What to watch after your dad dies
Comfort in the dark
A few hours before my dad died, I was curled up on my couch watching Riverdale on Netflix. Riverdale is, objectively, a preposterous programme. When it launched back in 2017, I watched the first episode of the show, decided it was trying and failing to be a dark, mysterious, “gritty” (ugh) update of the classic American Archie comics, and abandoned it. But in summer 2023, when Riverdale’s last episode aired, I read a few pieces in Vulture that made me realise the show was not going for “dark”, it was going for “completely fucking unhinged”, and I was intrigued. When several mutuals on Insta told me that I would love its unique brand of batshittery, I knew I had to dive back in, viewing it through this lens. And, of course, they were right. I did love it. And I still do.
Riverdale is, objectively, a completely preposterous programme and without a doubt the most high camp show of the last decade. Everything is played completely straight, but it is very clear that everyone involved knows how insane it all is and is having a huge amount of fun. Although the show is set in the present day and everyone has smartphones, they also have rotary phones in their homes, the TVs are old school chunky numbers and the hospital looks like it’s from the 50s. The cast is a mix of very likeable young actors (one of whom, Charles Melton, is deservedly tipped for an Oscar nom this year for his excellent performance in May December) and middle aged stars who played iconic roles in their 80s and 90s youths; Archie’s parents are Luke Perry and Molly Ringwald; Betty’s mom is Twin Peaks legend Madchen Amick; Jughead’s parents are Skeet Ulrich and Gina Gershon. And the plots….well, this paragraph from one of the Vulture articles says it all:
This is a show in which a cult leader played by Chad Michael Murray (I don’t know why the fact that he’s played by Chad Michael Murray makes it funnier, but it does) tries to make a getaway on a homemade rocket wearing an Evel Knievel-style jumpsuit.
It is a show in which hero Archie is sent to the Leopold & Loeb Juvenile Detention Centre (oh yes) and forced by the warden to partake in an illegal fight club in an abandoned swimming pool for the entertainment of high society gamblers (Archie’s girlfriend Veronica spots him there when she attends a fight undercover in a blonde wig under the alias Monica Posh; the fighters are masked but Veronica gasps “I’d recognise those abs anywhere!” She and the rest of the gang help Archie escape and he sets off into the wilderness, where he fights a bear, because of course he does). It’s a show in which a would-be cheerleading coach can snap “I’ve seen a porcelain doll possessed by the spirit of my dead brother move faster than you lot!” at her students and mean it. There really are many, MANY musical numbers. I can’t get enough of it.
But the episode of Riverdale I watched that Wednesday night in November was a more somber affair than usual, and a genuinely moving one. You probably remember that Luke Perry died suddenly of a stroke back in 2019; in the aftermath of his shocking death, the show had to quickly rework the last few episodes of Season 3 and send his character Fred Andrews on a business trip. Sensibly, the show runners waited a few months to give a proper, thoughtful goodbye to both Fred and the actor who played him.
The fourth season begins with an episode in which Archie gets a phone call telling him Fred has been killed by a hit and run driver while helping a stranded motorist. By all accounts Luke Perry was a kind and generous man whose head hadn’t been turned by his own youthful stardom, much loved by everyone who worked with him, and the cast’s real grief and shock is evident in their performances. The result made me shed actual tears. “I can’t believe I’m properly crying at an episode of Riverdale!” I said to my husband.
An hour or so later I got a frantic phone call from my parents’ house, telling me to get there quickly, to get there now.
Long after midnight, when the paramedics and the gardaí had left my parents’ house (before that night, I had never had to know that if someone dies suddenly at home the police have to come in case there has been foul play; I wish I could tell my dad, a longtime viewer of Sunday evening crime dramas, about this, but I can’t), I suddenly found myself thinking of a scene in A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I loved that book so much as a kid that when I started writing a diary, age 10, I addressed its entries to “Dear Sara” after the book’s heroine, Sara Crewe. Sara is a fabulously rich young girl who is left a penniless orphan in a Victorian boarding school after her father dies. When she hears the news of his death, she doesn’t react with wailing and tears. She goes to her room and sits down and says, again and again, ‘My papa is dead. My papa is dead.’ If she says it enough times, maybe it will eventually feel real.
That scene is what I kept thinking of that night.
If you had asked me at any point in my life before that Wednesday night in November, ‘Would you be able to keep watching the programme you were watching the night your father died?’ I would have unhestitatingly said, ‘Absolutely not.’ Why would I want to watch, or read, or look at, any piece of culture that would always be linked to such an awful, awful experience? And yet, the very first time I was alone in my house during the following week - because there had to be a post mortem, the funeral didn’t take place until amost a week after my dad died, an eternity in Irish funeral terms – I very intentionally starting playing the next episode.
I realised that, with a fierceness that surprised me, I didn’t want to lose the preposterous pleasure of Riverdale to the shock and grief I was experiencing. And I really, really wanted - I needed - escapism and distraction, and season 4 of Riverdale, with an arc set in “Stonewall Prep” boarding school and based on the The Secret History, featuring characters named Bret Weston Wallis and Donna Sweett, was definitely distracting.
And in a weird way, I felt genuinely comforted by the fact that Riverdale had also become a story about losing your dad in a sudden and shocking, but unsensational, way. On screen, Archie was grieving his dad; off screen, I was grieving mine. Of course, Archie responded to his loss by running a boxing gym and becoming a vigilante (the worst Riverdale storylines usually involve Archie’s stupid gym and his regular descents into vigilante-ism) but still. Other characters had also lost parents, though in all those cases their parents had been murderers so, you know, their feelings were a little more complicated. ‘At least my sadness is straightforward,’ I said to my husband, watching one of the characters - whose name I won’t mention in case I spoil anyone inspired by this newsletter to watch this unhinged chaos - clean the graffiti off the grave of their serial-killer progenitor. Being Riverdale, the graffitti said “[Murderer’s name] burns in hell!” in an homage to the last scene of Carrie. Riverdale loves a classic film homage.
As I write, it’s seven weeks since my dad died. I could have watched much more complex and profound programmes about grief in that period. I could have read infinitely more complex books.
But I didn’t. I watched and am still watching Riverdale, and it feels just right.
Such a wonderful post, Anna. I’m so sorry for your loss.
This was a gorgeous read Anna ❤️