Bildungsroman Blitz Presents: Dispatches from the Riverdale Register
A prologue to my long-gestating thesis on The CW's Archie Comics-inspired television masterpiece
Greetings, dear readers! I am excited to announce a new weekly column that I will be publishing here as part of Bildungsroman Blitz. Dispatches from the Riverdale Register will be my weekly recap/review/rambling about Season 7 of Riverdale, a television show on The CW that some know is based on Archie Comics characters and that fewer know is still airing. Season 7 is the final season of this genre-busting, often baffling but always entertaining “teen drama”1, and I look forward to taking you along for the ride.
Braver souls than I have recapped every bonkers season and moment of Riverdale. Big plug for @levgarrity on Twitter:
The only thing missing from that recap is that at the end of Season 6, as a comet threatened to destroy the town of Riverdale (yes, really), all the characters suddenly woke up in the year 1955. And only Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse, he’s weird, he’s a weirdo) remembers the present. My column will be written assuming you know everything about Riverdale, but I hope that even those with zero context will get something out of it, and that’s because Riverdale is about America. It’s about Everything.
Before we jump into Season 7, Episode 1, “Don’t Worry, Darling”, I want to emphasize that this is not a bit. I think Riverdale is brilliant and will stand the test of time.
In a preview article in Entertainment Weekly about Season 7, creator Roberto Aguirre-Sarcasa said:
Every season we explore the tropes of a specific genre, be it supernatural, be it pulp, be it crime. This year our genre is the 1950s, so we're in dialogue with the American myth of what the 1950s were versus the reality. (link here)
Riverdale has always been about the Americana narratives we tell ourselves, and about how the political struggles of the past are still with us. It’s also always taken place in a heightened reality, one that is knowingly and winkingly Not Our World. It achieves this heightened reality in several ways, but my favorite way has to be the off-brand product names like Glamerge Eggs and Sarah Florence College, and metatextual homages like the local prison being called Shankshaw and two bitchy writer characters being named Bret Weston Wallis and Donna Sweett. Something else Aguirre-Sarcasa said in that EW preview was that Season 7 would be “probably, weirdly, our most grounded season”.
The Season 7 premiere, “Don’t Worry, Darling”, was immediately both things Aguirre-Sarcasa mentioned: grounded, and about the American myth of the 1950s. No sooner is Jughead narrating that we are in 1955 that he reminds the audience that 1955 is the year Emmett Till was lynched. That’s not a throw away reference, it’s almost the main focus of the episode.
Riverdale has been clumsy in its handling of racial justice in the past, and infamously couldn’t stop sidelining original cast member Ashleigh Murray, who played a reimagined Josie McCoy (of Josie and the Pussycats, naturally), which was glaring because Ashleigh was the only black regular cast member. Still, its heart has always been in the right place. As the town of Riverdale is somewhere in upstate New York, the show filled the town’s colonial history with indigenous genocide, which is met by a call for reparations in the present day2.
We learn from Jughead that Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan) and Tabitha Tate (Erinn Westbrook), two black students, have just returned to Riverdale from Mississippi, where they watched a grand jury refuse to indict Till’s killers. Toni did extensive reporting about the trial while in the area, and wants to have it published in The Blue and Gold, Riverdale High’s school newspaper. Editor-in-Chief Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) wants to publish it but reveals that the school principal has been censoring any stories about Till. In a meeting with Principal Featherhead (William MacDonald), he says that the reason they don’t want to publish Toni’s story is that “things like this don’t happen in Riverdale” and it “has nothing to do with us”. To “prove” that point, Featherhead reminds Betty and Toni that Riverdale High is a peaceably integrated school.
In the end, Betty and Toni decide to ambush the morning announcements and read Langston Hughes’ poem about Till, “Mississippi - 1955”, on air. The girls get in trouble, but we see the effect of their actions later in English class. The teacher asks the students about their response to the poem, and invites Toni and Tabitha to share their experiences in Mississippi if they feel comfortable doing so. Jughead narrates:
And so a conversation that might not have happened for decades was started in that classroom.
