Dispatches from the Riverdale Register: "Goodbye, Riverdale"
There goes the last great American dynasty
It has been five days since the series finale of Riverdale, “Goodbye, Riverdale”, aired. Fan response has run the gamut, which might lead one to ask the question: Is the Riverdale finale good or bad? Yes.
Let me explain. Riverdale is a story about stories. This has been clear from the start. Writer Mary Kate Carr is one of the few I’ve seen accurately assess Riverdale’s intentions with Season One (widely held by some as a the only “good” season):
The idea of a “dark and sexy” Archie Comics television show was silly from the start, something audience members may have forgotten due to the effectiveness of the first season’s Twin Peaks parody. But it was always a parody, one that pilloried teen soaps as much as it reveled in being one. There were gang wars and class battles, big musical numbers, and characters declaring their own romantic relationships as “endgame.” (Link here)
Lest we forget that in the pilot, new girl Veronica Lodge announces that she’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but this small town is In Cold Blood. The characters of Riverdale have always been trapped in narratives, only able to process their lives through art and pop culture. It’s become the most explicit in Season 7, where most of the characters have pursued a storytelling medium - Archie the poet, Betty the essayist, Veronica the movie producer, Jughead the comic book writer, Ethel the comic book artist, Cheryl the painter, Toni the literary author, Kevin the playwright/composer, Fangs the musician, and newcomer Clay as kind of a jack of all trades (he’s expressed interest in movies, theatre and literature).
While it can be easy to forget, given that our characters have had to contend with everything from murder mysteries to cults to ancient warlocks, the main narrative our characters are trapped in (and are commenting on) is the original Archie Comics setting. They have tried to resist a narrative where Archie can’t choose between Betty or Veronica, a narrative where Betty and Veronica are defined by their relationship to Archie. They have tried to resist the easy nostalgia for Americana that the original Archie Comics represent. You can even see this in the plots they’ve tackled. The True Crime Industry is all about how “shocking” murder is in a nice small (White) town, but Riverdale reveals how murder is a feature, not a bug, in this kind of environment. Even Season 6, where some characters have superpowers and other characters are literally from Heaven and Hell, grounds itself in political commentary about uniquely American horrors like union-busting, criminalizing homelessness, and the racist foundations of a town like Riverdale.
Another way to think about it, per writer Emma Stefansky:
Where shows and movies primarily driven by nostalgia have grown stale, Riverdale’s camp pastiche aesthetic took the bones of things we remember loving and spun them into entirely new shapes. (Link here)
And then there’s Season 7.
I like Season 7. But Season 7, while it does continue to spin the bones of things we love (both from the 1950s and from Season One of the show) into new shapes, can also be viewed as a corrective hand descending from Archie Comics itself. The characters got to grow into adults in Season 5 and 6, a striking departure from the forever teenage comic book characters. They had careers and families in the making…and then in Season 7, they’re 17 again.
Season 7 also plays in this weird space where it takes one step towards criticizing Americana values, and then takes two steps back. McCarthyism is bad, but Communism is worse. Your nuclear family might be a nightmare to deal with, but going No Contact isn’t the right solution. Propaganda about masculinity and the military is false, but Eisenhower and the Interstate is great, no questions asked.
Is this a failure of the Riverdale writers’ imaginations, or a purposeful demonstration of how the Archie Comics characters cannot escape Americana? Maybe it’s a little of both. Maybe it’s not even conscious.
In “Goodbye, Riverdale”, the characters get a second chance at growing up, albeit mostly off-screen. The framing device is an elderly Betty, remembering the last day of school in senior year, guided by a Jughead who is…what, exactly? An Angel? Jughead from the Rivervale/Riverdale bunker? Whoever he is, he is dressed, nostalgically, like Season One Jughead. Jughead fills Betty in on what happened to everyone, and aside from a few tragedies1, Betty is happy to know her friends all lived content, long lives. Elderly Betty dies near the end of the episode, and we see her enter the Sweet Hereafter, which is Pop’s Chock-Lit Shoppe, and all her high school friends are there2, drinking milkshakes, dressed in 1950s attire, smiling.
