Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 1 Most Dangerous Witch:
It starts with Hilda and Zelda having a nightmare about centuries ago where they had to leave town because they were so afraid of a winter hunter, which makes Heaton from the comic a rip-off, as well as the witch hunter that had the vacuum. Wait does it make sense that one of them thought the other said, “ Right, “ to mean, “ Yes, “ back in the witch-hunting days?
And I just have to ASSUME the reason they didn’t brainwash him into making him leave them alone was that everyone in town would find that suspicious enough to target them anyways, and the same would happen if they turned him into a frog because they’d notice his disappearance.
I have to assume they didn’t have enough magic to make everyone in town forget about the witch hunter after getting rid of him, but without being told that it could just be hard to take seriously that all-powerful witches are afraid of a mortal. Also I assume we’re not supposed to think the person dreaming sees this dream in black and white and it’s only that way, for effect for the audience.
It wouldn’t make sense for it to actually be in black and white because people stopped doing that after color TV became common. Zelda’s acting when she unrealistically sits up from the bed screaming is bad. I read the comic so I can’t sympathize with these two.
I love that eggs and bacon get splattered on Quigley’s face. They finally explain that they’re on edge because of the dream one of them had about a witch hunter. Sabrina’s acting isn’t trying hard enough. Hilda talks as if the guy who hunts witches for his own collection is still alive, meaning he has to be a witch himself. It seems like the episode doesn’t want you to be scared of Tim the Witch Smeller because it’s lame that it plays the stereotypical “ dum dum dum “ music TWICE, and his title is silly. It’s the definition of Narm.
Zelda uses some of the food in the kitchen to show Sabrina a part of her past to show off Tim. It makes sense for her to do that instead of using her own magic because she’ll run out of magic if she does it too often. I’m somehow expected to believe Tim didn’t have magic even though his parents were witches. It’s stupid in Harry Potter too! So if only it was explained that he has a genetic mutation making him unable to use magic, like, being unable to visualize, which IS possible in real life. They could just use magic to cure his inability to visualize things so no that can’t be it.
And he has to have magic in him regardless or else he wouldn’t have lived to modern day. We see him getting mocked by little witch girls. Quigley says witches can be cruel and gets glared at, I wonder why he was living in a town with witches in the Other Realm, if he can’t use magic. His parents were so cruel. And it turns out Tim started using gadgets to hunt witches. If he made those gadgets, centuries ago, he’s as smart as Rick Sanchez. The only way it gets away with being that unrealistic is that it’s a cartoon. Later Harvey watches TV near Sabrina and says people can be gullible.
She agrees that her aunts are idiots. And arbitrarily when he holds a mirror in front of his face his head looks weird, and Sabrina has to undo that by taking it away. Why is that still in her house? I assume it’s here because it’s a family heirloom but it should’ve been hidden in the attic.
He’d have heard Salem talk! Then he puts on a magical amulet, that come to think of it should’ve also been in the attic, and says he’ll try it on, despite being a guy. A few guys wear jewelry but most preteen guys wouldn’t because they’re afraid of being bullied. And somehow Sabrina doesn’t hear him and instantly solve the problem even though she would’ve heard him because he’s in her house. Sabrina’s aunts smeared themselves with green gunk to try to protect themselves from being detected by Tim, who eventually uses a machine to spray Harvey with stuff to trap him.
I assume the reason he’s risking embarrassment by talking about witches in front of him is he assumes Harvey’s a witch who’s just playing dumb, based on the magic in the amulet. Harvey gets kidnapped and Sabrina warns her family about it. This scene takes too long. Before this the episode’s pacing went so fast it was hard to keep up when typing about it. Zelda says Tim has a phone scrambler called a spell scrambler that magically jumbles up their spells to make them useless.
Sabrina says she’ll go save Harvey, so her aunts use magic to trap her in the house and force her to get grabbed and brought up the stairs. So they can only not use magic well when they’re CLOSE to Tim. They look mean but at least it’s responsible of them to protect her. Come to think of it why doesn’t Sabrina simply warp out of the house… or at least use something like pixie powder to do it? I have to assume her aunts told her later that they made that impossible for her. WHY did its security walls vanish? They come back!
Meanwhile Harvey thinks he’s been kidnapped by someone because that person’s running a TV show because he thought this was all a prank. That was a filler scene. Salem becomes an ally in Sabrina’s goal to save Harvey. You’d think an invisible force field would be around the house keeping her from getting here. That could’ve been what was done instead of the first thing that kept her from leaving it, which felt more like technology having a security system. Why were even the trees surrounded by metal walls?
An invisible force field would feel a lot more like magic than, a metal wall, so you’d think she would’ve thought of the magical force field idea faster. Where’d Sabrina get that paper? She pulled it out of nowhere. Sabrina holds something and says a spell which causes green fire to appear on the road which I’m sure nobody will question and she follows it. A lot of cars are gonna have to drive around that and if they don’t because the drivers think they’re hallucinating they’re gonna lose their tires if they drive through it. You’d think Enchantra would have a problem with this.
Zelda immediately knows a tracking spell is missing from her spell book. I guess she read it to try to stop Tim. Why did she think ANY magic would stop Tim if he had a magic scrambler? And they warp away. Harvey saying amulet makes Tim look at it and realize it’s a Soul Gem and that he’s mortal. Then why didn’t he instantly know that? I just realized, why does he think having a Soul Gem means he’s mortal? A witch could easily be wearing a magical necklace. If anything that should’ve had him convinced that he’s a witch even more.
Somehow the witch heads on the mantle in a kids’ cartoon, can talk, and it’s explained the rest of them are stuck in a parallel dimension and they were turned into living trophies. So now he can’t even walk down this hallway without them annoying him. At least that means he’s not TOO evil as he kept them alive, somehow, even though if he hates witches he would want them eliminated.
Sabrina somehow wastes time trying to use magic against someone she was TOLD can scramble up magic. And it’s not like she’s used to using magic against someone directly. So she wouldn’t have done this by force of habit. So she gets trapped in a force field by Tim. She taunts him that it wasn’t so hard for him to capture all of those witches, to try to make him desperate to prove he didn’t lose his touch. This manipulates him into giving her a head start, so because of that plot convenience she gets to run away and escape from below a sewer hatch. I’m impressed that she was allowed to be smart.
I know the witches couldn’t directly use magic on him. But they could still like, damage his house! I assume the mantle witches can’t use magic. She gets threatened by Tim at a dead end in an alley. Her aunts taunt him and I wonder how they knew to come here. I suppose they followed the green fire that every mortal assumed they were hallucinating! You’d think we would’ve been shown them doing that to know how to find her. Instead we saw them warp away and I wondered how they knew where to warp to. I guess the one who warped away used a spell to home in on Sabrina.
But somehow they didn’t warp next to her. It ends up raining cheese, and now I have enough time to question, why don’t these witches freeze time to effortlessly win against him? Good thing the episode didn’t show them do that to bring up that question. Thanks to lasers they have to run away from him. Tim ends up lying down and saying he hates mini-vans. So if he got hit by one, HOW is he still gonna be a threat?
I have to assume he has nanobots in himself to heal him quickly because he’s standing and trying to fire lasers at them next time he shows up, after Zelda casts a spell to warp the mortals in the mall to safety. Either he has nanobots or he has a magic artifact somewhere. Also it sucks that we don’t see the impact when he gets hit by the mini-van. A spying witch must have deleted footage of this and erased the memory of the security guard seeing it. Salem puts stuff on the floor and you’d think everyone near Salem would hear him say, “ follow your nose, “ in front of the weird-looking animal.
He should’ve been written as whispering… I mean even then you’d think the animal would hear him because animals always have better hearing than us so he should’ve just thought all his dialogue here. So the animal that looks like an alien ends up freaking out at the hot sauce and running into the fountain. I assume that the reason Sabrina’s family HAD that amulet was for extra magic in case they run out because he was able to detect magic in it. Even without that explanation we can assume it’s a family heirloom they’re too attached to.
Sabrina comes up with a plan to spill little candy balls on the floor to trip Tim. Why are they bothering to celebrate that they made it to nightfall and they rule when either way Tim’s still a threat? I assume they’re celebrating because of a reason I forgot.
Why are these three standing still when Tim’s pointing a ray gun at them?! 4 seconds later, plenty of time for them to run, then he gets brought upwards by the fishing pole of Quigley who calls him out on being mean to the aunts. He’s unusually strong and the fishing line is pretty hard to break if it can handle his weight. He gets told witches are all alike. Why’d he assume he’s mortal? And Quigley says individuals are different from each other and that he doesn’t judge people by their skin color or whether they have magic, and yet he constantly demonizes witchcraft.
So this only thinks it’s a good Establishing Character Moment because clearly he still wishes Sabrina wasn’t a witch. Him saying skin color out of nowhere is arrogant virtue-signalling since he’s a jerk normally. I’d have taken it seriously if it was from someone else and had build-up.
He smartly pretends to agree with him and apologize. Then he starts laughing evilly and activates his device, meaning that apologizing was pointless because they had plenty of time to plan against him when he was laughing evilly. This creates a green tornado sending his pet and eventually himself in it. This traps him in the device. I have to assume he was turned into AI for this to make sense. Sabrina hugs Quigley, and Hilda says another condescending remark about mortals for this episode, saying that it’s not bad for a mortal.
Fortunately Quigley calls her out on the fact that her tendency to have a condescending attitude is what creates witch haters. But obviously it’s not really that, it’s the fear of their powers! Harvey happily gives Sabrina back the amulet with no drama over the fact that he borrowed it without asking, though really Sabrina takes it off him, and we see that the captured witches got their bodies back, and Tim ends up on a mantle on his wall, but he’s still alive, which is a fate worse than death as nobody’s gonna be in that abandoned dark house to talk to him.
And I assume he doesn’t need to eat, or drink, because otherwise he’s doomed to starve to death or dehydrate anyways. Padding’s plentiful in this show, so it takes a while to show us him. What if a mortal eventually goes in there, like, a burglar, and sees him? Killing would’ve been merciful compared to his punishment at the end where he’d end up going even more insane from loneliness. This just makes the main characters look heartless AND no better than him in this one thing. You’d think they would notify the head witch about him to get him imprisoned instead.
As for why a spy witch didn’t do something about him a long time ago I assume he never had a spy witch assigned to supervise HIM, because he doesn’t have powers. You’d think a spy witch in charge of supervising OTHER witches on Earth, would’ve done something about him centuries ago though.
This is a deceptively good episode of the show. I say deceptively because it creates a good first impression by having nothing to do with how the show probably is most of the time based on the comic. It’s not a Be Careful What You Wish For plot, and while Sabrina’s aunts are harsh with her, it’s only for a justified reason, to protect her. They’re scared of a witch hunter because he can use a gadget to make their magic unable to bother him, so I wouldn’t have had faith in Sabrina either.
Good thing it’s explained that the witch hunter’s related to witches so I can easily have, “ he’s got magical artifacts, “ as a way to easily Hand Wave away why he’s even able to make an anti-magic gadget. The plot could’ve been rewritten with Chloe instead of Harvey to make sense.
So the witches have to deal with Tim in the mall. Salem uses hot sauce to debilitate a tracking animal and Sabrina is creative enough to send candy balls to trip Tim and Quigley uses a fishing rod to grab him. It’s all creative ways of dealing with him, making the story worth it. Still, most of the episode would’ve never happened.
The fear of his gadgets doesn’t explain why none of these witches freeze time to rescue Harvey. I just realized, why do none of these idiots warp Harvey to them and erase his memories of Tim? At least the episode never showed that these witches could do either of those things so if you aren’t keeping in mind what witches can do for most of the series, you won’t notice, and the story was worth it. But it was still poorly written, it was still catastrophically condescendingly clueless about how someone with magic would act. So far it looks like the writers of this show shouldn’t be writing Sabrina.
Hilda and Zelda seem to have the same personality making them redundant, Salem doesn’t show off HIS personality, and in fact it’s not even explained why he’s a cat, Chloe and Gem aren’t here, and it was ONLY a good episode by not being like most Animated Series plots, so it was a botched Establishing Character Moment for everything about the show, the only thing that worked being that it’s perfect to have the first episode of a show about witches center around a witch hunter. It was only technically bad, because it’s definitely poorly-written, but I didn’t hate watching it.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 2 You Said a Mouse-ful:
You’d think the intro wouldn’t have Harvey riding on Sabrina’s broom with her since the whole premise has him be oblivious, though it makes sense anyways because she could wipe his memory of it whenever. It just doesn’t seem in-character for Animated Series Sabrina, let alone ANY. Sabrina opens a cage door to release a mouse and he just runs up to cheese to get it, which disappoints her and Harvey who think the mouse should be a genius by now and wanted him to go through a maze.
Gem’s always a waste of time. I wonder if I’ll miss anything from skipping most of her dialogue. If she REALLY matters she’ll still be a major part of the climax. The science teacher says a professor’s visiting the town so he urges the classroom to do their best, and Harvey doubts he stands a chance.
Quigley reveals he made a huge maze for the mouse and Sabrina says it’s cool. Harvey gets told to go upstairs and Quigley says he’s proud of Sabrina. He condescendingly says she’s focusing on science and not relying on magic. Fuck Quigley. Besides doesn’t he know she’s only doing this because the science teacher forced her to? The mouse impresses them making Sabrina get to enjoy another hug, and Sabrina says Salem’s jealous of all of the attention the mouse is getting. She knows she shouldn’t let Salem supervise a mouse.
He wastes time denying that he’s a cat and somehow it guilts her, when regardless, she should KNOW he’s somehow a slave to cat instincts anyways. So there’s no excuse for her letting him supervise a mouse. She could’ve gotten her aunts’ opinion.
The next day she eventually realizes the mouse is gone, and Salem burps. When she accuses him of eating the mouse, he says that she should’ve known that’d happen because he’s a cat. Then why was it written? She knew him for a WHILE! Wow, surprisingly dark, he actually DID eat her precious mouse. He could’ve just zapped up an exact copy of the mouse and eaten that! He could’ve done that until he was full! Surprisingly, she tells Salem to turn HIMSELF into a mouse rather than keeping it simple and telling him to zap up an exact copy of the mouse, OR, zapping up the mouse herself.
It CAN’T be HARD for someone to visualize something so there’s no excuse for her not doing that. Instead she relies on Spookie. Why wasn’t it immediately explained why he’s in the house? Why wasn’t he in the first episode? They Just Didn’t Care with this show. Salem could’ve warped away. So she uses a paper from him to turn Salem into a mouse, who inexplicably can still talk. I guess the witch’s spell that mercifully lets him still talk is just impossible to overpower. He had time to get away and avoid this.
She should explain that she KNOWS she could zap up a new Chester, and she just wants to punish Salem, because otherwise the whole plot is forced. Obviously Quigley would know this isn’t Chester, especially since he remarks on how he’s chubbier. I’m glad he gets sprayed with water. Hilda’s dirty because Zelda made her clean up her junk from the attic, so she asks Sabrina to give her a hand with her absolutely idiotic way of cleaning the attic without magic. And Hilda is free of dirt next scene so obviously she used magic to clean herself up, and yet won’t clean the attic with magic.
Sabrina approaches a door which she was told has something to do with the Netherworld, and she’s left unsupervised with it somehow, so she opens it and wanders around in the arbitrarily confusing, scientifically impossible world, which can be justified with magic overuse. What can’t be is HER door being locked, and she didn’t even try using magic to get it open. She sees aliens behind a door. Why have the witch realm only show aliens in it? It only makes some sense if the aliens are there because they’re witches too.
Sabrina can’t find the door back home so it’s forced that she doesn’t instantly warp back home. Why didn’t Salem look the same as Chester? Why did Sabrina see a copy of herself? They must have been on drugs when they thought of this. Normally I would think that’s a good thing because it means they were being really creative, but it doesn’t even mean much to the plot, this whole scene could’ve been cut out. Harvey eventually puts Salem in the mouse maze.
Why is Salem refusing to go through the maze? He should want to make it up to Sabrina. Because Gem calls Sabrina a loser along with him, he does go through the whole maze. Why didn’t anyone hear him talk? Hilda tells her that the way out was the door with the Exit Sign. So that really WAS forced even in the logic of the episode, but to be fair it didn’t even affect anything that Sabrina wasn’t at the science fair so far.
Sabrina lies to Quigley that something’s in the backyard to smartly manipulate him into leaving the room. So she takes paper out of the Spookie Jar. Why does she think she has to do that? Nobody would be so stupid that she’d need to do that for magic. And again I don’t even know why Spookie’s in the house, in a household that doesn’t want Sabrina to use magic. Harvey tells her she won. Dr. Houston was so impressed he gave Harvey 10 bucks for Salem to make him an astronaut, and Harvey offers Sabrina 5 bucks.
Why is he gonna be used as an astronaut when who knows what he’ll even need to DO in space, just because he’s smart? Even the world’s smartest mouse would still not be more useful than any other mouse because there’s only so smart he can be, because either way he’s too small to actually use his intelligence for anything with no education.
Sabrina explains away why she’s upset, that she bonded with Chester. Quigley tells Sabrina he’s proud of her for winning the science fair as he drives a car with her in it. He tells the officer he’s here for the tour. This episode sure has a lot of padding. Why linger on the scene with just Salem in a cage? There’s no reason the professor wouldn’t even react when Salem talks. At least the sitcom didn’t make that mistake, it had a consequence for the whole episode when someone heard him.
Sabrina and Harvey run from somebody, and Harvey presses a button thinking it’ll be a light switch which turns off the gravity. It’s charming to see them fly around for fun. She can’t stop so he tells her to grab something and a button is pressed to scare them. The guard turns off the antigravity so they fall acting hurt from it. But they’re still able to run around the rest of the plot and end up going into the thing that spins. Quigley wishes Sabrina was here to see this because she’d love it. At least he does care about her happiness, unless it involves her making herself happy with magic.
Harvey apologizes and says this is all his fault. But he couldn’t have saved Salem. Salem throws cheese at Quigley’s head to get his attention. I have a question. Since he has magic, why doesn’t he use it to instantly save himself? Sabrina would simply warp Salem to her and end the plot immediately. It wouldn’t be hard to visualize him. And like with freezing time I’m pretty sure a witch would do that at some point in the show proving that witches can do that.
While she did tell Harvey she wanted the mouse back the fact remains she would’ve been able to make him forget that, so she wouldn’t have to resolve things the mortal way after all. But oh no, Animated Series Sabrina can’t erase a memory, she never did so in the comic! Eventually Sabrina opens a door and the guard gets warped away because Sabrina opens a piece of paper, and also Salem returns to normal. Couldn’t she have just asked Spookie for a piece of paper that would warp Salem back to her, if there’s no apparent limit on what the scrolls can do?
She could also ask Spookie to erase Harvey’s memory of what happened to the mouse. The scroll looks like a piece of dough with cheese in it when she pulls it apart to use magic, that’s creative. Quigley annoys me saying he’s waiting and she tackles him. The guard gets punished for being annoying because he replaced Salem in the rocket. Like, everything that happens because Sabrina didn’t just use Spookie to get Salem back was just annoying.
Quigley reveals he made sure the countdown would’ve taken longer because he walked around without his pants. WHY didn’t we see that? There’s NOT a Code for that! Sabrina hugs him for it, and the story ends. She asks how he knew the mouse was Salem, and it turns out that Salem wrote a message in the cheese he threw at his head.
So this episode was about Sabrina making Salem get turned into a mouse to replace the one he ate for her science project, even though it’s instantly obvious she or Salem could simply zap up a new version of that mouse and avoid the plot. But this could’ve been made to make sense if Sabrina explained that she just wants to spite Salem, for being too mean to simply zap up enough food that he’d be too full to eat Chester.
But she ends up getting karma for it because Salem’s success in the maze gets him put in a rocket meant to be sent to space, because apparently the professor thinks smart mice are more likely to survive being put through this for NO reason. There’s no excuse for the plot being so long because obviously Sabrina would’ve pointed to instantly return Salem to her. She also could’ve told Spookie or one of her aunts to do that, if she was somehow too stupid to herself because she’s new to magic, which isn’t even verbally expressed as the excuse most of the time.
Even then she still she would’ve warped to the science fair right away when she got lost and prevented Salem from being kidnapped. Her being a kid is no excuse because she warps in episode 7 and warps others in that episode and we’re supposed to think kids have imagination, so she would’ve had the imagination to think of when to use her powers! This was a fine episode to watch, because I didn’t hate my experience. Quigley was racist against magic, but like last episode it never led to discipline anyways, even though the plot only happened from the wrong spell being used.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 3 Boogie Shoes:
I hate that there’s narration about life by Sabrina. It’s pretentious, especially since the earlier episodes didn’t have that. There’s a poster put up about a dance and there’s a silly moment where Sabrina and Gem stand in front of each other like it’s a Wild West stand-off. I guess Sabrina thinks she’s too moral to just brainwash her. Sabrina jumps into the dirt, and eventually asks Harvey if he’d be willing to go with her to the dance, after he’s too polite to call her out on a blatant lie about why she’s dirty. And the whole time Gem could’ve just interrupted her.
He uncharacteristically gets nervous and says he’s not going with either her or Gem because he’s not going to the dance at all. Somehow saying that makes everyone shocked, cars crash and a plane crash. Salem gets bullied with magic for being annoying, hypocritically, just for asking if his butt would look big in something, and Hilda assumes the school dances are like the 1780s. It’s always charming when they make use of how old the aunts are.
Sabrina wants to do a perception spell to make Harvey say what’s wrong, and Zelda wants her to just go over to his house and ask him why, and she warps her to his door. But isn’t it obvious he wouldn’t tell her what’s wrong? But it is moral of her to not want her to use a spell that pokes around in his mind. Sabrina did with Aaron in the sitcom. It was reckless of her to warp her to his door because a mortal could see her go there. But I assume she assumes that a spy witch would erase the memory of any mortal that saw that. Eventually, Harvey says he can’t dance.
Sabrina somehow expects me to believe that because it’s middle school, nobody cares if you can really dance and you just have to improvise. The writer forgot that bullying is a very constant thing so kids will jump at any excuse to make fun of you. He eventually says that his mom made him take ballet, which is abusive of her because in real life that will literally get a guy bullied for the rest of the time he’s in school. The flashback goes on too long.
Why doesn’t Harvey move his legs? Him moving his legs actually breaks something and summons ghosts and cracks the wall. This would only make sense if he was cursed by a witch. Sabrina accuses him of exaggerating and asks what really happened, when even if it is unlikely, she should believe him because she’s a witch. Not that she casts spells in these episodes! So I had nothing to show! We see that what really happened is that he somehow went backwards and knocked a wall over on a piano player to injure him.
He says his feet are weapons and it’s Narmy that he says he dances alone when we’re supposed to take this seriously. Like if you don’t want us to take the show seriously, why do you ever make plots that we’re supposed to take seriously?
