The Four Color Media Monitor

The San Angelo Standard-Times is sugarcoating the new Riverdale TV show, which makes a mockery out of many of the old Archie characters and approach, beginning with the premise:

The David Lynch connection: The producers said “Twin Peaks” was an inspiration, and “Teenager’s mysterious death cracks open small town’s secrets” could be a description of both shows. The current show’s opening credits shows a “Welcome to Riverdale” sign, which feels like a wink at the earlier show, which included a “Twin Peaks, population 51,201” sign in the opening credits. Actress Mädchen Amick, the waitress at the Double R Diner in “Twin Peaks,” has a prominent role in “Riverdale.”

Just what the world needs, the kind of stuff that would never have served the old comics at all. It's annoying how quite a few TV shows like these are made by producers who seem to think they cannot appeal to audiences without storylines involving murder. Not to mention:

[...] Archie’s illicit affair with a teacher recalls “Pretty Little Liars.”

A teacher who happens to be a younger take on Ms. Grundy, and reeks of teachers having criminal affairs with students, as noted earlier. As a result, it makes little difference whether this is a young or old Grundy; they're exploiting an established character who was otherwise respectable for the sake of their sleazy ideas for how to write up a TV show.

She’s Been Working Out: Geraldine Grundy a hottie? Yes, that’s her name in the comics, too, which was almost certainly selected back in the day to make her sound like the cranky old fuddy-duddy she was. But the Geraldine on “Riverdale” is twentysomething and “unusually attractive,” to use Tony Stark’s words about Spider-Man’s Aunt May in “Captain America: Civil War” — another comics geriatric de-aged for the screen.

Is Archie swiping from Marvel? Naw. More likely, it’s a narrative decision to make Grundy more interesting and less clichéd. After all, the “old maid” stereotype is misogynist, insulting and meaningless to today’s younger audiences. Goodbye and good riddance.

Same to the disgraceful "journalists" who published this puff piece. And exploiting an established character, turning her into a sex offender, isn't misogynist, insulting and meaningless? Grundy's not the only one who's been exploited:

No Miss for Moose: The absence of Midge — Big Moose’s longtime girlfriend — becomes explained in the first episode, where we find out that the football team’s big hitter Marmaduke “Moose” Mason (Cody Kearsley) is in the closet. Well, sorta, as he and openly gay Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) seem to find each other. Welcome to the 21st century.

And goodbye to this corruption/distortion of past creations. It doesn't take a genius to figure out they not only don't respect the older material, they're not interested in encouraging TV viewers or anyone else to seek and read the older material either. To them, it's only dated and worthless, which is practically what this whole article fawning over the series really is.

...the first episode was good enough to get an 88 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 84 percent from viewers. There clearly has been a lot of thought put into the show to make the old Archie tropes work for today’s audiences. [...]

Yawn. RT isn't exactly a reliable source (certainly not many of the newspapers they link to), and to imply modern audiences shun older storytelling wholesale is galling. Anybody who doesn't want to see their childhoods corrupted should avoid this TV show.

Labels: Archie, golden calf of death, msm propaganda, politics, violence