Is this ending horrifying? Is this ending cathartic? I think it depends if you see Betty and the others as real people (or, characters who feel like real people) or as archetypes from a story. Try as they might, these archetypes will always be snapped back to high school, snapped back to an uncritical, nostalgic view of Americana, not able to move on, choosing instead to drink milkshakes over a rotting corpse3. Narrator Jughead says Riverdale will always be your home, and it’s true in the sense that these characters are doomed to repeat this cycle, and it’s true in the sense that these characters have infinite chances to live again. It’s also true for the audience, who will continue to read the comics, or continue to re-watch Riverdale, and who will write their own stories one day. Archie and friends are forever teenagers, waiting for the next storyteller to come along and push them in new directions, to try and break the narrative. “And then one fine morning—”4
Stray observations
My biggest disappointment with this season is the reduced screentime/storyline of Tabitha Tate (Erinn Westbrook). Tabitha was a regular cast member in Season 5 and 6 and quickly distinguished herself despite coming late to the show. In Season 7, she is only in a few episodes, and does not appear in the series finale. I just want to know why, and I’ll have to wait for the SAG strike to conclude (with a fair contract!) and for any NDAs to be expired.
I originally watched the non-extended episode, which skewed the ratio of Happy vs. Sad endings for characters - Fangs is the only teen to die young in the non-extended episode. Even with the tragic deaths of Julian Blossom, Tom Keller and Frank Andrews in the extended cut, I wish we had skewed a little closer to a Stephen King’s The Body, or even Rob Reiner’s more bittersweet Stand By Me, where everyone’s life has a melancholy tinge to it, whether through loss of friends and family or loss of their own life.
Archie’s poem/roast is instantly an infamous Riverdale moment, and I hate it and love it in equal measure. Which is related to my next point…
…how much of this finale is about the TV show Riverdale ending, and how much is it about the characters who live in the TV show Riverdale concluding their journey? One comment I saw that I resonated with was that Betty saying Riverdale was a wonderful town to grow up in goes against the experience of the character Betty as we know it. Rather, Riverdale the TV show was a wonderful place for Lili Reinhart to grow up, was a wonderful product for us the audience to grow up with, and I think this is the spirit in which we are supposed to take this line. I sympathize with fan frustration over this - I harbor a small amount as well - but I think this is the inevitable conclusion of these characters realizing that they are characters. Thus Archie’s poem works more if you view it as KJ Apa roasting the cast and crew.
Am I the only one who thinks Betty’s grandaughter looks like Donna Sweet?
I didn’t get into the “quad” above, but essentially Archie/Betty/Veronica/Jughead all date each other senior year, in a nice little polycule. I think this is a) the only place they could have ended up because b) Archie is never allowed to choose one girl over the other, per that guiding hand from Archie Comics.
I do love that Vanessa Morgan’s real son River got to play Toni’s son DALE.
I love Kevin desperately asking Archie to include him in the poem/roast, that’s such a Kevin moment.
Thank you everyone who has read my dispatches this season, and to everyone who has ever enjoyed watching Riverdale. There will truly never be a TV show like this one ever again. To close out, I am sharing some of my favorite articles/ephemera about Riverdale.
Link roundup:
“They’re Finally Ready to Graduate”, Rebecca Alter for Vulture
“The end of Riverdale is the end of an era of television”, Mary Kate Carr for The AV Club
“We’ll Never See Anything Like ‘Riverdale’ Again”, Emma Stefansky writing for The Ringer
“A Celebration of the Incredible Fake Names on ‘Riverdale’”, Bec Shaw writing for Gawker
The Epic Highs and Lows of High School Football by Rebecca Shaw and Freya Daly Sadgrove
That happen mostly in the deleted scenes from the extended version!
Plus Pop, the poor bastard.
Note that Jason Blossom, the show’s original rotting corpse, is the one who holds the door to Pop’s.
The Great Gatsby