Sabrina tells Hilda that Harvey won’t dance because he’s afraid he’ll be a klutz. In the 70s comic he IS a klutz so he’s smart here. Hilda looks sympathetic by explaining to her a story from her past where she had a friend who had a dance problem. Her friend from the past was going to dance with her at a disco from centuries ago. Obviously the disco is in the witch world or it was introduced to mortals early by witches. It’s lazy animation to show them in a pink tornado just turning around. Why are they impressed by THIS?
His dancing got the other girls in love with him and he happily ditched her, and she tells her she dumped him and she talks as if he’s still alive. That should mean her ex is a witch too. So, she told her this to make her feel better about the fact that Harvey doesn’t wanna dance by showing her that it’d be bad if he danced well. Didn’t work. I mean she does just want him to dance with her for that one school dance. And besides she knows that Harvey isn’t the type to, happily ditch her for pretty girls at the drop of a hat, at least in THIS show, so of course that didn’t talk her out of it.
So Salem says very interesting and offers to help Sabrina. She could brainwash Harvey out of his problem, but if she did, he might get completely obsessed with dancing. So it is smart of her not to considering her incompetence, and she thinks she’s too moral to do that.
Instead he tells Sabrina that she could get the help of Hilda’s ex to help Harvey. So she reads a spell out loud. Somehow this causes the house to shake for a while. Why? Why would a spell to summon specifically Hilda’s ex even be in the spell book? It’s her black book BUT STILL, Hilda never wants to see Thor again! Why wouldn’t the spell just result in Hilda’s ex warping to her? If it always made a house shake, that could injure people or even kill them. And besides it’d be an inconvenience to the person who was summoned, when he could be doing anything at that point.
He arrogantly says he’s the lord of the dance and is surprised that he’s on Earth, even though obviously the Other Realm bedrooms would look the same as mortal bedrooms. The guy she had no reason to get to meet, says he doesn’t want to consort with mortals when he has other things to do. He says he’s got a new Janet Jackson video to choreograph when he JUST said he doesn’t help mortals. So either Janet is a witch in this universe, in which case she’d have used magic to make people forget about her most embarrassing moment… There is no, it must be that.
He says he’ll only help her if she signs a contract and of course she doesn’t read it out of desperation for his help. Lemme guess, the contract is to force Hilda back with him, which would only make me wonder why he didn’t just zap up a new Hilda to date. I assume she’s morally opposed to brainwashing him into agreeing to help her. Any kid who watched Star Wars would think they could do the Jedi mind trick if they’re a witch, and it couldn’t be hard to visualize.
We then see Harvey wonderfully dancing with Sabrina at the school dance for a while of padding. I’m glad it didn’t turn out to be just an Imagine Spot, because it’s so rare for the show to be nice to Sabrina for so long. Harvey got new shoes and it’s discussed that it’s like he couldn’t say no. So the shoes forced him to dance. It turns out that whenever music plays, Harvey is forced to dance. Harvey even discusses it with Sabrina later. So he REALLY TRUSTS her because he just assumes she’ll believe him. It turns out the shoes won’t let him take them off, and Sabrina can’t do it for him either.
I assume the dance guy made the shoes this way just to spite Hilda. Sabrina even tries to use a wrench to get the shoes off. SHE could’ve made the shoes and there’d be no problem! An ice cream truck coincidentally passes by, and SOMEHOW it forces Harvey to go after it instead of forcing him to dance. Thankfully this isn’t gonna matter to the plot. So it doesn’t really matter that it was unlikely to happen. I’ve never seen an ice cream truck in real life, let alone seen it pass by my house. Zelda says the last time
Sabrina reminded her aunts they loved her, she conjured up a beef gravy storm. She wouldn’t have done that anyways. And she would’ve fixed the problem herself. Hilda reveals that a witch can’t undo a god’s magic. Quigley says Sabrina’s grounded. A mortal shouldn’t be allowed to punish a witch relative of his, but this is for a justified reason. It’d be awesome if we never saw her suffer through being grounded, because she’s already being punished by the events of the plot. Then Thor gets warped to them when he’s still in the bathtub. It’s lucky that his bathtub and bubbles are still there.
I assume Hilda’s warping spell included the condition that they would still be there if he was in the bathtub, and witches got used to having that condition. Predictably the contract has it that Hilda has to marry him to uncurse Harvey. So Hilda says it’s not really so bad if Harvey stayed this way… really a, “ Do as I say, not as I do, “ kind of parent.
Sabrina thinks instantly to manipulate him by saying that Harvey’s now a better dancer than him, and makes a wager to prove who’s the better dancer. If Harvey wins, he gets the shoes off. But what’s gonna force this guy to take off the shoes just because he lost the bet? He should say the spell he cast will do it. If he really wants Hilda as his bride, even though obviously an unwilling wife would be awful to him, then he wouldn’t hold up his end of the bargain. Sabrina tells Harvey the truth, without revealing magic. We don’t need a scene dedicated to this.
Salem snarks about the “ evil shoe salesman “ being a part of the lie, when it’s not that far-fetched if he just assumes he’s a witch. Harvey is smart enough to ask Sabrina what’s going on when he sees him. The god shows them that a bunch of judges that are from a long time ago are here for no reason. I guess the spell he cast that screws him over if Harvey wins, requires there to be judges. It doesn’t really matter that he’s giving away that he’s supernatural though because Harvey already figured out the shoes are cursed so he already knows supernatural figures exist now.
So at this point it wouldn’t really matter if she told him he’s a warlock. If the logic is she’s always being spied on and so she’ll instantly get punished if she tells him about witches, well Chloe knows and nothing happened to Sabrina. The people spying on them, would be pretty interested in what they’re seeing now.
Out of nowhere the god removes Harvey’s shoes to see what a good dancer he is without them. Let me guess, he’ll still be a good dancer. After all he did take a dance class. But there’s no way the judges would make him the winner regardless. After all, they’re biased in the god’s favor. They would be scared of pissing him off by admitting that Harvey’s better. Harvey somehow ends up going backwards and walking into the judge’s table, which somehow causes damage. Someone says that was brilliant and somehow the hurt judges all agree, because the story needs a happy ending. The god says he mastered every dance.
He gets told all he does is reproduce the talent of OTHERS, while Harvey’s dances are his own, so the judges respect them more. I don’t think this writer respects dance then. Almost every dancer in real life just reproduces the dances of others. Usually only people who WEREN’T taught how to dance improvise. Sabrina even said this. So what kinda judges would be guaranteed to pick the person who didn’t get taught how to dance for a long time, who was just improvising? It looks like the god turned into a pink tornado and vanished in front of Harvey, which must have been part of the contest spell.
Sabrina hugs him, and Harvey says this theater crowd she hangs out with is bizarre. Why does he think she regularly hangs out with them? Logically there is no way in hell that he doesn’t know supernatural people exist by now. It’s apparently fine to reveal that magic in general exists, as long as you don’t reveal witches exist, because that could cause the mortal to be paranoid of every human around them if something awful happens because they could be a witch for all he knows, while if he thinks he’s just a supernatural figure of ill-defining, like an angel, he wouldn’t get paranoid.
I assume she thinks it’s too irresponsible to tell Harvey about magic too. I’m glad Christianity wasn’t referenced, but that’s just me. Speaking objectively, it would be better writing to just have Harvey say that he assumes this guy is a demon who only looks human, and that he assumes that about all the judges who were stated to be quite old. It’s not all that likely that Hilda’s ex would be an outright god, since I’m sure gods are minorities among witches in the witch realm, but if he were a warlock, the plot would be the same, only it’d be more believable.
This episode is about Harvey getting given shoes to make him willing to dance with Sabrina, that are cursed to force him to dance in response to music, because Hilda’s ex wants the contract Sabrina desperately signed to force Hilda to marry him to get the curse undone. She would hate him her whole life for it, so what’s the point? He just wants to say he has her. It’s good that it was established that it’s impossible to take off the shoes.
We should’ve been shown Sabrina warping the shoes off him knowing that her aunt could erase his memory anyways, and when the shoes warp back to his feet, then it’d fully make sense that the plot happened, but I can assume that’s the case, because they’re magical shoes.
You’d think Salem the Karma Houdini every time would be under constant supervision. The plot could’ve easily not happened if Hilda didn’t date this one guy but if the only real problem with the story is “ coincidence, “ it’s still a good story. The jerk somehow gets the Idiot Ball and agrees to cast a spell that has the curse on Harvey removed if the judges vote him the better dancer. I assume that’s why he disappeared at the end and Harvey got his life back to normal.
It makes sense that the judges weren’t too scared to vote for Harvey, if they knew it would cause this jerk to disappear. Maybe they had a grudge against him. I have to assume that he actually died. Otherwise there’d be no excuse for him not instantly warping back here, and putting the shoes back on Harvey and forcing Hilda to marry him. So the impossible happened and the show actually had a well-written episode. I’ll put that in a list. Too bad it makes the marriage contract plot of the later 2000s comic look unoriginal.
And of course it’s still in the lower list of good quality episodes because it’s still about magic being evil. It seems forced because of Salem somehow having a way to summon Thor, but it could’ve happened because Sabrina simply asked Hilda to get Thor’s help for her, so if it’s so easy to rewrite the plot so it could’ve still happened and made sense to, that’s good enough.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 4 Tail of Two Kitties:
I also never liked the female singing at the start of each episode, because it like the intro song just panders to girls and no one else, while the 70s cartoon songs appealed to everyone. Salem spins and crashes after calling for Sabrina. Why didn’t she use magic to save him? Sabrina complains that it’s not fair that she has to pay for a doll SALEM broke. Why did Salem even get sent spinning through the door anyways? It makes the plot forced when it doesn’t have to be, as because of this, she wants a job, because she’s somehow too stupid to zap up a new version of the doll he broke.
Or she could ask her aunts to cast a spell to show what the doll looked like through Salem’s eyes, and zap up the doll’s copy. It’d make sense if her aunts told her to get a job to learn the value of a dollar, and it’d only feel okay AFTER I saw one of them zap up a copy of the doll. At least that way, she wouldn’t be forced to take forever earning enough money to buy a new doll because she could be told to spend less time than that in the job. Eventually we see Salem at the pet show so the whole concept of Sabrina looking for a job was wasted.
She finds out Harvey’s at the pet show because he got a cat that just showed up at his door the other day. Unlike in the comic, Salem’s been reluctant and embarrassed about the pet show the whole time, which makes sense for a former human. Or it might just be the fact that he hates being trapped in a cage.
How is there dust thrown upwards when Salem falls? He spins around dancing and somehow all the judge says in response is “ Very nice, “ at that physical impossibility. It has to be that cats in this universe can also stand up. But Salem’s shown juggling! There’s no way the judges would not figure out something supernatural is going on, especially when the other cat does a wonderful job playing piano and Harvey wins. It’s obvious the judges are witches who just don’t wanna talk witchcraft in front of any potential mortals. Salem then finds out the other cat is a witch.
There is no way nobody would’ve heard this commotion aside from the two of them when we JUST SAW that Sabrina and Harvey were in the same room as him! Salem eventually explains that he used to be married to her, but he recognized her voice. He tells Sabrina that he told her to meet him at a tower, only for him to stand her up because he was too scared to propose to her, and then he never talked to her again, even though she could have effortlessly warped to him or warped HIM to HER.
So I have to assume she was just too POLITE to forcibly go to him, which is a miracle because any other woman would’ve done that. Sabrina tries to reassure him and tell him to make it up to her, and he’s probably right that she still hates him after 400 years. Sabrina has no reason to trust her around Salem especially since she’s a witch, though Salem didn’t tell Sabrina that she abused magic against him. The instant Salem asks her to forgive him, she kisses him. We see them watch a drive-in movie and kiss in front of the projector. Why did it take SO LONG for her to say she forgives him for standing him up?
She says there’s nothing to forgive. This makes me assume she’s not really the woman he knew, literally, and of course it doesn’t help that I already saw a story like this in the comic, complete with a white cat. Salem seems to be walking out of Sabrina’s house with a briefcase, but somehow she doesn’t make a huge deal out of it like in the comic when he was gonna move out. Instead he somehow thinks he’s allowed to try to leave the house when the Witches’ Council put her aunts in charge of him and eventually says he’s afraid to commit, and she lectures him and tries to pressure him into it.
Eventually she asks Zelda if there’s a spell for commitment to make someone love someone so much they’d want to spend their lives together. Zelda says it’s a bad idea, but of course she doesn’t properly try to convince her, so she gets a scroll from Spookie when obviously she’d just cast the spell directly on Salem because she’s not a drooling idiot. She instantly thinks to manipulate her enemies!
She causes Salem to have a dream about how wonderful it’d be to be married and have loving kids. It’s so freaky to see him be tall with human clothes. When the woman says they’ll sing the daddy song it gets sickening. Why’d they put this in the show? Zelda couldn’t have outright told Sabrina about the fact that roofies exist and people who literally force people to let them kiss them exist because god forbid you tell a preteen that, so because of her being too cowardly to give her a mandatory talk, the rest of the plot happened. Sabrina says the witch cat’s name is Shahairazon. I have no idea how to spell that garbage.
Hilda warns her that it’s a very bad idea for Salem to marry her. They could’ve had this talk earlier, Zelda could’ve told her all of this earlier if she bothered to mention the name of Salem’s potential bride to her. Hilda says she SOMEHOW remembers the night that Salem stood up his former bride, while SHE saw her dancing with another man, and she got turned into a cat for stealing the husband of every witch on the council. So somehow every witch on the council is a woman. So, Hilda used to be friends with Salem centuries ago, which properly explains why SHE was tasked with housing him.
Sabrina eventually spies on Shahair in a trash can, and conveniently hears her tell someone over the phone that she’s only marrying Salem to turn herself back into a human, nonsensically. Shahair talks to “ Hazel, “ OK, is that her sister? Hope so or this is stupid. Harvey stops briefly when Sabrina talks in the trash can. ANYONE would assume he heard her and was reacting to the word spell, but somehow he dumps garbage on her anyways, when you’d think he’d see her. I feel like the selective hearing problem wouldn’t be done in the sitcom.
Sabrina warns Salem about the truth. Lemme guess, he won’t believe her. Yep, that’s why the scene is a waste of fucking time. To be fair, Sabrina cast a love spell on Salem, of course he can’t be talked out of it. But Sabrina would’ve just cast another spell on him to fix this! She’d get another scroll from Spookie if she thinks she can’t brainwash him out of this! Instead he goes into the Netherworld and she follows him and runs around until she sees a big heart-shaped door, because cats aren’t allowed to get married so Salem has to get married in THIS universe.
She rides on a swan and it looks like Zelda is lecturing him before she eventually gets thrown onto dry land. I assume Zelda wasn’t really there and it was just a place meant to scare anyone who’s there with their own current worries. She sees Shahair and sees Salem walking towards her. Why isn’t he flying to go faster? HE wouldn’t conserve. She wants to find a way to show Salem what kind of woman Shahair is. OH, so she can shapeshift herself, but can’t do anything ELSE that’d resolve a plot faster! So that overpowered ability is fine!
She kisses the hand of Shahair, who says that she didn’t say to stop, so she’s grabbing the Idiot Ball here because she needs to get married. The fact that she CAN use magic herself means ANYONE should be questioning why she thinks she needs Spookie’s scrolls, especially in a show for kids because kids are even less likely to figure out how to fill in plot holes.
It should be explained that she’s just trying to save magic by using the scrolls, because it’s not explained that magic is a limited resource OR what she doesn’t know how to do as a witch in the first episode, so anyone would be confused. Shahair somehow believes Sabrina when she says she was turned into a cat for making love instead of using magic. Somehow Salem thinks she’ll punch Sabrina any minute when she was clearly enjoying it. Shahair agrees to marry Sabrina. This is a better way to resolve the plot than when the comic ripped this off.
This is really a dragged out way to resolve the plot though, especially since of course it’s uncomfortable that Sabrina the preteen girl is kissing this woman’s arm for so long. Hilda should’ve done this instead. The funny thing is Sabrina never acts disgusted after this is all over like the episode has no self-awareness at all, so I wonder what that could mean about her? She should’ve turned Shahair into a frog after they went into the door.
Salem cries at first only to laugh at Sabrina’s bad accent because he conveniently knew the whole time that it was Sabrina. It makes sense because it’s more likely to be Sabrina than some random stranger. Salem tells her that she should do a background check on someone before setting him up, and complains that she’s still screwed out of allowance until she pays for Quigley’s doll, even though he’d KNOW she could use magic to get him a new doll much faster if he wants it so bad.
Apparently he wants her to SUFFER MORE. You’d think the episode would end with her having the money to pay for the new doll because she complained about that at the start. It’s SO condescendingly convenient that Salem isn’t heartbroken or mad.
This episode is about a witch cat that Harvey could have easily not met trying to date Salem, because if she gets married she’ll turn back into a human. She could have so easily not had anyone to talk to about this on the phone in front of Sabrina. Who was she talking to, who would actually approve of her plan? Oh I guess her mother is on her side because she’s her daughter even though she deserved to be turned into a cat.
This seems like the comic where Salem fell for a white cat as well but THERE the white cat was smarter by casting a love spell on him, while here Sabrina does that to him, because Salem was dating Shahair at the time, so he was ALREADY in love with her. Also why aren’t we told that Salem isn’t required to live with Sabrina’s family? That’d explain why he thinks he’s allowed to move out.
Shahair’s SO MUCH less intelligent than Malicia that she lets someone other than Salem kiss her when waiting for Salem to marry her, and doesn’t even comment that the witch’s council got harsher when told someone was shapeshifted for kissing instead of using magic. The plot could’ve been the same if she said no at first until Sabrina proposed to her in a shapeshifted form.
If she can shapeshift herself it just makes me wonder why she didn’t cast a spell to brainwash Salem into giving up on Shahair or Shahair into deciding not to marry Salem. You’d think she could undo her OWN SPELL instantly. I didn’t hate watching this episode, though.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 5 The Senses-Shattering Adventures of Captain Harvtastic:
If Chloe doesn’t show up by the 5TH episode despite her importance I’m officially gonna be suspicious. Sabrina’s art teacher compliments her painting, and when Gem insults her, Sabrina uses magic to ruin Gem’s painting, making the dinosaur sleep, causing the teacher to say her dinosaur isn’t very active. Then he’s impressed that Harvey somehow drew and made a comic. He says he doesn’t draw hands well and his coloring is somehow sloppy, not that we can tell. If he thinks it’s bad why did he bring it to art class? The teacher gives him a pamphlet showing him that he could go to a con to meet a hero of his.
He’s scared to show him his comic in front of people, so he turns down the idea. Harvey’s better in this show than the sitcom. He’s more sympathetic and he has depths. Sabrina tells Salem what’s bothering her, and that Harvey’s coming over. Hilda says her hair is a harpy’s nest and uses magic to make floating monsters fix her hair, which is convoluted compared to just pointing to instantly fix her hair. She even tips one of them with a quarter, because she’s just that nice. I don’t know why he likes just a quarter for a tip, though. Salem says they could use the Spookie Jar.
If the logic is he wants to conserve magic, that doesn’t stop him from using magic anyways. He even lampshades that it’s a waste of time for Sabrina to say no magic because he always pressures her into using it. Then WHY show US this?! Then why not just have it be a lot faster and have HER come up with the idea to abuse magic like she’s SUPPOSED to?! So because convoluted writing Sabrina uses a magic fishing rod to fish up what looks like one of the star people from Super Mario Galaxy, because just putting potion ingredients into it would make too much sense.
So Sabrina says with a cake that now Harvey will get the courage he needs. He would hear that because he’s in the house with her. And she’s basically handing him a spiked drink by expecting him to eat a cake to get courage. Well it’s a cupcake but I’d expect a cake! Why is she resorting to something he can ingest instead of just pointing at him? She tells him to make a wish because of convoluted writing and he blows out the candle, and the episode takes too long to take them all into his comic. There’s no reason he’d wish to be in the comic instead of wishing he had the courage to show his favorite celebrity the comic.
She even told him in an unsubtle way to wish for that! Maybe the premise wouldn’t have been as arbitrary, if he went into the comic because she warped him there, thinking it would give him the courage to show his favorite celebrity his comic. Experiencing the comic firsthand, will actually give him the courage.
He asks how they got here and instantly flies because he doesn’t care about Sabrina’s lie that he got hurt. Sabrina having squid tentacle hair reminds me of the Lara-Su Chronicles. She makes a squid and he apologizes for that being her only power and says he was gonna give her more powers next issue. Salem lampshades the silliness of the supervillain being an animal, and says that it’s lazy writing to make a talking animal sidekick.
So Harvey wastes time saying that his comic is stupid when it’s more creative than normal superhero comics. Why did the story waste time showing Quigley hold the comic, if somehow despite him seeing the panels move, he still throws it on the table saying that comics rot your brain? I have to assume he thought this was a witch’s comic book. And the one-dimensional supervillain threatens them all. I don’t care about any of this. At least it’s visually interesting but it’s silly and stupid. It’s just in a comic!
I hate that Gem was made a part of the superhero comic. Why is she and the other guy part of the comic if they’re just here to nag Harvey that he didn’t draw a door to their superhero lair and he somehow can’t draw hands? The supervillain whines about being ignored. Why didn’t he just keep attacking them the whole time? Why did Gem get written to scream for multiple seconds to bother the villain when that’d also bother the audience? And the green superhero shapeshifts to trap the villain, but eventually he gets flattened, and we see the supervillain free instead of being trapped.
He complains that he looks silly. I don’t understand why a part of Harvey’s wish would be that the main characters of the comic would insult him at length and want to walk away together when they’re supposed to hate the villain. So far this is the worst episode in the show. They warn him about a bad guy and warp away. Sabrina tells Harvey he’s not a loser and Salem warns them about a floating monster erasing everything in its path. HOW is that thing here if Harvey didn’t create it? That needs to be explained!
Why is Salem scared that he’ll die if the whole comic world is erased when he talked like he knew she could warp them all out of here at any time? And he doesn’t because he wants to humor Sabrina. So they all go to Harvey’s base and see camera footage showing the monster.
Harvey wastes time angsting at length that he’s a joke for no reason. Someone wastes time and says Harvey has an inability to like himself. Salem snarks about him and Sabrina somehow comes to the conclusion that the monster is only growing because of Harvey’s whining. Somehow that doesn’t cause him to stop whining. So Sabrina somehow gets the idea to insult him at length to motivate him into defending himself even though he didn’t stand up to Gem. And if Gem’s opinions of him didn’t mean anything to him, why would he even have Gem insult him?
He stands up for himself that he’s a good artist and she agrees and he thanks her, realizing what she was doing. Because Salem calls the monster blobby, Harvey remembers that in The Blob they used fire extinguishers to freeze the monster, and so he types in the hopes of doing the same thing to the monster even though there’s no guarantee that’ll work on whatever the hell it is. And it works. It gets frozen and Harvey shoots ink and runs out.
Sabrina sends a squid into his weapon as a Chekhov’s Gun, and the “ weapon “ makes a hand to pick up and hit the blob into space. The animal says he did it too somehow because they needed his insight even though it was clearly Harvey’s idea to save them all and he did everything. Salem insults him and he somehow figured out he needs a radio to talk and destroys it just by stomping it, because he’s magical. And the animal gets carted away in a van. Conveniently they all get sent back to the real world. But it’s not like they were passed out. So it WAS the real world, it was just a parallel universe.
