#indigo effortposts

[indigosfindings]

riverdale season 7 takes

the timeskip in season 5 felt in part like the series correcting for the fact that most of the cast simply cannot pass for teenagers anymore (well, most of them couldnt even in season 1, ahem), & putting them back in high school two years later is just so.........

the actors are scattershot in terms of whether theyve adapted to the 1950s setting. kj apa & charles melton are essentially playing different characters (which really just means a clunky "gee willikers" performance from the former), madeleine petsch does a different performance thats actually kind of camp but only for the first half, cole sprouse seems to be going for a vaguely retro-inflected performance, then camilla mendes & ESPECIALLY lilli reinhart are still fully playing it 21st century style. "uh, yeah, mom, you are literally gaslighting me right now. which is so not ginchy"

so like, the show is now extremely eager to discuss race (again, im sure this is in part a reaction to criticism) but like theres a lot of jarring & flat elements to that discussion. a lot of it is the show's eternal "have your cake" element (this is a world with like, violent racism, but also white american small-town teens are unanimously vocally incensed about racism, & the single most popular tv show in america is about a latino family, & a student of colour can loudly & explicitly complain about her school's lack of black teachers without so much as a derisive glance), and a lot of it is riverdale's eternally flighty anxiety about preserving the integrity of the characters & setting (the world has racism which is very bad & warrants navel gazing, but riverdale high school also desegregated remarkably early, & nobody is ever actually depicted harassing a racialized character outside of some extremely circumspect jeering in reggie's intro episode in the vein of "youre not a *real american* because of reasons that are very obvious but which i do not feel the need to express or tailor this harassment to"). all of this also applies to the season's portrayals of homophobia

i got the impression that acknowledging racism had become the series' way of like, buying an indulgence for being set in the 50s & revelling in the associated aesthetic. which explains why it almost feels like a mandatory education quota, like the characters just have to periodically look into the camera & say "we know the 50s are racist & thats bad. however, WE are not racist, so please like us"

the invocations of emmett till were just like, wildly distasteful. the way that like horror movie music is played while theyre discussing his murder. & this is used for like, high school drama (& also to facilitate shelving one of the few black characters). frankly horrific

i was initially a bit confused that toni was now being referred to as black (after having been explicitly depicted as indigenous in earlier seasons) but i eventually realized that like, the writers had backed themselves into a corner where they wanted (needed?) to Discuss Race but having shelved both josie & tabitha meant there were no black women left in the main cast.

the way the korean war keeps getting brought up.... "oughh archie your dad was a hero he died in the korean war protecting this country" & what exactly was he doing. what did he do as an american soldier in the korean war. was it heroic.

funny how so many elements of the classic comics are just now making it in (archie is clumsy! julian is reggie for some reason!)

i dont mind that it's gone in a kind of cartoony direction, but good god the sets are drab. the colours are more washed out than ever (presumably to suggest antiquation, i guess?????)

this show is like allergic to writing someone as just, like, a bad person. like nobody ever just sucks theyre always a member of A Devil's Conspiracy. nobody can just be organically homophobic, they have to be shown meeting up with the other Bastards to twirl moustaches & bloviate about deliberate efforts to weed out Unnatural Proclivities. tedious !

the way every character's subplot is just like "i want to have sex" and/or "i want to Watch Movie"

re: my earlier post: the way kevin & clay have no chemistry & dont flirt & so forth and it's just the show flagging that their relationship is inevitable. and there's simply no substance to it & clay never like, gets a personality beyond "likes poetry & movies" but this is still kevin's endgame

the deployment of the red scare is. sort of astonishing. like mccarthyism & the scrutinizing of "unamerican" activity via allegations of communism are used again & again as a tool for drama, but like the show also takes as a given that 'a communist' is the worst thing someone can be & that a person being russian is inherently extremely suspect. so it has to conclude that all the allegations of communism are either false (/misrepresentative, embellished, etc) or "true, but it was only because he was in a bad place & needed community" or whatever. really spineless play at refuting the red scare lol. also theres that very brief bit at the end that implies that mccarthyism was actually the result of russian interference the whole time,

really really loved the thing where jughead offers to help tabitha with her homework then several episodes later the writers realize they forgot to acknowledge that so they just have tabitha say "by the way my homework turned out fine"

the treehouse of horror episode near the start was actually like, genuinely pretty fun. like, fun on its own terms.

the pageant episode was also unironically quite fun. "what happened? did midge die?"

"VIDEL MASTRO"????

the stakes have gone wonky. like seasons 1 & 2 had the whole teacher/student plot thread & incest & whatnot, while season 7 has an episode where gay kevin cries over his parents getting divorced

im so tickled by the way that "you need to get rich & famous within the next six months" is repeatedly framed as like, a good & levelheaded piece of advice

the script being ill-considered is par for the course for riverdale but i feel like it's worse than normal this season (see: the plot point where cheryl & toni, ostensibly teenagers, submit racy photos of themselves to a pinup magazine, & the show doesnt even register this as like, odd). my favourite instance of this is the way midge being imprisoned at The Evil Nunnery is just unceremoniously forgotten. in the second-last episode when theyre onerously tidying all the outstanding plot threads i loveee how no one even seems to think of her

archie's hair.... 😬 and toni's bangs... 😬😬 i didnt even recognize her at first......

there is something so funny about the effort to put characters in 50s fashion/hair but still being too chickenshit to put them in anything that looks unfashionable by today's standards & therefore ending up with outfits that look awful by either standard

i like how aguirre-sacasa is very clearly still bothered about the cancellation of chilling adventures of sabrina

i like that theres lots of poetry reading & it's all awfullll

actually on that note i realized recently that riverdale's horrible musical sequences have conditioned me to like, mentally check out whenever a movie or show has a musical number

one thing that really shocked me is just how Boring the series has become. like nothing is really happening & it's genuinely difficult to focus on season 7. when the finale ended all i could think was "thank god it's over". the last two episodes in particular were a total slog, they just feel like a loooong checklist of loose ends to tie up. honestly i watched the finale yesterday & i couldnt even tell you any of the characters' epilogues, other than fangs instantly dying in a car crash & the homophobes turning out to be secretly gay. archie's horrible poem thats just a chain of references to Moments in the series made me want to throw upp

it's so fascinating that it's just been transplanted to 1955 & theres all this effort with the sets, the costumes, the needledrops & pop-culture references, & a bunch of period-accurate slang has been forced in & whatnot, but theres also just not even a gesture toward avoiding modern line deliveries or terms that hadnt even been coined yet ("polyamorous" jumps to mind), and 50s values are relegated to EvilGuys while the heroes all reject racism & homophobia & misogyny without so much as a moment of hesitation. it's like, why even set it in the 50s if you seemingly dont even want to. it feels even more tactless & superficial than ever

