riverdale? more like hey! these characters have the same names as the archie comics!

11:05 pm

(image courtesy of nerdystuff.com)

when i was 13, my family and i went on a holiday to my parents' home country of sri lanka for a few weeks. during our stay, we spent a night at one of my uncle's house. we had been on holiday for about a week by then and i had already finished up all the reading materials i had brought with me. when i told my 18 year old cousin this, she promptly took me into her room and directed me to her book shelf where amidst various picture-books and hardbacks, was a neat row of archie comics.

i had never even heard of the archie universe in my life, but after that night i was obsessed. the next day, my cousin took me to the bookshop where she bought them from. i use the term 'bookshop' loosely; it was basically a hole carved out of the wall in a shopping centre filled to the brim with every book you could imagine and a man squeezed into the middle who knew them all by heart. when we told him what we were looking for, he confidently dug through the books stored to his right and presented us with a stack of archie digests. from my pocket i pulled out basically all the money my parents had allocated me to spend on souvenirs for the trip and bought 14 comics. i still have them on my shelf above me as i write this right now.

that was just the beginning and over the last few years the iconic squad of riverdale have always been on the back of my mind. when i'm having a secret midnight feast i think of jughead. when i do something nice for someone else i think of betty. when i feel like throwing a tantrum i think of veronica. and, of course, any love triangle in any pop culture work ever pales in comparison to the shockingly functional mess that is betty-archie-veronica.

when i heard they were revamping the comics last year i was pumped. i remember when they did a different art style in jughead's the matchmakers. it was weird and after a few rows i kindda got used to it but it was definitely comforting to turn the page and have my classic cartoons waiting for me in the end. likewise, when i saw the new designs for the 2015 comics i was conflicted. but now i can confidently say i like it. it was modern and new but the stories still held the classic archie foundations and values. they respected the characters and while their origins might have swayed slightly from the original comics, it still managed to bring the sweet and all-ages appropriate riverdale world seamlessly to the 21st century while achieving a sense of freshness and relevancy.
(image courtesy of nerdist.com)

when i heard that the cw was creating a live-action tv show, i was even more hyped. i never really got into the original animated series so i was excited to see my beloved crew on the small screen. that is, until i heard the intended direction of the highly-anticipated adaption and i realised that the only similarities between the comics and the show were going to be the characters' names and hair colour. that's it.

i read a vanity fair article on what we could expect from the new series and i'm still in shock. apparently the first season is going to focus on a murder. a murder. in riverdale. riverdale being the most wholesome and least likely place for a murder to happen in the entire universe! archie and co. are known for getting into bizarre but they're always charming and innocent - not homicide! and who is going to be our poor, dead victim? none other than mr jason blossom. the jason blossom, you ask? cheryl's twin brother? hates "townies"? can be surprisingly kind? is in love with betty? frankly, who knows. in this version he's probably a crackhead sex addict because that's what everyone else is:

betty is being drugged by her mother to focus on school. the bromance between archie and jughead is fractured. betty and veronica's friendship is on the rocks. but the part that had me reeling the most was "the sudden end of [archie's] forbidden relationship with riverdale's young music teacher, ms grundy". um... what? ms grundy? teacher ms grundy? this ms grundy?
(image courtesy of comicvine.gamestop.com)
didn't they go to her funeral in life with archie? oh, wait, nope. in riverdale, ms grundy is being portrayed by a 33 year old who could potentially pass as 18. still, teacher-student relationships do not happen in archie. they're wrong on normal, society levels but their wrongness comes at tenfold when put in archie because that world is just too good and pure for that. also, i suppose betty and veronica aren't enough for man-whore archie in this show.

i get that the cw are trying to be appealing to a modern young-adult audience and the happy-go-lucky attitude that was at the core of every archie comic and spin-off is not going to do that, but i can't help but feel that they're just trying to monopolise on a strong and dedicated fanbase that has already been built for them by slapping on the archie brand, chucking together a typical teen-drama plot and waiting for the money to roll in. i admit the cast looks promising (the kings of summer is one of my favourite movies of all time and while betty actress, lili reinhart's, role was minor and fleeting, it was passable. also, who doesn't love cole sprouse? i think i can trust him to not completely ruin my boy, jughead). and of course i'll watch at least the pilot, if not for the sake of curiosity but merely because i find train-wrecks fascinating. i'll try enter with an open-mind but i can't make any promises.

though, let's get one thing straight right now: if jughead jones is not wearing his iconic, old, tattered hat/crown, i'm going to be pissed.

(born in 1998 and have a voice to share with the world? click here to find out how you can be heard!)

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