Why I Started an Entertainment Blog So That I Could Write About a Teen Drama
To get a lil’ meta, it’s not really about Riverdale (or is it?).
I hate pretentious shit.
That’s where this all starts.
Hilariously, the world of entertainment writing is chock-full of pretentious fuckery. You’ve got people reading into shit that doesn’t exist on the screen, throwing out all the SAT words they didn’t get to drop at a college bar a la Good Will Hunting (“HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?”), and generally competing in a good, old-fashioned dick-measuring contest.
In the words of my late grandma Evelyn, oy gevalt.
Interestingly, I’ve always been interested in the ~moving image~. As an awkward person suffering from high social anxiety, I’ve always looked to movies and television to inform me on how I’m supposed to act in any and all social situations.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not mindlessly reading into characters on a screen and copying their exact moves. I get there’s a lot of fancy airbrushing and camera tricks to make people and situations appear more glamorous than they actually are. But back in the day I, like millions of pimple-ridden, All Time Low concert tee-wearing youths, looked to film as a medium to tell us what we’re supposed to do. I guess, if you want to get slightly sappy at this point, it’s also there to tell us we’re not alone.
Given my love of all things television in particular, it makes sense that I’ve wanted to start an entertainment blog for a while. Why haven’t I? Well, a couple of reasons:
- I didn’t even want to get into the writing field until I accidentally stumbled and tripped into it in college. Whoops.
- Out of all the types of writing, entertainment writing has to be one of the most competitive, so I focused on other verticals. Again, I hate pretentious shit; I also had no interest in dealing with the pretentious people who wrote such pretentious shit.
- Also, like, money. Bros. Seriously. Money. This vertical doesn’t pay that much unless you’re the Pauline Kael of modern-day TV writing (and even then, it’s still not much). Sorry to burst some bubbles.
On top of these easily understandable dilemmas, in the words of Dan Humphrey, the gold standard of artsy white fuckboys on TV during the late 2000s, every writer needs his (or her or their) muse.
While great entertainment writing can stand on its own regardless of the subject matter, I was looking for a show that could inspire me while also being a good representation of my writing style: I wanted a show that was ambitious but wasn’t pretentious, one that understood its depth and importance but could also laugh at itself a little bit.
On top of that, I write about a lot of deep and intense and angry shit all day (#TRUMPBEAT). It’ll be nice to unwind a little bit.
And thus, I spent the past two years waiting for such a show to arrive. Plus, in all honesty, I kept getting side-tracked from this project. And even more importantly, I didn’t want to pick a show that everyone was already watching or that was already a permanent fixture of the American television zeitgeist. Do we really need another snarky asshat on the internet writing Bachelor recaps?
So, here we are: I arrived at a noir teen drama adapted from a 75-year-old comic book series that stars a former Disney Channel star who has seemingly turned into every hipster guy from my alma mater, a blonde-haired chick who shares my name (she spells it the cool way though), a New Zealand-born softboy who definitely uses hair pomade instead of gel, and a girl with perfect eyebrows. Say hello to Riverdale.
Why in the name of my recently deceased labradoodle Cocoa (#RIP) did I pick this show when I literally could’ve picked anything else?
To be honest, I didn’t even know what Riverdale was until it was several weeks into its first season, and that was only because fellow Teen Vogue contributor De Elizabeth was livetweeting it each week from TV’s Twitter account. Having read none of the Archie comic books ever in my life, I had no interest.
And then the series hit Netflix.
As many an epic tale begins, I was bored and wanted a new show to nap to. I watched the first episode. I was immediately intrigued by:
- The really, really good soundtrack. (It sounds like the shit college freshmen play when hooking up during first semester of school.)
- The attractive cast that somehow has sexual tension with every other person in the attractive cast. (Not going to lie, I was Team Cody from day one when The Suite Life was on, and seeing Cole Sprouse again for the first time in a decade made me feel weird things.)
- The ~murder plot~. (Love me a good small-town murder plot.)
- The really cute diner. (Anyone who knows me can vouch for the fact that there’s nothing I love more than eating pancakes at 9pm at a 24-hour diner.)
Anyway, that’s not a lot of inspiring #content to work off of, but for whatever reason, the lightbulb in my head went off. After I proceeded to binge-watch the first season’s 13 episodes in a single day, I knew it was time to start this blog.
And the more I thought about it, there was a lot I really liked about Riverdale. For one thing, I do think the fact that it’s based on such a historic and iconic American brand (the Archie Comics) adds another layer to the storytelling. It’s also interesting watching the show weave in details of 21st century teendom now that I’m well-removed from high school but not too old to yammer on about riding a horse to the one-room schoolhouse. Another weird bonus is that all of the episodes pass the Bechdel Test (even though it’s a movie theory) with flying colors; the women on the show don’t have time to fuck around and just make out, ARCHIE.
And more than anything, the vibe just felt different from all the shows my friends watched five to 10 years ago that I never caught onto, like Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries, even though the latter two also have very dark themes. Is there a particular reason why? Not really, but I think certain television speaks to us at the exact moments it needs to.
So, Riverdale. Hello. How are things? Are y’all still attractive and stuff? Good, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.
