TV Reviews : ‘Archie’: Jugheaded Effort From NBC

A lot of people are wicked and vicious; let’s be nice. Let’s just figure that with “Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again,” NBC was trying to make a pleasant, white-breaded two hours for us out of the goofy old Archie comic-strip cutups.

Who could forget Archie and Jughead? Or Betty and Veronica, so hot in basic comic colors?

This project (airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39) presents the characters as real people at a class reunion 15 years later, with hopes of becoming a series.

It’s hard to find the right word to describe it. Insipid doesn’t stretch far enough.

There are so many embarrassments. Patchett-Kaufman Entertainment put them all to work: Archie (Christopher Rich) as a lawyer, Jughead (Sam Whipple) as a psychiatrist, Betty (Lauren Holly) as a teacher-hopeful writer, Veronica (Karen Kopins) as the spoiled heiress, etc. The cast is quite winning for the humanization from the comic page, but the adult concerns put into their mouths are paltry and trivial.

“We were blissfully ignorant and then we graduated,” Archie reflects. But ignorance doesn’t improve with age. It stays dumb.

Someone should pay for this. But let’s not be cruel. Maybe not a death sentence--but life in prison without possibility of parole.