And that’s what I have to assume because it wouldn’t make any sense otherwise. Sabrina tells Harvey they were on their way to the comic convention when he tripped, and that convinces him to show off the comic to the celebrity he likes. She better hope he never finds out that you can’t dream when you’re knocked out. The artist gives him the same criticisms Harvey gave to himself, but then says that his comic’s way better than HIS early work, a cliché complaint. I guess nobody’s suspicious of the aliens walking around because everyone assumes they’re in costume. But WHY are they there?
This episode was mostly boring because it was taking place in a superhero comic world in a different art style when I’m not a fan of superhero fiction, but it could’ve been a lot worse, as in while I’m thankful it’s over it’s not as bad as I expect the Animated Series to be. It always seemed arbitrary when they were in the comic universe because Harvey could have easily wished he had the courage to show his comic to a celebrity because it’d be a continuation of the story, but instead he somehow wished he could be in his comic.
I thought Sabrina would simply give him the courage with what she was giving him, not do something as risky as this. So this whole story feels arbitrary. At least the superhero universe was trying its best to be creative. I was bored when the supervillain was fighting so it woke me up when their enemy was a flying green fireball instead, even though it did have no excuse for existing… because at least it was doing something threatening and evil-looking! After the first watching I didn’t even remember what the supervillain did!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 6 Witch Switch:
If the episodes were in the proper order in the playlist I’d have reviewed this earlier. I finally get to see Sabrina in front of a cauldron wearing a witch costume. She uses magic to get rid of stereos making spooky noises. We also see her aunts wearing witch costumes, and she complains about having witch chores. This is all very generic for Sabrina but it’s surprising to see in the Animated Series. She lampshades that she doesn’t need to learn this stuff. And the potion splashes on her so she must have done it wrong.
It’s annoying that her complaints about being a witch to set up the episode seem exclusive to this episode. It’d be a more compelling argument if this came off the tail end of her suffering for an entire episode because of her magic. She answers the door to Harvey and he invites her to a concert, and Quigley says she can’t go because he just gave her money two nights ago, and tonight is family night where they have to play trivia whiz because he wants the family to be closer together, and obviously he has no regard for Sabrina’s feelings, since obviously she would hate that night in situations like this.
He told her no in a condescendingly sing-singey way while smiling like he’s a sadist. Also it’s just his anti-witch bias again because he could have told her to zap up gold and sell it to get money. I also have to assume she doesn’t have the guts to simply turn her aunts into statues so she could go to the concert, and undo the spell as soon as she gets home so there’d be no harm done. Sabrina lampshades that she’s got no freedom to do anything. Then they should’ve realized the show sucks. I have to assume she doesn’t have the guts to simply turn her aunts into statues so she could go to a concert.
A lot of the story’s next scene is a waste of time. Harvey begs her to go with him to a Gem party she doesn’t wanna go to. I don’t get why he wants her to go. What a jerk. I’m sure his friend would go too so he’d have HIM for company. She says that the party only has a hundred dollar door prizes going for it to avoid just being generic. I hate that she went, when she had no excuse to go, when her going to this is the whole reason the plot happens! You could’ve had the plot happen because of how Gem would be acting in school so it’s not like the plot couldn’t have happened.
And then WAY too much time in the episode is wasted on Gem showing off, when we could have all assumed her life was that spoiled, this isn’t fun to watch so I wouldn’t blame anybody for skipping all of it because they’d miss nothing, and we really didn’t need to see this to get why Sabrina would want to get Gem’s life. How does Sabrina think she’s the only one living with a family of slave-drivers? Does she not watch TV? Also why would Salem want to give Sabrina a new life, when he’d lose his only friend that way? He’s not saying that the spell she’d cast would bring him with her!
It’s so lame that Spookie inexplicably raps, when I’d expect a centuries-old genie to be resistant to rap because he’d think it’s trying too hard to be cool. And somehow Sabrina and Salem don’t lampshade its lameness, because the show’s showing no self-awareness, all of a sudden.
Sabrina puts stuff on Gem to switch lives with her. Sabrina wakes up next to an alarm clock that wakes her up by talking very early in the morning. There is no way Gem would have to wake up early every morning. Her parents are revealed to hate her later so there’s no way they’d want her waking up early, because that’d mean they’d hear her earlier in the day. Take it from someone who lives with a kid who exhausts my parents, they don’t wake him up super early for a reason!
There’s also no way her mansion would have a conveyor belt in its hallway all the time because this isn’t the future, so what if it breaks down, they’ll have to buy a new one and her father would hate the constant extra expense. And while you’d think he wouldn’t care because he’s rich anyways unfortunately it doesn’t work like that with all rich people. Maybe I’m wrong but I doubt this is realistic because out of all of the different mansions I saw in fiction, I never saw a conveyor belt in it. Sabrina gets told by a stuck-up person that she’s behind schedule, arbitrarily.
Somehow she doesn’t question Sabrina telling Salem that she’s got a personal assistant, as if she’s surprised by this. Sabrina wants to go yachting and instead is forced to sit at a kitchen table with her parents who are just ignoring her. One of them is on the phone and the father is busy typing on a laptop, caring about stocks. The mother’s just wasting time gossiping. It’s like she’s tried every breakfast she could think of and just doesn’t wanna eat. It seems unrealistic that they’re doing this when they’re supposed to be eating breakfast.
And as rich people, they could try every type of breakfast until they find what they love. Sabrina says she wants to talk with them, and somehow he sounds cheerful when threatening to ship her to boarding school. So if he hates Gem that much there’s no believability to Gem not being in boarding school the whole show. Sabrina’s also forced to run on a treadmill and then walk around with books on her head that then fall off. I get her parents wanting to make her miserable but, why these specific things that come off like they’re trying to benefit her, and improve her, when they wouldn’t care enough to do that?
Then she’s forced to get make-up put on her. We didn’t need the story to do a bunch of explaining for why Gem flaunts her wealth and bribes all the time outside of home. It was easy to understand that she did that because it was fun… and she doesn’t care what people think of her. The servant doesn’t ask why Salem can talk! There’s no way Salem would convince her to say she’s just overreacting. Easily gaslit. That’s not Sabrina! In fact SHE was the one doing the gaslighting of Harvey in the 70s.
Sabrina’s told by reporters that she just became the richest girl in the world. If she just took over Gem’s life, then she was sent to another universe where she’s always been the world’s richest girl. But then she sees Gem who says she’s a half-witch like she used to be. So that means, it really was as simple as, Gem’s parents had their memories rewritten. and she summons Harvey who kisses her foot. There’s no way Sabrina’s spell would cause her to lose her powers, because the Witches’ Council wouldn’t want any sort of risk of a mortal getting magic.
I guess it’s a good thing in the context of the show that it’s implied later that witches aren’t getting spied on, because a witch would take immediate action and Sabrina would be punished for this whole episode. Sabrina wastes time talking to Quigley. Hilda and Zelda don’t live in the house anymore because Gem turned them into statues on the roof, because she was intelligent enough to use her magic to make them stop forcing her to do things she doesn’t want to do, because she doesn’t care about them. I know I said the statue thing but that’s because it just came off the top of my head, and they were annoying me.
But she could have also brainwashed them into not forcing her to learn stuff she doesn’t want to learn. If she made Harvey her brainwashed servant, then you’d think she’d very quickly make them go from statues to her servants. That’d benefit her constantly. That has to be why she kept Quigley around when he’s the annoying one and not her aunts in this show, because she wants him to cook for her. Then Sabrina goes home and Gem’s dad bitches at her for having a low daily progress report. Again if her parents don’t care about her why would they even care about her progress at all?
Sabrina’s threatened with boarding school, and Salem refuses to leave the pleasure zone until she hears Gem’s mom plan to make an appointment for him. So he uses his nails to free Sabrina from a car, and now it’s a good thing it’s explained that somehow she doesn’t have magic any more, when it could easily be explained that Gem also has magic because that’s the only way she could have Sabrina’s life.
I shouldn’t need to explain that Sabrina’s magic is an inherent part of her body, and so it’d only make sense if Gem got magic because that’s the only way to switch lives with Sabrina without taking away Sabrina’s magic. If you wanna have a story where this makes sense you need to have them actually switch bodies. She runs away and someone says she’s getting away with ridiculous acting. He’d run after her WHILE saying that. Sabrina plans to make a potion that stops time for everyone but her. Why don’t witches just use magical artifacts that let them cast whatever spell they’re thinking about instead?
Salem falls down the stairs, and has to run from a dog that wastes a lot of time on us. Salem eventually puts a web on the dog and somehow the spider instantly covers a part of the dog with a web. So the spider must have been made by Gem, but she wouldn’t do that, especially since I bet she would scream at a spider. Then he runs while holding something. I’m still wondering why the spell makes it even possible for the witch who used it to lose magic, Enchantra would be pissed! Gem says the witch girl is up to something. What took her so long? And she instantly knows to warp to Sabrina.
How’d she know to go here? I assume she knew how to home in on her location. She could’ve hid in ANOTHER room. I wish Gem said, “ Lucky guess, “ because this could make sense. It makes Sabrina look completely stupid at memorizing and stuff that Gem is an instant expert at magic, while Sabrina constantly sucks at magic because she’s supposedly a novice. Of course Gem would be good at magic because it’s all about visualization… and memorizing a FEW spells and potions granted but that’s as hard as memorizing school info.
Gem’s frozen literally by the potion, but that would make things obvious to mortals immediately. That’s stupid. Things go back to normal and Salem doesn’t remember what happened, even though the spell was about switching SALEM’S body with Gem’s dog too. So how does Sabrina remember what happened, just so that she learns her lesson? I have to assume that Spookie made the spell so that Sabrina would remember what happened at the end of it but not Salem, for no reason. He just naturally assumed Salem can’t be taught lessons.
He’d know that Sabrina can’t be taught lessons anyways, she SAYS she’s taught lessons but a day later she forgets them. Sabrina hugs her aunts and Quigley and says she wants to play with her family in trivia night. This is trying to be heartwarming but most of the time I’m not given a reason to feel like she SHOULD care about and get attached to her family because they’re not deep characters, and they’re not constantly doing good things. Quigley’s just there to boss her around and her aunts barely do anything other than harass each OTHER. She says she’s always been lucky and hugs him.
The show’s showing no self-awareness of the fact that her life still SUCKS. Her aunts still have no excuse for forcing her to waste time learning how to make potions, especially when the whole premise is that she’s being raised to be a normal girl and discouraged from using magic so why would Quigley let them teach her, are they doing it in secret? Because, he doesn’t question the potions on her so no. They’ll use magic on him if he doesn’t let them teach her about potions but they won’t use magic on him any OTHER time he tries to exert his authority yeah right.
But yeah her aunts have no excuse for forcing her to waste time learning how to make potions she doesn’t need to learn about, it’s not like one of them said that they know she’s gonna switch lives with Gem in the future, and so she needs to be taught how to make a potion in case she’s stuck without her magic. And even then they’d have only taught her about the potion in this one episode then.
And she’d only ever need potions in a life or death situation where she’s out of magic, and as far as we know she’s never been out of magic, and she could’ve easily not had Gem to deal with because how did she even know where she was?
This episode is interesting most of the time, to the point where it usually keeps your attention away from the fact that it’s totally forced that a life-switching spell, took away Sabrina’s powers, because she never tried using magic when living at her house, when the Sabrina I know would have tried that as soon as she was bothered by something. I get the meta logic, that she wouldn’t really experience Gem’s life if she could get rid of every problem with magic. But there’s no way the Witches’ Council would keep the possibility that a witch could give her power to a mortal, around.
But since it was always easy to understand why Gem would flaunt and abuse her wealth, it’s totally unnecessary to establish that Gem’s got a restrictive horrible home life, that really makes no sense considering that if her parents hate her, they have no reason to care enough about her to make her run on a treadmill every day and get make-up when she looks the same without it. We’re not gonna feel sorry for Gem no matter what. If her parents are this evil why would her dad buy her whatever she wants and agree to buy a new wing for the school library to help her win student of the year?
It’s not like she screamed until she got what she wanted, because he threatened to send her to boarding school, so he would just do that as soon as she tried whining at him. I’d also never imagine that her parents still ate at the breakfast table with her, if the idea is that they’re rich busy parents, because then you’d think they’d already be at work by this point. That’s what I thought Scourge’s home life was like. Anyways the episode barely showed off what Gem would do with Sabrina’s powers, but it showed everything important.
She’s annoying so it does make sense to not show an entire day where she uses magic to cheat every problem, but that’d be far more entertaining than wasting entire scenes at the start on Gem’s party, and obnoxious dialogue, when we KNOW why Sabrina would envy her already.
The episode thinks it’s valuable by contributing to the show’s lore, but if Gem had restrictive parents who wanna send her away at the drop of a hat for ANYBODY’s normal behavior, then she wouldn’t be getting everything she wants bought for her and wouldn’t get to have money to bribe with, so it contradicts the show, to the point where it doesn’t even count. There’s no indication that Gem has to do any chores, so she wouldn’t get an allowance. Gem wouldn’t be allowed to do whatever she wants at school then.
Her parents wouldn’t be constantly bailing her out, the teachers wouldn’t be constantly letting Gem insult her in front of the students and so on and letting Gem pay people to do her school work, because, if her parents are like this they wouldn’t be pressuring the school staff to let her do whatever she wants. The point is her parents always come off as lenient and apathetic to how she is.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 7 Picture Perfect:
Finally we see Chloe, as it’s announced that anyone who’s late for the school assembly gets detention. Schools were stricter back then. I got told elementary schools don’t get detention anymore. I left a school assembly and I didn’t get detention or anything. I’m disappointed that Chloe has the same voice actress who voices the girl from Rugrats and Dulcy, because it doesn’t seem fair to her that just because of her design she doesn’t get a normal girl’s average everyday voice like I expected and instead I think she sounds stereotypical, while Harvey and Sabrina have normal people voices.
Sabrina’s shown student photos at an assembly too boring for what the woman said to really sink in for me. She’s talking about the student of the year nomination idea. So why did she have to have an entire assembly about this? Couldn’t she just make an announcement? After all that’s one sentence.
Sabrina just has to be written to shout no for no apparent reason to embarrass herself. Then she has a Blatant Lie. Why doesn’t she get detention for all this, not that I’m complaining? She eventually explains to Chloe that it’s a tradition in her family that it’s a tradition for the women on her mom’s side to be student of the year. It’s so polite of Harvey to not make fun of or lampshade her obvious verbal slip-up about “ mortal “ of the family. She was upset because she thinks every student is expecting her to be student of the year.
The story wastes time with Sabrina imagining that her family’s wearing paper bags on their heads, talking as if they’re ashamed of her for not being student of the year, when they’d be more subtle than that. I lose interest as soon as Gem starts talking. She’s predictable. Sabrina’s worried that she won’t get the student of the year victory party because Gem’s using her money to try to win. And another Imagine Spot wastes our time. These are ALWAYS padding.
Quigley hands his family an omelet with liver, so Hilda and Sabrina don’t appreciate it, and Hilda gets worried when Sabrina’s sad that she eats it. Sabrina talks about the student of the year award. Sabrina’s family don’t help at all by clearly acting like they assume she’ll win. How are they such bad parents? Even Salem was more sensitive than them. He knew what she was worried about, which Quigley should’ve expected because she said, “ What if. “ He says he’s not an insensitive clod like them. Salem tempts her to use magic to win and I’m glad she refuses. Quigley congratulates her for refusing to.
Sabrina assumes she’ll lose because she’s getting a zit. I have to assume the reason she doesn’t zap it away is she JUST SAID magic is cheating. I don’t know why she wouldn’t win student of the year just because of one zit, realistically speaking zits would be NORMAL. Somehow Hilda assumes an evil witch they knew is responsible for her zit, even though they didn’t see her… and, what took her so long to do this then? Even Zelda assumes this. It’s not like witches never get zits, right?
The witch has a stupid name. Quigley makes me hate him insisting this house is a magic-free zone, even though Hilda uses magic frivolously all the time so why does he even say this? Sabrina gets pointed at and somehow has to tell them it’s a zit. She’s given concealer as I have to assume that they’re ALL opposed to magic being used to further her chances of winning even if it involves getting rid of a zit. And Gem wastes our time, motivating Sabrina into telling Salem that she plans to use magic, because Gem’s already cheating with her wealth.
One of them should say it’s better for Sabrina to win regardless because she’s good and Gem’s not. Anyone would root for Sabrina here, so the message will suck if this backfires on her badly enough. Harvey flicks away her “ zit. “ Sabrina’s magical gem causes Gem to get a mustache. It’s nice to see people giggle at her instead of believe her lie. It’s obvious that at this point Gem would know magic exists because magic’s been cursing her here. I assume she blames it on demons but I shouldn’t have to just assume that, because, other than Chloe or Harvey, who else would do this to her for Sabrina’s campaign?
Gem thanks her hairdresser or whatever he is. And then Gem gets made fat in front of her hairdresser and cries. These students must have assumed to avoid believing in magic that she wore a fake mustache and a fatsuit to joke around, or self-sabotage out of insecurity. Why’d she keep using the mirror? Like no one would question her getting fat instantly. Again, why would student of the year be based on looks? Well, it’s because the students are the ones voting for who it is. It’s really, really stupid. Why would the faculty think the students can be trusted to properly choose student of the year, when the fact is, students tend to be bullies to anyone who’s different?
Only the faculty should get to vote on that because they’re the only ones who would care about the students’ grades and hopefully be mature enough to just care about what personality they have. Sabrina feels bad for Gem because she’s crying and said she never felt so bad. It’s in-character for Sabrina, who’s supposed to be an overly compassionate All-Loving Hero.
But we should see an actually relatable person’s response to this, like Salem, because as it stands it seems like we’re expected to side with Gem and that’s insulting. It’s not how you teach the message! When Sabrina tells Gem it’s all over now and she’s fine, it makes it obvious SHE’S responsible for what kept happening to her. I’m glad Sabrina still wins.
She gets to call her mom who’s shown in front of her pyramid, and she wishes she could hug her and says she loves her. She says she loves her back and everyone in the audience cheers for her. I’m just waiting for the moment where, of course, she says she can’t accept the award. Compassion is self-destructive apparently. She says being student of the year is about being the best you can be and she says she enjoyed making someone else feel bad and tried to cheat. I can’t stand seeing this because of how stupid she’s being.
Sadly the woman plans to give the award to Gem anyways. What bad writing. Why would Gem be the runner-up, when she was being humiliated by Sabrina, causing her to lose her good looks? “ Don’t fight injustice! Let corruption exist or you’re evil! “ That’s the moral. How did Sabrina win, if the logic for why Gem won is people still voted for her because of what she did with her money? Nothing HAPPENED to motivate people to vote for Sabrina! She just won to have a Yank the Dog’s Chain Moment.
Sabrina’s approached by her smiling family and a crystal ball shows her her mother saying that she’s proud of her for owning up to what she did and that she loves her. “ I love her being self-destructive! “ But if she disappointed everyone by refusing the award for Gem’s sake, how was that doing the right thing, how is that commendable?! Isn’t it a shame on the whole school that they have Gem for Student of the Year? If she wanted to punish herself, she should’ve done something else!
Quigley says her family loves and respects her, but then says she’s grounded for a month for cheating with magic even though Gem cheated first and would’ve been guaranteed to win if she didn’t. So anyone reasonable would’ve wanted Sabrina to win while we’re at itI wish Quigley wasn’t in the show, I know he’s justified here but you’d think he wouldn’t side with Gem. The story ends with everyone in the audience leaving because Gem’s complimenting herself. I feel like that’s unrealistic because they’d think they aren’t allowed to leave the assembly.
I wasn’t even allowed to leave an assembly where all that happened was the students were encouraged to do a dance near a guy in a chicken suit. This needed to end with Gem being sad and regretting what she did because of this, but with no actual karma against her, the show’s just oppressively bleak and seems to only punish Sabrina for doing the right thing, as if THAT’LL encourage kids to imitate her!
Sure magic is cheating but there’s no equivalent to magic to cheat in real life other than money, and since Gem wins because of her MONEY, the message is botched because Gem gets rewarded and somehow doesn’t care that the audience is abandoning her so that doesn’t work as karma, which she should always get. It’s unbalanced in Gem’s favor to make her a Karma Houdini.
So instead the only message that sinks in is, “ you should follow the same rules as everyone unless you’re rich. Bribe people every time you can because it always works, you get no karma, and never regret it. “ Instead the episode just looks like Sabrina was stupid for being weak, and you’d think that too, and obviously it wasn’t okay to have her be grounded even for an entire month when her giving up the award and feeling bad for Gem was a punishment already. So basically Quigley grounds her for doing the right thing, WAY to RAISE HER idiot!
So this shitty ass episode was about Gem using her magic I mean money to encourage the students to vote her student of the year, and winning in the end because Sabrina grabbed the Idiot Ball, and refused to accept the award because boo-hoo, she made GEM cry. Pragmatically speaking, not only is Gem being smart since she cares about getting the trophy but it’s also pragmatic of the students to vote for her because she buys a new wing for the school library, among plenty of other things to curry people’s favor, like she might buy someone’s lunch for a semester, while I don’t see Sabrina doing anything like that.
Sure Gem’s a jerk and I assume everyone knows it, but no other student is doing nearly as much that’s good for the school. She’s even more successful at doing good than Sabrina is! So I guess they’re operating under the belief that it’s your actions that really matter, not whether you’re a jerk. Sabrina could’ve done everything she did.
Sabrina could’ve summoned gold, and shapeshifted to age herself up so she could sell it to a professional who’d give her money for it, and since Gem doesn’t deserve to have that money just because she’s the daughter of someone rich, it’s just not fair, and I don’t see the value of a message like that.
But as if the premise wasn’t bad enough, being cliché as well as mundane, this is one of the stories ruined by the ending, if the constant use of Gem didn’t already ruin it. Gem shouldn’t have gotten the award, or she should’ve gotten it taken away for bragging at the end. We wouldn’t care if that wouldn’t be realistic!
It’s one of the worst episodes because the POINTLESS message we take in is, “ magic shouldn’t be used but bribing has no consequences! ” Why would the jealous writers teach us that, when they don’t believe there’s any witches watching, while there WILL be rich kids watching? THIS is why I hate the concept of The Animated Series.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 8 Field Trippin’:
Sabrina annoyingly sings horribly and uses magic to change her clothes multiple times. She must be very selfish to not stop singing when Salem complains about it. Salem hopes that she’d get a ticket for him to her favorite band. She looks an idiot saying that she spent all her allowance on the clothes, even though we just saw her warp the clothes TO her. So I thought she summoned them. I assume she bought the clothes instead of creating them because it’s the right thing to do. Even in the 70s comic Sabrina would advocate buying stuff instead of zapping it up.
