Alanna Gillis

Staff Writer

amg7393@psu.edu

With season six of “Riverdale” premiering November 16th, 2021, it’s time to really look into whether this show should continue to air. It’s no secret to anyone at this point that “Riverdale’s” writing has been going downhill- I would say this has been the case since season one. From the crazy plot lines that don’t make sense to the high schoolers who look like they should be seniors in college, there’s a lot to break down about this CW show. 

The writing in the show has been going steadily downhill since season one finished. Season two alone has many crazy plot twists that seem too far-fetched, even for a fictional show: Betty’s father is the Black Hood, Chic is not actually her long-lost brother, Betty and her mom kill a man, and Hiram frames Archie for murder. It’s worth keeping in mind here that the main characters would only be about 15 or 16 at this point. 

Considering the ages of the main characters, there are many plot points in “Riverdale” that seem inappropriate when we remember that the characters are not the age of the actors. A few scenes like this come to mind. Archie forming “The Red Circle” which is a violent vigilante gang, Hiram tries to kill Archie, and what is in my mind the most egregious offense, the scene where Betty gets inducted into the Southside Serpents, and she strips and dances on stage while the members of the gang watch. Keep in mind that Betty is 16 here, and dancing for literal adults, some of whom are her mother and her boyfriend’s father. 

This is not the first example of the show’s use of sex appeal to garner its audience’s attention. The writers know that the main audience of this show are young teenage girls, and they capitalize on the “pretty privilege” of their actors. All of their actors are stereotypically attractive. The numerous as-close-to-sex-scenes-as-cable-will-allow are a perfect example of how the writers utilize their knowledge of the people who watch the show. The initial draw of this show for young teen audiences, I think, was the hot-ness of its characters and plot. I vividly remember being in high school when the first season aired, and it was all that any girl in my grade would talk about. Nonetheless, these scenes are still uncomfortable to watch when you know that the characters are literal children. I think the show gets away with this because that fact is so easy to forget when these characters are being played by adults, who look like adults, not like the 16-year-olds they’ve been hired to play.

The only reason “Riverdale” is still on air, as far as I can tell, is because of its “pretty privilege”, because let’s be real, the plot makes no sense anymore. Some of the more ridiculous “Riverdale” plotlines include: Veronica running a speakeasy, Archie surviving a bear attack, the entirety of the Gargoyle King storyline, Archie forming a vigilante group, Cheryl keeping her dead brother’s corpse in her house, and a cult that harvests the organs of the townspeople. With season five’s time jump -seven years into the future- the plot only gets crazier. Now there are Mothmen that haunt one of the town’s highways, Cheryl’s ancestor was a witch and was burned by the ancestors of Jughead, Archie, and Betty so she recites a curse against them, and Hiram hides a bomb under a bed with the intention to kill Betty and Archie. The only reason it still has an audience is because people got invested in the characters from the start because they are attractive, and now are just along for the ride. 

At this point, it feels like the writers throw darts at a dartboard full of random plot points and then try to connect the ones that they hit. It’s far past the time that “Riverdale” just accepts that its time has come to an end. There can be no graceful send-off for a show that has had such a strange plot, the only way this show could end is with something even crazier than anything it had done before, and that is going to be hard to do. 

Do I think that “Riverdale” will end after season six? It’s hard to say, but I’m going to go with “no”. The CW profits too much from this bizarre “teen” soap opera to cancel this show while there’s still money to be generated from it.