[indigosfindings]

a game director calls the studio's lead composer into their office. the composer opens with a jovial & familiar greeting before reading on the director's face that the tenor of this meeting will be grim. "is something wrong?" the composer asks. the director maintains eye contact for a few seconds before sighing deeply and turning to their computer. they bring up an audio file & play it. it's an exceptional high-tempo music track with a pulse-pounding rhythm & a layered, complex polytonality that both excites & satisfies the listener. it's easily the sort of song you could dance to. the director lets it play for about twenty seconds before hitting pause. "that was the track you composed for the final boss," they say quietly. the composer, shoulders bunched inward, licks their lips. "i, um..." they stammer, "is, um, is there an issue with the track?" the director leans forward and says--practically hisses, upset yet desperate-- "you did not need to go this hard."

the composer tries to come up with a response while avoiding eye contact with their evidently offended boss. "im sorry, i dont--" the director interrupts them. "nobody asked you to go this hard. i did not ask you to go this hard. who do you think you are, going behind my back like this?!" the composer, trying not to shrink any deeper into their chair, sputters: "i didnt mean any harm! i just thought that our players would enjoy an exciting music track for the final battle-!!" the director points an accusatory finger and practically spits, "you should know better. we dont make games with music that goes hard--certainly not this hard!" at this point the composer is starting to tear up, but the director doesnt back down. "players know that video game soundtracks dont need to go hard. by composing this track youve put the success of this entire project in jeopardy." breaths shallow, the composer croaks, "im so sorry. i didnt intend any harm."

the director stands up hastily and turns away from the desk, fists balled and quivering. after a second they straighten their shirt and ease their shoulders: when they turn back toward the composer, their expression and demeanour have returned to neutrality. the composer is hunched & pallid, gripping their knees with trembling hands and staring straight down. "take a few minutes to compose yourself," the director says in a frigid tone, "ive got to try and placate the board. investors are already jumping ship. depending on how things go, we may need to meet again in the next several days to discuss your future with this company." the director exits the room without a second glance, leaving the composer to cry alone, gutted by the knowledge that they have not merely failed at their job but betrayed the faith of the one person who ever loved them

[indigosfindings]

riverdale season 6 takes (post-rivervale)

percival is a fairly compelling villain at the very beginning. i like that this guy just shows up & starts advocating for really horrible policies & the protagonists are just unable to debate him because they have no real principles. giving him mind control powers is really fucking dumb, as is making him The DevilGuy & totemizing him as like a personification of everything wrong with the world. the unsubtle riffs on the avengers movies dont help.

it's also like, all this superpower stuff & power struggle & whatnot puts the show in a place where it just doesnt even have an illusion of being about the characters & their relationships. there are all these gestures toward like, the role these powers play in action & battles & conflict and whatnot, but this show still doesnt like, Want to be an action series. so it's just not really anything

ok so. the fucking powers. archie being invulnerable & cheryl having fire powers are whatever. jughead's mindreading was fine (albeit only thematically relevant if you accept the premise that he is clever or insightful or communicative or a good judge of character, which the show has not facilitated at any point). the reveal that his power is actually Portals made me laugh. betty's aura-reading is silly (obviously the worst power insofar as it accomplishes (both diegetically & as a narrative device) a tiny fragment of what jughead's does: this is such an obvious observation that im not sure why this power was even put in the show). tabitha's time travel thing is bizarre: it seems to riff off of the idea that she & pop's are like, timelessly connected to the city's history, which might make more sense if she'd been around for longer and/or been sufficiently emphasized like, ever. veronica's poison power is possibly the dumbest: it's explicitly riffing off the idea that she's "toxic", which is something the show has resolutely refused to depict her as

the fucking library book episode where percival threatens everyone with jail time over their overdue library books, & this is established through like 5 consecutive scenes of the exact same conversation. i started wondering if i was hallucinating

the invocations of class struggle & the labour movement are like, whatever. ok sure archie is a working class hero. i just feel like riverdale is what you end up writing when you desperately want to be seen as politically progressive but have no principles or knowledge of politics outside of what people tweet about

it's really really funny how tbk does all this posturing toward betty like "youre just like me" "youre just as bad as i am" etc & it has. literally no effect on her. even in their final confrontation shes just like "no im not". like what are we even doing here

the thing about hermione actually joining the cast of the real housewives was really really good. genuinely funny bit. why was kevin there during their dinner scene. like genuinely why was he there, if they explained it i missed it completely. he doesnt even say or do anything. when veronica asks everyone to clear the room theres a shot of him looking kind of sour. what was he doing there in the first place why is he involved in veronica's dinner with her mom.

it's funny that veronica is so cordoned off for most of the season (archie & betty & jughead never let her in on anything!) yet it still feels contrived when her plot becomes about how Lonely And Alone she is

veronica's arc is really bad in general. her status quo--her feelings about reggie, her degree of sociality, her general mental state, the goings-on of her stupid fucking casino--is practically being randomized each episode

heraldo's presence is such a funny component. ok veronica has just been introduced to this really handsome new guy, he has ties to her family but is explicitly not related to her, he is both soft-spoken & dangerous, and all of this is happening as her relationship with reggie gets rockier & rockier. ok so he's her new love interest right? no actually she will hook up with him once so that he can then die to demonstrate that veronica's bodily fluids are now poisonous

why was there zero fallout for heraldo's death. she manslaughtered someone & talks about it as if the problem is that she knocked a glass over. no coverup or prosecution or grief at all. veronica's grandma doesnt even ask after him.

