Does Time Work Differently on ‘Riverdale’?

Something is clearly wrong with the town of Riverdale. The hit CW show is full to the brim with murder, sex and intrigue… But it’s also full of weird, off-brand products that don’t exist, sitting right next to products that do exist. Riverdale is clearly in a reality of its own; but does that include the flow of time itself? Does time, in fact, work entirely differently on Riverdale than it does in the real world?

There are two major pieces of evidence that this might be possible. In the Season 2 episode “When a Stranger Calls,” Veronica (Camila Mendes) dropped a reference to a hotel in town called the Five Seasons. We’ve since visited the hotel a number of times, and as far as I can tell it’s not warping the space time continuum or anything. On the surface, calling a hotel the Five Seasons isn’t really much different than a coffee chain called Bean & Beluga, or that time they ordered stuff from

Except, and here’s where I’m about to blow your mind: there aren’t five seasons in the year.

I know, I’ll give you a minute to process. …Back? Good. Five seasons is just not a thing that exists. It’s like opening a 25-hour diner… You’re overlapping hours, somehow? Just like with the Five Seasons, you’re either referencing two winters, or there’s an extra season in the Riverdale year.

Seems a stretch, right? And to be fair, most likely the town of Riverdale doesn’t celebrate Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and a fifth season called Glubbance or something. That seems like the sort of thing that would have come up in conversation on the show. Plus, a cursory glance at Google shows that several real spas and sports clubs around the country use the name Five Seasons. They’ll definitely be getting an angry call from me later.

So let’s say Five Seasons is just a quirky name, something the residents of Riverdale accept along with stick monsters called The Gargoyle King. Fine. We’ll move on.

Instead, let’s talk about a new establishment that was introduced on this past week’s episode, “Chapter Thirty-Seven: Fortune And Men’s Eyes.” In a scene early in the hour, Veronica is frustrated that Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) is throwing her hat in the ring to become student body president of Riverdale High (a normal thing high schoolers deal with! finally!) because Archie (KJ Apa), the current student body president, is in jail for a murder he didn’t commit (retreat! retreat!). Initially, Veronica responds by telling Cheryl she’s banned from Pop’s Diner (prompting Cheryl’s already classic response, “you can’t discriminate against someone because they’re better looking than you”), but when Cheryl points out that there are more productive ways of responding to Archie’s incarceration, Veronica agrees.

Regardless, the damage — and Cheryl’s lunch — is done, so she decides to leave Pop’s. That’s when she drops this shocker:

riverdale tgi thursdays
Photo: The CW

I’m sorry: T.G.I. Thursdays? As in, “thank god it’s the second to last day of the work week?” Nobody says that. Nobody even thinks that. The real world establishment T.G.I. Fridays is named that because there’s a common phrase in use for decades, and they’re trying to make you feel that feeling you always feel on Friday night, but with budget-priced appetizers.

So what if, and I’m just throwing it out there… What if Thursday is the last day of the week in Riverdale?

This opens up two possibilities:

  1. Riverdale operates on a four-day work week.
  2. There are six days in a week in Riverdale

Let’s tackle the first possibility, first. In most scenarios, the increasingly popular four-day work week leads to greater happiness and productivity in workers. There’s no real loss in giving employees a three-day long weekend, and in fact studies have shown employees work better for the other four days of the week. That would be a great thing for more companies to try out in America, like, say, entertainment journalism outlets that mostly cover television and streaming media. Or something, I’m just spitballing.

Back to Riverdale, if Thursdays are, in fact, the end of a Riverdale work week, that might explain a number of things: why nobody ever seems to be in school; why nobody ever seems to be at their job; why there’s an all-ages dance club that seems to be packed every day of the week, even in the middle of the day.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of murder on Riverdale, and generally people are pretty moody. One could argue that a murderer’s happy place is while they’re murdering people, so the increased free time might lead to increased murders. But that hasn’t held true in the Netherlands, for example.

The more likely possibility is that there are six days a week in Riverdale. Conversely to the previous theory, if Thursday is the last day of the week, and they’re going directly from there to Saturday, that might explain a lot. Fridays are great! You take away Fridays, and everyone is going to be way more upset and prone to murder.

To get back to the Five Seasons thing, if there are less days in the week, that might also explain how they’re able to get through five seasons in a year. Most seasons are between 89 and 92 days, but if you eliminate a few days from each, and shove ’em over to a fifth, 52-day long season, that might work out? This certainly seems to point towards why everyone is so screwed up on Riverdale…. If their whole time schedule is off, they’re going to feel off, as well. The broken nature of time in the town of Riverdale could explain the murdering, the strange behavior, even why Kevin (Casey Cott) is so aggressively pursuing Moose!

Or maybe they’re just funny product names. Either way.

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

Where to stream Riverdale