10 TV Shows That Went From Great To Terrible SO FAST
6. Riverdale
When the premise of Riverdale was announced the show was met with disbelieving laughter. A dark and edgy murder mystery reboot of... Archie Comics?
As The Simpsons once put in, "duh, stay out of Riverdale".
But despite an inane conceit, this teen hit soon won over disbelievers with its 2017 debut. The show’s trick was to never attempt anything like self seriousness, a goal aided by two generations of game teen stars including series standout Madeleine Petsch, Scream’s Skeet Ulrich, Twin Peak’s Madchen Amick, and the late great Luke Perry.
However since the show began at the height of absurdity with its over-the-top first season, there wasn’t a lot further for it to go without slipping into stupidity. The shift from murder mystery to slasher kept the first half of the second season afloat, but a bizarre Dungeons and Dragons parodying subplot was starting to reveal the cracks.
And so the latter half of the second season's slide into fast-paced self parody was almost inevitable, with the show’s likeable cast not enough to save it from cartoony excess that even seasoned teen soap fans couldn’t enjoy.
And with a hot cast and funny one liners, that’s about as forgiving a target audience as a show can hope for.