CyanideFishbone

I was at work the other day and overhead a woman trying to sell her friend on the show by saying "it's, like, y'know, it's Archie and the gang trying to solve a murder".

So... you really can't take this show seriously. It's going to limit your enjoyment (if you've even seen any of it). Everyone I know that watches it (my girlfriend and I are included in this) only watches it (and gets enjoyment out of it) because of how absurdly stupid it is, not because it's some tightly written witty Sorkin-esque drama.

@terminoob Yeah, man I get the appeal of watching it for the absurdity. Most of the people I know take it actually seriously, and just, my god, I can't understand how anyone would. Turning Archie into an edgy teen drama is like turning the Flintstones into a BoJack Horseman type dramedy. 

Well, bad example, because DC actually did that with The Flintstones and it became a 12 issue comic that ended up being a critical hit - so much so that the guy who wrote it is now gonna be doing a Snagglepuss comic where he's a gay southern gothic playwright. Just because an idea or plot sounds ridiculous or stupid doesn't mean the execution of it is. Archie as an edgy teen drama makes sense for the modern era of media - doing a straight-up adaptation of 50s Archie wouldn't work because that's not what viewers want. The creator of Riverdale is the Chief Creative Officer of Archie comics and writes Afterlife with Archie (horror Archie series? Incredibly stupid, but somehow amazing), so the dude gets what the core of Archie is about and how to translate that. Archie has always been overly saccharine and cheesy; Riverdale goes along the same line of thinking, just in a noir-thriller genre rather than slice-of-life.

I don't think Riverdale was meant to be taken seriously in the first place, because Archie isn't exactly a comic you could take that seriously, so your friends might just be a tad too invested. I can't imagine how someone could take Jughead or "Dark Betty" or Cheryl or the implied incest seriously.

Edit: BoJack Horseman is also an odd example to go with, because if you tell someone the plot of that show they're gonna think you're fucking with them. A dark dramedy show about an anthropomorphic horse actor going through a midlife crisis and the decisions that he's making and how they affect his relationships. That's an insane premise. I remember all the articles on TV.com before it premiered that were talking about how stupid it looked and how terrible the trailers were and how Will Arnett and Aaron Paul are wasting their time. But the execution of it was dynamite and here we are.