An alien gets summoned to them thanks to Salem, who takes forever to say he’s sold out of tickets. I hate that he calls Earth, “ the real world, “ and so does Sabrina. It makes it obvious the writers are totally uninvested in the show and should quit. Never in the rest of the franchise has Earth been called the real world. Sabrina plans to earn money for a ticket. Again I wish she said that it’s because buying stuff is the right thing to do. Also she should say if she zapped up a ticket, it’d be stealing a ticket from someone else because there’s only so many seats.
Eventually magic happens in the kitchen to cause a problem and one of the aunts says, “ The twins, “ making me assume the family’s being harassed by a witch. But then after Sabrina agrees to something when called on the phone, the family just warns her that babysitting sucks based on their own experiences. I wish they had a different suggestion for making money then because, their advice to Sabrina is just a waste of time that makes the plot even more frustrating because it could’ve easily been avoided.
So anyways a bunch of time is wasted before some kids get dropped off in front of Sabrina by a car and I assume the kids are saying the same thing simultaneously just to creep people out, because that’s not normal. Then they spray Sabrina and Harvey. They’re twins too, so that has to mean the magic in the kitchen somehow wasn’t from anyone outside of the family, so how did magic happen that inconvenienced the people there, how could it happen by accident?
Thankfully Harvey’s gonna help her babysit when he could have easily not done that. I only say thankfully because this Sabrina’s so stupid and stubborn that she would’ve barely used magic regardless of whether Harvey was there to help her babysit. Still, if he wasn’t with her, she could’ve frozen the twins in time the whole time she was with them. And Hilda should’ve told her to do that. The twins act like evil monsters the whole time. It keeps me from being invested in the story because they aren’t acting like realistic people, just giggling maniacs who always run from them.
I like that Sabrina creates pillows to stop falls at one point. Eventually a beam of her magic brings a statue to life and it scares her. How would this happen if she doesn’t want it to? And Sabrina takes forever to see the kids again, when she could’ve frozen time to stop their progress through the museum, but at least the show hasn’t proven witches can do that yet, or proven that they can cast a spell to give super speed to themselves. When she does see them again, it makes me wonder why nobody hears her say a spell, which somehow isn’t a spell to make them well-behaved.
How in the world is she surprised and disappointed when her magic traps the twins and Harvey in a painting? This is why I hate this show. How’d she do this accidentally? This is just insulting to the mere concept of a witch, about as insulting as Twilight is to vampires! So this should get a lot more attention! I have to assume these three were sent to another universe, and I also have to assume that the reason she’s able to see them in the painting is that it’s another part of the spell. She could’ve at least explained the former. How does she not immediately think to warp them back to her?
I don’t know why people say she was a complete idiot in Sabrina’s Secret Life as if she wasn’t always that way, like she got stupider. I don’t know how they NOTICED a DIFFERENCE, if they talked as if she wasn’t always impossibly stupid since the second episode, because other than instantly thinking to manipulate or lie to people when it’d benefit her, which only comes off as plot convenience, she never HAD any intelligence to begin with.
When she gets in the painting, the accents of the people talking to her make it impossible for me to understand most of what they’re saying. It doesn’t help that my keyboard’s very loud. It’s too bad Harvey never says he assumes he’s dreaming all of this, when it HAS to be that it’s Sabrina’s fault since all of the supernatural stuff in his life happened because of his association with her. It seems like the majority of this episode is worthless padding. What’s the point of us seeing a museum tour guide, see people run around in the painting just to assume he’s hallucinating from lack of medication?
It’s a joke but this show’s attempts at humor usually fail when all of its plot take the series way too seriously. If they’re willing to redo this joke, there’s no excuse for them not having Sabrina use a lot more magic! I don’t understand how the twins stay in a good mood the whole time they’re in the paintings instead of being scared that they’ll never get out. They come off as insane. I assume they think they’re dreaming right away. Sabrina eventually lampshades that she thinks she knows better than everybody. Why doesn’t she stop making unacceptable mistakes then?
I hate that she’s embarrassing herself by talking to herself in front of people for a while. At least I can see the point of her going through all of these painting worlds; it’s meant to be visually interesting. But I still know scenes that could be cut out just fine when I see them. Eventually we see her go to the twins and threaten them. She clearly warps when she goes into the painting, why didn’t she warp to them a lot earlier? Why doesn’t Harvey question her suddenly having a pink rope? The fact that it’s pink instantly makes it clear it’s not a normal rope she could just get from a store.
She lassos the twins and Harvey tries to warn her and she keeps telling him not now basically. Then she ends up realizing that they’re in danger and they fall off a cliff into a river. It’s annoying that Harvey tells her to remind him never to speak to her again. She casts a spell out loud and they get sent out of the painting. And there’s obviously water on the floor around them in the museum so there’s no way she could convince them this was a dream. Ideally they’d all still think they’re dreaming. The twins should be witches like I always assumed. Sabrina sees the statues and use magic to return them to their pedestals.
And somehow they look different than they used to be and somehow she thinks no one would notice. And Harvey says outside of the museum that she told him they were always in a virtual reality exhibit, that made them feel like they were really in a painting. The kids tell their mom what happened and she just says “ you two and your wild imaginations. “ Why are they smiling then? So sadly they aren’t witches. They’re just literally insane because they were totally cool with what happened, and they never ask how in the world they went through all of that.
They should’ve been witches, no matter how unlikely that is because then it would’ve made sense that they went through the paintings, because they would’ve done it for fun! There’s horrible writing as Sabrina says she forgot to get her babysitting money, and wastes a bunch of time angsting. What’s the point of her angsting, if she’s never gonna change, which means she’s not gonna be an appealing protagonist? At least she thanked her family for not saying, “ I told you so. “ That’s because Quigley and Salem were frozen with magic.
The mother of the kids realistically shows up at her house and gives her her pay, is thankful that Sabrina made her kids art lovers, and she gives her some tickets to the exact band she wanted to see which HAS to be because she told her offscreen that she wanted to see that band. I figured that the first time she ever saw her was when she drove up to her in that car. And there’s more horrible writing because Sabrina and Harvey sleep through the concert. The story should have ended with a member of Sabrina’s family rewinding time for her or something so that she could experience the concert.
How did Sabrina and Harvey sleep through the concert when their babysitting job didn’t take place during the night? I know they’d be tired from all of the running they did, but that doesn’t explain it. They had quite a long time to do some resting, where they weren’t running before this point, where they didn’t act tired. It’s not like students are stuck sleeping for the length of time a concert takes after every gym class.
This was a horrible episode and that was immediately obvious once you found out it was a babysitting episode. Obviously a witch stuck babysitting mortals would just magically freeze them in time or make them well-behaved, but instead Sabrina somehow wasted Harvey’s time having him with her. At least she still got to use magic a little, but there’s NO way she’d trap them in a universe where they’re on a planet just like a bunch of paintings, by ACCIDENT!
And there’s no way she wouldn’t instantly warp them out of there, because visualizing them wouldn’t be hard, and she already proved she knew she COULD warp them by doing the previous thing! And since she could always turn to a member of her family or Spookie for help with magic, the excuse that she’s a novice witch NEVER holds any water! Most of the episode clearly could’ve been cut out of the story and still had the same plot just fine. Most of it was about Sabrina going through a world made of various different paintings.
What sucked is there was no explanation for its existence, even if it is easy to assume she warped to another world created by a witch. It was just boring when they were running through the museum. The twins came off as insane because they did nothing but run away from the babysitters laughing and somehow never tried to figure out how they got into the painting or saying that Sabrina must be a witch. The writer cares so little about making sense that it’s implied that their mother is a mortal, so that’s not the explanation, or they could be half-witches which I assumed.
And the writing sucks so bad that Sabrina and Harvey somehow slept through the concert, but at LEAST she still had the money she got, so she didn’t actually go through all of that for nothing. Rather than getting the point of the series by showing what a witch’s life on Earth would be like, and being an escapist fantasy, this episode is just arbitrary sadism.
This was the first episode I didn’t like the experience of watching, because it turns out it’s ANNOYING to hear almost nothing but evil giggling from brats and the rest of it is just Sabrina being an idiot, and it’s also boring to see the main characters just run. I ALREADY got enough of that, for a lifetime when Salem was turned into a mouse.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 9 No Time to Be a Hero:
I don’t like the title. Harvey gets asked to go to a chick flick with Sabrina as she’s walking with him in the rain just to spend time with him. She shouldn’t have asked him to go with her if the title made it so obvious he’d be the only guy with her. She isn’t THAT stupid! She asks him if it’s safe to cross the bridge so of course it wasn’t. He falls into the river and the current brings him to dry land, so he assumes she saved him. She says she didn’t, so it’s forced writing to have him keep thinking she pulled him out of the river despite how strong the current is, faster than her.
And he wouldn’t be unconscious in the river because he was above it for almost the whole time. WHY couldn’t the story have written her to save him for real? That’d be Sabrina acting in-character. She’s SUPPOSED to impulsively use magic! He asks her out after all as a reward, so she smartly agrees. The whole plot would’ve been avoided because she would’ve erased his memory of what happened. That couldn’t be hard to think about and do.
Gem really has no reason to assume Sabrina didn’t save Harvey, and therefore ask her how exactly she saved him, because she thinks she’s a goody-goody, and you’d think people would assume that Gem asked a stupid question, because there wouldn’t be any extra details to how she saved him. And if she has a GOOD reason to doubt her, she’d just say it instantly! This episode is just horrible to watch. Sabrina thanks the principal. Hilda would’ve instantly understood that Sabrina was gonna say she didn’t save Harvey, based on what she tried to say.
She wouldn’t have interrupted her twice, and gotten a picture taken of her. Quigley says anyone who’d lie about saving someone’s life should be tarred and feathered. Then she definitely wouldn’t lie! It’s obvious the writer wants us to hate him so why is he here? It’s smart of Sabrina to lie that she did save Harvey since no one believes the truth anyways, especially since she’d get her bike taken away by her abusive parental figures if she did tell the truth. She obviously doesn’t trust them for good reason if she doesn’t assume she’d get it anyways.
Based on how Anviilicious the message is, I bet the writer somehow expects me to disagree with Salem, when he says she was smart to lie. Sabrina IS relatable in this episode, but I hate how easily the plot could’ve been avoided if she DID save him instead of being hopelessly Out of Character. Sabrina not saving someone’s life is as forced as Sonic or one of his friends not saving someone’s life, or Superman! She would’ve been smart to lie about it, if she wasn’t the type to feel guilty, at the drop of a hat! Salem the asshole somehow thinks honesty would’ve gotten her expelled and grounded!
Salem says that Sabrina could go back in time to when Harvey fell into the river and save him for real. Actually good writing would make her succeed, so the plot could move on to be about something else. After all they had a whole pet show storyline and the plot moved on to something else after that. You’d think time travel would be illegal for witches because if any witch could do it, there’d be complete chaos. Sabrina pushes Harvey and says she saved him and he says from what. The bus drives onto the bridge so the bridge starts collapsing. She should’ve known he wouldn’t think she saved him!
Sabrina says she stopped Harvey from falling off the bridge so now the school bus is going to suffer from that. It’s so obvious that she would have saved Harvey by pointing to make sure he’d get out of the river immediately. Instead the students think she’s cool when she saves them by accident! Why couldn’t it be on purpose and respect her just once?! Why in the world is it that she didn’t go back in time AGAIN right away to try saving him the proper way? It’s not explained that they only have the ability to time travel once before the time travel artifact breaks.
So the scene has a whole bunch of students treat Sabrina well. Even an authority figure unrealistically declares a school holiday just because a student did something heroic, that was accidental obviously as she was hanging by her backpack, even though she’s realistically sad, because all she did was cause a bus to get wrecked. If she was actually competent, she would’ve erased the memory of the disaster from everyone in the accident. She could’ve reversed time and made the bridge sturdier, instantly!
She’s given a horse and somehow her family is completely unable to tell how she doesn’t appreciate how they’re treating her. Somehow even when she screams they don’t comment on it. There isn’t anything wrong with their brains so how in the world are they so oblivious to her feelings? They can see her mouth, and they’re not deaf. She goes back in time to when the sun’s about to rise.
Her spell causes the dam to start breaking. There’s no way in hell that would happen if she doesn’t want it to because if magic doesn’t work by visualization, or even by telling the spirits what to do, how WOULD it know how to interpret what she wants? If her idea was she wanted the river gone, she would’ve just pointed and had the river disappear! Sabrina runs into town and yells out that the dam is gonna break. There is no way in hell that anyone would actually listen to her warning to evacuate. They’d assume she was just pulling a prank on them, especially because it sounds like she has a little girl voice.
I like that someone said they should give Gem a wedgie… even if it’s Out of Character because we never hear that. Of course I also liked earlier when someone said Gem should go to the nerd’s table, even if again it would never happen. People surrounding Sabrina are being nice to Sabrina, and are somehow oblivious to how she’s feeling. If the writer hates Sabrina, which I can relate to, he should either not write the show, or if he’s just that greedy, he should be writing a story that isn’t just based on torturing her like it’s a bad fanfiction. He should just torture Gem instead since I’m sure he’d hate her too.
Why did Sabrina take until now to figure out that she should use magic to make the bridge a lot better? That was obvious immediately because it would make the world a better place as well as save Harvey! She casts a spell to get taken back in time a hundred years to when the bridge first appeared. She wants it to be made of stone and it happens. So obviously she has no excuse anymore for not going back in time to undo anything bad that happens to her from now on. If Salem suggests using magical artifacts at the drop of a hat for her, why doesn’t he suggest time travel to her more often? Why’d it take until now?
The episode should’ve ended with her making the bridge become stone. Instead people see her act of magic. They’re pilgrims! Wouldn’t they still be working? Sabrina had no reason to go back in time that far back, when it’d work just as well to go back in time to the previous day’s midnight when no one would witness her magic. And when she goes back to the present there’s a statue in her honor, and a bunch of people walk up to her saying “ All hail the ageless Sabrina! “ I assume they think she’s literally a saint. Even Chloe is wearing a wig in her honor and says she’s a Sabrina fan.
Everyone here acts like they’re seeing Sabrina for the first time. This means in this timeline, the real Sabrina never lived in Greendale, probably because of what she did. They didn’t want to attract attention to her. And again, these people that supposedly admire her are somehow ignoring her sad expression. She throws and breaks the hourglass which very conveniently undoes all of the changes she did, instead of making her stuck in this timeline, because that’s apparently how it works, it has, back-up data. You’d think you’d have to press a button to undo all of this.
So she gets sent to the point where a reporter was going to take a photo of her for her saving Harvey. I can at least compliment that it’s smart of Gem to know there was no way Sabrina could save Harvey from the river the mortal way because of the strong current, but why didn’t everyone else know that, then?! She tells the truth, and at least Salem is lampshading how stupid she is. And her aunts are clearly disappointed, but at least they’re trying to be nice to her. I’m also glad that it’s never said that they’re gonna get rid of the bike they bought her.
They should be rewarding her honesty, but this does the opposite because they act disappointed. It’s convenient that the reporter believes her, when none of the students did. It’s a miracle that Harvey instantly believes her NOW,even though before this he never believed her! She DID tell the truth! She didn’t just “ mean to! “ At least this was all worth it for Sabrina because he still agrees to go with her to the chick flick. It’s still evil of her to expect him to go to a movie he doesn’t want to go to, or maybe a play, like it matters. He’s worried about getting bullied for going to that movie!
But I don’t have any sympathy for him in this episode. What is the point of having this show and the sitcom obsessed with teaching lessons to kids? You can’t change people based on the forced obnoxious lesson of a kids’ show. If anything it’ll make them rebel against it. Only life experience changes people. And I’m sure there’s a way to teach a lesson without having an entire episode making the main character miserable!
Nobody should be defending this show’s insistence on teaching lessons all the time when it doesn’t belong in Sabrina and I’m sure it was a universally mocked part of an entire era of cartoons! Why else did Sonic Sez exist come to think of it? Even AoStH is more respectable because it keeps the messages to the end of the episodes. So they were allowed to do that! She DID make the truth obvious every time. It’s just no one believed her! I HATE that she said, “ I meant to tell you the truth! “ The only lesson this story teaches is, “ don’t time travel. “
I knew this episode was annoying to watch even when I was first watching it, so like 6 it’s especially bad, torturing Sabrina by having her feel guilty that people are praising her, for something she didn’t do, and no matter how much she tries to do things differently back in time, inexplicably needing an artifact to do the time travel, she only makes her problem worse, when you’d think turning the bridge to stone wouldn’t backfire. First of all if she was in-character, she would’ve saved him!
What is the point of using Sabrina as a character if she’s almost never doing good, especially not with magic, when she’s not Sabrina at that point, ESPECIALLY not when she doesn’t impulsively think to use magic every time she thinks she could get away with it outside of school? Second, it was instantly obvious how she was SUPPOSED to save him after going back in time; she would’ve used magic to warp him out of the river, or at least used magic to force the river itself to send him to dry land. That’s what she would’ve actually done because that would’ve actually been subtle.
So this story could’ve been way shorter, but instead it forced things to go wrong at every time in an unfair way because she held the Idiot Ball because the point was to teach her a lesson about honesty, when I’m sure there are better ways to teach that. “ You’ve got it all wrong! “ She never needed to learn the lesson! But the Sabrina I know would’ve always known the value of telling the truth, in non-magic cases. Otherwise she feels like a bad friend to Harvey because of how much she lies about magic.
To make a show about Sabrina learning lessons requires writing her Out of Character so that she needs the lessons. And it thinks that makes sense because she’s a kid so Hilda’s out because she can’t go to school and give plots an excuse. But the show should’ve had Esmeralda live with her while SHE’S in-character and used her for the lessons instead. There’s no reason the pilgrims would’ve seen her because she would’ve gone back in time, only a little bit, and turned the bridge to stone instantly.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 10 Extreme Harvey:
Sabrina walks out of school and eventually the students stare at someone skateboarding past them over and over because they’re easily impressed, and it’s Harvey showing off with one. It’s in-character for him to be good at this. Someone says Harvey’s just average despite him amazing everyone else, so I have to assume he’s a better skateboarder. Sabrina gets away with using magic against him and his jerk friend. Then Gem tells the students boringly long-windedly there’s gonna be a skateboarding tournament. Her acting gets more monotone and boring when she tells Harvey he could be a skateboarding legend.
This may be the first time what she says matters. Sabrina warns him that he might need more practice, and Harvey arbitrarily says she’s supposed to be his friend, and he thought she’d be on his side, when clearly she IS because she’s trying to improve him. Gem makes a call and says it’s clear who his friends are and uncharacteristically he agrees with her and goes into her limo. I hate that. Sabrina tells Chloe what she missed. The show’s always repeated exposition for cheap padding. Sabrina complains she was just trying to be honest.
What kind of broken show is it where first it has an episode about preaching that being dishonest makes you MISERABLE, and the next episode it demonizes being honest?! Well REALLY the previous episode had the message that, you should never stop correcting positive misinformation about yourself, because she didn’t actually lie. Then we see a tour guide giving people a tour of a mansion apparently belonging to Harvey, and I only find it it’s just Sabrina imagining things after he says the picture of Sabrina is of a kid he forgot because of Gem.
So it makes sense that there’s no reason the picture would be there because it’s just an Imagine Spot. It’s never been in-character for Sabrina to be the type who constantly gets so overwhelmed by anxiety that she has these daydreams about how horribly things could go wrong! It’s all Quigley’s fault because, this is the only continuity where she’s like this and he’s in it! There’s padding until Chloe puts her hand on Sabrina’s shoulder and then helps her scrub a car. She needs a lot more moments like this to endear her to us. Sabrina complains about Harvey ignoring her.
She complains about the fact that telling the truth makes someone think you’re not on their side. I know how that feels. It’s why people get mad at people who criticize their favorite work of fiction when they just want it to be better. Chloe says uh-oh when she has no excuse for not just telling her what she needs to know. Eventually Harvey angsts to Sabrina that he’ll take a year to be really talented. I’m glad he’s not being mean to her this time like he’s forgiven her completely. I wish the episode started here. You could use magic to have padding! In fact it does do that, with Salem.
Sabrina walks into her house randomly talking to her aunt as if she’s continuing off a conversation, when she’s all alone. She spends a long time convincing Hilda to let her go find a spell to help her friend. Thankfully Hilda’s fine with it THIS TIME, which means it’s always arbitrary when her aunts DON’T want her to use the Spookie Jar. And Salem uncharacteristically congratulates her on combatting negative witch stereotypes even though no one would know. They go to Spookie for no reason to get offered a sphere to make Harvey a star on the skateboard track.
Spookie’s spell objects seem jinxed because they always backfire unless they’re used to undo the last time one was used. But explaining that would just make Spookie look even meaner! Sabrina can’t find Harvey when she’s calling for him but that meant nothing because she eventually finds him and he says she should go away because he doesn’t want her to see him like this. She uses the spell on him, and he unusually thanks her for smacking his head because he needed that.
Somehow he instantly knew that her doing that made him a better skateboarder, and that has to be because it’s another part of the sphere spell. As usual there’s way too much wasted time in the episode. And I don’t find this plot engaging because it’s instantly obvious where it’s gonna go as soon as Sabrina plans to give him fame. She obviously didn’t even need to give him fame. All she needed was to make him a slightly better skateboarder so he wouldn’t embarrass himself at the skateboard tournament.
Instead she has a bunch of people in front of her she can’t see over even though 12-year-olds can be taller than adults. Eventually she sees boring commercials with Harvey in monotone one after the one no matter how much she changes channels. She somehow hears Harvey say skateboarding is a metaphor for life’s emptiness, and he gets asked if there’s anyone who inspired him to rocket his way to the top. He says no, and while that’s supposed to be annoying, how was he supposed to know she inspired him? She never skateboarded in front of him.
Hitting him on the head, according to him made him a better skateboarder, but he can’t explain that because she’ll think he’s crazy, and that’s not the meaning of inspired, not to mention she didn’t inspire him to start skateboarding in the first place. She turns the TV into a gorilla in front of Chloe and she doesn’t react. This seems to be the first time she ever used magic in front of her in the show, so it’s needlessly disorienting that Chloe already knows about magic, and doesn’t even comment on it. It makes me wonder if, they expect you to read the comic.
And uncharacteristically when her aunts walk into the room they don’t complain about the TV being gone. Zelda takes forever to explain that Harvey’s spell will wear off any minute because of its class. The only way the spell would be this way EVERY TIME, is if the Witches’ Council forced all the witches to cast a spell to make it so that the spell would be temporary every time. Spookie was never told to make the spell temporary so he wouldn’t have. I can see why it would be temporary in order to keep people from taking advantage of such a spell for life.
But the thing is if the witches disapprove of talent spells, why wouldn’t they instead cast a spell to disable talent spells entirely? There’s no reason spells would inherently have separate classes where some of them are forced to be temporary! Somehow there’s no mention of the idea that a witch could just instantly remove the spell. I understand not doing that right away though because they were just hoping the spell would stay on until the end of the tournament to keep Harvey from getting hurt. People would see the green flash of light when Harvey returned to normal!
