A thread for the explosive side of Mr. Lodge. I made this because I had a story I was going to post in the fink thread but I really cant, Archie isn't a creep in this story, just stupid. 

I guess it would have killed the story if Mr. Lodge had just called ahead. Assuming the recipient of the bearer bonds had been at his place of business that day, Hiram could have sent a driver to pick him up, given him the bonds right there at the mansion, and sent him back with the driver. Maybe they could have had a nice little chat over lunch together.

Who strolls around the streets carrying a half-mil of negotiable bonds? Not that the streets of Riverdale are exactly crime infested, but Hiram ought to know better in the first place than to listen to Archie (who was obviously taking great glee in destroying his suit, which should have made him think twice). I'm sure Hiram is used to dealing in large amounts of cash or other unsecure transactions on rare occasions, so why would he be acting like this was the first such situation he's ever had to deal with?

He has to wear a torn-up suit to walk from the curb of the sidewalk where Archie pulls his car up to the front door? And of course neither Archie nor Mr. Lodge can look and see the CLOSED sign in the window as they pull up in the car, and Archie drives away immediately as soon as Hiram closes the car door without looking to see him enter the building.

And the Riverdale P.D. doesn't recognize Hiram Lodge, because it's not like he's a local celebrity or carrying any form of identification -- he's just some vagrant who likely lifted a half-mil in bonds from one of the many well-dressed millionaires walking the streets of Riverdale.

It's so easy to shoot more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese in some of these simple plots from classic Archie stories, that you realize a lot of the old type of plots are not going to pass in the New Riverdale's mode of realism and continuity, which of course just reduces the opportunities for comedy.

It's all true but the last three panels make it all worthwhile.

I guess my point would be that the comedy that's crucial to classic Archie is built entirely on a foundation of absurdist assumptions. If the characters are forced into a mold where consistency, continuity and realism are the overriding factors, all of the characters come under scrutiny for the believability of their charactistics and actions, and the ramifications that would ensue from those. It's not realistic for Dilton to be a genius boy inventor creating anti-gravity shoes and artificially-intelligent robots, or that there wouldn't be any lasting consequences from Reggie's constant extreme pranking, or that Moose would be allowed to beat guys up over and over again whenever they cast a stray glance or casual conversation in Midge's direction. It's impossible for anyone to eat as much as Jughead does, or for Archie to be as klutzy as he is (yet he can still be on the RHS sports teams and play guitar in his own band) or constantly ignoring one girl to date another or getting sent to detention every other day, or for Reggie or Veronica to be as vain and conceited as they are and not be socially ostracized as a result of it. All of those things only work if they're treated as cartoon characters, and the real-world consequences of their extreme characteristics or behavior don't extend past the final panel "The End" of any individual story. In a realistic story all of those characteristics have to be scaled far down to more human proportions, and consideration given to how they would affect the character's ongoing relationships with people and social status in the real world, so none of those things are particularly funny any more.