This was really well done! I am honestly shocked, and can’t wait to see how the show handles more horrors of the 1950s next.
The other real-life tragedy informing this episode was James Dean’s death in a car crash, which was alluded to in the Season 6 finale. The news has so rattled Archie Andrews’ (KJ Apa) mom Mary (Molly Ringwald) that she forbids him to drive, which cramps his style when he wants to offer new girl in town Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) a ride. I loved this detail because a piece of 1950s culture I’ve always been a sucker for is the teenage tragedy song. The teenage tragedy song is always a ballad, usually about the death of your sweetheart, which often was the result of a motorcycle or automobile crash. Think “Last Kiss”, “Dead Man’s Curve”, the great Amy Jo Jackson vehicle Susie Q3.
Let’s go back to Principal Featherhead for a second. He is played by the same actor who previously appeared in Season 3 as Warden Norton4. We also meet the school psychologist, who is played by Malcolm Stewart, an actor who also previously appeared in Season 4 as Francis Dupont. Both Warden Norton and and Francis Dupont were villainous authority figures, so I'm sure the principal and psychologist will be completely above-board this season. This is also a clue that we are in an alternate universe.
Stray observations
Jughead details what everyone’s new teenage selves are up to, but says “No sign of Reggie yet.” This is disappointing for me personally, as a Reggie fan, but I think this is because Charles Melton was filming the new Todd Haynes movie - good for him!
Veronica Lodge’s parents in this universe appear to be a version of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, starring in a sitcom called Oh Mija! They apparently still suck, even though they aren’t in the mob this time around (as far as I know). There is a character on their sitcom called “Little Ronnie”, who Veronica calls a bitch, and this reminded me very much of Steve Sanders on Beverly Hills 90210 and his strained relationship with his actress mom, who treated her TV son better than him.
Veronica originally claims to be in Riverdale researching for her role in an upcoming film of Our Town, but it’s then revealed that Natalie Wood has the part. Wood was probably chosen as a shout-out to her co-star James Dean, as this movie appears to be exist only in the Riverdale universe.
We have a brand new opening Riverdale title card, and it’s perfect but also it’s so different that I don’t feel right shouting “RIVERDALE!” at full volume the way I used to when it would pop up.
Another clue that we are in an alternate universe is that Cheryl Blossom’s (Madeleine Petsch) twin brother is no longer Jason but Julian, the triplet that she ate in the womb. Julian sucks!
The Emmett Till plot was treated in a surprisingly grounded way, but am I the only one who thinks there was a hint of Dark Betty in Betty’s desire to see the photos of Emmett Till’s open casket?
Archie says that his dad was Missing in Action in the Korean War. For those who don’t know, Archie’s dad was played by Luke Perry until his untimely passing, at which point they killed the character off-screen. I think it’s interesting that they chose to not make it Killed in Action, raising the possibility that Fred Andrews could be alive in this universe. But I’m not really sure if they’ll do anything with that.
Jughead to Archie: “You’re really violent in the future.”
Off-brand product name: Chateau Marmaduke, standing in for the Chateau Marmont (and also metatextually referencing Marmaduke “Moose” Mason, who like Reggie also hasn’t appeared yet).
Real life product name: Spotify. A shame, I was really looking forward to what the Riverdale version of that would be.
See you next week!
Scare quotes not because I don’t respect teen dramas, I just think Riverdale is way outside those parameters. In fact, the Wikipedia article for Riverdale describes it as a “supernatural horror crime drama”.
They made up an indigenous tribe, the Uktena, which again, kind of fits the Not Our World vibe, but is also kind of cringey because it’s a bunch of non-indigenous creators trying to make up fake customs and culture.
The song “Susie Q” is not a teen tragedy song, but this underseen Walt Disney Channel film is about a ghost who died in the events of a teen tragedy song.
Yes, the character is literally called Warden Norton, the same name of the villain in The Shawshank Redemption. No, he is not the warden of Shankshaw, but he is the Warden of the Leopold and Loeb Juvenile Detention Center (emphasis mine).