Riverdale: The Complete Second Season
As a guilty pleasure TV show, Riverdale is more fun in big chunks, which makes the DVD format a great way to indulge. Riverdale: The Complete Second Season is out Tuesday. This season ran 22 episodes instead of the 13 of the first season, so the set is four discs. (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a review copy of this DVD set.)
This was the season where Archie (KJ Apa) became a junior mob enforcer and leader of a vigilante group, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) a gang member, Veronica (Camila Mendes) a blackmailer, and Betty (Lili Reinhart) an accessory to murder. So… not your parents’ Archie characters. But we knew that when the season started with Archie’s dad shot by a serial killer.
KJ Apa as Archie Andrews and Luke Perry as Fred Andrews in Riverdale
This season we met Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos), found out why Betty’s mother (Mädchen Amick) was crazy, and investigated the Black Hood. We got drag racing and long-lost relatives, jingle jangle drug-dealing and blackmail rape, conversation therapy rescue and the high school musical, Carrie. It’s all insane, but dang, did Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) look good hunting a killer with a bow and arrow.
While Archie and Veronica got together, Betty and Jughead turned out to be the great romance of the show, and Veronica started growing into her parents’ daughter.
As previously reported, there are a few special features. Every episode has at least one deleted scene.
“Making the Musical: Riverdale” (5 minutes) has executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and many of the cast members briefly commenting on the Carrie musical episode. It’s always entertaining to hear K.J. Apa’s New Zealand accent! And to hear them tell it, everyone had so much fun the best ever! We laughed at one of the teen actors saying “I did musical theater when I was young,” but their enthusiasm is infectious.
“Riverdale Vocal Warm Ups” is two minutes of clips of cast members making silly faces and sounds.
“Riverdale Pop Quiz!” is a minute-and-a-half excerpt from the 2017 Comic-Con panel with the cast answering questions about each other. Speaking of the panel, that’s its own half-hour extra, with just about every major younger cast member and a couple of producers. This took place between seasons 1 and 2 so there’s a good amount of teasing for events and relationships of this season.
“Caught Between Two Worlds: The Darkness Inside” (18 1/2 minutes) talks about how they set things up so they could explore the darkness within various characters. Season 1 involved a murder in the past, but this season is about a present-day serial killer. I didn’t learn much with this extra — I enjoyed the convention panel more — but it’s helpful to hear the producers share what they think about the characters.
The five-minute gag reel is welcome after being reminded of all that creepy stuff. This has lots of bleeping after flubbed lines! It looks like the group has plenty of fun making the show, which is a nice counterbalance to the dark material.