I have to assume that mortals can’t see magic flashes of light, or beams of light. Like many things in the show this should be explained. It’s easy to have assumed by now that, nobody can see the beams of magic because nobody’s commented on it. Sabrina and her aunts use magic on Harvey to account for him going out of control to try to save him. I don’t know why any of them bothered wasting the magic on changing his skateboard. Why did Hilda sneeze? Especially since you’d think witches would be so advanced that they’d have vaccines for the common cold.
It’s explained that people think this is a bunch of special effects SOMEHOW. A ramp’s created for him for no reason too and she’s told she was stylish. Sabrina tells them to stop his landing, Zelda calls Hilda stylish, and one aunt says she can’t do it without anyone noticing. Now it should REALLY be explained nobody can see the magic flashes because it ALWAYS seemed like obvious magic! But NOW one of the aunts says they need a distraction. Sabrina uses magic to make Gem announce over the intercom somehow that she sucks her thumb. “ Gemini Stone, “ REALLY? I hate that first name.
Harvey relatably asks why the audience hates him for making just a few mistakes. It makes sense that they would think that, no actually great skateboarder would have a shitty ending for his act. it’s not like his act was a terrible STORY, just a skateboarding act you can’t put into words in a reasonable time period. You’d think they’d still be impressed by the special effects. And I don’t like the potential subtext, that Harvey was written to say this, because the writer might have been excusing the flaws of the show as just a few mistakes. Well if the mistakes are major enough, the audience SHOULD hate them.
Sabrina says she’s the one who made a mistake, that she forgot what really makes someone a winner. I hate how vague she’s being. It’s not that she forgot what makes someone a winner! It’s that she didn’t want him to be embarrassed! And Harvey would just be completely confused by this because he doesn’t know she’s responsible for his talent. Luckily they see a kid get handed first prize for practicing since he was little.
Hopefully the moral of THIS episode is that Sabrina shouldn’t have made Harvey that talented at skateboarding, because she’d hate him being famous. To be fact this is a moral that the main 70s Sabrina WOULD need to learn. And it doesn’t have to be forced and thus botch its message because, at least I have to assume that the spell had no chance of making Harvey only slightly better of a skateboarder, only the best possible one, forcing him to get famous, and it makes sense because if you think about someone being talented at something, you’re not gonna imagine him making a single mistake.
Spookie wasn’t told to imagine him skateboarding for long enough that he’d make a few mistakes. How did he know what looked like good skateboarding TRICKS? I have to assume magic scoured the world to do the necessary research FOR him, filling in the blanks after he just told it to make him skateboard without mistakes, so he’d have to know a lot about skateboarding himself and take a much longer time casting to know how to only slightly increase someone’s skateboarding skill.
And if all it did was make him just good enough that he wouldn’t embarrass himself in the tournament, that’d have been all Sabrina wanted WITHOUT resulting in the problems of the episode. Sabrina only thought about the fact that she wanted to keep Harvey from getting mocked, and it wouldn’t be like her to fully think through her spell first, and the first time she saw people admire his skateboarding skills, all that happened was THAT, so she just thought that would happen because of the spell at first thought.
So in a vacuum, this is a fine plot, even if it should’ve explained why the tournament audience didn’t find out about magic when it was clearly used on Harvey, and there’s no reason for special effects to be used in a skateboarding tournament. But it’s mostly BORING, because it’s immediately obvious where it’s gonna go and mostly consists of him getting unwarranted praise, which we already saw Sabrina get an episode ago. And it’s praise for something non-magical.
There’s already been 70s Sabrina comic stories where Sabrina cast a talent spell, and they’re mercifully brief by comparison, and kids would’ve already known that fame came with a price, so this plot is worthless, except for the moment where Gem gets carried away. Other than fame comes with a price what is supposed to be the moral here? Because the writers don’t think witches exist so the moral can’t be, “ Don’t use magic, to make someone talented. “
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 11 Shrink to Fit:
The school bell sounds annoying. And in my high school it had a bell that didn’t sound annoying. Eventually Chloe says the guys are drooling over Gem. Since when? So she sure is unlucky that Harvey doesn’t date her. Sabrina sees a photo of a girl on Harvey’s locker, and then when she decides to go to the mall with Chloe, Harvey shudders at the picture of the girl who’s creepily skinny and turns the paper over to the other side. There’s no way it’d even have the photo then.
There’s no way a photo of a supermodel would actually make it obvious you could see her ribs. Well I don’t read supermodel magazines so maybe it is but, it seems like a kid style exaggeration, when we don’t even need that for a story where Sabrina tries to fit into overly tight pants. It could’ve just started here. Eventually Salem shows them a machine to help them button them. Does he just have so little faith in Sabrina’s magic skills he thinks he HAS to give her artifacts? You could save on padding by not having the artifacts or Spookie.
But at least it requires creativity from the writer to think up what each artifact looks like. She goes into a machine after she and Chloe are somehow afraid to for no stated reason when they’d only think it was dangerous, if it’s because they remember that Salem’s magic constantly backfires on her. And if they realize that they have even less of an excuse to go with it. She leaves it and she thinks the pants fit but the button springs off, and Salem swallows it.
Considering this show’s Salem is the most unlikable he’s ever been, I can understand the writers hating him. I guess the problem is they don’t go far enough then. Chloe’s the voice of reason by saying they should zap up jeans that fit. Why doesn’t she just tell her to use magic to lose weight? It was obvious she had to do that immediately! Sabrina stupidly plans to watch what they eat, and eats something they hate. Chloe says they should get exercise but that’s forced if she was immediately gonna say she meant walking to the Spookie Jar.
And again I have to assume she ONLY wants her to use Spookie to conserve her magic. If the writer knows she should’ve seen her idea coming, why didn’t she think of it instantly? Why does Sabrina waste time telling her aunts she needs a spell when she knows they’re always hypocritically telling her not to use magic while constantly doing so, making me wonder why they wanna lecture her?
Zelda gets the chance to explain why she disapproves of the spell. It’s just because she knows they look fine as they are. But to be fair being told that doesn’t talk people out of it when they’re desperate to lose weight. So for once it’s realistic that she doesn’t listen to them.
It takes too long for the aunts to figure out that Salem gave them fleas. It could’ve been a more interesting explanation for their itchiness. I thought they were all cursed by a witch. So I guess it’s justified that they took too long to assume it was Salem. Instead they run after Salem wanting to give him a flea bath, not explaining why the fleas are magically sentient, and chase him out of the room so the characters are able to use Spookie. This wouldn’t have happened if they had just pointed to get rid of the fleas from the house.
Why does Spookie waste our time asking their names, quest and favorite color? That’s Out of Character. He never does that, partly because he knows their names. Eventually the two of them stand on a magic scale and one of them turns their weight down on it. I say one of them because they aren’t distinct enough from each other, that I would instantly remember who it is, a couple of seconds later. If she gets a bad feeling, WHY does the plot continue? Predictably Harvey doesn’t even notice how they look different, because he doesn’t care about their weight.
The writer’s sadistic enough to make their pants fall down in front of everyone in the cafeteria. There’s no way Harvey wouldn’t hear Sabrina talk about the spell’s problem under the table! At first it seemed confusing that the two of them started shrinking and kept doing so throughout the episode, because that isn’t what they wanted and Spookie would know that. But it’d make sense of Spookie to make this part of the spell to force them to want the spell undone before they’d get sick from being underweight.
I thought the show was leading up to showing THEIR ribs and the realistic consequences of being unhealthily underweight, and that’d actually succeed in delivering the message! But instead to anyone not thinking about the why, the spell seems forced, as it seems to come completely out of nowhere! What’s really forced, is that Sabrina doesn’t instantly use magic to undo the spell on them! Maybe most of the time she uses an artifact or a Spookie scroll it should be a potion, ‘cause I could buy it not being gotten rid of right away by pointing, if it’s explained that it’s immune to magic.
Even then that would just be all the more reason for her to not use them! Nothing interesting happens after they walk through the pants and then end up in a locker. It is realistic that Chloe bickers with Sabrina over this because she got her into this situation. Chloe’s idea but she could’ve said no and gone with her FIRST idea. I’m glad this only lasted a little scene. Eventually it rains and somehow it instantly fills the dry river bank trapping them on an island. And they need a paper boat. But Sabrina would never be so stupid as to think they need a boat here.
Sabrina warped herself and Harvey in a previous episode, so they would’ve warped home instantly! Eventually Sabrina hears Harvey say he doesn’t get girls who try to stuff themselves into tight pants. It gets unrealistic and lame when both he and Pi say “ Be yourself. “ I never liked his friend because not only does he have no personality yet, and when he does get one it’s just annoying, but how can he even see? So he seems stupid. Eventually a spinning skateboard flings them into a mailbox and they end up in an envelope, and Quigley carries it into the house.
Somehow Chloe wonders how they’re gonna make it ALL the way up there to the magic scale that had no business being up there instead of on the floor like a normal scale. How is she so stupid when a witch is beside her?! I shouldn’t need to explain witches can fly! Sabrina pushes Chloe and she doesn’t get hurt from the huge fall. To be fair ants can survive huge falls too because they’re small. But if it was following the Square/Cube Law, then I have to wonder if it makes sense that these two haven’t frozen to death already, because their bodies wouldn’t be able to produce enough heat proportionally with their size.
It turns out Quigley wasn’t Quigley in this scene at all, and instead Zelda disguised herself to sneak up on and bathe Salem. It’s a bit meaner than simply freezing time or freezing HIM in time. I can understand them wanting to get back at him, because he’s a jerk who keeps ruining Sabrina’s day. But still if they were really good people they would just put him to sleep for the whole time they were bathing him, just to be merciful. Very conveniently, Sabrina and Chloe get sent up in bubbles from this when realistically I’m sure they’d have drowned. And conveniently they end up near the scale and get returned to normal.
Zelda asks if they used the Spookie Jar without permission. I now have to wonder in what circumstances they’re actually allowed to use it because she always acts like magic for Sabrina is evil because it makes life easier. By THAT logic technology is evil, but I don’t see her banning THAT. Thankfully the story ends with a gag at Salem’s expense instead of Sabrina being punished, not even for dragging a mortal into her magic misuse. Something good about the show is that it never actually shows Sabrina suffering through the effect of being grounded.
But something that sucks that I took too long to notice because it’s hard to notice an absence is that it still isn’t explained how the household has money. We aren’t told the jobs of her aunts from episode 1, which even the sitcom thought to do. It was forgivable in the 70s cartoon because the aunts looked like stereotypical witches so it was even easier to assume they just used magic for their money. What’s Quigley’s job instead? They’re teens, fine. It needs to be explained because this is a kids’ cartoon so they might not think of that.
This boring episode is another one where it’s predictable how the plot’s gonna go right from the first scene; Sabrina and Chloe feel like they’re not skinny enough to attract boys just because Harvey had a photo of a creepily skinny girl on his locker. And it botches teaching the message because due to illogical consequences to magic, it never gets to explaining that being too skinny gives you health issues. American Dad taught this better.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 12 Has Anybody Seen my Quigley:
Harvey invites Sabrina to the movies and Quigley unlikably hands Sabrina a letter with a condescending tone he doesn’t have to have. It turns out Quigley’s car got repossessed because Quigley didn’t get handed a letter telling him to call them, somehow. He’s mad at her for not writing down the message after she answered the phone. So the story starts with an Idiot Ball. But if he just told her to zap up a copy of his car, it wouldn’t matter anymore!
Then he recites a lame rhyme about chores that the aunts would never say. Quigley complains that Hilda didn’t water the plants and they died. How did that happen when she has NO job and nothing to do all day and no reason to be too tired to do that?
Then Zelda gets food splashed onto her because she was experimenting in the kitchen. Quigley says she wasn’t allowed to do that and grounds the whole family. Hilda lampshades he can’t do that because she’s 600 years old. If the writer knows that he has no excuse for putting him in the show. Salem’s also grounded just for calling him Quigster. Why is Hilda saying Quigley’s “ turning into “ a real control freak when he’s always like that and she’d know that? Zelda also complains about that and it’s satisfying that Quigley listens into what they’re saying.
The next day he’s gone. On the first watch it looks like the show’s trying to manipulate you into feeling bad for him because it looks like they hurt his feelings, even though he would’ve KNOWN they were so unhappy with him all along. The problem is, this just leads to a story where his replacement is somehow even worse! In fact she kicks down the door which wouldn’t happen because she’d know that she’d instantly get charged and call the police. And these WITCHES have no excuse for following her orders instead of doing that.
So rather than Quigley actually realizing he was wrong, he hired this bitch to gaslight them into thinking he was perfectly fine and punish them the whole episode. They had every right to complain about him and he had no right to punish them for it when he had no business eavesdropping on them. Hilda also lampshades that she’s giving them all of the orders, when she’s been hired to work for THEM. It’s also offensive that the nanny has a German accent. It makes it harder for her to be understood and she’s clearly evil, so what’s the point of making her talk like this?
Why would you use a stereotype in a show all about teaching kids lessons? I’m just missing out on most of her dialogue this way, but I’m not REALLY missing anything since she’s just an unrealistic drill sergeant. I guess Sabrina and Hilda are intentionally doing the cleaning badly. So it’d be contrived if that wasn’t good enough to make them give up on ordering them around. But obviously it’d be better to just make her nice, or turn her into a statue. That’d be way faster. When they tried scaring her the first time, that’d have worked! She’d scream at seeing a headless person and emoting pumpkin.
Also Zelda uses magic on the mail to try to scare the nanny. The only way she could not be terrified by magic is if she used to be a witch and her powers were taken away. But in this show even someone who tried to take over the world kept his powers. And if that was the case for her she would’ve confronted them on it. So it just makes it more forced, that they got to this point. Sabrina’s family spends a long time making a wand of niceness in a cauldron. I have to assume the reason they didn’t do this earlier is that they’re uncomfortable with brainwashing, not that they’re showing it because they’re all smiling.
And they made it in a potion because they wanna conserve magic, since even Sabrina can just point to change someone’s personality in a later episode. There’s just no way the nanny would expect breakfast to be made FOR her. She’d only act like this the if Quigley was offering her extra pay if she acted like a bitch.. Why would the nanny ask the family if they’re okay? She has no reason to be suspicious of them. And if she’s really suspicious of them, there’s even less of a reason for her to drink anything they offer!
The nanny becomes nice, telling them their toast is delicious, and she lets her hair down because it’s hot, and turns on the stereo to dance to some music, and opens the window and dances with Salem. There’s no way that she’d do that if the spell is making her nice, because she’d instantly figure out Salem doesn’t appreciate this and stop. She tells them they don’t need to do chores and can do whatever they want. Sabrina sees smelly trash cans outside of her house and her nanny doing Tai Chi.
I don’t care how much the writer wants me to think she’s weird. I’d take a character that’s weird but nice any day over the real her. The nanny must be acting like a hippie because she’s trying to imitate the nicest people she can think of. But it’s racist to have her stop using her German accent just because she’s nice now! And she wouldn’t have let Hilda’s fish die, if the spell is that she’s nice now. She also redecorated a room in Zelda’s house and replaced her chemicals with flowers. There’s no reason that’d happen either if the spell is to make her nice.
She’d know they wouldn’t appreciate what she’s doing. The same goes for her installing a disco ball, and serving them tree bark and dandelions for dinner. Any episode like this where the horrible status quo gets changed just for the writer to force the writing to have the characters miss the status quo, is just absolute garbage. There’s no way the witches would put up with her behavior, when they were fine with brainwashing her ONCE.
I assume the reason they don’t brainwash her into never doing these mistakes again every time, is that they think it’d be crossing the line to brainwash her even MORE, and they’re secretly feeling guilty, but that isn’t coming through, they just look like idiots. The story gets spiteful and Anvilicious when Sabrina has a problem because the nanny didn’t write down a message for her. And Harvey wants to listen to a CD at Sabrina’s house because his CD Player broke. I wish it was explained why it broke because this seems contrived.
He says the house stinks. Again the nanny wouldn’t have the house like this, because if she’s been made nice, she’d have the compassion to fix that problem. It’s almost like she definitely is being bribed, to the point where she still thinks the money would be worth it, except now she’s planning to give the money to charity, which is why she still thinks she’s justified in ruining their house. And she wouldn’t have thrown out Sabrina’s CD player either. She also wouldn’t make a loud dinging noise either. She definitely wouldn’t get rid of the VCR and TV. Without proper justification, this plot is just embarrassing.
Harvey smartly makes excuses to leave. If the nanny was born without the capacity for empathy to begin with, and the logic is that the spell only heightens the compassion you already have, this could make sense, if she was a sociopath. All the spell was about was making people present themselves as nice apparently. But there’s no way this would be the case though. Why would a magic wand made specifically to make people nice, not increase their compassion? Rather than zapping up a new nanny, the family find out that Quigley’s in a book, and he’s doing an overly long lesson to people on housework and cooking.
Sabrina’s family notices that he’s happy and he makes it clear that he’s never been so happy. So there’s no excuse for Sabrina asking him if he’d wanna come back home, considering that she often acts like, she’s too good to use magic. She even says it’s wrong of them to ask. So they should’ve just zapped up a new Quigley who wasn’t as controlling. Somehow he agrees and gets a hug in a sappy moment, to try to force you to find it heartwarming. But I’m not forgetting how Quigley was at the start of the episode.
I get why they’d be so traumatized they wouldn’t trust nannies anymore, but realistically chances are very slim that hiring a nanny would have this result, so any rational person would just hire a new nanny! Any smart person would zap up one for free! And I thought Quigley was supposed to live with them because her aunts are teenagers. So why is he allowed to leave then?
It should’ve been explained that his plan was to still let them call him and pretend he’s still looking after them when necessary, or else they would’ve been taken away by social services because the nanny wasn’t given permission to be their legal guardian.
Quigley sees the nanny running around streaking and says he doesn’t want to know if that was the nanny he hired. He should’ve EXPECTED a bunch of WITCHES to change her personality. He had a mortal go against witches! That’s so irresponsible! they would’ve hired a normal nanny and Quigley would’ve been gone from the show, and the obviousness of how the show would only be better that way just highlights how stupid the one who thought up the show’s premise and the executives who’d say no to kicking him out of the show really are.
The story should’ve explained that he bribed her to be more of a bitch because there’s no way a nanny would act like she did at the start of the episode, because she’d know she’d get fired and arrested right away. What’s the moral of this story? “ Every nanny is evil, accept your abusive caretaker! “?
This episode’s about Quigley hearing the family call him a control freak and ditching them, even though he’d know they feel that way about him, and he’d have only stayed here so long if he didn’t care, so the only way this makes sense is if he only ditched them with the intention of bribing their new nanny to be as evil to them as possible to manipulate them into unrealistically asking for him back, instead of just zapping up a new nanny. They would’ve called the cops as soon as she knocked down their door!
Considering how unlikable he was, why did the writer make him so happy? Of course the witches brainwashed her to be nicer, what’d he expect? The only other thing he could expect was that they would abuse magic on her to terrify her which they did! The whole episode felt frustratingly arbitrary. It should’ve been explained that the magic wand only makes people try harder to present themselves as nice rather than actually increasing how considerate they are, but even then there’s no way in hell the wand of niceness would be like that because that’s not what someone who’d make it would want.
And they’d have known it’d be like that because the book they’d have followed to make it would’ve warned them. And to state the obvious here it’s pretty weird that in a kids’ cartoon about teaching lessons, the story doesn’t end with her back to normal, like, the supposedly sympathetic main characters permanently ruined her personality.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 13 Wag the Witch:
It starts with a kid somehow hearing Quigley sing in the shower from all the way in the front of her house, and Salem says just a little cold water therapy from a music lover. So Quigley complains that he turned off the hot water. Zelda gets a call and Quigley says he hates living in a house with teenage girls, which would confuse anyone watching this, as this is the first time it establishes that her aunts are inexplicably teenagers. Eventually, Sabrina gets a prank call and uses her own magic for once for Caller ID. Chloe lampshades for no reason that she should get normal Caller ID.
She was using a weird voice to call people. It turns out Sabrina’s running for class president. When you’re older you know how stupid it is of her to think she COULD make any changes. Of course the faculty wouldn’t let a student change the school in a way that really matters. Even the sitcom gave out that lesson! Salem causes food to fall on Sabrina and Quigley’s told he’s not nice for chasing Salem with a vacuum, and Salem has to hang on curtains.
He says he was forced to sleep outside last night, and it’s because Quigley was punishing him for having a fur ball he couldn’t help. More moments of him being a jerk. Salem plans to go to the Nether World. Why can he do that unsupervised? Sabrina says she can’t become class president because there’s a requirement to be normal. She says that if people are gonna like her enough to vote for her she has to be normal. But nobody knows she’s a witch and nobody will find out. So why is she whining? Gem’s running for class president, go figure.
I skip ahead out of boredom and I like that if you skip ahead 30 seconds Sabrina says, “ off, “ to Gem, like she told her to fuck off. And then later the episode forces you to listen to Harvey’s friend’s voice for way too long, where he tells Sabrina that Gem started a rumor about her. Why? Chloe tells Sabrina that she’s cool and Sabrina plans to spread rumors about Gem. I hope we see her reaction to it! She complains about getting Zelda’s salad and says anchovies make her gag right behind Gem.
I assume Gem’s gonna take advantage of this now which is totally forced because she wouldn’t say this because Chloe would already know that about her. They grew up together. Then Harvey reads in the school newspaper that there’s an article about how weird Sabrina’s house is from the kid at the start of the episode. Somehow Sabrina’s behind people in the polls who aren’t even running. This episode is just way too mean. Why would the students care about how weird Sabrina’s house is? That doesn’t make HER weird.
Harvey somehow says, “ you call this normal? “ when he’s supposed to be her nice friend, but after the commercial break he reassures her and says she’s normal. He tries to unlock the door and Sabrina tells Salem to do a magical transport zap to get her friends to the back door. She also says she’ll reward him for a month if he does. Why is she so desperate to conserve magic she’ll make him do this? Also these kids would’ve heard her spell from just outside the door, if Harvey could be heard from the inside.
They’re naturally confused and somehow the kid’s dizzy with everything out of focus. Why don’t they figure out magic exists? They’re confused, so it’s not like their brains were rewritten so that they thought they went to the back door! And why wouldn’t they hear everything Sabrina’s telling Hilda? Hilda gives her rose-colored glasses to brainwash one of the kids into seeing everything in the house as normal, a different function from how it was in the 70s cartoon.
Why can’t any witches think to point to cast a spell so that everyone will see them as normal? When Harvey says, “ Great idea, JANE, “ and says they should visit Sabrina in the “ LIVING ROOM, “ it literally comes off like he’s intentionally warning Sabrina that they’re gonna go there, because he emphasized Jane and living room. So Hilda instead of Sabrina for no reason gets to keep them from seeing stereotypical witches and push them out of the house. The kid says she’s still on Gem’s payroll. Why did she tell Sabrina this, why was she supposed to tell Gem where they’d go?
