highlight the series’ strange writing process.
It’s a show that doesn’t need to make sense. One could argue that it wouldn’t be as enjoyable to watch if it was. Given that the actors feel like they’ve aged out of their teenage roles (season four is their senior year at Riverdale High), some moments play like a surreal Alan Ruck-ish portrait of high school in a funhouse mirror. They’re either too mature for some of the dialogue they’re given, or the writing forces them to take crazy situations seriously. For as many faults as this show has, the idea of Riverdale making sense is a joke more than a request because honestly, it’s the one show that I love going to and get lost in its strange worldview.
That is why it’s kind of fitting that Riverdale ended its fourth season this week abruptly with a note that feels all too relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. The final episode finds the teens wanting to murder their new principal Mr. Honey (Kerr Smith) because he’s trying to keep them from going to prom. Meanwhile, Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) is being hunted by a masked killer (wearing masks designed like their cartoon origins) while he writes a murder mystery that is a blatant blueprint for their planned hit on Honey. It all ends, unfulfilled. Like everyone else it seems, the pandemic cut short their production history. So what is the ultimate final moment of Riverdale in 2020? There is an abrupt ending where the kids are disappointed that they can’t go to prom and death lurks behind them.
If there’s a more sensible series conclusion this year, please let me know. Things are so bad in the real world that local networks have taken to paying tribute to The Class of 2020™ in between other stories.
But Riverdale was promising some big things for the senior year of these characters. Considering that there’s no clarity as to when the series will return, there’s no certainty that we’ll get that cliffhanger resolved anytime soon. Instead, we’re left with a twist as absurd as anything the show has developed. Even as things looked to be at their clearest (for what it’s worth, season four has been leagues more coherent than season three), there had to be something to frustrate the trajectory of the series. It’s especially frustrating because that cliffhanger is the type meant to fill you with anticipation for the next episode. The conclusion was still three episodes off, so this is especially tragic.
Though if we’re being honest, the most fascinating detail of this season is how it has used death in three very different ways. If you judged based on the abrupt finale, it was a sense that the teens are all blood-thirsty, eager to appropriate justice in the only way that they know how: murder. Sure, they get talked down from that ledge, but that’s only after Jughead gets a potential scholarship and Mr. Honey’s inner logic becomes something more complex. In theory, this series stacks dozens of plots on a weekly basis and it’s hard to know how long the sympathy will last, but considering that they suspect him of sending death threats to Jughead, trouble lies on the horizon.
Compare that to where this season started. In one of the series’ best, and most compassionate, episodes, they pay tribute to Luke Perry. Perry played Archie (K.J. Apa)’s dad and his untimely death impacted the story in unexpected ways. While it amped up the role of Archie’s mother (Molly Ringwald), this was an opportunity to reflect back on Perry’s place in the show. There was a sensitivity that the show rarely expressed, and it actually treated death as something serious and personal. There had been significant deaths before (to quote Josie: “Riverdale is the murder capital of the world”), but this felt special.
It felt like a turn, where everyone was going to work to become more compassionate and caring. Maybe they would focus on their studies and return to normal lives. That’s how this was supposed to go, right? Well… this show has a way of working like a tidal wave. There are long stretches of evenness, but the waves eventually rise, collapsing on each other, and soon they swirl into something new and unrecognizable. If you think that Riverdale is going to form a conscience and enter college with a bigger heart, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Part of me wouldn’t mind seeing Riverdale try to go long stretches without melodramatic conflict, but again this doesn’t take place in our world. It doesn’t take long for the story to shift to Jughead getting a scholarship to a prestigious prep school, being offered the chance to write a Baxter Boys sequel – itself based on existing events from the series. Soon it becomes clear that Jughead, this scrappy outsider, doesn’t belong and they start turf wars against each other that builds to a mid-season twist.
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| Story of my life too, Betty |
It’s one that you think will inform the rest of the season, but it’s not quite that. Jughead “dies.” Considering that we’re coming off of the Perry death earlier, you’d expect this to be more nuanced, of Jughead’s rebellious nature colliding with an intellectual sociopath. The audience gets to see this moment play out. He has a funeral and his friends get to play along. You figure that it’s going to be emotional and treat death with a sensitivity. We lost a meaningful cast member, and the show would be forever changed. We loved his voice-over narration, his confidence that he’ll solve crimes. Considering how much time was left in the season, it was the perfect time to start sleuthing this mystery…
Remember, you’re talking about Riverdale.
