Riverdale Season 4 Premiere: 7 Ups & 0 Downs From 'Chapter Fifty-Eight: In Memoriam'

Ups...

7. The Writing

We could go into how Riverdale often gets a bad rap for its ambitious storylines or off-the-wall narratives and how it's always at its best when it keeps things simple, but that simply isn't relevant right now. What is relevant is how strong the writing was right here, right now, as Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa delivered what is, without a doubt, the best-written episode in the show's history.

The idea that Fred had been killed by a car while helping someone out may have shocked us at first, but that only ended up heightening what we already knew about him - he was a hero. And that really was the basis upon which the whole episode was based: Fred Andrews was a hero.

This set the stage for an emotional character journey for his son, Archie Andrews, as his grief threatened to push him over the edge. That is, until he remembered the kind of man his father was. Furthermore, Cheryl Blossom, reflecting on Fred's life and knowing what grief and loneliness can do to a person, put her differences with the core four aside to be there for Archie.

The whole town came together to form a guard of honour as Archie brought his father home, and the imprisoned Hiram Lodge even paid the funeral costs - an example of how, regardless of who you were or what you believed, you were touched by how good a man Fred Andrews was.

Though Archie was at the heart of it, this mature tale told the story of how one man left Riverdale better than how he found it, and how if everyone was more like him, the world would be a better place