Riverdale: The Complete First Season - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

Riverdale: The Complete First Season

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

“Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.”
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Movie
Everyone one of us has probably grown up reading “Archie & Jughead”, “Betty & Veronica” etc, and to many it was a staple of growing up. Watching Betty and Veronica fight over Archie, and Jughead’s moronic stunts (as well as being able to heat his entire weight in burgers) all the while chuckling away. A perfect town with nearly perfect seeming kids. Well, what if the town of Riverdale (Archie’s home town) is a little less perfect than you actually thought? What if there were dark secrets hidden, bitter trysts simmering underneath the surface, and scandal that could rock the whole basis of the happy little comic book world? Well, that’s what The CW’s Riverdale is all about. Exploring the world of Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead with a dark teen drama that is filled with more angst than you could possibly imagine.

You can basically take comfort in the fact that this is NOT the world of Riverdale that you grew up with as a kid. It’s really an “Archie-ized” version of 90210, with hunky hot teens (who really aren’t teens in real life) smoldering up the screen, and filled with mystery and murder. Young Archie (K.J. Apa) is back for his sophomore year of high school, and things in the perfect little town of Riverdale are not as happy and joyful as we once new. The richest family in the town, the Blossoms, have had a horrible tragedy befall them. Their oldest son Jason (Trevor Stines) has been presumed dead after vanishing off of a boat with his sister Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch). The whole town is up in a furor about it, but this means little to Archie and his best friend Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) as they’re getting ready to start up the next year.

Archie has been having a bit of a “Mrs. Robinson” experience with music teacher Miss Grundy (Sarah Habel), and Betty is pining after her childhood friend. Naturally there’s the comic book rivalry with newcomer, Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes), including some infighting over who gets to take home the hunky, six pack abs piece of man meat that is our main character. While the trio of “friends” are trying to make their way in the world of Riverdale, it soon becomes apparent that the happy little town is filled with MORE tragedies. Queen bee Cheryl Blossom is taking charge of anything and everything related to her brother, and as the plot unfolds we realize there is much more to her brother’s “accident” then meets the eye. Young Jason soon is found washed up on the shores of Riverdale with a bullet in his head, and the mistrust and betrayal that follows is deliciously angsty and epic.

I said it a few paragraphs back, but Riverdale is what happens when you blend 90210, The Vampire Diaries, Twin Peaks with Gossip Girl. The angst just FLOOOOOOOOOOWS throughout the show like a blunt battering ram. There’s no sense of subtlety or disguise going on to soften that element. The Mean Girls drama among the girls is hilariously campy and over the top, and the mysterious, but smoldering, take on Archie and Jughead is rather amusing. The first couple episodes are REALLY hard to get through. So much so that I was having a hard time last week when I started watching the DVDs. After a while the campy and brooding nature of the show tends to soften just a little bit, with the groundwork being laid we have some more fluidity to deal with the darker elements of the show without having to regurgitate every character's motivations like you do in the 2-3 episodes that it takes to find it’s footing.

There’s nothing classy about the show, and while I was having a hard time reconciling The CW angst and melodrama with a beloved classic cartoon, it really does replicate the cartoon in many ways. I’m not saying the tone and feel are the same, as the original comics and strips that we grew up with were all bubbly and happy. But the melodrama and over the top hijinks of the strips actually fit with what we’re seeing on screen. Except with less murder and sexual tension.

I won’t say anything about the acting except that this is pretty much par for the course with The CW. Everyone is smoking hot and showing ripped abs or just enough cleavage to make you realize that there isn’t a single bad looking person in the entire cast. Even Jughead, who is the outcast and narrator of the show, is a good looking kid for a skinny emo boy. Everyone does their melodramatic best, but Madelaine Petsch) is EASILY the highlight of the show as the ridiculously over the top Cheryl Blossom. Everyone else is just hunky, cute and meant to be eye candy.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

In typical CW fashion, Riverdale: The Complete First Season comes to DVD with a very stable looking transfer. Sadly the show is relegated to DVD for general release, while the Blu-ray is relegated to Warner Archive Collection, which presses the discs in a small “on demand” fashion. The show is overly stylized, with deep burnished reds, bold blues, and a dusky, almost surreal look to the show that employs some lightly gauzy effects. Fine details during daylight shots are magnificent, with crisp facial tones and sharp lines around faces. You can see everything from the mole on Betty’s face, to the sweaty abs of our hunky Archie with pinpoint precision. The darker shots appear more murky, with a lightly soft haze that gives the show an almost supernatural or dreamlike vibe. Blacks can be ever so slightly washed out, but they still maintain a good amount of shadow detail, and some mild compression artifacts do show up from time to time.







Audio:

The 5.1 Dolby Digital track is just as impressive as the video track, giving us a very engaging expereince in the sleepy little town. There is quite a bit of dialog and drama to mire through, so there is some definite front heaviness to the track a lot of the time, but when the teen party music kicks up the surrounds get a lot more active and the LFE channel more powerful. It’s not a wildly kinetic track, but the surrounds do get a modicum of activity with the sounds of a rushing river, or slamming door, but a majority of the heavy lifting stays firmly up front.
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Extras:

• Riverdale: 2016 Comic-Con Panel
• Riverdale: The New Normal
• Riverdale: The Ultimate Sin
• I Got You – musical piece
• These Are Moments I Remember – musical piece
• Gag Reel
• Deleted Scenes

Final Score: ​

Riverdale is one of those weird shows that seems to thrive off of low ratings. The series has a fraction of the viewers that many CW shows enjoy, but somehow managed to come out ahead due to the massive viewership that Netflix has to offer the last few weeks. It started out with a VERY VERY weak couple of episodes and decent viewings, but as the season progressed it got steadily better, but the average viewings were going downhill. I can’t say I’m a great fan of the show, but the hyper stylized comic book nature has a certain appeal for me. My main complaint comes with the teen drama that is so prevalent in the 90210/Gossip Girls format that the series takes. It gets rather grating after a while, much like how I reacted to The Vampire Diaries. Audio and video are very solid, and extras are worth checking out. If you want the Blu-ray than Warner Archive Collection has released that at the same time, but only available online if you’re looking for it in stores. Interesting watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: K.J. Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes
Created by: Greg Berlanti
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 MPEG 2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1, Portuguese DD 2.0
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: NR
Runtime: 555 Minutes
DVD Release Date: June 15th, 2017

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Interesting Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I will skip this teen melodrama .. lol.

 

[Asere]

Thanks for the review. I will skip this teen melodrama .. lol.

I hear you. Maybe I'm just getting old lol.

 

[Michael Scott]

yeaaaaahhh. It's definitely a bit heavy on teen melodrama.