The readings for this week may be focused most intently on genre, but the complicated notion of “quality TV” runs alongside side genre on parallel track. On the surface, “quality” and “genre” are two terms where, to borrow Mittel’s quotation of Court Justice Potter Stewart, “we know them when we see them.” But thinking about them more deeply reveals troubling messages about which genres are elevated as “quality TV,” what a move towards “quality TV” means, and whether the term functions as a genre (or even a brand) itself. Kackman asserts as much in “Flow Favorites: Quality Television, Melodrama, and Cultural Complexity,” interrogating how the moniker of “quality TV” reasserts either “high-art” elitism or “gendered hierarchies that made the medium an object of critical and popular scorn” before early feminist television scholars reclaimed supposed “low-brow” offerings like the melodrama (Kackman). And as Kackman points out, HBO, the pre-eminent “quality TV” network, resists being categorized as television altogether, suggesting a rejection of its own medium.
This intersection of quality and genre brings me to Riverdale, a modern-day retelling of the Archie comics that is a hybrid of the teen television, melodrama, and mystery genres. Through its “hyperbolic mise en scène,” outrageous plot twists, and intentionally silly dialogue, the program embraces both soap opera storytelling and elements of camp (McPherson 177). Like the Douglas Sirk’s films that Jane Feuer alludes to, Riverdale is recognizable for its “extreme formalist” qualities, but whereas Sirk’s films has been praised for their auteurism (the term itself an identifier of quality), Riverdale is not meant to be confused with quality TV (Feuer 5). Or is it? Interestingly, as Stefania Marghitu states in Teen TV, her book charting the history of teen-directed television programming, Riverdale’s first season was received positively by critics, and was praised for its “genre hybridity, production values, and self-reflexivity–all markers of ‘quality TV” (Marghitu 183). The descriptor of “quality TV” here creates a tension between Riverdale’s critically acclaimed first season and the eye-roll inducing audience and critical responses of later seasons.
To be absolutely clear: I agree with Petrus that Riverdale offers almost no valuable social commentary, and the episodes where it tries to tackle thorny social issues (such as gay cruising, drug use, or sexual assault) are amongst the most hackneyed and unsatisfying it has to offer. But the reputation of the first season (which works as a contained narrative that introduces then solves its central mystery) is worth remembering even as subsequent seasons, which lean even more heavily into melodramatic storytelling, were received much more negatively by critics. Was Riverdale’s first season truly able to earn, through all its genre-blending glory, the moniker of “quality TV?” If so, what do we make of comments from reviewers like AV Club’s LaToya Ferguson, who covered the show weekly for half of its run and offered this scathing (and amusing) lead to an episode review:
“Chapter Forty-One: Manhunter” is one of those Riverdale episodes where, if you were to explain a large portion of it to anyone who knows absolutely nothing about Riverdale, you would sound very out of touch with reality. That’s technically true of every episode, especially after the first season, but imagine having someone who knows nothing about this show watch any of the scenes where Jughead goes on and on about the Gargoyle Gang. Then imagine them trying to understand why you watch this show.”
The opening lines of this review refer to the absurdity of Riverdale’s storytelling, which certainly grew more exaggerated as the show went along, and uses the example of trying to explain its plot to someone unfamiliar with it as proof that this is not “good” television. Yet Riverdale’s fall from “quality TV” is defined solely by its plot lines, with the above criticism saying nothing about the show’s aesthetic style and high production values, both key components of its original “quality TV” reputation. I wonder then if, for the genre of teen television, the signposts for “quality TV” are not defined so much by visual language (as Sirk’s films, and shows Kackman refers to, were), but rather by the ways in which it tests its audience patience for melodramatic storylines. How much “genre” is too much? For how long can a show amplify its melodramatic story beats before becoming incompatible with definitions of a “quality” TV show? Or does getting hung-up on the “quality” of a specific program, especially one in the seldomly taken seriously genre of teen television, merely reify elitist positions that early TV scholars had done so well to deconstruct?
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| Promotional image for Season 1 showing Cheryl Blossom in her lavishly gothic bedroom in Thornhill, the Blossom estate. |
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