Riverdale Season 5 review: Randomness is not Personal Growth
The moral case for the importance of consistency in personal growth.
Things don't just happen to people.
There are times when it might feel like it does, but in fact it rarely happens that a completely random event will descend upon someone or a group of people. Even those which appear to be such things are part of a larger sequence. Getting hit by lightning is usually a result of weather in some respect and your susceptibility to it is based on the actions you took that lead you to the moment where it happened. Taken as an event in and of itself, it seems random, but it's not. People make choices and those choices affect the outcomes of those choices. Your view of the world changes based on the consequences of decisions. Even in fiction it's rarely the case that things just happen for the sake of happening. If it does, this is usually the result of bad writing.
Riverdale unfortunately suffers from an abundance of need to have random events occur to its characters and use these as a basis of character growth. It's one of the major differences between season 1 of the show and the several seasons after that. Randomness became an integral part of making storylines connect. Perhaps the most obvious example of this which stood out in season 2 was the advent of the musical episode and the strange sequence of events which proceeded it. Cheryl, having recently gotten free of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, suddenly decides that she will participate in the school musical and play the character of Carrie. This despite the obvious trauma she's just been through and the complete lack of resolution to those events. People don't just escape from mental institutions or convents or whatever she escaped from and suffer no real consequences.
Time after time, this is something which happened to Riverdale characters more and more as the seasons progressed. It was particularly a problem when it came to musical episodes. Stories were resolved for the sole purpose of having the main characters being able to inhabit the roles they play in the musical episodes whether it made sense for the characters or not. It's one of the major problems of the series and it appears they're headed towards it again with season 5's musical episode.
However, the last episode to air before the rather long break is one that is of particular distinction. Rather than set up a solid progression of story to come back to, they jumped in with both feet on a ridiculous series of events.
Namely, the prison break episode. None of what happened in the episode had any particular grounding in past events. Veronica's husband suddenly blackmailing her into staying with him because of apparent debts he's wracked up, Archie fighting off a band of vandals at the school only to be saved by his uncle, and the sudden return of Chic and Charles all suffer from the unfortunately all too common idea of randomness within the show.
Chad's sudden turn from a somewhat mean over protective husband into a blackmailing bad guy wasn't set up in previous episodes. Archie leading a bunch of parents out of danger was nice and generally in keeping with his character's desire to be a hero, but it wasn't necessary for him to grow as a person. In fact, he didn't grow as a person at all through that exchange. And Juniper and Dagwood didn't need to be forced into a weird game of “Pincushion Man” to resolve the apparently emotionally vacant story they were setting up there. The only halfway logical story that followed from previous episodes was Jughead searching for aliens and going on a drug trip to find out more.
Here's how to make the stories more coherent and follow more of a progression.
Betty's discovery of the lack of empathy that Juniper and Dagwood have for others could've lead to a conversation between her and Alice. The conversation would involve the idea that Polly had been keeping them under control, teaching them how to present themselves as having emotions. But without their mother around to keep them in check, their natural tendencies are reasserting themselves. Naturally, this would lead Betty to become ever more desperate to find Polly in order to save Juniper and Dagwood from themselves. In the process, she would discover some fact about Polly's disappearance and set off to find her. If you wanted to have her become a trucker you could since that would be consistent but there's probably a better way to go about things.
Chad's story would be better suited to being set up more obviously that he is in trouble. Perhaps a strange one sided conversation or two in the episodes leading up to it. Some mention of him having troubles in the past that Veronica is aware of and thought she worked through with him. This would make him more sympathetic and for his needing Veronica to stay with him would be more logical. She built an entire life with him and to leave him with nothing wouldn't have felt good for Veronica. It creates a fundamental motivation for them which proceeds from other characteristics.
Archie's need to make the town better should suffer a real obstacle of some kind. Instead of a riot, perhaps someone specific threatens him or his project to save the town of Riverdale. Maybe a band of concerned citizens who don't think he has what it takes to save the town confronts him about it. He's then forced to convince them that he can do what he promised. This would be consistent and something that has been reasonably set up from previous events.
Cheryl's story line is barely worth mentioning because of the sheer absurdity of it all. Her mother showing up and insisting that Minerva be sacrificed in order to appease some strange curse which Cheryl believes herself to be the victim of is absolutely ridiculous. A more logical way to go about it would be to see that the sudden loss of maple syrup was due to some other cause then a vague and uncertain curse. It could even be related to Hiram in some way to make it all work within the bounds of what the episode wants. But the idea that Minerva leaving and a prayer stopped a fire from burning the maple groves is beyond absurd.
This is how you build out strong character growth. It's how most ordinary people do it. They learn from the past and find ways around it.
One can only hope that when Riverdale returns in August, that they've gone through the process of reevaluating past mistakes and will not create randomness for its own sake.
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