While I would be surprised if I'm alone, I'm one of the few people I know who's actually read a large number of Archie Comics. And, keep in mind this is coming from someone who made the conscious decision to read this tripe (a lot!), let me be the first to say that the comics are complete bullshit. Archie is a selfish idiot, Veronica is a bitchy socialite with a competitive streak, Betty is an airhead who seems to be slumming it in her infatuation with Archie and the whole town of Riverdale was pretty much just an overly perfected version of classic Americana with little beneath the surface. Now, apparently realizing that their signature creation really is THAT awful, the creators have decided to turn the whole damned thing into a CW series and...they really didn't add much to the mix. Talk about not hearing the dogs barking in your head.
Sadly, from a strictly watchable standpoint, Riverdale excels in its own averageness. Archie is now an oversexed teenager with a serious Edward Cullen complex (I'm curious if he would sparkle if the sun would ever come out). Kevin is little more than you basic stereotype of a gay best friend to Betty, the series rather cheery outlook on life as been replaced by a murder mystery in the heart of eternal fog country, Jughead has become an emo and, apparently to be just a little late on the timely train, Veronica's dad is now Bernie Madoff. Good job swinging for the fences and still missing, CW!
Fortunately, if you can look past the fact that the writers basically took Vampire Diaries (dark and broody), Pretty Little Liars (somewhat interesting characters with uninteresting plots) and Teen Wolf (beautiful, oversexed people in various states of undress), you might find something worth the forty plus minute slog the pilot quickly becomes. Despite being the second least likeable character from the comics (behind Archie), Veronica (Camila Mendes) is sort of endearing as a former socialite-queen-bitch-turned-wannabe-good-person. I know this is only the pilot and they have twenty-plus episodes to totally screw her up and turn the whole damned thing into another will-they-won't-they love triangle but, come on, when was the last time you felt like rooting for the Veronica in this particular tricycle? And, while the character quickly devolved into Joey from Season 1 of Dawson's Creek (openly pining for the guy too stupid to notice the burning house in front of him), Betty (Lila Reinhart) actually kind of fits the role well enough to make her memorable and, dare I say it, endearing. Hell, if the show could have just been about Betty and Veronica and just killed off Archie (or sent him away to boarding school for a semester, I don't care!), it almost feels like this show would have improved twofold based solely on the winning combo of catty (Veronica) and stoic (Betty).
As for watching it, is there literally anything else on? Yeah, good luck with that decision. I guess if you're really hard up you can endlessly repeat the out-of-nowhere Veronica-Betty cheerleader audition makeout on CW.com or laugh at some of the stale jokes that fall flat because of Jughead's (Cole Sprouse) terribly bland delivery, but, let's be honest, nothing in this particular episode feels even remotely unique. Every character is playing a worse version of terrible characters you've seen in slightly better shows and, even with the added incentive of a series that is trying to "modernize" a very outdated story, there just isn't anything here that makes it stick out. Maybe Jughead will get more screen time to actually DO SOMETHING in Episode 2...
No comments:
Post a Comment