I've been meaning to check this out for awhile but I totally forgot that it had already started airing. I'm 4 weeks behind schedule, but I managed to knock out the first two today and I gotta say, this is damn good so far. I remember the Trailer dropping awhile back, but I wasn't really paying attention to the characters. Had I paid attention, then it wouldn't have been a huge surprise to learn that everyone in Riverdale comes straight from the pages of Archie's Comics. Yes, THAT Archie's Comics. Now I'm not a history buff and I don't know all that much about the comics itself. Sure, I read a handful of issues, but that was when I was in Elementary School. So, as you can guess, my knowledge of any and all past story-lines is beyond limited going into the series.

At face value, Riverdale has some subtle and not so subtle stylistic influences. On the surface what comes to mind is that a big chunk of what I've seen so far reminds me a lot of Veronica Mars (a series that I still love to this day), as well as some Mean Girls, Friday Night Lights and even Disturbing Behavior seems to have it's imprint here. You all know that the High School genre is one of my favorite genres to write personally. So I have been itching find a High School series that was and is worthy of my time and investment. Riverdale right now is hitting the marks I like. The first two episodes were fantastic. Right from the very start with the VO narration from Jughead, I was hooked. The rest of the cast that makes up Archie, Betty, and Veronica are perfectly cast. I'm definitely on board till for the rest of this season.

So, overall this season and the series itself has been a great surprise...a true guilty pleasure. But there was one minor hiccup that kinda took it down a notch from being a truly great series and that was the revelation that Clifford Blossom was the murderer. I don't know what it is, but having him be the one just seemed contrived and not really thought out all that well by the writers. Sure, he may have been the one they decided on before they ever shot a single frame of Season 1....but it still doesn't take away from the fact that this was just a little too obvious of a choice to lean an entire season on. Since the revelation came before the season finale, I knew that The Sweet Hereafter would have to kick-start another murder mystery to hold us over until Season 2 and sure enough, that's exactly what we got. He good episode, but the fact that they just killed off Luke Perry's character does suck. I liked the mix of new and old actors carrying this show. Well, that's one less old. I'm still sticking with the series no doubt. Why couldn't they have killed off Robin Given's character of Mayor. That would seem to be a better and more reasonable choice since they could have made it "politically" motivated. But then again, everyone would have applauded this instead of feeling the sting of a cool character as Fred.

Thanks for the heads up. Because of the show, yeah, I'm definitely interested in checking out the TPB. Looking forward to your thoughts on the series.

I take it you're digging Riverdale so far?