It looks like Hiram has assembled his own Legion of Doom Riverdale style.
Riverdale Season 2 (Spoilers)
- Thread starter Gryffindorian
- Start date
Was that the season finale last night? I thought when FP disbanded the Serpents, it was the end of the gang, considering most have defected to the Ghoulies or left town altogether. Now it appears the Serpents have blended in quite well with the Northsiders.
I really admire Veronica for her courage to stand up to and challenge her manipulative, scheming, and despicable father. I liked it when she secured The Wyrm in the Southside and traded it for Pop's Diner with Hiram. But the deal didn't come without a hefty price. "It's all blood money anyway."
I really admire Veronica for her courage to stand up to and challenge her manipulative, scheming, and despicable father. I liked it when she secured The Wyrm in the Southside and traded it for Pop's Diner with Hiram. But the deal didn't come without a hefty price. "It's all blood money anyway."
Yes indeedy.
She and Betty both freed themselves from their evil dads at the same time. And Cheryl also literally emancipated herself from her evil mother and the twin brother of her dead evil father. Whereas Archie and Jughead both ended up with restored, strengthened bonds with their single dads. The boys of Riverdale have been having better luck with fathers than the girls have.
Season three: Penelope Ann Miller to recur
Not that I'm complaining since I have Netflix, but it would be cool to see the upcoming Sabrina series on the CW, even on a different night or timeslot from Riverdale.
That phrasing makes her sound like a disease.
Why, Archie, why? 
This show just keeps getting more and more insane. So Riverdale's juvenile detention facility is a hardcore, brutal prison? And then the cheerleaders show up and do an Elvis number, and it's conveniently choreographed to give Veronica time to have an angry confrontation with Hiram before she finishes the song. And meanwhile there are crazy cult murders going on and all the gang's parents are involved with some Deep Dark Secret connected to it.
A lot of it was delightfully crazy, especially the song number, but the part that rubbed me the wrong way was the portrayal of role-playing gamers as some kind of delusional, dangerous suicide cult confusing the game with reality. That's right out of the paranoid rantings of moralists toward RPGs when they were first catching on, back when I was in high school. I would've thought by now we would've outgrown those stereotypes and that treatment of RPGs as some scary, alien thing. I don't know, I suppose maybe the show is satirizing old movies/TV that featured such tropes, but it feels like it's playing it straight, and that bothers me.
A lot of it was delightfully crazy, especially the song number, but the part that rubbed me the wrong way was the portrayal of role-playing gamers as some kind of delusional, dangerous suicide cult confusing the game with reality. That's right out of the paranoid rantings of moralists toward RPGs when they were first catching on, back when I was in high school. I would've thought by now we would've outgrown those stereotypes and that treatment of RPGs as some scary, alien thing. I don't know, I suppose maybe the show is satirizing old movies/TV that featured such tropes, but it feels like it's playing it straight, and that bothers me.
Christopher... I see what you are saying but as a former gamer myself, who lived through the “DnD is evil” 80s, I don’t see that this is the same thing. Obviously at the end of the episode when all the adults came together, it’s obvious that this is far more than game hysteria by parents.
I love how this show gets crazier and crazier. And now i’m really interested to see the new Sabrina series. I think Riverdale is now accepting that supernatural things are real.
I love how this show gets crazier and crazier. And now i’m really interested to see the new Sabrina series. I think Riverdale is now accepting that supernatural things are real.
