Riverdale: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Riverdale: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Forget Laura Palmer. Who killed Jason Blossom?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 16, 2017

Riverdale revisits the iconic if seemingly carefree world of the old Archie comics franchise, albeit with an intentionally darker edge that includes unexpected elements like murder. That might seem to be a decidedly odd take on this particular source material, but there’s at least one notable long ago death that has at least a tangential link to Archie, or perhaps more accurately The Archies. One of the odder strategies employed by a major broadcast network occurred in the 1969-70 season, when ABC, perhaps desperate for viewers, did something previously (and in fact since) virtually unheard of for their fall schedule on Monday nights. Both ABC and CBS were struggling to compete against ratings juggernaut Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, but at least CBS had dependable offerings like Gunsmoke and Here's Lucy, which were still bringing in respectable viewer numbers despite having to go up against the crazy quasi-vaudevillian antics of the NBC comedy series. ABC on the other hand was up a veritable creek, and decided to gamble on the “youth market” to propel two new entries that fall, The Music Scene and The New People, and further did something very unusual in the annals of broadcast television by having each series last 45 minutes each week.

That was an unabashed gambit that was meant to hook viewers past the opening of Laugh-In, and with The Music Scene heavily promoting the fact that it would be featuring live performances by the biggest pop and rock music acts of the day, premiering that week's Number One Billboard hit in the closing moments of each show (after Laugh-In had begun), it was at least an interesting marketing strategy (even if it turned out that many Music Scene performances were lip synched, as was the general case back in those days). Neither The Music Scene nor The New People (which was kind of a pre-Lost Lost, so to speak) managed to make it past the halfway point of that season, and while many analysts blamed that (probably correctly) on the insurmountable phenomenon that was Laugh-In during that era, some of the creative staff on The Music Scene posited at least one other reason for the failure: while the series offered live (and/or “Memorex”) performances by era superstars like Three Dog Night, Janis Joplin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The 5th Dimension and Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66, it got off to an unexpectedly “cartoonish” start when its “big reveal” of the week of the Number One song on the Billboard charts was repeatedly “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies. That song, for all its perhaps weird popularity, was not exactly the kind of tune with the sort of “rock cred” or even “pop cred” that the show was aiming for, and the fact that the darned thing refused to leave the top spot on the Hot 100 for a virtual month meant that host David Steinberg and his crew of daffy comedian sidekicks had to keep re-introducing it each week, arguably seeming less and less "hip" each time they did.

Music trivia buffs will know that while there's some lingering dispute over this, some at least have alleged that Don Kirshner initially wanted The Monkees to record "Sugar, Sugar", and when they refused, that exacerbated an already fractious relationship with their manager, leading to the ultimate dissolution of the band (meaning perhaps that The Archies have been responsible for two "murders"). "Sugar, Sugar" was a sunshine pop tune that seemed to emphasize the preternaturally cheery world of the Archie comics clan, a franchise that seemed decidedly “fifties” despite tangentially producing the largest selling song of 1969. There’s decidedly less cheeriness on hand in Riverdale, a post-modern update of the venerable Archie franchise, and one that is obviously meant to be the same kind of “hip” that evaded The Music Scene when it was forced to deal with an earlier version of these characters.

There’s little doubt that Riverdale wants to reinvent Archie and his cohorts in a kind of Twin Peaks context, down to a central murder mystery that propels the first season, a connection which is perhaps subliminally reinforced by the participation of Mädchen Amick in a supporting role. In this version, Archie (KJ Apa) isn’t the lovable nerd in the comic books of yore, but instead a young stud who’s a nascent football star and who also dreams of a music career. He’s also apparent catnip to the babes, something that leads to some expected soap operatic developments involving putative girlfriend Betty (Lili Reinhart). In fact, in one of Riverdale’s most audacious plot points (and one that I was frankly gobsmacked the Archie comic book “franchisers” allowed), Archie is carrying on a pretty hot and heavy affair with one of his teachers, Miss Grundy (Sarah Habel).

The murder in this case involves Jason Blossom, a relatively minor character in the Archie universe whom some older fans may not even recognize. Jason’s twin sister Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) is a kind of uptight, “rich bitch” sort, and as such is kind of a pea in a pod with newcomer to Riverdale Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes), who in this formulation is actually at least a little bit less of a “mean girl” than might be expected. There are a huge number of melodramatic subplots woven through the proceedings, including the fact that Veronica and her mother Hermione (Marisol Nichols) are attempting to “rebrand” themselves after Veronica’s father and Hermione’s husband has been imprisoned for embezzlement. Hermione also has her eyes on Archie’s father Fred (Luke Perry), with whom she had a relationship back in the day.