Jughead isn’t even dead ONE episode. He shows up at the end, after we’ve built up this emotional response and a butting suspicion that he was still alive. This was good fuel to get through the rest of the season, but it should be noted that death means nothing on this show. Jughead is doing it just to show up the preppies and prove that he was capable of fooling them. Months after dying, he’s rubbing their noses in his intricate web of brilliant schemery. Oh, the hubris of Jughead. Does it know no bounds?
There were other plots scattered throughout, though none of them really felt as significant this season. Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) spent a lot of time fighting with her father (Mark Consuelos) over running a speakeasy and who got control of the maple industry in Riverdale. Also, Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) has a catatonic relative that she keeps in a back room for some reason. Oh, the amount of weirdness on this show isn’t enough to sustain in one review.
It’s all wonderful in painting a portrait of a world where Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) has “serial killer genes” and Archie has connections to the F.B.I. It’s one where Archie’s mom randomly becomes gay, and they get a new evil principal who threatens to make everything square and backward. The audience is forced to hate Honey because he won’t let Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) perform songs from Hedwig and the Angry Inch at a talent show. Given that we’ve already seen them perform Carrie and Heathers, you know that they’re not going to go down without a well-choreographed fight.
A lot of the key moments for the final stretch appeared in that annual musical episode. It always has to. There are the videotapes/snuff films from a rental business called Blue Velvet (get it?) that give Jughead cryptic messages of his death. He watches. We don’t question why an 18-year-old wouldn’t be overtly traumatized by such grizzly imagery, especially when prompted by adult figures who should know better, we just go along with it. It’s creepy and serves as a great final mystery before prom kicks in…
But that’s to ignore the Hedwig episode. These episodes, in general, have become divisive, if just because some of the material feels absent from the meaning of the series. Whereas Carrie and Heathers had ties to high school ennui, Hedwig is about a transgender rock star coming to terms with conflicted relationships. It kind of works (if you stretch reason), but it ultimately got laughed into being the worst-rated episode on IMDb because it felt more mandated than emotionally resonant. It doesn’t help that some numbers just break out randomly, lacking a deeper motivation. By the end when they’re dancing on Pop’s Choc’lit Shop, it’s all meaningless nonsense. If you’re not on board for the confusing decisions, then this is a nightmare.
But I really wanted to see where things would wind up this season. For the first time in a long time, it felt like season four would make sense. It wouldn’t be a masterpiece and no episode was without dialogue that could’ve used more self-awareness (talking about yourself as a senior may be appropriate, but it also makes you sound like you got an AARP subscription), but the mystery wasn’t meandering, dragging on for weeks because they needed to fill time. That’s what I ultimately disliked about season three, which felt like it went a quarter of the season without any major developments yet acted like navel-gazing was appropriate storytelling.
Here Riverdale gave us twists and developed something that’s more serviceable to a narrative structure. They may have been spinning wheels during this season and others are just rehashing tired plot twists (how many times do Betty and Archie need to have a fling?), but it felt like there was an urgency. The show was in its final high school season, and that meant it was the last time that this premise would work as well as it does. At various points, there’s talk about their future, and we’re saddened to know that the gang may be breaking up. Josie’s already jumped ship to Katy Keene. Where else are people going to go?
Without that ending, it feels like a typical Riverdale trope, but one without a deeper emotional resonance. They usually end on a strong note, reminding us of the value that these characters bring to each other’s lives. In a series that failed to have a continuous stance on death even within a 10 episode stretch, it has a wonderful, kaleidoscopic heart that will never align with reason. Even if they’re not teenagers, they embody the logic and impulsive foolishness of youth in ways that is unlike anything else.
I wonder where things will wind up, if the show actually will return anytime soon. I want to know how things end. Even as I make fun of this show, the absence of a conclusion is heartbreaking. With that said, I am a student of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I know that high school graduation brings with it a new set of conflicts from a narrative standpoint. What will matter when they’re all at different schools, only talking on Zooms? It feels like the show has taken one last chance to acknowledge their mortality and that the show will never be the same after this season. I hope they find a way to make it work, but then again I’m talking about Riverdale. I’m still waiting for it to make sense.
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