Sabrina decides to go with Hilda to the mall, who CAN DRIVE. She stands on an escalator and sees a picture of her and backs away. No one’s this stupid. They’d die. Why doesn’t Sabrina tell Hilda why she was acting panicked when she got called a whacko? Hilda says Gem’s just jealous of her because she’s awesome, even though she would have no reason to think that at this point. Jane thinks that Harvey’s friend’s trivia about beetles is amazing. Sabrina starts coughing because of the anchovy pizza Gem sent to her. They wouldn’t LAUGH at her burp, she was just choking.
Eventually, someone unrealistically laughs evilly after Gem bribes her. She goes after Sabrina with perfume and sprays her. Why is the kid writing stuff down after Sabrina gets sprayed with perfume? If the whole thing is that the glasses are making her see everything as normal, there’s no point in constantly showing us her writing it down like we’re gonna forget that. We’re just gonna wonder if the glasses aren’t working and get even more frustrated. The tension isn’t as stressful as it could be because of those glasses. Gem throws tacks on the floor to make Hilda freak out and start falling.
Sabrina says Gem’s gone too far and uses magic to make Harvey trip and walk out of the store with clothes on him. WHY’D he WALK? Any normal person would stand there and try to get the clothes off! And he gets immediately arrested for shoplifting. She wouldn’t waste time trying to talk sense into the guard. She’d just brainwash him right away, because the show proves she’s fine with that. And why would the kid not hear her confessing to Hilda? Hilda reminds her that the kid saw the mannequin tripping Harvey as normal.
But Harvey’s friend shows up with a piece of paper with a drawing of what happened to Harvey. Realistically he would’ve immediately been told to look at security camera footage of what happened instead. Gem gets made to run away scared by a perfume salesman, and Sabrina finds out she didn’t win the election because Jane thought Sabrina was boring, and the winner of the election was Harvey’s friend. Sabrina preaches to the audience that he won because he’s never afraid to be himself, but if Gem won student of the year because she did some bribery, why didn’t she win in this episode for the same reason?
Harvey’s friend winning is a narrative cheat because Sabrina kept talking as if weird kids don’t have a chance of being elected, and there was no foreshadowing to the idea that most kids in her school would want a weird kid elected. Chloe told Sabrina that she’s behind in the polls to a ridiculous degree right after she read an article exposing a bit of how weird her family is, when she was JUST leading in the polls.
So the real moral of the story is, weird kids always get elected class president as long as they’re guys. Well at least it didn’t end with her resigning because she feels bad about bothering Gem. That’d have been too predictable. It can’t be that nobody liked Gem, because then she wouldn’t have been voted student of the year.
This episode’s about a kid following Sabrina around in the mall writing down things about her to influence people wanting to vote for the class president, but because Hilda gave her magic glasses to make her think everything about Sabrina is normal, she realistically gets called boring. But the ending has a weird kid win anyways, which makes no sense if Sabrina was unpopular in the polls for being weird. And he would definitely be more unpopular. It needed to have someone explain that he won because only guys are liked for being weird.
Just his annoying voice alone makes it impossible to buy that anyone would’ve voted for him, so it’s not even that he’s weird in the right ways and she’s weird in the “ makes you pity her, “ ways. Gem isn’t weird in that way.
The episode’s got two messages; that it can be good to be weird which is a good message, and that you shouldn’t try to make people think you’re normal, even though if you don’t try there could be terrible consequences like harassment for being weird, so the message is actually dangerous. The entire episode had Sabrina be antagonized by Gem because she thinks she’s weird, so it’s not convincing for either message.
It doesn’t make Hilda and Chloe look right about calling her cool this time, because instead of her being successful because of her witchcraft, proving that it’s good to be weird, the episode has Harvey get framed because of it! And it’s another episode that demonizes magic in the end because the glasses that decreased the tension still managed to screw Sabrina over. So it looks like it’s bad for HER to be different!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 14 Witchy Grrrls:
Harvey at the community talent show plans to put a magic act on for an audience. It’s lame that he says he knows not of this Harvey someone speaks about. He’s handed a wrist-watch, and hits it with a hammer and we can hear glass break. So it’s needlessly sad that Sabrina and her family aren’t in the audience waiting to save his magic show from failure, and instead they and Chloe are in a ridiculous band behind a curtain. It seems so Out of Character of them. I don’t know who one of those women is but I don’t like her voice.
Predictably Harvey ruined the watch and is booed off the stage. It’s not even new for Harvey to be bad at magic tricks. There’s nothing enjoyable about the rest of the talent show. There’s no way Sabrina would think she’s got good lyrics and singing talent and music talent. Even the flowers die somehow. There’s no excuse for making the audience listen to this. You’re supposed to have them sound only mediocre. The principal wisely unplugs it and somehow one of the band expects to get prize money. Why was Gem written to be the winner? There could have been other participants and there should have been!
Chloe asks Sabrina to use magic to give them star quality. Zelda’s moral enough to say no magic, but doesn’t explain what I just did so of course they won’t be convinced! Harvey asks if he heard the word magic but just reminds them he’s a magician, and conveniently walks away as if he never heard their conversation. Obvious padding! Everyone in the band tries to pressure Zelda, and she describes the life of a rock star, and asks how quick they’d get tired of that.
They aren’t convinced so she says she’s in, making it hypocritical every time she says no magic and thus pointless and bad for her character, and ends up reading from the spell book. Earlier on Sabrina said Zelda doesn’t want magic used frivolously so I wish someone called her out on the fact that she constantly uses magic frivolously. Not only are they made good at music, but instantly their house is surrounded by screaming adoring fans. Wouldn’t it be forced if Quigley wasn’t in the episode? Not that it would be a problem. It would just make no sense. It’s in the future!
So the story wastes our time until they’re about to play at a concert. I think it’s gonna matter when Chloe plays from a trumpet. Aside from an awkward silence it doesn’t matter and Sabrina starts the lame song. I have to assume people are being brainwashed into liking it. She sings about “ what’s your favorite flavor? “ and “ cotton candy. “ At least that’s better than singing or rapping about how crime is awesome and you’re cool if you do it like songs now, but it’s a blatant waste of the audience’s time to have a song, especially one with two verses. It’s obvious there wasn’t enough actual plot written.
Now I have time to wonder why there’s a spell like this in the spell book. I have to assume the witches’ council is just that cavalier about magic. They really don’t mind if witches make themselves famous rock stars even though it’s not fair. It should be explained that they know it doesn’t matter because they think that EVERY time the witches will get tired of having to constantly avoid fans, and will end up giving it up and making people forget about it all anyways. But you’d think they would have the same assumption, for the skateboarding spell. So why was THAT spell temporary no matter what?
It’s obvious padding that the song replays while we see a montage of them avoiding people. And then there’s a blatantly waste of time music video. I assume none of this ever happened because it’s just nonsensical. The sitcom did an episode JUST LIKE this, but it didn’t waste tons of time playing an annoying song over a ton of it, while showing you nothing but the typical stuff. Unless it did and it was just that forgettable that I forgot about it. Sabrina complains that what she sees tells her that the Flavor Babes are sloppy drinkers.
Salem shows them more merchandise, and Hilda licks a doll resembling her and says it doesn’t taste like HER flavor, somehow. And why is there another music video from a hideous guy who has a monotone “ singing “ video? It has nothing to do with the main characters. Sabrina asks Chloe if she said she could switch the TV channel, and they keep saying Switch and Switch back. Sabrina realizes they shouldn’t argue like this because they’re acting like kids. Chloe goes from agreeing with her to saying they ARE kids, so they go back to arguing. Why don’t they watch TV in separate rooms if they have different tastes?
Harvey shows up and tells them Gem got caught passing notes with someone lame. Somehow Sabrina thinks it wasn’t worth it that he came here to tell them that, when she’d obviously be happy that Gem got in trouble. He says he came here to chill, and she tells him to take up ice-skating. That’s Out of Character. He’s written to say they’re just cool “ for girls. “ I’m waiting for it to be explained that them acting narcissistic and selfish as Zelda explains is forced on them by the spell. That was the case with the sitcom too. Why is the episode annoying the audience with even more of Chloe and Sabrina’s selfish bickering?
Also why aren’t the aunts affected? I DON’T CARE about anything these two are saying. Chloe says she’s so out of here and leaves. Sabrina says she’s got three words, solo career. That’s how dumb this show makes her to force morals on her. SOMEHOW Zelda reveals they gave up their magic to be musicians for a few days. sand somehow it’s revealed that if the band breaks up before that point, they’ll be stuck in this alternate reality without getting their powers back. There is NO way the spell would be made like this.
I can understand the spell making the witches narcissistic to encourage them to end it earlier, but if the witches get stuck as musicians, the world would remain unfairly altered, which you’d think the witches who disapprove of talent spells enough to curse them, would never want to happen! Depending on how rare witches are on Earth, it would always be stuck in a state where there’s former witch rock stars that JUST became famous, since there’d constantly be witches who try out this spell. If there are tons of witch families on Earth, that’d mean a significant chunk of its rock bands are always former witches!
We get shown by someone that each of them went for unsuccessful solo careers, because they’re desperate to prove their ego is warranted. Chloe became part of a metal band, and accidentally blew up a drummer offscreen in a kids’ show. Zelda’s performance artist act has no music. Why?! Chloe goes to Sabrina, and the two of them keep saying they want their stuff back about each other. It’s so annoying.
Sabrina tells her to forget her locker combination, like she could do that. I don’t care if someone’s your friend, you should never tell them your locker combination, and the show should tell the audience that’s a bad idea. That’s no better than telling someone your password. They look sad, which makes it make sense when they reconcile so easily. Sabrina just says she wants her best friend back, and she easily agrees and they hug. Too bad the show hasn’t done anything so far to make me support their friendship.
Chloe’s either been interchangeable with Harvey, redundant with Sabrina, or the writer forced her to bicker with her. I’d like her to be a deep interesting character who has tons of good times with her instead. Sabrina says she wants to say how psyched they are that they’re all back together again. I never stopped noticing how unemotional she is. The spell reverses as they’re playing, returning their talent to awful, so all of their neighbors revolt and Salem gets made miserable, when he didn’t do anything bad in this episode.
This episode is what people think Sonic Underground is like without actually watching it; most of it is just a lame kiddy song, rather than the song being a small skippable part of the story, although the stuff that happens in it is just the characters playing music or running from fans, the stuff we’ve seen a million times that has to happen as a result of the stereotypical plot, where the main characters form a band. There’s no point in the episode existing because it’s just a cliché where Sabrina and Chloe have annoying bickering I DON’T CARE about! It sucks when the show keeps doing plots the sitcom did, WORSE.
HERE, I’m expected to believe the spell can’t be undone by them because they give up their powers to be rock stars together for a few days, and they can’t have reality go back to normal while their band is broken up. That’s only there to force the episode to last longer showing us how the characters would be as solo musicians. There’s no way Sabrina and Chloe would become selfish like this and ruin what would’ve been a barely above average episode, that’d only look good by this show’s standards, because they enjoy the results of magic, until their own personalities ruin it.
But they do become awful to have a lesson that fame makes you a narcissist. But it’s not necessarily true because fame doesn’t ALWAYS make you a narcissist, as we see with Hilda who gives money away to get eaten because she’s so generous. It wasn’t necessary to teach that lesson to the audience! We know and there’s almost no chance a fan of this show would become a famous rock star.
The sitcom did a better job by explaining that this only happened because of the magic stuff they ingested, but here the aunts AREN’T affected somehow when they’re no better than them. It makes sense that the spell makes them lose their powers because when they’re famous it’s too likely that mortals will see them use magic, and again I assume the maker of the spell wants the users of it to be a bit punished for using magic so selfishly.
And I have to assume the spell wears off after days because witches in charge don’t want reality permanently altered, by the whims of just a few witches, and don’t see the harm in just a few days that will retcon themselves anyways. But it doesn’t explain why the spell isn’t extremely temporary regardless of whether they break up or not, when the show acted like ALL talent spells were temporary earlier!
I don’t blame the characters for using the spell, both because it’d be fun, and because it’s easier than Zelda coming up with her OWN rhymes, to make that magic happen, and if she did THAT, she would’ve been able to reverse the spell instantly. It’s Out of Character of the aunts to be so lazy that they don’t even wanna come up with their own rhyming spells, when they always did it BEFORE the TV show.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 15 Paranormal Pi:
Harvey’s friend is somehow able to believe in blatantly untrue paranormal things reported on by a “ newspaper. “ It goes on long enough to make you enjoy when the stereotypical bully hits him even though hitting is wrong. Sabrina uses magic to embarrass him so that everyone in the table laughs. What was the point of this scene? Sabrina wonders why her family is going through so much trouble cleaning the house. Zelda uses magic so it’s hypocritical that Sabrina’s forced to dust the normal way. It’s explained that their uncle is the head of the family and sucks. Zelda should agree with Hilda, not scold her!
I also get to see Harvey’s annoying friend fall, and Harvey shows morality by going after someone that wronged him. This kid looks like a really bad rip-off of Miles from the sitcom. Miles had a normal voice, making me care about him. This guy… fuck it I’m calling him Miles because I don’t know his name. Miles notices a UFO and wants to follow it, and it turns out to be the flying chair of Sabrina’s uncle, which crashes through the house without him caring about the fact that his family will have to use magic to fix it up.
He calls this place a pig sty and says, “ Some honor, “ even though he should know HE CAUSED this house to look bad. He insults Hilda for being single, says he’ll speak slowly because Sabrina’s half-witch, which he doesn’t even mean if he’s not gonna speak slowly when he talks to her from now on, and refers to Quigley in an insulting way that sadly doesn’t match his personality. If witches are more advanced than mortals, then it would make sense that he’d think mortals are idiots. He says that since he’s mortal he’ll be dead soon.
Why doesn’t he make a big deal out of a mortal knowing about witches? Apparently, this is NORMAL, in the Animated Series universe. Quigley didn’t care when THEY were being insulted! He’s also surprised at Salem being here. Zelda’s upset because he got rid of her furniture. He also tells Quigley to make him a sandwich and Sabrina’s ordered to carry his luggage. This writer was working something out. Somehow the uncle thinks the aunts look terrible, and confuses Zelda for Hilda. Why does this guy have to be so unlikable if there’s so much focus on him, with no slapstick against him?
Looney Tunes is way better than this because it constantly gives villains punishment, and while I get wanting to punish these characters, silly cartoon slapstick would be better. Then the story goes back to blatantly wasting my time. Sabrina has no excuse for going back to her house until her uncle leaves. She could zap up her own food and water. She agrees to go along with her friend, who tells her that this is a drawing of the UFO. And she says she agreed because he’s her friend because he’s Harvey’s friend. She finds out she agreed to hunt down her own family.
Zelda’s told that the jerk needs his nail clippers. I guess he doesn’t wanna waste magic by catering to HIMSELF. I don’t know why the many witches in his family don’t use magic on HIM, turn him into a powerless frog. Quigley at least gets to tell him off that people are working hard for him, when every witch is equally powerful, equally capable of turning another into a frog. So what makes him think he can treat people that way? I get to see Quigley get warped to another dimension. Sadly the scene instantly ends and it’s not really shown why he’d hate it there other than him being away from home.
It seems like a vacation to me because he doesn’t have to serve on him anymore. I don’t blame the aunts for not warping him home. Miles activates a device and Harvey says Sabrina, because the device figures out Sabrina is paranormal. It has to be that a witch made it. It’d be lazy writing if just like in the sitcom they don’t explain that! Conveniently somehow Miles assumes the device needs to be tinkered with, while in the sitcom when this happened, all of Sabrina’s friends instantly got afraid of her and shunned her. Why did Sabrina’s hair get changed?
Sabrina says at least he tweaked it so that it won’t pick up her signals anymore. Why didn’t Sabrina do that? You’re supposed to make the main character a LITTLE competent at least! How am I supposed to think it makes sense then that the device will pick up THEIR signals because THEY aren’t half-witches? ‘Cause if half-witches are different in any way it has to be because they’re half as powerful, so they would be picked up, easier. I guess Sabrina’s aunt is kidding herself saying that Miles can’t really be a threat. The uncle says that Miles IS a threat, and they have to turn him into a frog.
The uncle agrees to leave Miles alone for a little while because he wants someone to perform a disgusting chore on his back. I assume the reason he’s not just saying, “ Let’s erase his memory, “ is that he just hates mortals that much. I have to assume the device is immune to magic so good thing that first episode exists. I guess they assume it’s always with him so they can’t just warp to it and smash it.
And it isn’t explained that they can freeze time and do it anyways. But it needs to be explained that the device was made by a witch who hates witches, because otherwise it couldn’t possibly be immune to magic! Sabrina throws out a magic beam to lure Miles away from her house. Because it doesn’t make him give up, this ends up pointless anyways!
Sabrina instantly thinks to start firing beams of magic to get the guy to chase after it. But you’d think that the device would STILL keep detecting it coming from her house, and he’d be more interested in continuing to go after the bigger source of magic. If she can do that, it makes sitcom Sabrina look stupid for not doing that.
You’d think her saying that he tinkered with it so it wouldn’t detect her would mean something, mean that it can’t detect her magic beams either, if it can’t even detect the place where the largest amount of that same magic, it’s detecting is. So it should’ve been Hilda going along with Miles invisibly and doing this.
Harvey wonders if the UFO already left, and it’s polite to say that he isn’t saying it WASN’T here. He usually wears a shirt with an alien face on it, so I’d expect Harvey to be the one with this device. He even believed in aliens in a few issues of the 70s comic! The uncle asks who touched his chair, and we get shown Miles. Hilda says all she did was fluff his pillows. He gets mad at her for ruining centuries of work because it takes forever to break in a chair. It sadly is realistic that someone would get mad about something that they’ve known for centuries being changed just because.
But it’s not realistic that a warlock would get furious because he can just use magic to instantly return it to normal. I just have to assume that the launch of the rocket was just because he was mad, but it’s forced that he would make THAT happen if he was mad rather than him causing an explosion. Miles makes a call, and then the uncle says he isn’t TOTALLY displeased and he won’t smite them. At least his temper CAN calm down confusingly fast. Is he bipolar? There is NO WAY a ton of people would come to Sabrina’s house just because one kid with a crazy reputation made one call that nobody would believe!
This would only make sense if someone filmed what happened. Ironically, it should have been Gem! She could’ve witnessed what he did. Finally Sabrina called the uncle a sour-faced old bully who doesn’t know what it’s like to have friends. She says the only reason people put up with him is fear and that she’s not afraid of him. He says nobody spoke to him in a while and it seems like he’ll inexplicably like it, because her grandma liked it in the comic, but he says he’ll hate it. He plans to use magic on the mortals outside of the house. Why won’t he zap Sabrina?
Salem said everyone in the city was here. I’m sure using magic against ALL of them would piss off the head witch by making magic way too obvious. He said earlier to make eye of newt for 40, 40’s a small city population. He’d know he’d need more Eye of Newt than that. Sabrina says “ I’m sorry, Pi. “ What, is his name freaking Pi?! Sabrina uses magic on a satellite dish. It fires magic at the magnet beam, that’s immune to magic, he ends up falling and the device burns itself and a radio signal talks to him. It’d just transform her hair! People laugh and one says it’s a radio signal and he gets abandoned.
Harvey doesn’t believe him, and he obviously needed to lie to him that he did believe him. It’s condescending of him to just say, “ I believe that you believe. “ The uncle says Sabrina should’ve turned Miles into bean dip and wonders what happened to family values, when he doesn’t mean what we’d mean. He’s got Hilda’s personality from the 70s but with none of the charm or charming moments. He notices there’s almost no food. He says he’s leaving, because I guess he cares so much about not wasting magic zapping UP food, and none of the family will ever see him again. How did the plot even happen?
Zelda’s smart so she’d have thought of zapping the fridge empty right away. Not to mention he could tell THEM to zap up food for him. Salem says he needs him to beg the Witches’ Council to return him to normal. Miles sees the flying chair. Why does Sabrina tell him to take a picture of it? She even summons a camera for him to use, so that Harvey can say wow about seeing a picture of it in a magazine. He says he’s sorry he doubted him.
At least this is harmless. People assume it’s aliens instead, even though it’s a flying chair, so it looks way more like a magical thing, but it makes sense because belief in aliens is far more common than belief in witches nowadays. But it’s still very weird that ANY Sabrina would help someone get proof of witchcraft made public.
This story’s annoying because it centers on two unlikable characters, as it’s about Sabrina’s friend using a device that detects magic somehow with no explanation for why JUST LIKE the sitcom, and Sabrina’s evil uncle just abusing her family by ordering them to slave on him while giving them unprovoked insults, and it has too much focus on that, but a part of me actually liked it because I’ve got grudges against all of these idiots. They should’ve been shown doing something to deserve it though.
The concept of Sabrina’s family having a head of the family has been done in the sitcom and better. He isn’t constantly using magic so he doesn’t look awesome. The matriarch in the sitcom spent a long time abusing Harvey over him knowing Sabrina’s a witch. This guy just acts like a typical cranky old man. Why doesn’t he always live here if he wants to be slaved over? I have to assume he has servants back at home too.
It should’ve been explained that the reason the witches don’t just turn him into a powerless object is that it’s illegal, and they think that’d be found out. People would “ miss him “ apparently. At least the show using stories from the sitcom sort of makes me feel better about not being able to review it, because I’m getting to give my thoughts on its episodes anyways. Why does the detector work? That’s the big plot hole.
At least him not constantly abusing magic means he’s not demonizing magic, even though, it does make Harvey’s friend look like an idiot, so for the most of the episode yeah it IS demonizing magic. It’s tame compared to MOST of the bad episodes of this show though, because magic saves the day!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 16 Anywhere but Here:
It starts with some guy doing an announcement about the place Sabrina’s going to, which takes too long since it’s just a mall. Harvey looks relatable by looking forward to the arcade. Zelda calls them kids, and there’s no reason Sabrina would say she’s not a kid, if she is for no good reason meta-wise! Someone’s stuck in the doorway so Sabrina uses magic to solve the problem in a way that makes magic too obvious even for Harvey. To be fair no one has any way of knowing the magic was from her so I get her not even being punished. Plus no one believes in witches so they would think it’s demons at worst.
For once her aunts have different personalities because while Zelda says her name disapprovingly, Hilda says “ Cool move. “ Sabrina ends up seeing a clown who has a voice so stupid that I can’t understand him. He gets relatable when he says he hates his job basically. Then Sabrina’s told no adult, no game. I get why she doesn’t zap one up, because it’s in public and Harvey’s nearby – never mind she’d do it and say, “ He was always there! “ – That’s also why she couldn’t just turn herself into an adult. He makes a suggestion which gets her to follow him and try to buy a CD.
The guy at the desk is somehow openly judgemental saying its name condescendingly. It’s hard to believe he’d be so bad at customer service. Surely he’d have to constantly deal with customers who don’t share his musical tastes. I guess he only sticks with the job because he can’t find another job or think of another that he’d like. At least she finds her CD. And Harvey gets to enjoy listening to music. But somehow she can’t even buy the CD because she’s too young. Harvey even admits that that’s dumb. Now I’m gonna look it up. I GOOGLED it and got NOTHING.
