Riverdale’s best episode had nothing to do with murder or monsters

The Season 4 premiere paused the campy overtones to honor Luke Perry, and the series-best episode showed off a different side of Riverdale.

Going into Riverdale’s Season 4 premiere, we knew the episode would be devoted to paying tribute to the late Luke Perry and his moral center character Fred Andrews. We knew that the series would strip away its bells and whistles, and we knew the standalone episode would honor the memory of an irreplaceable member of its cast and treasured pop culture icon. Thankfully, the show succeeded.

Although some touchstones of the Riverdale aesthetic were still present in “In Memoriam,” like ominous low-angle shots and justice-minded Archie, the episode revealed a different shade of the series that perhaps had always been in its DNA but we hadn’t seen before. Gone were the serial killers and mask-wearing monsters and surrealistic twists, and the series still shined on the weight of an honest story and the raw emotion of its talented cast.

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It’s true that most episodes of Riverdale feel heavy. Not heavy in the sense of mourning an inimitable person like Luke Perry. Just the substantial heft of a narrative that exists somewhere between two planes of reality. But “In Memoriam” tackled the impossible task of grieving the loss of a major character and an incomparable generational icon with the grace a show of this nature isn’t used to employing on a week to week basis.

No matter what you think or how you feel about Riverdale’s execution of its multiple mysteries, the series has been successful at toeing the line between taking itself too seriously and being blissfully self-aware of its own madness. That madness, with murderers and monsters galore, is the series’ winning calling card. For the first time, Riverdale grappled with how to operate without the urgent energy of its horror-lite chaos working as a thread in any single episode.

It’s easy to call “In Memoriam” a fluke, that the series did what it needed to do in order to pay tribute to Perry. But the episode wouldn’t have worked if these elements weren’t present in Riverdale from the start. The series isn’t known for its heart or quieter moments, but in its somber (but still super-dark) commemoration of Fred and Luke, it proved that it could stand without Black Hoods and maple syrup-related incest and organ harvesting cults, if only for a minute.

The tone-shifting episode’s secret weapon arrives with Shannen Doherty, Perry’s close friend and Beverly Hills, 90210 co-star, the Brenda to his Dylan. Doherty’s appearance and delivery of a prayer humbles the series in a reality that it hasn’t truly ever existed in. She could totally thrive within the crazy of the Riverdale universe, what with her Charmed background, but she was the perfect outlet for the series to step outside of itself into territory more grounded.

When all is said and done, “In Memoriam” will be remembered as a series-best episode of Riverdale, as both a beautiful memorial and a test of range. Obviously, it’s our hope that the series never has to pump the breaks for a special tribute episode again. But it’s worth taking a piece of this melancholy throughout Season 4 and remembering that the narrative doesn’t have to get nearly as convoluted as Season 3, with murder and monsters running rampant. Allow the story and characters to breathe and hit the beats that lean more realistic, more human.

What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.