There’s a fairly huge supporting cast in Riverdale, one which includes expected recurring members like the venerable Josie (Ashleigh Murray), who along with the Pussycats offers a kind of hip hop update on, yep, you guessed it, “Sugar, Sugar”. Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is actually something of an intellectual in this version of events, and his efforts to journalistically memorialize the events surrounding Jason’s murder help to frame this season, including with voiceover narration. A relatively recent addition to the Archie comics also shows up here, with Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) appearing as what might be charitably called the “token gay” character.

Perhaps surprisingly, the rather huge tonal shift from the original version of Archie works at least intermittently, buoyed by an energetic cast and a generally breezy presentational style, despite some of the lurid subtext. The series probably has too much going on for its own good, and therefore tends to feel somewhat frayed at various points. It’s interesting to note that the whole murder angle is more or less wrapped up by the end of the first season, though the season finale offers a (predictable?) cliffhanger involving the potential death of a relatively major character. Maybe Riverdale is going to end up less like Twin Peaks and more like the infamous Cabot Cove of Murder, She Wrote fame, a little out of the way scenic burg where the mortality rate often seemed uncharacteristically high.

Riverdale: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Riverdale: The Complete First Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Archive with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The series tries to go for a semi-Twin Peaks aesthetic, with some stylized natural scenes, sometimes in rather drab tones, alternating with almost candy colored visions of life at high school. That said, the palette only rarely really pops throughout this season, and I found some of the saturation on the anemic side. Detail levels are routinely high, even though there are a number of nighttime sequences scattered throughout the season, where shadow detail generally holds up well. There are a couple of odd anomalies that pop up, including a bit of image instability in the establishing flyover of Riverdale that begins each episode, as well as one discussed in our forum, where there's just a flash of pixellation during Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion.

Riverdale: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Riverdale: The Complete First Season has an occasionally boisterous sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, one that derives some good sonic energy from scenes like pep rallies (with performances by Josie and the Pussycats!) or football games. Even some of the scenes in Pop's have nicely done if more subtle uses of discrete channelization to establish spatial relationships. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

Riverdale: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The New Normal (1080p; 8:45) is an above average piece which has some interesting interviews with the creative staff who discuss how the original Archie comics made them feel safe, something that's kind of ironic given the dark take on the source material in the series.


• Riverdale: The Ultimate Sin (1080p; 9:15) is an overview of all the shenanigans going on in the town.


• I Got You (1080p; 00:45) is a brief snippet of music with Archie and a Pussycat.


• These Are Moments I Remember (1080p; 1:49) is another "performance" by Archie and band.


• Riverdale: 2016 Comic-Con Panel (1080i; 8:04) features Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Jon Goldwater, Sarah Schechter, KJ Apa, Camila Mendes, Lili Reinhart, Luke Perry, Madelaine Petsch, Cole Sprouse, and Ashleigh Murray. By the time they get through introducing all of these people, there's almost enough time for a question (that's a joke, kind of).


• Gag Reel (1080p; 4:45)


• Deleted Scenes:

  Chapter One: The River's Edge (1080p; 00:20)

  Chapter Two: A Touch of Evil (1080p; 1:25)

  Chapter Three: Body Double (1080p; 00:30)

  Chapter Four: The Last Picture Show (1080p; 1:15)

  Chapter Five: Heart of Darkness (1080p; 3:07)

  Chapter Six: Faster, Pussycats! Kill! Kill! (1080p; 00:28)

  Chapter Seven: In a Lonely Place (1080p; 00:30)

  Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion (1080p; 1:08)

  Chapter Ten: The Lost Weekend (1080p; 00;27)

  Chapter Twelve: Anatomy of a Murder (1080p; 00:56)

  Chapter Thirteen: The Sweet Hereafter (1080p; 4:12)

  Note: There are no Deleted Scenes for any unlisted chapters.

Riverdale: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's a lot to like about Riverdale, not the least of which is its sheer audaciousness in revisiting these "kinder, gentler" comic characters in a whole new context. There are some really neat little touches, like making Pop's Chok'lit Shoppe clearly modeled on the diner in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, but dialogue in this series is often overly arch (people don't talk like that, even in comic books). This is one of those "novelistic" adaptations where seemingly every character has a convoluted backstory and equally labyrinthine interrelationships with each other, so a certain patience is required. I'm not quite sure this formulation is going to end up working in the long run (again, maybe like Twin Peaks), but for now Riverdale is kind of a fun, campy diversion. Technical merits are generally strong, and Riverdale: The Complete First Season comes Recommended.