Indigo

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.

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