- Joined
- Aug 16, 2018
Okay, so I’ve heard people bring this show up here and there, but there isn’t an official thread for it. If any show deserves its own thread, it’s this one. So far, there have been six seasons, and it getting progressively worse, and into the “so bad, it’s good” territory. Without further ado, here are some of my issues with the series:
The Show in General
Since I’m having some technical difficulties, I’ll just double post.
Here are my problems with some of the characters:
Archie
Veronica
Betty
Jugghead
Kevin
Cheryl
The Show in General
- The tone is all over the place. One minute, it’s a soap opera filled with relationship issues, the next it’s a dark film noir. The show can’t make its mind up on what it wants to be, so it tries to be everything, and is mediocre at best with that.
- Character motivations change all the time. This will be discussed further on the main characters
- Some of the actual “reveals” on mystery killers are underwhelming for how much it gets built up, leaving viewers let down
- The musical episodes vary in quality a lot, and with about every other episode featuring at least one song sung by a character, it can put it into cheesy territory (which isn’t always a great thing when you are trying to go for a “dark, gritty reboot”)
Since I’m having some technical difficulties, I’ll just double post.
Here are my problems with some of the characters:
Archie
- He is painfully dumb to a point where I wonder how he has survived the series as long
- His goodness is more implied than anything else. A lot of characters in-universe will tell him he is the all-around good guy, but he is also prone to vigilante work and tried to run his own gang in season 2. He’s not the worst character, but the writers could have done him more justice
- I think he would be a better character if they actually tried presenting him as a more morally neutral character, but that would be writing far beyond what the show is capable of
Veronica
- Her dad being her sole motivator for most of her actions throughout the series made her stale
- The writers needed to do her more justice by making it clear that she either hates her dad, or wants him to be with her. Her motivation here changed nearly every other episode, and it made her wish-washy. For a character that is seemingly so headstrong and stubborn, it seems out-of-character
- She has overall become more unsympathetic as the series has gone on, and she has pretty much gotten to the level of her dad with her vengeance
- Her money making schemes are lulzy, especially for when she was in high school. I have a hard time believing a teenager can run a rum business, as she wasn’t even the legal drinking age at the time in-universe. No side characters even questioned this at all
Betty
- All of her detective skills are implied by others in Riverdale, but rarely demonstrated. Her own dad was apparently the Black Hood, but she couldn’t even detect that. Her dad revealed his nature to her, she didn’t do anything to really “catch” him, as she claims later in the series
- Laws don’t really apply to her, even after becoming an FBI agent. Maybe this is the more realistic part of the series, but she goes around searching people’s homes without a search warrant. Laws seem to only apply when the plot calls for it.
- She is overall better at getting caught by serial killers than actually killing them.
Jugghead
- In my opinion, one of the better written characters of the series, but still lacking in some areas
- Like other skills characters seem to have in this series, his writing skills are mostly implied, and seems to have trouble writing unless it’s something happening in real life, meaning that his creative writing skills aren’t as good in-universe as other characters keep insisting
- He is pretty much the brains of the group, which doesn’t always create the best character. Like Archie being mostly the brawn, the characters are overall pretty one-dimensional despite attempts to add depth. They could stand to make him less intelligent on some subjects just to even things out.
Kevin
- At any opportunity, will join a group to betray his friends, despite constantly being reminded in-universe that he is decent (more so in previous seasons than in season 6)
- Overall, probably the most shallow of everyone. His reason for cruising wasn’t out of shame of being gay, but because his mom called him “fat” one time when he was little
- His big take from Lord of the Flies isn’t the dangers of tribalism and what people are capable of without any authority, it’s that he related to Piggy because he was once fat. The writers could have gone for anything else, but all this does is make him seem unintelligent
- He gets mad at Betty in season 2 when she tells him it’s a bad idea to cruise when there’s a serial killer out on the loose. He says that he needs to do it because there aren’t many gay men around in-universe, according to him, despite him being able to find gay men around town looking for casual sex quite regularly. This also just goes into the stereotype of gay men being obsessed with sex, to the point of danger, which might not be something the writers intended
Cheryl
- Probably one of the better characters, but like the others, suffers from motivations being all over the place
- Her identity as a lesbian is too heavy handed. Most of her motivations to do things are either from Nana Rose telling her about a tale from long ago, or from wanting to spite past lovers (specifically Toni)
- I get that she’s a fanservice character, but at least in high school, they could have bothered to put her in less revealing tops and longer skirts. In any other high school, she’d get a dress code violation, which doesn’t exactly help when trying to bring realism to the series
- Her carrying around her dead brother’s corpse for a portion of seasons 3-4 was creepy and I didn’t get why they had to do it. We already know she’s a bit weird, but they could have been a tad more subtle