the series has hit new levels of Contrived. ok sure, a casino & a diner are two businesses in direct competition with each other. whatever

i like how abigail is written as if she's speaking in a like formal, antiquated register, but most of the things she says are just indistinct from cheryl's regular speech

the abigail plot also goes nowhere. she barely even tries to take her revenge. she gives all these spiels about all the diabolical things she intends to do, then she just doesnt do any of them

the insertion of pop's into the green book is......... i honestly find it really distasteful. i assume that plot points like this are a reaction to criticisms of the show's sidelining of characters of colour, but i dont think they are an appropriate remedy. invoking a bunch of real instances of racism & racist violence as like, a means of mining for drama in your cornball cw show is already in poor taste imo, & i think it's worse to look at the enormity of historical antiblack violence & say "im going to integrate that into my show, specifically by saying that My fictional location was One Of The Good Ones". it gives the sensation of watching a kenneth branagh movie: racism is real & bad & violent & horrible, but it's not here, nor anywhere in the line of sight, & every named white character will make sure to passionately disavow it

relatedly: it's jarring how like, when a flashback episode/segment needs a historical misogynist theyre fine having cole sprouse as the jughead ancestor/counterpart saying something sexist, but when they need a historical racist they have to just like, make up a new character. being weird & antsy about race while also desperately craving the social capital of discussing it is a bad look

the paternity dispute plot thread is soooo whatever. it has brief moments that work (toni proposing marriage because being married = better optics in a custody battle was particularly juicy, although her motive was dropped pretty much instantly in favour of characterizing the marriage/relationship as perfectly healthy & reciprocal), but the gestalt of it is just nothing.

i like how they call him "baby anthony", as though the audience is at constant risk of forgetting that he's a baby

the season going all-in on fangs/toni is really funny. theyre woefully underdeveloped-- and sure, most of the relationships are, but it hits worse when theyre side characters & the show is also declaring their union to represent the birth of christ. and fangs still doesnt have a personality yet

i really really really like that everybody is now going to the town coroner for like, GP shit. like they go to see him for blood work.

the product placement is so fucking funny. ok archie ill send you my payment on chime. (holds up phone) (phone dings) god fuck yes chime is so convenient me & my friends in riverdale love sending payments on chime. 🫦🫦🫦 ugghh chime just gets me so worked up. ok lets eat some doritos

a split focus lens is used a couple of times through the season and uhhh well ummmmm it's not being used to the *best* effect

the dance choreography has gotten BAD. toni and tabitha's dance scene in s6e10 is genuinely horrific

veronica's cover of toxic...... like........ you can tell theyre autotuning her but it's just still not there. it's just not mendes's vocal range. which is fine but like, pick a song that's in her vocal range or get someone else to do the singing. come on

i wish nobody had taught the riverdale writers room the word "grooming"

heather is styled really really badly. she has like pinned bangs with huge thick curls drooping over them, it makes her hair look plastic. that + the huge oddly shaped glasses that dont suit her face at all. girl you need to sue the costume department NOW

ive seen sabrina's appearances in this season described as an "epilogue" or a "backdoor finale" for chilling adventures. and like, they really arent,

i assume they couldnt get nick's actor to come back, but having him only appear while possessing jughead's body is ROUGH. cole sprouse emulates the performance pretty well but it's pretty much impossible to get Anything out of his comeback when he's just. jughead.

this season is probably the new low for the series. seasons 4 -> 5 -> 6 replicated the 1 -> 2 -> 3 pattern or "good season -> bad season -> worse season" so maybe that means s7 will be good. maybe

[indigosfindings]

ok so before i finish season 6 i have enough takes on the "rivervale" portion that id like to post them first

when "rivervale" first started i was thinking that it was a lost highway-style metamorphosis (not out of the question considering the heavy allusions to that exact movie throughout seasons 4 & 5)-- that the story had come to a point past which there is nowhere else to go (the apparent death of archie) & thus undergone a transformation. i wouldve appreciated it as a like nonliteral extrapolation on what had happened up till then, & i wouldve begrudgingly accepted "it was all a dream", but tbh "it's a literal parallel universe in a state of crisis, the resolution of which will prevent archie from dying in the main universe" was like, the stupidest route they couldve gone. not an endearing kind of stupid either

the multiverse stuff is also like, all dialogue. there's no visual representation *at all* of the supposed impending apocalypse. very "low-budget" decision from a show with multiple cgi beehives

on paper the idea of a supernatural anthology-esque "what if" au is actually pretty charming-- like if treehouse of horror composed like a fifth of the season. in practice it falls short repeatedly: the plots still proceed in riverdale's characteristic scattershot fashion, diminishing & de-emphasizing each episode's allegedly central horror component. the appeals to the idea of the story being anthological (up to & including the rod serling pastiche) run aground of the insistence on maintaining inter-episode continuity, fatally kneecapping the arc conclusion's central basis (ie, that rivervale is a world whose status quo is periodically resetting). the horror components are barebones, perfunctory, & largely symbolic, presumably because (as weve already seen via chilling adventures) aguirre-sacasa's approach to structuring a horror story is effectively identical to the bottom of the r/nosleep barrel. Evil Archie was fun though.

the structure of the first two episodes of rivervale led me to think that one major character was going to be killed off each episode until there was only one person left. unfortunately that's too interesting for riverdale

it is very very funny how you can tell that almost every actor is genuinely struggling to say "rivervale" out loud. it sounds unnatural & forced.

