Please, please let there be an episode called “The Sweet Life of Hamburgers and Hot Dog.”
The CW has begun moving forward with the Riverdale pilot, based on the characters from Archie Comics. Since it’s on the CW, it’s probably a little less Archie Laugh Digest and more the recent revamp of [amazon text=Archie&asin=1627388672] that takes the students of Riverdale High a lot more seriously. Regardless, the network has cast a couple of tween favorites from years gone by, possibly capturing their interest in the show.
We have a Betty Cooper, now played by Lili Reinhart, and we have a Jughead, embodied by Cole Sprouse from Disney’s Suite Life series of series. They can handle the comedy along with the very special moments. For the sake of the news cycle, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s script is being described as a subversive take on the characters, but if you’ve read what Mark Waid and Fiona Staples have been doing with the characters (along with Chip Zdarsky’s [amazon text=Jughead&asin=1627388931]), you’d know it’s already subversive.
For those unfamiliar with the characters, Betty Cooper is a typical American girl, carrying a torch for Archie Andrews (whose casting remains unannounced). Jughead is Archie’s best friend, recently identified in comics as asexual, more interested in eating and being diffidently friendly than anything else.
While I’m all for this take, produced by Greg Berlanti with Warner Brothers Television (when does that man sleep?), Aguirre-Sacasa really needs to get back to writing comics — his involvement with this series seems to have distracted him from [amazon text=Afterlife with Archie&asin=161988948X] and [amazon text=Chilling Adventures of Sabrina&asin=1627389873]. Or Archie Comics needs to find someone new to carry on those books — the curse of success is that everybody wants you.
