How Riverdale gets away with being "patently ridiculous television"

GQ

As it returns for Season 3, The CW teen drama "has never met an idea it didn't want to immediately dial to 11 and send to the moon," says Joshua Rivera. "And that's how Riverdale got away with it, over and over again: It just kept going, introducing a new outrageous idea before you could fully process the outrageousness of the one you just saw. Riverdale dished out plot twists the way Donald Trump spouts lies—relentlessly, with five more at the ready before you can even get a question out about the first one. This is something the show hilariously acknowledges when it returns Wednesday night for its third season by literally putting Archie Andrews on trial for season two." He adds that viewers know Riverdale is ridiculous. "But the trick, the secret of the whole show, I think, is a moment when the core quartet reminisce about summers they used to spend at a watering hole we've never seen them in," he says. "It's a moment that explains why Riverdale works: it anchors all of its wild plotting with the notion that things were different once. Their world shouldn't be this way. And that's the tension of the show—because while we tune in to see what new crazy new twists are in store, we secretly hope for the town of Riverdale to somehow find a sense of normalcy again, even though we know you can't ever get that back."

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