it's banal but i cant deny smiling a little when jughead's narrations made hamfisted reference to horror anthologies ("nightmares and dreamscapes", "house of mysteries")

in the abigail episode theres a scene where she & thomasina are rummaging through fen's things looking for proof that he's a murderer. and then he enters the house & calls out to them, & they start scrambling to put his things away & hide the evidence of their rummaging, crosscut with shots of him coming up the stairs to imply urgency. then as soon as he reaches them they immediately confront him about being a murderer. so why were they trying to hide their rummaging. why would the scene be written like this. were they stupid

kind of exhausting how the telos of "rivervale" is like. "riverdale needs to continue existing. any loss or sacrifice is justifiable in pursuit of that goal." i do not think riverdale has earned the right to creative incest

the thing i really dont get about "rivervale" is like. ok you want to lead the season with a few AU episodes to explore a supernatural direction. thats fine youre allowed to do that. but like. when the AU ends there are still supernatural elements! they get superpowers & witchcraft & resurrections & whatnot! so what was the point. a what-if episode depicts abigail the immortal witch in cheryl's body, then a regular episode later in the season depicts. the same thing. happening again.

you can really feel the stinging over the cancellation of chilling adventures of sabrina. which is crazy because chilling adventures of sabrina sucked

the afterlife being styled after classic archie comics is. fine i guess. like, it technically addresses the tension between riverdale & its source material, but not in a very interesting way. if anything i think it highlights the tension between the desires to characterize riverdale as a notoriously dangerous place & as an idyll of small-town values that must be protected

[indigosfindings]

as i said earlier this week, i think s5e3 wouldve been a great moment to end riverdale. however, that did not stop me from coming up with my own version of how the timeskip should go for each character

when he is on the cusp of death a sudden, miraculous rainstorm flushes him out of the chasm & deposits him at the outskirts of a small town where he is found by a young doctor fresh out of medical school (let's say.... brigitte reilly), who performs first aid & gets him to a hospital. he gives her a fake name & claims to have no family (his ID is all long gone so nobody can dispute it). she (a profoundly lonely person) offers to let him stay with her & her father. he claims to be a teenager to be permitted to go to high school (partly for a do-over, mostly to shed responsibility over his own life). the other students mostly avoid archie. he initially tries to do lots of chores around the house-- it exacerbates his injuries so brigitte makes him stop. brigitte's father barely acknowledges either of them. he had some kind of falling-out with his daughter years ago & they have not been close since, as brigitte tearfully confesses one night. within weeks their relationship becomes physical. brigitte is in truth only a few years older than archie, but she is wracked with guilt, believing that she's preying on a vulnerable teen. she tries to build up the courage to break it off, but is delayed when archie is suspended from school for brawling with a classmate who called her father a drunk.

________________________________

archie enlists in the military. he never sees actual combat. months into training (he is routinely overzealous to the point of spraining himself btw) he is dishonourably discharged for repeatedly getting into fights. he's too ashamed of himself to go back to riverdale so he starts hitchhiking across the usa looking fruitlessly for people to save and/or fix, all the while phoning his mom periodically & telling her he's still in training (/eventually deployed). while hiking he slips & gets trapped in a chasm for days, his phone broken. on the third day he starts having hallucinations of betty & veronica fighting over him before getting with each other & abandoning him.

a few months later archie's mom comes to the town (she has phoned the military base, who told her that archie is long discharged, and she's now travelling to every city near the base to put up missing person posters). brigitte bumps into her. she lies (out of fear, not malice) about not having seen archie. once mary is gone, brigitte methodically takes down all of the posters & confronts archie about them (she does not mention having encountered his mother). archie, desperate not to lose her, confesses his real age & name, and they tearfully agree to continue their relationship in secret.

years fly by. archie graduates without fanfare, his grades not good enough to get into the town's small college. brigitte's father gets archie a job at the local sawmill. archie has recovered from his injuries, but his slight limp never goes away. at the mill, brigitte's father acts like a different person: warm, jovial, energetic. archie forms a friendship with him & learns that he is a mantra-spouting AA devotee. he reminds archie of his own father (but less kind) & of hiram (but less dangerous). archie nonetheless convolutes excuses for skin contact with him. over years at the sawmill, archie grows resentful of his relationship with brigitte: the combination of feeling that her more prestigious job makes her "the provider", his disappointment that she does not need "saving" (her strained familial situation is not in fact a crisis but a mundane father-daughter schism resulting from whatever unspecified event removed brigitte's mom from the picture), & his inability to give a voice to his feelings of attraction toward brigitte's father collectively ferment into a general sense that he "deserves" better than what he has. meanwhile brigitte's feelings have gotten stronger than ever: her social existence has only become more constrained over the years, making archie a larger & larger piece of her life. her father still doesnt know about their relationship, & she has begun to consider asking archie to elope.

an accident at the sawmill gravely injures archie's coworker. archie's injury flares, preventing him from helping. brigitte watches the coworker die at the hospital. she went to high school with him. she always thought of him as a friend. he didnt remember her name. she comes home in tears. her father consoles her-- the warmest he's been toward her since she was a child. in a passionate moment she asks his permission to marry archie. he's stunned. he still thinks that archie was a teenager when they first met. brigitte tries to explain archie's real name & age. he doesnt believe her-- how can he, after so many years? meanwhile archie cries alone in his workplace's locker room (he'd never admit that he's jealous that he wasnt the one who was hurt). he resolves to break up with brigitte. he buys a bottle of whiskey to give himself courage: he cant drink it (he hasnt drunk in years & can no longer stomach the taste). he comes home to find brigitte & her father in a screaming match. the dad turns his anger on archie. archie misreads the situation & hits him with the bottle. he collapses, the gravity of his injury ambiguous. brigitte, stunned, tries to get archie to flee the scene with her, but he blurts out his intent to leave her. she, feeling that she's lost everyone she's ever known, throws him out.

he finds his way back to riverdale & can hardly recognize it. his old house is empty (his mom settled years ago that he was gone for good. she held a small wake & then left riverdale), his old gym is now a vacant lot, even hiram lodge has given up on riverdale & returned to new york. archie has left no mark on the city at all. he collapses on the football field & falls asleep.

