Riverdale's seven-year time jump is a reminder that it's essentially Glee's darker noir cousin

Variety

Former Glee writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who created Riverdale, has "embraced soap opera style melodrama from the start, throwing its plucky — if weirdly solemn — teens into life-threatening scenarios every week," says Caroline Framke. As for this week's time jump, she says, "'Purgatorio isn’t here to party; it’s here to remind everyone that Riverdale has always fancied itself a pitch black noir above all else. In retrospect, though, this is about what I should’ve expected. While Riverdale has had more than its share of hyperbolic storylines, its first instinct is to take them all very, very seriously. The combination of absurdity, solemnity and gothic grandeur that 'Purgatorio' runs on has always formed the backbone of Riverdale. Flashing forward wasn’t going to change that. If anything, aging the characters up to being full adults only made the show a more concentrated version of itself that’s freer than ever to dig into its seedy underbelly."