Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Are you binge-watching Riverdale? Because we are DEF binge-watching Riverdale. This show is straight-up addictive and pushing the boundaries of what we usually think of as “teen viewing.” It can get dark, and there’s a lot of dark to explore in the underbelly of this small town, but it also thrives on knowing humor and much wokeness. And for us, Dramedy + Wokeness = Excellence.
FACTS: Archie Comics has been around a looooonnnnng time. Like your grandma and grandpa probably read Archie. It’s changed over time, obvs. When it started in the 1950s, it was apple pie on steroids. Bright, Polaroid-saturated colors, cloudless skies, and saccharine sweet. Everyone had the same face, only their Technicolor hair and clothes were different. Many of your faves were already there: Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead. But it never veered off the story line of the Betty-Archie-Veronica love triangle, with Jughead just wanting to eat. Their clothing style changed with time, but everything else retained that sticky sweetness. It was like they, and all of Riverdale, were frozen in time.
In the ’90s, sales began to fall, because BORING. Marvel and DC were pounding them. But eventually, a new CEO arrived and BOOM! Things got much cooler. They were finally willing to explore more adult themes, portraying issues on gun control, politics, financial recessions, long-term relationships, and same-sex marriage. Which is awesome because the new, improved Life with Archie gave us Kevin Keller! Who became a senator! We are so here for that. The series ended in 2014 when some loon tried to shoot Kevin, and Archie took the bullet to save him.
SQUISH!
Undeterred, the Archie Comic peeps came out with Afterlife with Archie, getting us a lot closer to our jam, Riverdale. It was complete zombie realness when Sabrina Spellman, the teenage witch, tried to revive Jughead’s beloved floof Hot Dog, but the spell gets borked, no pun intended. The point is, when they saw everyone’s response to the darker, creeptastic Archie, they knew they had a good thing.
Riverdale took the ball and ran with it. And they’re serving up ALL the things, and we are shook. It’s a small town, and yet there are drug runners and murderers. We take that back. We mean murderers galore. Don’t forget cults, lots of empty coffins, organ theft, evil nuns, gryphons, gargoyle kings, and conversion therapy, which, last time we looked, was a bunch of snake oil. How all this goes down in such a wee town is beyond us, and you’ve got to wonder if it isn’t sort of like when 1700s Paris emptied their prisons into Louisiana.
It’s completely bananas, and we love it! Still, we have lots of questions . . . Like, why did poor Svenson have to die when he’d already lost all his fam as a kid? And, how do they keep their bodies so tight while constantly eating burgers and milkshakes? Will Jughead ever publish a novel? And how does Veronica get her eyebrows so perfect?!?
We’ll have to drop anchor before we get all those answers, except for the main one: The cast of Riverdale tackled a story that everyone knows, and characters everyone thinks they know. Cole Sprouse, KJ Apa, Cami Mendes, Lili Reinhart, Ashleigh Murray, Madelaine Petsch, Casey Cott, and Charles Melton faced an enormous challenge to make it their own.
SCOOP! is, our cute cast knew it too. KJ Apa told ET Live that “it’s a massive responsibility, playing such an iconic character.” They knew the fans of the comics were going to be tough on them.
Some of those very fans are in the cast. Who, you ask? Well, Madelaine Petsch is a huge stan and got so thrilled when she was cast as Cheryl Blossom that she started crying!
Then we’ve got Cole Sprouse, who worked in a comic store! He knew all the deets about Archie Comics and had doubts about their ability to pull it off. “I come from a comic background . . . and when you hear about a dark and gritty take on an otherwise beloved franchise, that’s all the wrong buzzwords for the right project,” he told The Last Magazine.
But after he did his homework, he began to see the light. Or the dark. “It seemed like the road [in the Archie universe] had been paved for a while for something like this. My knowledge now is that the Archie universe is wide enough for something like this to take place.”
Not only has Riverdale taken place, but everyone is shooketh! Peeps are devoted to this show, and we get it.