________________________________

jughead studies writing at the university of iowa. he does not make friends. everyone is put off by his constant use of writing as a proxy for complaining about the people around him. he has minimal contact with his riverdale friends. he barely scrapes through his first year. his parents call him the day after his birthday. he compulsively googles betty's name. he returns to riverdale at the start of summer break to meet his friends, but they dont show. he regresses & reintegrates isolation into his personality.

by his second year, he is consciously sitting in the back corner of class. his grades keep getting worse. one professor in particular is especially harsh: a "D" grade (on a story about a group of students who conspire willingly to isolate their weirdo classmate) has jughead convinced of a personal vendetta, which the professor vehemently denies before making gentle suggestions about prose, tone, & pacing. he laughs at her. alone in his dorm he searches her up, digging up every piece of writing she's published & keeping a list of everything he thinks is wrong with it. once that well is tapped, he starts looking up her public appearances. he realizes that she is often near a certain other person in public-- an employee of lodge industries. he spends days tailing the professor: he follows her to stores, restaurants, appointments, etc. eventually he sees her meeting with the lodge employee. they smile and shake hands warmly. one passes something to the other. jughead snaps photos of every second of this exchange.

he has now missed several classes. the professor emails him, telling him he is welcome to make some changes to his story & present it during the next class. he changes his story to make the class's professor the ringleader of the conspiracy against the loner. midway through reading it to the class she interrupts him to say that the story is inappropriate. he accuses her of taking bribes from hiram lodge to sabotage his grades. when she denies it, he shows everyone the photos of her meeting. she tries to shut down the conversation but he wont let her. he presses until she is forced to admit that she is a closeted lesbian, the person she was meeting was her secret girlfriend (extramarital), & the reason for jughead's poor grades is his total inability to write anything other than barely-veiled analogies for his own life.

jughead is not reprimanded for this incident, but he immediately stops going to all classes and within days abandons the school entirely. he goes to toledo, intending to surprise his family. as he approaches the house he catches a glimpse through the window of his father putting a hand on his mother's shoulder. he's suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of being an intruder in his own life. he turns around & leaves.

he returns to riverdale & lives in the bunker. he bounces between jobs over the years. at first he goes to pop's with some frequency, but he eventually realizes that he's the only adult in a restaurant full of teens, gets embarrassed, & switches to takeout. he keeps writing. his style improves somewhat but he cant keep himself from inserting mean-spirited stand-ins for betty into each story. he submits his stories to magazines (like Barksworld) & they are rejected each time. a story by the professor he confronted makes it in to the magazine: he cant deny that it's good. he looks her up & finds that her life is going great. she's out now. he creates a burner email & types up a longer version of the list of things he hates about her writing, but chickens out of sending it to her.

betty calls him one day. he doesnt answer. he changes his number. he doesnt get informed about the wake for archie because no one can reach him. he maintains email contact with his parents for a while (mostly on special occasions) but holds the unspoken rule that he will not try to initiate a visit or a phone call unless they do it first. he eventually stops writing. he runs into toni at a grocery store. he tries to avoid her but she wont let him. she tells him about the serpents (now a mostly symbolic group) & the school (she's working there as a gym teacher). he cant answer when she asks how he's been. she says she could probably get him a job at the school-- a janitor, maybe, or clerical work. he refuses. he blames her for not having spoken to him in the years since he returned to riverdale: when she retorts that she never knew he was there, he walks away. he drafts an elaborate suicide note & doesnt kill himself. a year later he returns to writing & concocts an elaborate story about the town of riverdale (personified as a seven-foot-tall woman) having a sexual affair with a young man before choking him to death. he rereads it, hates it, & deletes it. the rest of the timeskip flies by, jughead barely speaking to anyone.

___________________________________

betty studies forensics at yale & excels. she makes plenty of friends, none of them close. there's one guy (let's say...... frankie valdez) who hits on her now & then. she reciprocates but it never goes anywhere. she's still not over jughead or archie. she keeps in touch with her family, mostly to inquire about her older sister. there's an element of genuine care there, but betty is secretly using polly as a roadmap for her own future, trying to gauge potential health concerns & the general course of aging.

craving contact but petrified of rejection, betty's solution is to micromanage herself. she keeps a diary to monitor her food intake & sets a rigid daily schedule. it gets worse during a dissection assignment, when a classmate notices her smiling while making an incision & points it out. she freaks out, convinced that her expression must evince an unconscious pleasure in violence (one that speaks to a "truer" self than her conscious choices & personality). she starts hyperanalyzing her emotions & actions for signs that she is dangerous (was i too eager to swat that fly? what do i feel when i see a baby? do i get too angry when inconvenienced?). she becomes less & less attuned to her own body. days pass by without her noticing.

she gets the call about archie's wake & nearly has a meltdown but restrains it for fear of being perceived as aggressive or 'unwell'. she goes out for drinks with friends. she drinks way too much: she's good at concealing her drunkenness, but frankie notices & walks her to her dorm. she propositions him. he declines (because she's drunk) (she takes it personally anyway) (she doesnt let it show though). he stays with her & they chat. he asks her about forensics. she tells him a little about what led her to the field, without making any mention of her father or riverdale or the "serial killer gene". he jokingly asks how to get away with murder. she starts outlining, in detail, the scenario of how she would murder him & conceal the evidence. he takes it as playful & interjects with lighthearted suggestions ("dont forget to pull out my teeth!"): she refutes or accepts each of them as if they are serious. at the end he jokingly congratulates her on successfully murdering him. she starts sobbing. she tries to tell him about archie (& jughead, & polly, & the black hood) but is too drunk & distraught to be coherent. he fruitlessly tries to console her. he stays until she falls asleep.

she wakes up four hours later: it's barely dawn. frankie is gone. she's about to text him when she catches sight of something out the window: a lump on the pavement a little ways away. she goes outside to investigate. it's frankie, murdered. she calls the police. no culprit is ever found: no evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive (nothing was taken from him, the crime was passionless, & he had no enemies). he was stabbed to death. the murder weapon is never found. a knife is missing from betty's kitchen. the police never consider betty a suspect. no one knew that frankie was at her dorm, & she never tells anyone. she tells herself that she didnt harm frankie, but she believes that she did.

the school offers her counselling & leniency, but she doesnt need it. her academic performance doesnt suffer at all. rather than inspiring doubt, this incident redoubles her commitment to joining the fbi, perhaps as a roundabout atonement. she makes excuses for why she cant visit her family, until they eventually stop asking. she breezes through school & is recruited as a rookie. she starts off with low-profile cases & naturally excels. eventually she learns about a new case-- two proximal homicides, a man & a woman, each killed in public in the middle of the night through passionless stabbings. betty is the only person who makes the connection to frankie. the murders happened in riverdale. she begs to be put on the case.

