It’s not often that I revisit a television show I’ve already written about in this space, particularly when I’m as busy as I have been lately. But then again, it’s not often that a television show goes so completely and wonderfully off the rails as Riverdale did. The teen-angst TV version of the Archie comics universe started out as a standard, if slightly dark, attempt at blending small town high school drama with a fatheaded attempt to capture the elusive qualities of Twin Peaks, delivering a first season that was goofy and yet still essentially grounded in recognizable young adult tropes. Its second season, however, goes from “Archie, but everyone fucks” to “Archie, but everyone is involved in a cult murder gang” in ten seconds flat, and the results are something to see.
It’s hard to determine exactly how much the glorious train wreck that is Season 2 of Riverdale is intentional, and how much is functional. Like the Holocaust, it is a question that may haunt historians for generations to come. Is this the way the show was always intended to go, part of a sinister plan from the very beginning to turn America’s most beloved teen icon into a depraved stew of lunacy? Or are the writers and producers simply responding to feedback from the fans, who press the red button the crazier the show gets? If there is an answer, I have no idea what it is. It doesn’t display the traditional qualities of camp; it plays everything perfectly straight, and although it contains nearly innumerable self-references, there is not a wink in sight, and even if the creators are trying to get one over on us, nothing can penetrate the sticky haze of seriousness projected by the young actors (who at least have an excuse, unlike the likes of plaid dad Luke Perry and insufferable Marco Rubio impersonator Mark “Mr. Kelly Ripa” Consuelos).
Looking at the credentials of the people who boiled up this pot of teen madness is no help. Greg Berlanti has had enough success in television that he can probably do whatever he wants, which means that at the very least approves of whatever is going on here. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is the creative head of the Archie Comics extended universe (yes, that’s a thing that exists and is so named now), which probably explains the number of deep-cut characters who show up in absolutely batshit form, but he came to us from Glee, a show which similarly seemed impenetrable to those of us who wasted time trying to figure out exactly what its motivations were supposed to be. Like Glee, Riverdale seems to veer wildly between embracing its own most absurd tendencies for the sake of entertainment and wanting to be something profound that has Things To Say about How We Live Now. Sadly, these latter elements appear to be winning, and the result is a show that, on the level of pure narrative design, is a complete disaster, but which somehow manages to be compulsively watchable.
What’s the secret? Well, it’s actually pretty simple: Riverdale lacks almost all the traditional virtues of good serial television. The dialogue is (forgive me) impossibly arch and unrealistic; it has no sense of humor about itself; it’s an utter mess plot-wise; the characterization is implausible and inconsistent at best; the actors range from merely competent to hilariously bad; and for all its moodiness and shadow, it’s as light as a feather and incapable of delivering any emotional impact whatsoever. But in the era of streaming media, it does one thing extremely well: it’s never, ever boring or predictable. Jumping from a manageable 13 episodes to a comedically bloated 22, it somehow manages to keep upping the stakes from one episode to the next, forever managing — at a time when other Netflix original series, especially the generally dreary Marvel superhero shows, end up becoming torpid and unwatchable only halfway through a season that’s half as long — to raise the ante through sheer determined craziness. No matter what madness has come before, Riverdale tops it again and again.
Give an example, I hear from those of you who have managed to miss out on this work of demented energy. Oh, don’t get me started. I could give a hundred and barely be scratching the surface. Here’s a few to start: Season 2 of Riverdale features not one, not two, but three separate serial killers, one of whom is the only surviving member of another one. There are duels between two different drug gangs in a town that is simultaneously so small that its entire economy sees to run on maple syrup and designer drugs but is also so large that it has its own culinary festival and a Four Seasons Hotel. At one point, to fight the second (? I just watched the second season for the second time and I can barely remember the details, so absurdly tight is the hysterical tenor of its constant revelations) serial killer, he forms a vigilante gang whose primary activity seems to be posing shirtless in extremely homoerotic YouTube videos. There are at least two incest subplots, and possibly more. There are so many killings (“milkshakes and murder”, as Veronica puts it in what seems like a moment of self-revelation but is really just another toss-off joke) that the sheriff hasn’t slept in two years, but no other law enforcement ever shows up. Betty receives regular phone calls from one of the serial killers, to whom she apparently assigns the personalized ringtone of a 1958 pop song about blowjobs. I could go on, and I haven’t even gotten to the musical episode, because of course there is a musical episode.
I honestly don’t know how to assess this show’s second season; it’s critic-proof in the most profound way, because every single scene is at tonally at odds with not only every other scene, but with the very foundations of dramatic storytelling. It’s not that I like it or don’t like it; it’s below both hurdles. It just is, and to be honest, I hope it doesn’t stop. All sense has left the world, and Hollywood has left us with Riverdale.