Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Meandering Rant by Professor Popinjay

—–My first encounter with Riverdale was by way of a shirt. A young lady with whom I work was wearing the garment. It bore the image of a good-looking young man, fair of skin, rather forlorn in expression but generally unadorned and unextraordinary in any other way. My first inclination was that this was a character from Twilight. When it was explained that the young man depicted was meant to be Jughead from Archie comics I was very surprised. Jughead was a goofball whose sole passion in life was hamburgers. Who was this pretty-boy staring longingly at me from a girl’s shirt as if I were some kind of dancing human hamburger guy? I decided I couldn’t really make judgements until I actually watched the show.

—-Before I could watch the show however, a friend of mine started talking it up. “It’s the characters from Archie and Jughead comics!” He said with enthusiasm. “Except they (gnomes) tweaked it for modern audiences! Jughead is no longer a goofball who wears a weird crown thing and chases hamburgers. Now he and Archie are involved in a thrilling murder plot and they’re at war with another school and it’s all very dark and mysterious.”

—-So let me get this straight. They (the gnomes) have taken the character NAMES from Archie and Jughead comics and then made their own story? After seeing an episode or two, I can understand the show’s appeal. It’s the same appeal as the “Scream” movies, or the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies, or “The Faculty”. Remember “The Faculty”? Me neither. You know to whom I can’t imagine Riverdale appealing? Fans of Archie and Jughead comics. Sure there may be the odd fan who likes both Riverdale AND A&J comics but if the two had been completely dissociated they would still like both regardless. The fact that these are known characters is pointless.

—-The argument arises: “But if they did a straight depiction of Archie and Jughead as from the original source material it would hold no one’s interest! It’s too dated!” Then perhaps we should lay it to rest and appreciate it for its nostalgic value instead of bastardizing it into some unrecognizable soulless version of itself just for a quick buck! If the show could make it on its own merits, why associate it with something completely different? Riverdale’s attempt to ride on the coattails of something previously well-established is not only blatantly obvious, it’s attempting to associate with something about which a younger generation couldn’t care less and the older generation would suddenly be expecting to see done true to form instead of this bizarre mockery.
—-I know of many nostalgic cash-ins, of which even the worst examples at least bare some semblance to their source material. But I can only think of one other example besides Riverdale that borrowed so very much from an original source only to mangle it into a mere shadow of its former self. Of course here I refer to Disney’s use of the beloved Rudyard Kipling characters in the show Talespin. Here we have Baloo the bear cast as a seaplane pilot for a delivery service. Clearly the bare necessities weren’t putting enough pawpaws and prickly pears on the table.

——To a lesser extent, Teen Titans Go! is doing this too but it’s hilarious so it gets a pass. And frankly, I enjoyed Talespin also so maybe I’m hypocritical in my opinion. This is a meandering rant after all.

——-The most perplexing question I have is, why isn’t Riverdale called Coolsville and involve Scooby-Doo? Even if they avoided a cgi budget and made Scooby a real dog it still wouldn’t be as much of a deviation as Riverdale is.

——I suppose Batman used to be all happy and funny and swell too. I wonder if Bob Kane lived to see both the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. I wonder if Bob Kane considered those a deviation. I wonder what he would think of Christian Bale. All the founders of Archie Comics are deceased now too. Does that mean whoever has the rights can make their creation into whatever they want? What will the owners of my writing do with it after I’m gone!?! Burn it? Rewrite it to make me look like even more of a doofus!?! Turn it into a night time drama/thriller!?! Attempt to make it genuinely humorous as opposed to whatever it passes for now? I protest! Let this be included in my last will and testament that not one jot or tittle of my original work shall be in any way altered unless an obscene amount of money can be made by doing so!