___________________________________

unfortunately this is where i had to stop because veronica's psychological quirks dont conduce an interesting timeskip, & cheryl's psychological quirks arent interesting period

[indigosfindings]

riverdale s5!!!!!

ive heard the thing about how the first three episodes were transposed from the intended end of season 4 but like. it honestly feels like they were condensed from like 5 or more episodes, they go from 0 to 1000 (shootouts, brawls, violent outbursts) without warning. being shoved into the next season is also a much worse look in terms of how hastily they rush every outstanding plot thread to its conclusion. why was defeating hiram that easy. why was the fallout from the barchie kiss so nonexistent

despite all the flagging the timeskip still caught me off guard. anyway i wish the characters were more miserable & that their problems were harder to fix

pretty well directed, at least sometimes. the like frenzy at prom was just an unironically good scene, i already posted the demented dario argento ass zoom on betty. like despite being compressed as all hell, the first three episodes were a good watch. i looked up the guy who directed e2 & e3, and apparently he has done Very Little Else

i think archie joining the military works as a character beat if understood as like, his retreat into a reactionary fantasy of ethical & heuristic simplicity (see: his fantasizing about wwii right before he signs up) combined with a like sublimation of his desire for suicide-as-martyrdom. as a decision it also foregrounds the unresolved tension between the praise archie receives for his physical activities & the like boundless anger he expresses through doing them (it also imo acknowledges the tensions of the archie franchise's general anachronism). the scene where the war is fused with a football field drives that all home for me. unfortunately i hate pretty much every subsequent decision relating to that plot thread

relatedly: in the flashbacks we never see archie's enemy, depict him attacking someone, or describe the mission in anything other than generalities. it's just him running around in trenches & gawking at his platoon's suffering. this is presumably to avoid depicting archie, like, killing somebody (& also a standard consequence of having zero interest in the personhood of the enemies in this war) but it also like, abstracts the war out of utility as even the most basic plot device, muddied further by the conscious, unmissable invocation of at least four different real wars

the nonstop soapboxing about veterans is really dull. every time they go on about Long Wait Times for subsidized veteran therapy or whatever i start groaning. made worse by the inability to decide whether the soapbox is "soldiers have given so much for Their Country & do not get enough gratitude" or "soldiers are misled from step 1 & deployed as sacrificial pawns in an ultimately trivial & meaningless conflict".

eric might be the most frivolous cast addition the show has had to date. minerva is a strong runner-up

i enjoyed the batshit ufo plot. wish there was more of that. i spent the whole season waiting for them to use the words "weird mystery" & was sorely disappointed

"LERMAN LOGAN"??????!?!!!?

the cliffhanger of a truck approaching jughead (after we've established that there's a truck-driving kidnapper/murderer) that is just like, bald-faced misdirection. i say it again: why is riverdale like this

every time they point the camera at veronica in her stupid jewelry shop theyre like practically holding up a neon sign that says "hey! ive seen uncut gems! have YOU seen uncut gems?" shut uppp riverdaaallleee

the episode where veronica starts like, printing her own money & putting it into circulation was fun. it was a really really really obviously bad idea & i think it shouldve exploded far more than it did. i feel like im saying that a lot

theres a big running problem where the show is like, allergic to making veronica Lose. it seems to want the audience to clap & cheer for her Epic Girlboss Clapbacks but gives her no struggle to put weight on those moments so she's just like on this airy chain of victories forever

i have very little to say about betty's subplot. "hey! ive seen the silence of the lambs! have YOU seen the silence of the lambs?" oh wow alice is in Denial Hysteria AGAIN. why should i care

after the timeskip half the mid-20s characters are being written like theyre mid to late 30s & the other half are written like theyre still in high school

re last point, cheryl is probably the worst offender. "this character is 25, she is entirely fixated on her high school accomplishments, she still feels a sense of ownership over her high school sports team & feels so offended over its continued existence without her that she marches into the school & demands control over it, she deeply resents her high school sweetheart for having dumped her 7 years ago" <- the show is entirely unaware of how acutely pathetic this makes her look

"cheryl blossom, queen of the bees"

cheryl continues to be a directionless & flighty character. particularly when she does The Curse at the end of the season, like.... is the idea that she is now just fine with killing archie?? it paints her with a very uhhh "Distinct" interiority. her fixation on receiving retribution her ancestor having been Wronged--& this coming so soon after the reveal that a much more recent ancestor's indiscretion directly catalyzed a wave of murders--is just like ambiently frustrating to watch, especially since nobody can muster a retort. very forced! in general, cheryl is just like at her most forced here, it feels like the show is Trying To Be Riverdale, when Being Riverdale only "works" if it's happening naturally

penelope was a delight this season. perfect volumes of Ham

when fangs & toni initiated their relationship i was surprised, because i thought they had already been together for most of the season

they keep putting toni in Mom Shirts. like even when she's not pregnant. even when she's supposed to be in her cool leather jacket or whatever she's in a tunic-cut top underneath. ok ree drummond

the show's determination to characterize gay hookups as, like, an addictive & self-destructive behaviour is. uhhhhhh

the hiram backstory episode was fun. i find myself looking forward to the gimmick episodes since theyre the only time the show ever runs at a normal pace

having said that everything with hiram's plot is just outright dumb (not in a fun way). "his gated community plan was from its inception a conscious, willful scam designed to rope in investors he never intended to recompense, because his Actual desire has always been to acquire land to satisfy a personal, irrational, & neurotic obsession with mining for palladium" <- this is not interesting or fun at all. was "capital gain feat. familial control" not considered a strong enough motivator???

