Season 6 opened in a parallel universe, revealing that an explosion in the S5 finale had ripped open the walls of reality and created an alternate version of Riverdale called Rivervale that was defined by supernatural and occult forces. After five episodes, the situation was explained and we returned to the supposedly non-supernatural Riverdale --

And due to some aftereffect of the extradimensional energies that were unleashed, Archie and Betty are now manifesting superpowers. Archie now has invulnerability and super strength and Betty is developing psychic powers.

...

This all works for me. So long as the characters' personalities are present, RIVERDALE thrives on shifting from dramedy to serial killer hunting to crime drama to horror to occult roleplay to cults to paranormal investigations to supernatural horror to superheroes.

I'm sure there are plenty who will disengage or simply be unwilling or unable to accept such turns of narrative because genre shifts within a single series can be unsettling. Some will go so far as to declare that genre shifts within a series are "creatively bankrupt 100%" just because it's outside the previous boundaries of the series. But for me, if the genre shifts serve the characters and are written with awareness and a genuine love for whatever the genre is, it can work, unlike, say, the clumsy MAD MAX and DRACULA ripoffs of SLIDERS.

That said, some will react to RIVERDALE's shift to superheroes the same way we reacted to SLIDERS becoming a clumsy TV approximation of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS / DRAGONHEART / SPECIES / THE RUNNING MAN / ANACONDA.

Then there's the JUGHEAD title written by Chip Zdarsky in which Jughead finds himself on a date with Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, a storyline that isn't reflected in the core ARCHIE title. When Sabrina appears in the ARCHIE title, it doesn't acknowledge her JUGHEAD plotline at all and she meets the ARCHIE cast for the first time again and is dating Archie. There's a SABRINA THE TEENAGED WITCH title in which Sabrina is in her own town, irreconcilable with ARCHIE.

Then there's the ancillary titles. BETTY AND VERONICA: VIXENS has the two girls starting a biker gang. It has a completely different version of the Betty and Veronica friendship in the main title. There's JUGHEAD: THE HUNGER in which Jughead is revealed to be part of a lineage of werewolves, hence his voracious hunger for hamburgers. It kills off a large number of the cast, it reveals Betty to be the latest in a family line of werewolf hunters; this isn't reflected in any other title. There's VAMPIRONICA, in which Veronica is transformed into a vampire and then she later travels to a parallel universe where she meets the werewolf Jughead from JUGHEAD: THE HUNGER.

There's ARCHIE VS. PREDATOR where all but two cast members are murdered by the Predator; this appears to be a series finale to the 'classic' ARCHIE comics as the surviving Betty and Veronica refer to various events in the original comics and travel into the parallel universe of the 2015 reboot.

The horror line also has CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA and AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE, two very dark versions of the characters which haven't been appearing regularly in comic stores as the writer has been working on RIVERDALE. Interestingly, there's a series, JUGHEAD: TIME POLICE where 2015 reboot Jughead discovers that the classic version of Jughead has become evil and been gathering Jugheads from parallel universes.

One of these Jugheads is the RIVERDALE incarnation who wears a Serpents leather jacket and delivers an overwrought monologue describing the war of Jugheads only to be interrupted when he's knocked unconscious.

What's interesting is that despite the light and dark and sci-fi variations on these titles, Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica remain the same characters, simply in different situations and with different choices before them even if those choices involve summer jobs in one universe or time and space in another.

Side note: anyone see the new Mad Magazine volume 2 #1? Has an Archie/Riverdale spoof that’s pretty hilarious.

Last year, the show was dark and moody, but the core characters still seemed pretty solid. This year, Jughead is cutting skin off of a woman's arm. It's insane.

But I don't remember Brenda Walsh performing a striptease at 16, with her mother in the audience.

I don’t think this show is any racier than the original 90210 series, which I think started them as either freshmen or sophomores aback in the early 1990s.

While the first season worked fine as a murder mystery, the Black hood concept was not quite as good, and I kinda wish it had gone in a different direction, what direction, I don’t know, maybe a little more care free and less super serious. It still has a lot of great moments and I’m enjoyong it a lot, as long as I seperate the show from the comics, both are enjoyable despite being vastly different.

These kids today...