If you're not keeping up with Archie Comics—and you really should be, ya Moose—you're missing out on one of the most happily imaginative, quietly successful upgrades in recent memory, with Archie and his pals being recast as everything from on-the-run zombie-victims (2013's Afterlife with Archie) to deep-thinking, deep-feeling modern-drama kids (last year's modern Archie). And at Comic-Con International, The CW network debuted the most grown-up iteration of Archie yet: Riverdale, a horny, semi-hallucinogenic mystery-drama with a potentially high death toll and lots of skin.
That might sound awful, but somehow, Riverdale is a grin-inducing hoot—a show that takes beloved but flexible characters like Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, and places them in a world that's a little bit V.C. Andrews, and a little bit Josh Schwartz. In the pilot's ominous prologue, we learn that a young Riverdale High School student, Jason Blossom, has gone missing after a boat trip with his twin sister, Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch). His disappearance casts a dark shadow over the maybe too-tight townspeople, including Archie (K.J. Apa), an aspiring musician and rising football star who's friend-zoning his best pal, the over-stressed Betty (Lili Reinhart), while also still recovering from a mid-summer backseat-bonk with Ms. Grundy (Sarah Habel). Archie's life is further complicated by the arrival of Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes), a rich kid with a corrosive wit and a working knowledge of Truman Capote, but whose family has fled to Riverdale in the wake of a national scandal.
But wait, there's even more to chew on here, like the fact that Josie (Ashleigh Murray) and the Pussycats are now an all-black, success-seeking combo capable of knocking out tight Cyndi Lauper covers; or the decision to make Jughead (Cole Sprouse) the show's jaded, arms-length narrator; or the casting of '90s prime-time pin-ups Luke Perry (Beverly Hills, 90210) and Mädchen E. Amick (Twin Peaks) as still-smokin' parents (everyone on this show is hot so far, though we've yet to see Hot Dog). All of these elements display a knowing amount of pop-culture-savvy, but the show's biggest success might be the way it takes the familiar-seeming, deceptively cozy titular town and debauches it ever so slightly, turning Riverdale (and Riverdale) into a weird but electric dream.
At the show's Comic-Con panel, creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa noted that the pilot had been influenced by such hazy-vibed young-love dramas as The Virgin Suicides and Heavenly Creatures). But it also brought to mind Veronica Mars and Twin Peaks—shows that expertly mixed together teen angst and grown-up desperation, and that embraced the innate weirdness of suburbia without making too big of a fuss over it. Riverdale doesn't make its official debut until the mid-season, but I already want to go back.