the josie comeback episode was. solid. starting to become convinced that riverdale is at its strongest when it's doing fix-it fic of itself. i liked the scene where everybody invites josie for drinks & she goes "since when have any of you had time for me". the conspicuous effort to give valerie & melody their own Lives And Drama feels really perfunctory (in part because of the exact shafting of those characters it's trying to rectify). "ougghhg valerie doesnt know if shes ready to get married" ok? why should i care? why should this compel me? the whole episode was a very obvious backdoor pilot (very bold effort when two spinoffs have JUST been cancelled).

that episode has a line to the effect of "the pussycats are forgotten about in the wake of the latest murder... sounds like riverdale." <- i dont think you get to do this. like, a pithy one-liner about josie having been shafted in riverdale is not something riverdale should be permitted to do. it's like throwing a hammer at someone then saying "darn, we sure hate hammer throwing, right? it's pretty obnoxious that people do that amirite? #relatable"

in a similar vein: the scene where penelope cuts off a musical number like "new decree: no more singing 🤣" while all but looking into the camera is sooo insipid. like i give the show a pass for making a joke in s2 about "im weird im a weirdo" because it's like, actively invoking the public response to something from s1. shoving in a bunch of musical numbers then *in the same season* going "you guys HATE musical numbers right?? lets uhhh maybe not have any more of that 🤣🤣🤣" is just so cowardly & grating

having the now-adult characters become teachers as a device to keep them in the high school is pretty funny. the refusal to give names & goings-on to more than like, two students really lays the priorities bare

the needledrops are perhaps worse than ever. there's a scene of the characters extrajudicially raiding a drug den & the song choice is like this upbeat bouncy "Wow So Fun" type thing. meanwhile every sex scene is set to a song that's like "unh... i can turn you on with my sex and do a sex on your penis with my sex"

what is going on with the foley. there are three separate moments in three separate episodes where a kick makes a wet crunch

"that was better than kendall roy's speech at the end of season 2" <- actual line of dialogue. again: who is forcing you to write this

the idea that a serial killer who targets sex workers would refer to them with the term "sex worker" is. corny

[indigosfindings]

katy keene takes

much less of a slog than sabrina. but then again, so is going to the dentist,

making shows about people who live in new york should be illegal

hard to root for katy when from the word "go" she either has or is halfway to acquiring everything she wants (a loving & doting ltr, her dream job, a heap of close friends, (allegedly) virtuosic talent at her chosen craft). im just not convinced of her Struggles. & im not compelled when her relationship starts disintegrating in like, episode 3(!!), because i havent been convinced that they even liked each other in the first place

i really like that theres a whole arm of the plot that bravely asks "what if the devil wears prada was bad"

i dont caaaaaaare about jorge. the show pushes his plots so hard & theyre all so lifeless. i do not care about his trade bf or his threesome-related anxieties. i dont care about his shit ass musical numbers. they seem unable to decide whether he's like a really trivial, catty, broadway-obsessed comic relief cliché or A Serious And Damaged GayBoy With Real Pains And Traumas And Danger. it's not even impossible to negotiate the space between camp/frivolity & genuine pain in queer art ime, but the marriage of these topics is not being attempted here. half of his plot threads are just like "he has a good thing going until he self-sabotages, after which everyone meets him with saintlike patience" this is not interesting to watch, him being gay is not enough to make this shit interesting

tonally confused in general, especially in the front half. the show seems unable to decide how fanciful & whimsical or flippant & parodic it wants to be. the best illustration is probably the episode where katy's boss is accused of workplace misogyny. for the whole show up till now this character is like 40% cartoon snob & 60% "strict boss" plot device, & suddenly we have her tearfully asking whether she's a bad person

so much of pepper's plot is people saying to her "you are a bad & inattentive friend. you do not pay attention to the desires or needs of anyone other than yourself" but like, thats just at odds with the way she acts in every other context

lot of missed opportunities with pepper in general. her scam/embezzlement thing is easily the most Exciting thing the show has going, but the excitement is measured out badly. it seems to want to be received as an uncut gems-style "a character keeps making riskier decisions that add up, making her life more tangled & backing her into a corner as an explosive collapse becomes more & more inevitable", but what it is in practice is "a character makes a risky choice once per episode. the consequences of each action do not linger, any sense of danger or duress is only limited to allusions in dialogue, not in her behaviour or the tone of the show."

having said all that, the episode that concluded her plot thread was easily the best in the series. it actually was pretty explosive & had strong dramatic stakes that extended effectively into the other characters' subplots. pepper's response to her friends confronting her being an almost uncanny deflection where she acts like she's hearing something different from what theyre saying (& repeatedly tries to reframe the discussion as josie Tearing Her Down) was the strongest character beat in the whole show. deeply unfortunate that the show has preformed its opinion that she is A Good Guy & has her confess & make amends & be redeemed after fairly little pressure, to make alex seem like A Villain for continuing to hold it against her. obnoxious!

love love love love how half of josie's dialogue is her saying "this is just like reggie mantle" or whatever

josie's plot is like, fine. the wheels start spinning after a few episodes & it turns into a cycle of "im not sure if i like alex" -> "i got backstabbed by xandra". 13 eps really was not enough breathing room, but given the track record of the entire riverdaleverse im not convinced any number of episodes would be

there are (& im not being hyperbolic) more josie & the pussycats characters in the supporting cast than katy keene ones. where are the katy keene characters???

unclear on whether this show was the reason josie was written out of riverdale. regardless, this is like straight up the first time josie's gotten breathing room as a character. she does NOT feel like a character with three seasons' worth of history backing her up, which makes all her allusions to experiences & relationships in riverdale fall flat

did they tell the actor playing ko that he was like, not allowed to act or emote. what happened there. he delivers his lines as if the character is supposed to be, like, a hallucination. i keep expecting him to say "it's ok katy..... the accident wasnt your fault......"