Like with the game that’s no adult no game, I have to assume she didn’t KNOW there’d be mature content that wouldn’t appeal to her and that’s why she tried to get it. She just seems too goody-goody to WANT a “ mature “ CD or a mature game. She isn’t allowed to see a movie she wants either. That woman wouldn’t smirk! It makes no sense that even when she’s separated from Harvey and other mortals she STILL doesn’t shapeshift into an adult, even though she shapeshifts in one of the previous episodes.
So the plot would’ve gone a completely different way if it was written with talent, not to mention she would’ve just zapped up the stuff she wanted to buy! And I have to just assume she didn’t do that because she thinks it’d be wrong to do that when she could just pay for them but she could just write down a reminder to herself saying to pay for this when she’s an adult! Sabrina says that if she was an adult she’d get to do whatever she wanted.
Somehow the adult in front of her doesn’t instantly tell her that she’s wrong because she’d still have a boss in most cases telling her what to do anyways, and she might still hate her job even if she was self-employed. Harvey then comforts Sabrina and Zelda tells her it’s time to leave even though the two of them want to do a lot more here. No good excuse for this, she’s selfish!
Sabrina complains to Salem, he refuses to show her compassion because he’s busy goofing off, and when she says he doesn’t remember being a kid, thankfully saying he’s creepy, he says spitefully that she doesn’t have the brains to know when she’s got it made, and talks in a clearly spiteful tone before handing her a magical ticket to adulthood. Does he not remember how awful it was to do school work and homework? I mean he’s not even a typical adult because he doesn’t have a job to put up with, so, why would he be jealous of her being a kid? It’s been centuries since he had been a real adult.
So he wouldn’t even remember how much it sucks to be an adult. She thanks him. He says she has to undo the spell before 24 hours or she’ll be stuck that way. There’s NO way in hell that’d be the case. Witches would be complaining about that in droves, the Witches’ Council wouldn’t want them to be stuck that way, and they wouldn’t force every witch to cast a spell to make this have to be the case for every ticket like this. Salem would’ve just been able to cast a spell for her that would not have the 24 hour limit.
So he gave her this ticket just to be extra spiteful, but that’s redundant when she’s gonna hate her time anyways. Sabrina goes to her new house and finds out that her house with Harvey is too small because it’s all he can afford with his lame job as a door-to-door salesman. It was normal for him to be a loser in the 70s comics. His acting is so bad when he says that next thing he knew he was all grown up, and when he says what about the kids. Usually speaking with too little emotion is Sabrina’s thing. Somehow magic kept their kid voices. Also the kids are horribly misbehaving unrealistically much.
She wouldn’t drink pregnant so this is impossible! And her kids would have magic, if weak magic. And Harvey says she can’t take them to a PG-13 movie. Why couldn’t she have gone to the PG-13 movie anyways, since Harvey was right there to babysit her kids? If she was smart she’d brainwash him to agree to do that and go anyways. There’s been episodes of the show where she’s fine with brainwashing so she wouldn’t not do that, when she even brainwashes Quigley later!
Sabrina also says she doesn’t know how to cook because she’s just 12. Okay, but her aunts could’ve taught her how, so this still could’ve been avoided, but I don’t know how to cook, so this isn’t forced. It’s just that Sabrina shouldn’t have been written to say this is the case because she’s a kid. It pretends that every kid doesn’t know how to cook and therefore this is a fair challenge for her. Sabrina finds out she can’t use magic because of the spell. So the spell isn’t accurately portraying adulthood for her. It already wasn’t because she would know how to cook by now most likely if she WAS an adult.
But to be fair her magic wouldn’t have fixed all of her problems here, especially if she’d wanna hide it. She might still think she’s too moral to brainwash her kids into being good, because her aunts didn’t do that to her, and she’d be an adult by that point so she might have changed from how she is now. Then the adult in front of her says that eating pizza as an adult has it go straight to your hips. Somehow it literally does right away. So? When Sabrina really grows up she’ll zap away any weight she gained anyways, like Hilda in the 90s comic.
Besides it’s not even a guarantee that eating pizza as an adult will have it go straight to your hips. Sabrina tries to play an arcade game and somehow, it’s totally unrealistic that the teenagers tell her that she’s not supposed to play the game because she’s an adult. While in the 2000s this attitude was common most people wouldn’t do this. The civilians in this show are ridiculously rude. First off how does the writer not know that adults play video games all the time? Second how did the teenagers even KNOW that she wasn’t a teenager? She isn’t drawn to look that much older.
Besides, if she had her magic, she’d just zap him anyways and get on with it. And it’s also unrealistic that Harvey somehow thought to come here and tell her that the kids are getting cranky so she has to come home. He’s so selfish. Then instead of Sabrina simply playing a game on a console or computer, she doesn’t even though she’s a rebel, the washing machine overflows with bubbles because Sabrina doesn’t know how to use it, when an accurate portrayal of adulthood would magically make her know how. She gets talked to over the phone and eventually says she needs money for the rent.
The story’s even more unreasonably sadistic because somehow she’s working for Gem. Gem wouldn’t settle for a job as the boss in an office. And Sabrina’s overwhelmed with paperwork, after she somehow got hired right away with no real credentials. I assume that makes sense though because Gem wanted to get to bully her every day. Then Sabrina wants to go to the bathroom and makes a call, and gets told by Gem that she’d have to get a piece of paper that’s a map to go to the bathroom in the office. Somehow she gets handed money right away and goes to a bank.
Somehow, the bank teller keeps taking away the dollar bills she would’ve gotten right in front of her, continuously saying that it’s taxes. To be fair, Salem gave her the ticket, so all of this needlessly mean stuff can be explained away as Salem making this miserable for her on purpose to guarantee out of spite that she’ll hate being an adult, and it doesn’t even have to be out of spite, because if she liked being an adult, she would stay this way forever. And if she did, her aunts would go ballistic on him for taking her away from them sending her to a parallel universe, where she must have replaced her alternate self.
She’s gotta be gone forever because time isn’t progressing in the old universe. Her POOR alternate self! Sabrina somehow doesn’t immediately have access to her way to get home. She sees a photo from the photo album and realizes that she missed out on every big milestone of a kid’s life, because SOMEHOW she isn’t part of any of those photos, even though she would’ve been here because she replaced her alternate universe self, hence why Harvey isn’t questioning why he’s married to her. So that self would’ve had photos of herself in the album.
But this could be explained away as, Salem made it this way because he knew she’d react like this. Salem had her get sent to a universe like this to increase the chance that she’d regret the spell. She goes from going into a cab to asking a kid for a skateboard. Somehow the kid calls her an old lady, and I don’t see why a cop starts going after her. I guess it’s for breaking some very minor traffic law. She finds the stopwatch and says a spell and turns it. Why does the watch require you to take so long to activate it, when time could run out on you before you get to activate it?
She uses it and somehow she makes a fool out of her self by happily telling Harvey that he looks how he’s supposed to look. She says she wants to buy a huge pizza and then rearrange all her stuffed animals. She also somersaults and says she’s enjoying being a kid. But if she stays fit, she could somersault as an adult too.
I knew the title was familiar; it’s that episode the Mysterious Mr. Enter reviewed, but the title wasn’t obvious enough about what the premise would be about, and it’s yet another mean-spirited episode of the show that only exists to shove a message down your throat, so he had every reason to hate it, but this episode isn’t so bad of an example of that as a lot of the other stories in this series with the same problem.
At least here all of the times where the story was unrealistically mean to Sabrina could’ve been easily explained as, Salem had the ticket make her go to a reality like this on purpose, to guarantee that she’ll wanna go back to her old life.
While Mr. Enter felt like Salem was just being a dick, and it did seem like Salem was being spiteful and really wanted to prove to her that adulthood sucked, the family would tear Salem a new one if Sabrina didn’t decide to return to her old life. Even if he wasn’t spiteful, he’d still have every incentive to make sure she has a miserable time. And he might have felt bad about simply brainwashing her OUT OF wanting to be an adult.
So unlike the rest of the show where there’s no excuse for her life being so miserable, at least THIS episode makes sense. Her not having powers while she’s an adult, prevents the plot from making me wonder why she’s not casting spells to make her life easier, when really she’d avoid most of these problems. I’ve seen worse episodes, but this is still relentlessly annoying.
But out-of-universe, when it comes to how the message is being given to the AUDIENCE, Mr. Enter’s right to hate how the message is mean and heavy-handed. The message that you should enjoy being a kid while it lasts IS a good one encouraging having fun, but it fails to show off the good things about being an adult, except with Salem. There’s plenty of people who aren’t adults yet who are depressed, and the last thing they’d need is an episode telling them that they have nothing to look forward to in life.
The episode needed to have more time in its ending instead of wasting a bunch of time with Sabrina inexplicably losing her watch and needing it back. After she got home, she should’ve been told that when she grows up, she won’t have to live in a small house OR get a job, because she’d have tons of money from pawning off jewelry she’d zap up… or even just family heirlooms! Also it’s very unlikely that she’d have tons of poorly behaved kids, especially if she can talk Harvey into birth control. She’d sterilize herself after this! But I guess it’s going with the assumption that the birth control didn’t work.
The audience should’ve been told that not everyone’s guaranteed to have kids. She would’ve gone to the movie anyways because Harvey was there to watch them. In fact she goes to the arcade anyways! The audience also should have been told that not everyone’s guaranteed to hate their job. But I’m sure most people do. And it’s still possible that someone could have a life like this, EXCEPT THIS FELON.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 17 Nothin’ Says Lovin’ Like Something from a Coven:
Sabrina complains that she doesn’t do enough socializing because she keeps spending the evening being forced to help Quigley with his chip collection. Another moment where he’s an inexcusable jerk. Harvey’s friend is just annoying, somehow thinking they’ll wanna help with spitballs. It turns out everyone in home room is invited to Gem’s party. Why the hell does Sabrina ask why Gem invited everyone but her?! Sure there never is a reason for Gem hating Sabrina, but she knows she does regardless. Zelda says she has to go to the Halloween ball with her, as she hasn’t missed one in a long time.
She’s actually worried because Uncle Quigley won’t let them go because he hates them partying with other witches, even though she could just warp to the party anyways. Who the hell he IS to determine what their social lives are like?! “ Uncle? “ He’s not HER uncle! Then Quigley shows up and wastes a bunch of time and Salem makes a sarcastic remark at his expense and everyone thankfully laughs at them. Quigley was being mocked for his hobby.
Sabrina comes home angry and I guess she used magic to put red electricity around her head just to look menacing, when she should know she isn’t allowed to do that. Good thing she isn’t punished. She complains to Salem about Gem humiliating her. Salem lampshades her wanting to go to the party when she hates Gem. She didn’t want to go to Gem’s party in Witch Switch! As usual I wish it was explained that Sabrina could use brainwashing to get invited, but is against it, even if it would be inconsistent because she’s fine with brainwashing.
Instead because convolution, she tells the students that SHE’S throwing a party, despite how restrictive her uncle is. I like that at one point Gem looks embarrassed and walks backwards while the students are on Sabrina’s side. But the voice of Harvey’s friend is just grating. After Sabrina lists off ingredients, why does a glutton like Salem say stomach pump because he’s seen her book? I guess Salem’s against brainwashing her so that’s why he doesn’t, use magic to make her good at cooking!
Eventually Salem has to remind her somehow she promised everyone that Quigley wouldn’t be at the house. Why did he have to remind her? But I like that it reveals that Quigley’s even unpopular at her school. Also I just have to assume she thinks she’s too moral to turn him into a statue the whole party or something. Eventually he wishes he could go to an auction.
The whole family encourages him and he says that he couldn’t leave them all alone without adult supervision. It’s lampshaded that they’re over 600 years old anyways, and Quigley gets convinced to leave. Salem protests and I find it creepy that Sabrina strokes his chin to make him purr because he has human intelligence. Oh right Salem’s an adult so Quigley leaving WOULDN’T make them without adult supervision!
It’s amazing that Hilda tells Sabrina “ good luck with your party, “ because I didn’t expect her to be as lenient about this as 80s Hilda would be! The sitcom aunts would glare at Sabrina for throwing a party! They use magic to get new outfits, and it turns out Sabrina burnt the pizza. No oven timer to PREVENT THIS?! How?! Why can’t she do anything right in this show?! It’s not funny! The doorbell rings and she’s upset. Finally Salem lampshades her being scared because the food’s not ready because she IS a witch.
She casts a spell saying “ enormous pizza you will make. “ But SOMEHOW magic interprets this to mean that the appliances will make pizza automatically. It could’ve easily been that the magic would just create a pizza. She would’ve done that. If she can do stuff like turn a bridge to stone through shapeshifting she could shapeshift the air to make a pizza. She would’ve done that, because there’s no way THAT would backfire! If she can turn a bridge to stone she can shapeshift the air to make a pizza. I assume that her leaving the appliances alone to answer the door means that a huge pizza is gonna be made.
Harvey’s friend convinces him to plan on sneaking in the back door to scare them. At first everyone’s quiet and Sabrina awkwardly tries but fails to make them all start conversing. Why isn’t the music on? Now I hate to assume they came here specifically to humiliate her. But they sure went out of their way to go all the way here to do that unrealistically instead of doing something more fun. I say that ‘cause you’d think they’d have plenty of experience with conversing at parties.
At one point, one of them tries to humor her for no reason, and Gem glares at her, so hopefully this is why they were unrealistically silent at the party. She must be bribing them. Sabrina tells them all what to do and it actually works. Then what took so long? She goes into the room, and somehow she screams multiple times at what she sees. And no one follows her here?! It’s just not Sabrina at all, to have Sabrina screaming. It’s so disrespectful to her. She could’ve just used magic to undo the spell instantly! She could’ve just used magic to undo the spell instantly. The whole kitchen is a mess.
Thankfully she does think to undo the spell, after Gem witnessed it all, would hear her say the spell, and told everyone and they somehow believed her enough to follow her into the room. She’d have heard Gem in the living room. They see the pizzas and Sabrina thanks her for accidentally complimenting her. The fact that nobody believes in witches is really the only flimsy excuse for why she doesn’t know she’s magical at this point since she doesn’t say, “ You’re a witch! “ but that’s smart of Gem, never mind. So I guess she thinks demons cleaned the kitchen just to spite HER.
What kid wouldn’t think Gem knows she’s a witch here and get confused when she’s surprised by it again? Why does Gem get left alone with the pizzas? So she ends up using salt to ruin the pizza for everyone else. She also shook the soda. The doorbell rings, I wish she’d just erase everyone’s memories to get a do-over because I don’t hate her THIS much… And then someone with a guitar and a lame instrument shows up out of nowhere to play kazoo music in the room. He expects money and she at least gives it to him while mad about one lousy song.
Sabrina angsts that she could never return to school after this even though obviously she could erase their memories of this! It’s frustrating, because that’s what you’d do in her place. That would make the tension pointlessly fake, but I could forgive that since even being judged for a couple seconds is STILL punishment enough, so I still wouldn’t be jealous of her when she’d still FEEL humiliated. And it’s easy to assume she can’t erase memories when she’s the most incompetent Sabrina. Little Sabrina is way more competent than her, so her being a preteen never worked as an excuse for me.
She summons a spell book and reads that she could cast a spell to put life back into a dead party. They’d hear this. Why is she surprised at seeing a scary alien who juggles and walks into the house? Why does this appear if she wouldn’t have imagined it because the book somehow didn’t include a picture of it, and describe what would happen? It would just put life back into a dead party. And as usual it’s forced that she doesn’t instantly undo the spell and instead eventually he gets thrown down the basement stairs. I guess he’s pretty hardy!
This spell means that Harvey and his friend’s scary outfits are gonna be even more scary to Sabrina as they’ll blend in with people like the flying skeleton. Why is this a part of a spell to make a party better?! Witches aren’t stereotypical in this show. And why didn’t Gem scream right after she saw green light around a door? Instead she only screams after looking in the room. So I have to assume that witches made green light from magic, impossible for mortals to perceive. It’s satisfying to see Gem see scary things and scream a lot.
I like that it’s just her being scared. But logically everyone in the house would hear her scream instantly. And it doesn’t make up for all the awkwardness Sabrina’s going through with her party being ruined. At first I thought Sabrina knew Harvey’s friend was here, but even after she hears his distinctive voice she still throws him in the basement. He even has the same outfit. His voice is worse than Manic’s, that’s why I’m complaining about it. Her aunts warp home. And Harvey shows up and Gem runs away screaming, and sees all the scary creatures in the basement and screams.
It’s annoying that Sabrina doesn’t enjoy this, because seeing the annoying characters suffer is the whole appeal of watching the show. I like that we see Chloe tell her off that it would’ve been a great party if Gem didn’t try to ruin it. It also would have been a great party if people were confident enough to start conversing right away, instead of just trying to humor her, so it’s not fair for her to entirely place the blame on Gem. Harvey reassures the mortals that all of the monsters are just people in costumes and masks.
I guess the monsters are pretty nice, since they don’t correct Harvey. So they’re welcome in the party after all, and everyone dances to the music. Why does Gem get to enjoy dancing with a skeleton even though he unrealistically roars at her? I thought when the mortals saw the monsters they’d say they were cool and that the Halloween party had great special effects, which would be nicer, like in the sitcom, but this is more realistic than the sitcom because why did they ever think that stuff like talking and moving furniture and stuff could be achieved by technology?
But somehow the students aren’t impressed or even react at all when they see the monsters. Why do we have to see Quigley get told the truth? Thankfully he says he can’t be too angry because he got a potato chip. Why would he be angry at all, the psychotic control freak? But then despite complimenting their honesty, he says she’s still grounded for two weeks!… Don’t you wanna reward her honesty?! An alien lands on him somehow not killing him but the catharsis is ruined as he says make that three weeks. She should learn to stop being honest with him because he just punishes her for it! WHY is he hurt offscreen?!
If her aunts were so fine with her having a party, there is no way they wouldn’t completely overpower his authority. The party didn’t actually inconvenience the house. OK the alien landing on him did but magic could be used to clean it all up instantly, and it wasn’t a mess by the time he got back anyways. So it goes without saying that it’s horrible writing to ground her because she did nothing wrong to deserve it! Sure in a meta logic sense, normal parents would ground their child for throwing a party without permission, but HER REAL PARENTAL FIGURES are okay with it! Why was the writer so sadistic with the ending?
If I were a writer for this show I would just not write Quigley at all, which does happen. But it doesn’t ruin the episode because we don’t see her suffer through being grounded, and the episode instantly ends and only Quigley wanted this, so MAYBE her aunts never enforced his decision anyways. Quigley didn’t get nearly enough slapstick at the end. It’d be better if he fell down the stairs like Chis in Sonic X because that’d get him hurt MULTIPLE times.
This was a boring episode about Sabrina throwing a party because Gem didn’t invite her to HERS, even though she didn’t immediately kick her out of her party the LAST time she went to her party. And a Halloween party episode was already done in the sitcom and the 90s comic so there’s no point in watching or making the episode, because just like in those stories, monsters show up, but this time the students somehow don’t even emote when they see them, so I have to assume they always assumed they were people in masks and costumes, and make-up, to explain why them blinking didn’t freak them out.
They would’ve at least been startled. Not only is the episode cliché when it DOES actually get going, but before that it spent way too much time on the party having a hard time getting off the ground, and Gem ruining the pizza as somehow she was trusted to be alone with it.
It’s lame when all the conflict is forced, as it can make the writer look sadistic when just lazy writing could be the real explanation. I wouldn’t say that it’s forced that Gem is HERE, though because she would’ve crashed the party even if she wasn’t invited. But there was no reason to be invite her. I guess the moral of the story was supposed to be not to throw parties, but it never showed the real consequences of them so it isn’t convincing. Quigley only found out the party happened and grounded her because she grabbed the Idiot Ball and told him when NO kid would, so that’s not a real consequence to parties either.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 18 Once Upon a Whine:
Sabrina uses magic to send hankies over to her and make them float, and eventually she puts a bow tie or kerchief on, and Quigley the asshole asks her where she thinks she’s going. She wants to go with Chloe when apparently Saturday is Chore Day. Sadist makes HER say it. I thought it was Family Day. Why does he make her suffer during the week, instead of one of the two days that’s supposed to be a day-off for Sabrina, why doesn’t she just turn him into a statue until she’s done what she wants to do?!
Why does the show ever dedicate any time to Quigley? It can’t give any enjoyment to the audience or be interesting to watch. And he doesn’t say he’s gonna pay her for the chores. But at least we can easily assume that. Quigley says you should follow the rules twice, ignoring that right before this Sabrina mentioned, “ child labor laws. “ He’s also an asshole by saying no magic, because he wants to torture her because of his personal bias. He SHOULD KNOW this is only gonna make her use magic more than ever when she’s grown up just to spite him.
And she probably would’ve used magic for chores when she grew up no matter what he did, because even Zelda does that. She should say that right now! So she does the chores the boring way. I at least liked seeing her wearing a bandana. She tells Quigley to hand over a toy rocket for her to dust it. I wonder if it’s gonna get broken, which is gonna be his fault for not putting it somewhere where it COULDN’T get broken.
He wonders if a don’t touch sign will remind her not to touch it and she sounds sarcastic when saying that’ll help. Yeah if he REALLY cared about it, he’d tell the aunts to cast a spell to put a force field around it, AND keep it on the floor so that it can’t get damaged from getting knocked off. I assume the reason SHE doesn’t cast a spell to make a force field, is that he keeps saying no magic. But that’s not an excuse for nobody in the house casting a spell to make it indestructible! He would never know!
Sabrina reaches for the Spookie Jar, and NOW an alarm goes off and a message tells her that it’s for emergencies only without clarifying what an emergency could possibly BE, and says that traces of magic could get left on her fingers if she washes it and doesn’t wash her hands. I wish this was explained with the magic book earlier in the franchise. Also this isn’t the case, in the other episodes. I hate Salem’s smug face. Somehow she assumes that the message was lying to her when warning her to force the plot in a bullshit lazy way.
She calls it a dumb rule. Having DUMB RULES destroys respect for ALL of them, parents. So her just holding a book causes the creation of a person who’s also annoying to the AUDIENCE in a forced way, when she didn’t want her to show up. And Sabrina just stands there gawking the whole time when she’d really point to get rid of her instantly. Salem had no excuse for not pointing to wash Sabrina’s hands as soon as he knew she was disobeying the rule. He also acts unlikable by walking away and refusing to help her, when he could end the plot right now.
Sabrina lectures the idiot on the rule about picking up after herself. Why doesn’t she turn her into a statue? She wouldn’t trust her to follow any rules at this point, let alone a rule to not do anything. Instead the girl approaches Harvey. She has such an annoying laugh. Again there’s no excuse for annoying the AUDIENCE. Chloe knowing about magic only causes Sabrina to waste our time giving her exposition. Then the toy rocket gets broken.
