Riverdale’s Spanglish is cringeworthy

The Outline

Veronica Lodge’s parents on The CW series “seem to have a minimum requirement of one cringey Spanglish line per episode,” says Gaby Del Valle. And that line seems to always involve “mija,” or Spanish for daughter. “Representation is cool and all, but these occasional mijas stick out blatantly in a family that never speaks Spanish or otherwise,” she says. “There are no signifiers, aside from these mijas, to clue you in to the fact that Veronica’s family is vaguely Latinx — and honestly, I’d be okay with that if the mijas weren’t so nails-on-a-chalkboard grating, sometimes almost rhyming with ‘yeehaw.’ If the Lodges don’t speak Spanish, that’s fine! But if they are going to speak Spanish, can they at least work any other word into the rotation?”