the reveal about alex & xandra was kind of crazy. wish it went anywhere or felt like the exposure of the news had any social, material, or emotional consequence for either of them. feels like it was just an effort to recapture the Edge of cheryl & jason

the ko/xandra relationship was kind of nonsensical. i like how the show never makes an effort to explain why theyre drawn to each other, or how he feels about all the shit she pulls. they meet offscreen, get together offscreen, & break up offscreen

katy repeatedly lets injustices slide because they benefit her own career: she intends to resign from the store in defence of gloria until she learns that she's getting gloria's job, she intends to quit working for guy because of all the women he's exploited but stays after he offers her a promotion. these things characterize her as either wishy-washy or cutthroat, and the show does not seem to be aware of that

the progression of major plots is really awkward & stilted. theres a cliffhanger where someone approaches another character & sinisterly says "i have some information that might be significant to you... >:)" then the next episode waits several minutes to address it-- we dont see that information being conveyed at all, & no immediate elaboration or reaction. the recipient of the information is shown in an unrelated, stress-free context, seemingly unperturbed, until after a minute he starts discussing that news nonchalantly, as if it's something that's already been out the open

the fashion crimes on display.... i get that theyre trying to go bold & make a statement but i dont think "making a statement" has to mean "looking like youre wearing the pelt of a murdered armchair". like for a show about fashion (& given the reputation of the source comic) id expect there to be a *little* bit of taste on display, but the outfits are at a baseline worse than riverdale's

the makeup department is once again the main villain. katy's constant bright lipstick + eyebrow fill + otherwise uniform foundation.... the shit they slather on jorge that makes him look skeletal

scenes keep ending with really awkward & overlong silent lingering

really on & off with the Archie Substitute Brands. they namedrop versace, gucci, givenchy, chanel, yeezy, then they say "comme des filles". they say "annie hathaway" but they namedrop anna wintour. "the meta gala".

it is actually such a breath of fresh air that there is genuine dating drama in this series. across all three shows this is the seventh season of RiverdaleVerse that ive watched, & only now am i made to feel that a character is overwhelmed from juggling suitors (the #1 thing archie comics is known for)

kind of absurd that one of katy's love interests is played by the guy who was lucifer in sabrina. like when we've most prominently seen this actor in the riverdaleverse as like an awful & abusive misogynist, & he also towers over her height-wise, & he looks substantially older than her (while she looks & acts identically to the other shows' teenagers), it's almost impossible to not read something sinister into their interactions, even though that's clearly not intended. also did they give him a bad spraytan or what. why are his eyelids & ears so absurdly, dissonantly pink

there is so much sitting around & talking through conflict & personal struggle. it's hopelessly twee in its unearned sentimentality. it's really tedious. speaking for myself: i am not looking to katy keene, the spinoff of riverdale, the cw television program, as a model for healthy relationships, nor do i feel Affirmed by the thought that its characters are treating each other correctly

"she is like the tethered from us" <- actual line of dialogue. who held you at gunpoint & made you write this

i enjoyed the blizzard episode. like yessss tear each other down. i hated that they worked out their differences so neatly, boooo

i enjoyed the scene of katy popping off at guy about the met(a) gala & the scene in the second-last episode where everyone gets in a shouting match with pepper. good drama!

katy just surmounts everything through, like, exceptionalism. for all the knocking-off of tdwp they jettison the element of like, developing a sense of dignity & just have her steamroll her problems.

the breakneck development of katy's career feels less propulsive & more frenzied. it feels like the nature of her job keeps switching again & again, & it rarely sticks, & it makes her life feel somewhat incoherent

the thing where names of comic characters are slapped onto completely unrelated characters for the adaptation is at its most severe here. ok sure, trula twyst is appearing in a context completely separate from jughead. & she's joined the pussycats. sure why not

i really love how the finale sets up a series of status quo changes (the store closing, katy ending her apprenticeship, the building being seized, pepper being arrested), seemingly in anticipation of the then-planned season 2, only to undo all of them within the span of the episode

love the hiram cliffhanger in the finale. i guess we never get to find out where that was going

[indigosfindings]

there are a lot of aspects of the general narrative(s) of the wii u's failure that ive found kind of strange for a while now, but the strangest imo is the claim that goes something to the effect of "(a sizeable portion of) the wii u's failure is owed to the fact that many prospective consumers Didnt Understand That It Was A Console (as opposed to an add-on for the wii or a special edition of it)"

like that argument has been tossed around repeatedly over the years, & i do not think that it is being used in most cases as a shorthand for a stronger argument, i think people are saying "the wii u failed because nobody knew it was a different console" & they mean exactly that. tbh it's just hardly even a coherent observation. afaict it seems to be rooted in (1) the response to the initial reveal trailer, which left viewers confused re what it was (like ok, if thats your argument then please demonstrate how/why a trailer from summer 2011 dictated a market reality from late 2012 through early 2017) and/or (2) that article from a former electronics store employee recounting personal anecdotes of like, parents not knowing the difference between wii games & wii u ones. like ok, that latter one is good evidence, assuming it is an accurate report of a phenomenon that was not isolated. now: is there proof that this was a widespread misconception? why were people who had this misconception still not buying the wii u after having the misunderstanding cleared up? if you feel this directly causally relates to the console's poor sales, how do you reconcile that with the fact that the 3ds was a much more successful console while also having a spate of people (including owners) not knowing that it was not just An Edition of the ds? how does this theory account for the massive success of the switch (a success probably not determined by The People Who Dont Know Which Console Is Which)?

like it is about 20% of the way to a more salient observation--"the wii u, in both development & marketing, was trying to coast off of the success of the wii (a success which was increasingly irreplicable in light of the broader tech situation), & in doing so alienated both the ultra-casual wii audience (which was never convinced that the wii u could offer something that the wii they already owned could not) & the general gaming audience (which was simply never appealed to)"--but reducing all of that into "the wii u failed because nobody could tell what it was" is. well it's a very convenient little soundbite in its parable-style simplicity, but it's just a really weak & assailable argument, & one that does not take into account the other realities of the wii u's situation (third parties jumping ship, the lack of a killer exclusive, the weakness of creative strength in many of the exclusives, how the early-stage appeals to the strength of the hardware looked in practice, the general cross-industry plummeting of emphasis on console identity at that time, etc)