Dispatches from the Riverdale Register: "Archie the Musical!"
It's not Archie's Weird Fantasy, but it's a last hurrah for the Riverdale fans who actually love the musical episodes
A certain, very vocal, subset of the Riverdale fandom hates Riverdale’s musical episodes. My understanding is these episodes are hated because they are viewed as the ultimate expression of the show being self-indulgent…which is bad, I guess.
In the first few seasons (the high school years), the musical episode would coincide with Kevin directing the spring musical, making the musical numbers mostly diegetic (i.e., happening in-universe). Season 5, which also saw our teenage characters jump forward in time to their mid-20s, broke tradition by having the musical episode be non-diegetic, using songs from the musical Next to Normal to plumb the depths of Alice and Betty’s grief, expose the cracks in Veronica and Archie’s relationship, and have Tabitha and Jughead start their own. Season 6 sort of returns to the standard by having Kevin staging/performing numbers from the musical American Psycho (a musical whose script is written by Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) at Betty’s serial killer convention (don’t ask).
Like much of Season 7, “Archie the Musical!” is revisiting something from the show’s earliest episodes: Kevin’s high school plays. But this time, Kevin is doing something different: he’s pitching an Original Musical. What’s it about? Well, it’s about our favorite gang of Riverdale High School students, and he’s decided that All American Boy Archie should be the main character. Everyone, including Archie, is confused by this.
Before I get into the full recap, I want to say that I was mostly whelmed1 by the musical aspects of this musical episode. The music itself (written by Matthew Doers, Joe Iconis, Tim Acito, Ben Lee, and Michael Wells) was fine, if tending towards the less distinctive elements of modern musical theatre pop. And while I—a devoted musical theatre fan and new play dramaturg—certainly chuckled at all the jokes about how difficult it is to market and workshop a new musical, I did feel it was a little too inside baseball to be enjoyed by a general audience. Then again, given the feedback that the more “general” audience dislikes these episodes, might as well play to the niche crowd.
There is a lot that happens in this episode outside of the writing and rehearsing of Archie the Musical. Kevin’s parents are getting a divorce! Archie quits the basketball team, and his pursuit of women! Betty and Veronica decide to date, I think! The divorce is given as the reason why Kevin is throwing himself into creating the musical (which, I should add, he is co-creating with Clay), but we’re never really given a convincing reason why his musical is about Archie. This is, of course, metatextual: fans of Riverdale have always observed that Archie is the least interesting part of his own show, and once Kevin decides to craft the show around Archie, Kevin and Clay struggle to give his character an I Want Song2 because the real Archie doesn’t know who he is. I think we are meant to understand that Kevin has chosen Archie because he’s trying to write as far from his own experience - who could have a problem with him writing musical theatre if it’s about the very heterosexual jock Archie Andrews?
But is Archie a jock (or heterosexual)? As for the jock part, he doesn’t think so. While Archie is initially in crisis once Kevin and Clay’s music reveals his indecisiveness, he later thanks Kevin for indirectly giving him the push he needed to tell Uncle Frank that he wants to quit basketball and dedicate himself full time to poetry. He also tells Betty and Veronica that he can no longer focus on them, but Betty and Veronica have other things on their minds.
Betty and Veronica are fed up with how Kevin and Clay are writing their characters in the musical - as singularly obsessed with Archie and competing with each other. Veronica confesses to Betty that she kissed Archie last week, and Betty asks Veronica if she likes him. Veronica admits that she does…but not as much as she likes Betty. Betty feels the same. Veronica gets her close personal friend Cole Porter (more on that later) to write a song for her and Betty to sing together, and it’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen (and maybe the gayest thing Kevin and Clay have seen, too!).
Despite everyone’s hard work, the episode ends with Principal Featherhead telling Kevin that he won’t get to direct Archie the Musical - stick to Oklahoma, that’s safer. After Archie tells Kevin how much his music helped him, he asks to hear the new song that Kevin’s writing. Slowly, the entire cast comes in and sings together. It’s not “One Day More”, but it’ll do!
Stray observations
This episode, more than any other this season, really strayed from the period vibes (though I still have some old time slang words of the week to share below). I’m probably reading too much into this, as usual, but I’m wondering if there’s a chance our modern memories are coming back. First, Jughead has this line in the opening song, “Monday, Senior Year”:
Four years, feels like I’ve done it before
referring to starting senior year…which of course, the old Jughead has done before. Second, Kevin invents the word “frenemies”. Third, Archie earnestly says he needs to take time for his mental health, which is the last thing a 1950s teenage boy would say. And lastly, the music tries nothing to sound like 1950s musical theatre.
Is Veronica saying “dramaturgically” a Succession reference? Probably, but also, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa once wrote a play (Rough Magic) where a dramaturg is the main character, so who’s to say?
At first, I was disappointed that Archie wasn’t apparently looking at Reggie and Jughead in a gay way—rather, as symbols of basketball and poetry. But until this show’s over, I’m not ruling out that it could be in a gay way.
We finally saw Kevin’s mom!
I enjoy the Archie/Kevin friendship. Hope it’s not over after this episode!
Old time slang words of the week: Archie says, “Sure jelly, let’s roll.” Which I think is just a play on the phrase jelly roll? He also says he’s “at sixes and sevens”, which is an idiom used to describe a condition of confusion or disarray. Jughead calls Archie a “cube”, which basically is the same as “square”. And Fangs says Kevin’s “snapped his cap”, which means to become angry or lose control.
Real life product name: I’m truly baffled by the decision to use Cole Porter’s real name here…when they didn’t use a real Cole Porter song. Heck, they didn’t even use a Cole Porter sound-alike song. If you use the name, say, Joel Shorter, the fact that the song sounds perfectly modern and not from the 1950s is an easy joke; “wow, his sound is ahead of his time”. However, I was delighted to find out that singer-songwriter Ben Lee3 wrote the Cole Porter song, and apparently ships Beronica:
What did you all think? Hate it/love it? Will Kevin continue to get screen time? Will Archie be torn between Reggie and Jughead, for real? Let’s find out in two weeks!
“Archie’s All-American”, written by Joe Iconis, is the I Want Song and is, in my opinion, the best song in the episode.
His song, “Apple Candy”, was one of my first illegal mp3 downloads. Ahh, memories.