Ask A Genius 568 – Wholesome High School Shows Gone Bad
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/27
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was the Kissing Booth? This was when Carole was calling you “Loudy.”
Rick Rosner: You’re going to be reading a transcript of this. When I am very interested in a subject [Laughing], I get louder and was shouty discussing high school.
Jacobsen: I can confirm this. This is true. It is not angry yelling. It is John Mulaney punch-liney telling a joke.
Rosner: If only I could be as funny and talented as John Mulaney, Kissing Booth, anyway, conformed to my stereotype of a high school movie, which is a de-emphasis on social media. Only using it so the characters can know where one another are or can suspect one another of cheating based on messages on a cell phone and stuff like that.
That all of the important moments take place face-to-face, as in old school life. Everything centres on the activities of the high school. Namely, the main story and a couple of the sub-plots, maybe not the main story, were resolved in the Kissing Booth.
It was at the high school. But there is one thing I also noticed, which is that compared to the high school movies of yore. The characters are leading much more adult lives. In that, the main character in this one drinks under-age without hesitation.
Even though, her age is unspecified. It is pretty clear that she is a high school senior, but has sex with her boyfriend who is a college freshman. Nobody worries about the legal implications or anything. It is something people do when they are dating. They have sex.
This is something. Carole and I don’t want CW much, but Riverdale is based on Archie comics with Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, which, for 60 or 70 years, was a painfully wholesome comic about a high school guy divided in his affections between the blonde Betty and the brunette Veronica.
It was also known for every sentence in the comics that didn’t end in a question mark ended in an exclamation mark. It was wholesome to the point of being unreadable. It was in a way Richie Rich was to anybody older than 8.
But the characters in Archie comics have been reimagined as noir characters in the benighted drugs ridden and gang ridden town of Riverdale. Apparently, the deadliest city in the state where they live.
All of the characters, even though, they are in high school; they are leading adult lives. Veronica is running a bar, a full-on bar. It serves alcohol, but it is in the style of a speak-easy. One character who lives with her lesbian girlfriend at the girlfriends’ house/mansion who has had the sinister mom thrown in prison; and now, the daughter is in charge of the mansion.
They both live in it. I think they’re both cheerleaders. The entire school is hip to the relationship. Archie carries a gun from time to time. Archie had to go on a journey where he fought a bear. His shirt comes off once per episode, at least, because he has nice abs.
He is boning the heck out Veronica. Jughead has come out as asexual in the comic books who has only affection for hamburgers. But in the TV show, he is boning Betty. In the first episode, Betty and Veronica dress up at dominatrices to execute part of a plot, because Betty is also a private eye.
Betty also has serial killer genes, which makes her worry that she will sometime become uncontrollably homicidal. Anyway, it is no longer a comic book meant for 12-year-olds. Veronica’s dad is a crime lord. It’s all that kind of stuff.
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