Well, yes, that's exactly the problem -- a work of fiction portraying that view of gamers as if it were objectively real, as if the fears of the moralists were justified. If the story showed gamers accurately as just kids having fun and being creative while their parents were jumping to ignorant conclusions about them being delusional Satanic cultists, I'd be fine with that. But when the story claims that gamers really are delusional Satanic cultists, that's treating an ignorant stereotype as the truth, giving it a legitimacy it doesn't deserve. And it's strange to see that trope played straight now, when RPGs are better understood and a lot of the people writing TV and movies are gamers themselves, so that we get more positive and informed portrayals of gamers (as in The Librarians and iZombie, for instance) instead of the old mocking stereotypes of gamers as dysfunctional nerds who couldn't cope with reality. So for a show in 2018 to go all the way back past the dysfunctional-nerd stereotype and resurrect the even more insulting and stupid Satanic-cultist stereotype -- and seemingly to play it straight rather than satirizing the idiocy and ignorance of it -- is jarring. I know this show loves its Brat Pack-era nostalgia, but that doesn't mean it should uncritically resurrect the more negative tropes of '80s fiction.
I don't see any sign of that. It looked pretty clear that that "Gargoyle King" thing in the woods was just an effigy that someone was hiding under and moving around to scare Betty and Jughead. If it had been meant to be a genuine monster, then it would've been a pretty lousy special effect. And just because characters in a story believe in the supernatural, that doesn't require their belief to be real.
Okay, this season is kinda going off the rails for me. I'm so tired of the Illegal Underground Fight Club plot that every show these days seems to feel obligated to do at some point. The stuff with the Farm and the supposed role-playing game (which works nothing like any RPG I know of) is just dumb -- it's crazy, but not in the fun crazy way I'm used to from this show.
And it's weird and incongruous to put a speakeasy under Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe, of all places. That's crossing two very different flavors of nostalgia. And it's very much in the vein of the stuff that shows on The WB and UPN used to do, contriving ways to include music venues as regular settings so they could feature bands and cross-promote their albums. Buffy had the gang hang out at The Bronze, Angel had Lorne's club, Charmed had Piper buy a nightclub, Smallville had Lana turn a classic movie theater into a nightclub, and so on and so on and so on. (IIRC, the UPN execs reportedly even tried to convince Star Trek: Enterprise's producers to somehow arrange for live bands to perform in the ship's mess hall, and thank the Great Bird the producers didn't give way on that one.) Between this, the underground-fight thing, and the evil satanic pseudo-RPG, this is just one cliched plot device piled on another.
There's also a weird parallel with Monday's Arrow. In both shows, the lead character is currently in prison, and in both of their episodes this week, the hero is pressured to hurt someone else but figures out that he can appease the person doing the pressuring by letting himself get hurt instead.
I will give the episode credit for bring back Ronnie, Cheryl, and Toni's stylish black sneaking-around ensembles. It's just so hilarious that they dress up so sexily to go ninja-ing.
When Hiram brought the portrait of Veronica to the speakeasy, my first thought was, "Check the frame for bugs and cameras."
And it's weird and incongruous to put a speakeasy under Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe, of all places. That's crossing two very different flavors of nostalgia. And it's very much in the vein of the stuff that shows on The WB and UPN used to do, contriving ways to include music venues as regular settings so they could feature bands and cross-promote their albums. Buffy had the gang hang out at The Bronze, Angel had Lorne's club, Charmed had Piper buy a nightclub, Smallville had Lana turn a classic movie theater into a nightclub, and so on and so on and so on. (IIRC, the UPN execs reportedly even tried to convince Star Trek: Enterprise's producers to somehow arrange for live bands to perform in the ship's mess hall, and thank the Great Bird the producers didn't give way on that one.) Between this, the underground-fight thing, and the evil satanic pseudo-RPG, this is just one cliched plot device piled on another.
There's also a weird parallel with Monday's Arrow. In both shows, the lead character is currently in prison, and in both of their episodes this week, the hero is pressured to hurt someone else but figures out that he can appease the person doing the pressuring by letting himself get hurt instead.
I will give the episode credit for bring back Ronnie, Cheryl, and Toni's stylish black sneaking-around ensembles. It's just so hilarious that they dress up so sexily to go ninja-ing.
When Hiram brought the portrait of Veronica to the speakeasy, my first thought was, "Check the frame for bugs and cameras."
Guys, there's a newer thread. Let's continue Season 3 there.
Oh, sorry, got the wrong thread.