Riverdale Season 3: 4 Ups & 2 Downs From 'Big Fun'

1. It Finally Addressed The Ridiculousness Of It All

"Can't we be seventeen?" Betty Cooper mused as she cradled Jughead's face.

In that moment, Betty wasn't just reciting the lines of one of Heathers' most iconic numbers, she was asking a question that many of us have been asking those characters for the past year.

When Riverdale first hit our screens, it was a show about lost teenagers that just so happened to find themselves caught up in a murder investigation. Sure, the town was Lynchian and the characters a little too promiscuous, but it still felt relatively grounded. However, throughout the show's run, it stopped being about real people and instead, we got Gargoyle Kings and drug lord mothers. It didn't happen overnight per say, but it sure felt like it.

However, the writers used the music of Heathers to finally address the sheer ridiculousness of the lives that these characters are living. As Jughead struggled with the realization that his mother was literally using his childhood home as a drug lab and Cheryl finally opened us about her, quite frankly, bizarre behaviour through the lyrics of "Seventeen", we finally got to see that these characters aren't as used to their crazy lives as they are portrayed to be.

Turns out that it wasn't just us getting frustrated by the absurdity of it all, the characters felt it too and, in doing so, suddenly became a lot more three-dimensional than they had been in a very long time. Yes, they realised that they are growing up, but they also realised that they wanted to do so in as "normal" a way as possible.

'Big Fun' was a surprisingly touching tale about the journey into adolescence, using the music of Heathers (and the show's exaggerated past) to highlight each character's thoughts and feelings about growing up.

Now, for the negatives...