ive never seen riverdale but im here from ur post and listening... can u explain how the characters use "old-timey tech" or what that means
short answer: imagine if people in 300 years time threw a '20th century' themed party, and you've got 20s flappers standing next to 70s punks next to someone cosplaying paris hilton. that's riverdale.
long answer: despite appearing to be pretty much just another vampire diaries, or pretty little liars, or even smallville (seriously, this show wants to be smallville so bad), riverdale is made with a kind of aesthetic verve usually only found in Wes Anderson movies. Whole sets are perpetually bathed in neon light, camera work is suprisingly inventive, characters are very carefully colour coded, its a visually pretty interesting show
and a part of that is the tech. the show-runners were going for a kind of timeless americana vibe, and one of the main ways that mannifests itself is that (after season 1, which is fairly normal) technologies from 1901 to 2021 all exist simultaneously in the town, and the general rule seems to be to only ever go as modern as you absolutely have to.
telephones are a good example of that. if a character recieves a phone call while in a physical building, it will come through on a chorded landline. (the only chordless phone exists in betty's bedroom, because they like to have her lie on her bed and talk, ala early 90s teen romcoms.) people will phone the diner and ask to speak to a patron rather than just calling that patron directly. the phones used are often rotary dial ones, rather than push button, and in the case of the high school, a candlestick phone (the ones where the speaker and microphone are two sepperate parts)
but characters have modern cell/mobile phones. if someone needs to make/recieve a phone call when they're in their car or outside, they'll use a mobile phone. (I have a feeling there is one instance of an 80s car phone, but don't quote me on that)
jughead has a laptop, because that was introduced in season 1, but he basically stops using it and starts writing on a typewriter from season 3 onward, and the laptop only comes back when it's needed for a plot point.
the fbi uses paper files and microfiche, and when they tap someone's phone it records onto a cassette tape. the highschool computers are from 1995, people are surprised that a video rental store is still in business but not that it only rents VHS tapes, tvs are almost all 1960s wood pannelled ones except when they're early 80s countertop ones, betty's dad is about 40 but his childhood home movies are reels of film that have to be played on an vintage projector rather than vhs tapes.
for season 3 and 4, all the tech works on this same logic. occaisionally it's a nod to the comics (archie drives a 1915 ford model T tourer, which is a comics reference, but everyone else drives cars from between about 1950 and 1975, which isn't. any modern cars are ones introduced in the first season), mostly it's just the designers having fun.
season 5 does something slightly weirder, where specific sets and characters seem to exist in different timezones, like jughead's flat exists in the 1970s and archie's military service exists in the 1910s. (hospitals have always only existed in the 1950s and the nurses wear those weird white pointy hats that make them look like the flying nun.)
i don't think it works for what they were going for; the diner definitely has a timeless feel, but the rest of it just feels weird, honestly. but that actually works in the show's favour, because the plots get so insane that combined with time not working properly you just have to conclude that this either takes place on an alien planet where everyone is trying and failing to cosplay 20th century humans, or in some kind of time sinkhole where a century of time is all happening simulataneously and also mothman is here. (that's not a joke. mothman is here)