And the reason it was broken wasn’t explained, because the writer and artist were too untalented to think about how it could possibly make sense that it would be broken, ‘cause she’d have to intentionally drop it. Chloe says that if this is Cinderella, no wonder her sisters hated her. She could’ve easily not been Cinderella. It goes without saying that she wasn’t like that, so why is she Cinderella? Salem advises Sabrina to use the Spookie Jar taking forever waiting through his BORING dialogue.
What’s all of this bullshit about how she’s only allowed to use it for an emergency now when previous episodes had her AUNTS allow her to use it for inane reasons? Spookie wouldn’t need to exist if the episodes consisted of multiple stories because then it wouldn’t need worthless padding. She could conserve magic by using a magical necklace to cast magic instead, and that’d be faster! Sabrina says she sent the wrong person to Once Upon a Time Land. That’d never happen because she would’ve been imagining HER getting warped there!
Salem expects me to believe Harvey changing a fairy tale would have serious consequences, even though witches can erase memories so he wouldn’t have to remember it, and why would it matter if one book is changed? He smirks for no reason like he’s lying. He must have been sent to another universe that’s at a point in time where he was sent to it. Even then, it would only change the book in Sabrina’s universe if that’s what the spell was supposed to do. And why would her spell ALSO include the clause that, if the wrong person was sent there it’d also change the book?
Sabrina somehow thinks she needs SALEM’S help to save Harvey when really she’d just point to warp him back to her right away. The writer wrote himself into a corner and had to have this happen to have the rest of the episode. And Salem references spy fiction wasting a bunch of time. It’s trying to be funny but the episode’s so frustratingly disrespectful and preachy that I hate it. Chloe wishes she could go. Why wouldn’t she? She accompanied her on her last adventure. Sabrina uses a letter and warps to Harvey, and for some reason at first he doesn’t recognize her until he does.
And it’s SO unlikely that the stepsisters would look and sound like Gem. OK she should have explained that this is another universe, but that is a given, and in another universe Gem’s family line could exist, too. They encounter some other fairy tale characters, which is a complete waste of time that’s painfully unfunny. I do like seeing that Goldilocks is being arrested for trespassing, even if that’s not hard to think up.
Sabrina finds out the fairy godmother is listed in the yellow pages and calls her on a payphone, only for her to just get the answering machine, which tells her she went to the fairy godmother’s annual convention. Sabrina hammers in the message of the episode. Sabrina complains that they only have until noon before they’re stuck here forever. Again she says she’ll never break the rules again. Why write that, don’t you realize everyone’s gonna know that she won’t keep true to that, and it’d never change anyone’s mind, so it’s just pointless? So much of the story is a waste of time.
Sabrina finally does see the convention, which has the godmothers talk about boring normal work things, wanting medical expenses paid. I wish I had a lot more stuff like this, in Once Upon a Time Land. Cinderella’s godmother says she needs therapy because her client’s so annoying. Sabrina somehow has to take a long time talking to her, and she says the only way out is for her to put on a pair of shoes, and somehow it has to be before noon. How is a fairy godmother a lot weaker than a witch? She says her spell always makes everyone involved forgetful for NO REASON!
And she warps her home. If she can warp her home, there’s NO way she wouldn’t just permanently send her home, and Harvey! I get her spitefully wanting to punish her for failing to get Cinderella back, actually I don’t, because even SHE hates her. So why would she want her back in the book? I get her wanting to punish her, for wasting her time talking to her so much when she’s a witch. The show doesn’t have the self-awareness to establish that and instead we’re supposed to think she’s a nice person. Cinderella refuses the slippers, and just wants to go barefoot, like that’s in-character.
What is it about bad cartoons and demonizing Disney princesses, with both this and AoStH? Sabrina gives her fashion advice to manipulate her and she takes forever to put the shoes back on. Harvey gets warped home and says that while he feels like something happened that he should be mad at her about, he forgot it and is dizzy. It was NEVER explained to the fairy godmother that Harvey’s a mortal needing his memory erased. Why can’t Sabrina be shown as competent enough to make him forget that herself? This show has no respect for preteens.
Quigley thinks it’s Salem’s fault his toy rocket broke, and Sabrina self-destructively owns up to it. I don’t think it’s a good message to teach people to be STUPID ENOUGH say that they broke the rule when they don’t have to because they could get fired for it as an adult, and what if they have kids? The story keeps dragging on and Sabrina decides that rules exist for a reason and she and Chloe almost get hit by a vehicle, so she gets her point. I think Chloe’s supposed to be smart?!
This boring frustrating episode was about traces of magic from the Spookie Jar on Sabrina’s hand somehow causing an annoying person to get summoned from another universe, even though Sabrina didn’t want that. There’s no way she wouldn’t have washed her hands of the traces of magic when it warned her that bad stuff could happen otherwise! It should’ve spent the episode punishing her for breaking a rule that a kid would believably break! Last episode already punished her for breaking a rule because she was punished for throwing a party, and THAT’S a believable rule for a kid to break!
It’s not her fault she had the Idiot Ball, and speaking of that somehow she doesn’t instantly point to warp the disobedient idiot back home, and somehow Salem’s also too dumb to think of it. AND they’re too dumb to think of simply turning her into a statue.
So the whole episode can happen, with her wandering around another universe seeing fairy tale characters with almost nothing new done with the idea. So it’s a creative wasteland. Cinderella wasn’t like this so she didn’t have to be called Cinderella, and there’s no way what’s supposed to be a sympathetic main character in a fairy tale like hers would’ve been like that in her book in-universe, not that it even mattered to the plot because she learned her lesson regardless that god forbid she break one rule. You don’t teach a message by pissing the audience off. “ Don’t break the rules “ is way too general for a show that’s already dedicated to teaching this message.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 19 Documagicary:
Hilda asks Sabrina if she loves shopping at the Nether World mall. Her aunts are selfishly forcing her to carry all of the gifts herself. I have a feeling that’s not normal for parents. Why would Hilda think she enjoys this? Her aunts insist that Sabrina should suffer through this as a rite of passage. But there is no way any witch would carry the gifts instead of making them float behind her, like 70s Sabrina did with her books. So there’s no reason her aunts would make her CARRY them to experience what witch shopping is like. Again they’re opposed to her frivolously using magic but THEY do it.
Then they go to see a celebrity, and I assume the voice actress was directed to make her sound super annoying just to force you to hate her. Sabrina bets that her life is better because she’s not told what to do even though she still would have a boss, not to mention an obligation to her fans, and as usual her aunts waste their breath trying to talk her out of this without doing so properly by saying this woman has a boss. Sabrina waits alone, somehow unsupervised, and then an alien scares her.
He compliments her scared reaction, even though it’s not impressive because it was a genuine reaction, not a display of acting skill. His voice sucks. Somehow he even scares himself. How is he so desperate for actors that he’s turning to a random girl on the street? He also offers her a contract to sign. This seems too easy so I’m wondering if this is a scam. She’s told she’ll have to go through a documentary about her life, and she’ll get money.
She somehow thinks she’ll have to not take orders from anyone just because she’ll be a celebrity, even though the law would still require her to live with her parental figures, who could’ve prevented this by supervising her. Quigley tells Sabrina that it’s not a good idea, and naturally it sounds fishy to him and he asks what they know about this director. Salem says Sabrina’s whiny and she uses magic to trap him in pots. Somehow Quigley doesn’t tell her off, nor does her aunts because they’re used to it and he’s more interested in warning her about not signing.
He also says she’ll have to work hard, and that the celebrity’s JOB is to look happy, while Sabrina might have to deal with even more demands than before. Why isn’t he being more clear about those? Salem reasons that maybe Sabrina would end up rich enough to hire a GOOD chef. Or one of the many witches here could zap up better food. Sabrina keeps whining, as if she never heard him, and he at least lampshades that he’s a pushover. It’s pure plot convenience because he’s never a pushover about GROUNDING her!
It IS realistic that she just confidently convinces herself she could handle the hard work. Not only is she a preteen but she doesn’t know exactly what the hard work will be. She wakes up and screams at being greeted by a camera. It’s annoying that the director tells her off. He tells her to make the bed with magic, because the show’s called That Witch, not, “ that boring mortal girl. “ No wonder witch isn’t in this show’s title. This better not be trying to give a middle finger to literally everyone who criticizes the show for her not using enough magic.
He says he’ll get low ratings if she doesn’t use more magic. And I get sad from remembering that this show has multiple seasons. Sabrina’s told to fly to school, and then pressured to turn Gem into a frog. She turns her into a mouse. This has to be intentional to spite him. If she even can be pressured into doing that, I wish she did that to Quigley. She says she doesn’t usually take care of her problems with magic. Bullshit. Why does no one in the hall hear the director? I wish it was explained that a spell was cast to make it this way. I like seeing Gem get turned into a mouse and run away.
I hope the writer doesn’t think I should be opposed to her overuse of magic, because I love it. It’s objectively more entertaining. Then there’s an annoying happy cheesy song about Sabrina. It kinda reminds me of the tone of the 70s cartoon’s theme song. We see Other Realmers dance and enjoy watching the show outside. Somehow even the celebrity from earlier is jealous of her even though she’s just another TV star and she’d be used to there being billions of other TV stars out there. Surely this couldn’t be the first time a TV star was more popular than HER.
Sabrina says she’s a star even though she already was. She’s somehow woken up at 4 AM. She wasn’t woken up at 4 AM LAST time so, wha? She’s brushing her teeth, and the director tells her she should brush with more conviction, somehow not doing that, LAST time she woke up, and he proves that she’s had tons of takes. WHY didn’t we see her brush with magic? It’s not like him to NOT tell her to use magic to brush her teeth. Then he complains when she’s doing her homework.
Then she goes into the attic somehow thinking she’ll be alone to write in her diary, but conveniently sees the camera and sees that her diary got a note on it. She throws the diary, and at least the director’s still acting nice to her. Then she’s told to go through a special appearance. All of this is forced because Sabrina would brainwash the director out of any behavior she disapproves of, because there’s an episode where she brainwashes her stepmom to be like her. We don’t need a third episode with a message that being famous is horrible.
Again there is no chance that a random kid watching the show would ever get to be famous. And if not every episode is mandated to have a message, that makes it even more bullshit that any of them do. It comes off like the writers are lazy and out of ideas because it’s so easy to write a story about a message about how to live your life. Plenty of other shows have done that so all that you have to do is copy them. She’s told she’s not allowed to go with Harvey, and she complains that she’s being bossed around and quits. Wouldn’t she have done this a little earlier?
She’s told she signed a contract that’ll have her get stuck in the show for centuries. Somehow, SOMEHOW the contract doesn’t force her to use magic in her show. Somehow he didn’t think ahead enough to put that in the contract, like he somehow didn’t know that sometimes witches are being raised in the Mortal Realm to NOT use magic all the time. I assume that he thinks he isn’t allowed to magically edit the contract so that it will say she has to use magic in the show. But he thinks he’s allowed to have a contract in the first place!
He wants to force her to use magic because he thinks his show would get cancelled otherwise. He’s told that he’s in front of something that could wipe out all of witchdom. There is NO WAY that Tim the Witch Smeller could do that, if he hasn’t done it in centuries. I was always worried that he’d be brought back. But this is such a forced way to do it. There’s no way this guy would be allowed to casually walk down the hall of a prison and just casually unlock Tim’s cell. He’s a director, not a prison warden. The writer didn’t even TRY. He should’ve just had a witch create a witch hunter.
His camera man would stop him. HE has magic. He should’ve just had a witch create a witch hunter, instead of freeing Tim. I assume this guy doesn’t have magic. I know him being in a cell was inconsistent, but it makes sense that he’d be picked up from the house he was in and put in a prison. It was a mistake, but it makes sense that the head witch would be notified about him. He then uses something to trap Sabrina’s family in the house, and he scares her with a magic scrambler.
When it turns out they ran out of film, he somehow says to please hurry, instead of just going after them with the device anyways, so they have time to run away. Even if he was being bribed, he would’ve cared more about chasing witches. I would’ve been more grateful that he came back because his immunity to magic means there’s finally a great villain for Sabrina to deal with. But he shows up way too late to save the episode. It should’ve been explained the main villain of this is immune to brainwashing magic so it could make sense that things got to this point.
Sabrina finds in the attic a blanket that could teleport somebody anywhere. She asks Tim who freed him from prison. The director makes sure that it won’t be recorded anymore. Then the director admits he freed Tim and starts ranting like a madman on camera, with Salem recording him. I guess it’s realistic that someone would wanna brag if they’re arrogant but he could have easily NOT ranted. Tim says “ and I thought I was nasty. “ Salem reveals that he had a camera that could send a live recording of the director ranting to the exact same audience. To be fair he IS a witch.
The director gets warped away because he’s in trouble now. It’s convenient that the director doesn’t assume Salem brainwashed him into saying this. I guess he hated him and WANTED an excuse to fire him. Then after Sabrina talks for a while, during which Tim could’ve easily done something to her, a blanket gets dropped on him to warp him to prison. It should’ve been written that the blanket got dropped on him much faster right before he was gonna shoot at her. That was pathetic. Tim could have not been in the episode, and it wouldn’t have mattered. He just contributed padding.
Speaking of padding, the next scene is that. We already knew the moral. And if they could put teleportation into a blanket, why don’t they have the pixie powder from the comic in the show? SHE’S doing the teleporting, why wasn’t Tim immune? Sabrina hugs Quigley saying that at least the people ordering her around love her. Quigley never comes off like it. Then we see Salem talking on the phone and he gets glared at because he did something he wasn’t allowed to do.
Sabrina shouldn’t have put up with the pushy director when he became annoying, because she’s fine with brainwashing people. I loved seeing her use magic more than usual, so I liked a lot of the episode, though the rare magic isn’t even visually interesting. It skips the broom ride. It wasn’t believable that the director freed Tim because how was he able to do that? There’s no security, and Tim would’ve been turned into a cat by now since Salem was. He also would’ve had all of his anti-magic technology confiscated and destroyed by this point. Maybe he had an extra stash, at home and he went there.
And it wasn’t worth sacrificing logic to have him, if he got defeated effortlessly, and all he did was cause the aunts to hide in the attic, but I think the fact that Tim was pointless ultimately makes up for how forced it is that he came back, because I liked MOST of the episode.
I hope the director wasn’t supposed to be a strawman representing the people smart enough to know that the show’s too boring as it is, because if so then the show had no excuse for remaining as it was and then getting worse. Sure it still HAD ratings as it was, but good ratings don’t mean you’re doing good all the time, and it would’ve lasted longer if Sabrina always used magic this much.
This is the first on the higher tier of good episodes because the uses of magic were mostly NOT demonized, aside from one use not important to the plot, and the show did nothing that’d actually convince the audience it was crossing a line to abuse Gem.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 20 The Grandparent Trap:
The beginning’s impossible for me to care about because it starts with the three Musketeers fighting in Sabrina’s room when I don’t know why, and Sabrina says Salem promised this wouldn’t last very long. This is so forced, she’d just point to get rid of them. Or if she wanted their fight to happen, she’d just warp them somewhere ELSE, and warp somewhere else to watch them. And the music playing here reminds me of a music piece in Super Smash Bros Brawl so much that it’s distracting. She complains about her book report and that her room’s a mess after they’re gone. Zap it away!
Salem blames her because she wanted her book report to come alive, being a victim-blamer. How would this happen by accident when you’d have to visualize it? He’d have known its result! The writer continues to humiliate Sabrina, but at least the flashbacks have her mess up for realistic reasons this time. She glued a toy she made to her hand and poorly cooked something. Harvey talks to Sabrina, with an outfit because he has to be an usher, and he says Sabrina’s toaster is ringing as if it’s totally something he doesn’t care about. Maybe he assumes Zelda invented it.
Wouldn’t Harvey eavesdrop after she suspiciously pushed him out of the house? Zelda says they got two emergency messages from the Nether world. One that says “ as you know, “ is from Sabrina’s grandparents, who have been separated for a long time now, and want to tell their family something important. Sabrina wonders if they’re gonna get a divorce and gets told she’s probably wrong. So that makes me assume she’s wrong, because she’s an idiot in this show. And the phrasing in that letter makes it come off like if anything the letter’s announcing that they’re gonna be closer, not get a divorce.
But then why show them fighting? What greeting card would show that?! Sabrina wastes our time with a flashback where she’s a kid. So it’s official, the flashbacks in black and white are only that way to rush the episode out. The mailman gives Sabrina something and talks too much and Sabrina rants and raves about a book, and Hilda just says huh as if she doesn’t care what she has to say. Sabrina has a plan to dissuade her grandparents from divorcing and Quigley doubts her as well. Hilda then believes Sabrina out of nowhere and has a melodramatic scream which would only make sense if she was just making fun of her.
And Salem gets scared from a toaster. Quigley says he’s usually not comfortable with meddling in people’s lives. How does he think that when he’s fine with doing that to Sabrina every day?! Get rid of this character! How does no one call him out? He insists that he’ll help her, but only if there’s no magic. I never expected magic, but now that he says that, I’m just disappointed that there definitely won’t be magic… and if there STILL won’t be there’s REALLY no point in writing him to say this.
Salem says Sabrina’s plan won’t work when he doesn’t even know it, that’s how Genre Savvy he is, and she picks him up and he tells her to get her knuckles out of his rib cage. He says her grandparents are very stubborn. I wish there wasn’t padding where Sabrina was getting unsuccessfully reasoned with, it just makes it even more frustrating because her behavior looks like it has no excuse, and she looks unsympathetic. There’s a reason this never happened in the old comics, both this and her abusing Salem this way.
Sabrina calls Harvey for help and he lampshades her going to HIM and says his parents played a lot of mini-golf. Sabrina’s grandpa is shown using magic on a ball and the grandma sends it into a hole, and despite them being happy together in her daydream, she somehow asks for something else, and he says his parents went to concerts. And for no apparent reason she doesn’t think that would work either. And then he says his parents went out to dinner a lot so she has the obvious idea to give her grandparents a romantic dinner.
So her time calling Harvey was a waste of time because she could have easily had this lazy idea right away. And there’s no way the mini-golf and concert would’ve failed in a way so catastrophic that it would be interesting to watch. Still they should’ve been mentioned as happening offscreen. Sabrina wants the dinner to be carried out even though Hilda can’t cook without magic, but other adults in the room could. Sabrina’s grandpa goes into the house alone and hugs her happily. It’s so obvious he isn’t gonna announce a divorce because he’s in a good mood!
His voice is so silly. It’s really trying to make him sound entertaining. Sabrina wants to stall off his announcement so she lies that Salem isn’t in the house and he ends up seeing her bedroom even though she clearly didn’t want him to see it for some reason. So checking is rude. She becomes a pathological liar here when she inexplicably wastes time lying that her messy room is a new way of interior decorating. Why bother giving her an episode that teaches her to value honesty then? Then her grandpa cleans her room with magic. I wish she was being raised by her grandpa instead.
Good, Quigley’s idea amounted to nothing. Sabrina calls her grandma the nicest most beautiful woman in the Nether World. She doesn’t get the hint when he happily agrees with her without hesitation. Instead she thinks that she’s gotten him to say that because her plan worked. Why does someone incompetent have such an ego? Her grandma warps to her kitchen and hugs her. I like that the way she looks is so distinct and harmless. Sabrina says her grandpa said that she’s one in a million. She tells her to talk about her trip before going to make the announcement.
She gets thanked for reminding her to tell her that on her way over she was told to send her gifts. She opens her bag and sends unicorns into the house. It’s obvious that wouldn’t have happened. They’d have to take care of them. But I can see where Sabrina got this from. The grandpa tells her off that there’s no way to house break a unicorn. She wouldn’t have done this then. His voice is mocking him but WHY if he’s SMART? Unicorns have to be immune to magic if you can’t cast a spell to housebreak them. Why did he say that then? She would’ve said you could cast a spell to keep them from not being house broken.
Then she ruins his tie and her hair gets changed. He tells her she’s irresponsible and summons bats. She summons snakes on his body. Why did he agree with Sabrina about her if she’s that abusive? He’s lucky he got rid of them before they could bite him. He must have only married her for her looks. He DOES return her looks to normal after all. There’s always time to dodge these spells! He summons rain on her head and Salem smartly says that divorce wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He says that he’s known plenty of other couples who divorced and went on to be happily married to other people.
Sabrina selfishly says that that would be too awful even though it’d make her grandparents happier. It is realistic though for a kid to say that because she doesn’t want her family to change. Hilda says Spookie Jar to the rescue and Zelda doesn’t know about this. So she’s the more cautious one for sure. Still, again I wish they said they use the Spookie Jar was used to save magic because every time they reference the idea of using it, they phrase things as if Spookie is the only way they could accomplish that feat of magic! Sabrina’s grandma has such silly overacting. But at least she HAS grandparents in this continuity.
Sabrina stalls them and gets them out of the kitchen. Zelda hands Sabrina a paper and she reads it out, and that changes the environment around her grandparents and has her grandma in a wedding dress, and the grandparents dance while hearing a sappy love song. Then little rocks start falling, and rather than using magic to deal with this, the grandma insults him. Eventually Hilda says they didn’t know their honeymoon was a disaster. Harvey shows up at Sabrina’s house and wonders what he’s seeing and she lies to him pushing him out of the house.
He could’ve easily not shown up. It adds nothing but frustration that he doesn’t know she’s a witch, supposedly. So far there’s no proof he’s not playing dumb yet. Eventually Hilda starts adding potion ingredients to a bowl and taps it with a wand, the love potion cups that the grandparents have get spilled, and Sabrina runs to the kitchen wanting to use the back-up glass and sees Quigley chasing a mailwoman. Sabrina shouts no in a badly acted way, and says in front of her grandparents that they’re getting divorced.
Her grandma puts her hands on her shoulders, and predictably, it turns out they were just gonna renew their wedding vows. Sabrina helps Salem get out from under the sink and he calls her out on being so stupid that she didn’t check the facts, but I can’t be satisfied with it because the writing just forced her to be that dumb, so it’s not fair. Hilda says her parents looked cute leaving for their second honeymoon on a broom built for two, and Harvey greets Sabrina wanting to do some boarding with her.
Sabrina walks with Harvey, and she hears a horse noise and all he does is ask if she needs to check that out when a normal kid would be wondering why there’s a horse nearby all of a sudden when horses are expensive! She says she’s sure it’ll be fine, and then assumes she’s jumping to a conclusion again. She’d be heard when she said that.
She should’ve thought it, not merely whispered even though she’s right beside him so she’d know he’d hear her. This part of the episode was so confusing that I watched it three times trying to understand what was going on, because I don’t know why she asked her aunts for help, when nothing seemed to be happening to her before she ran back to them.
This episode was tedious because it made it way too obvious that Sabrina was wrong about thinking her grandparents were announcing their divorce because she was constantly being warned that she could be wrong, and combine that with the fact that the cheery wording of the letter instantly gave away that it wasn’t going to be a depressing announcement like that, and somehow nobody told her that they could just be planning to renew their wedding vows, and it was just an Idiot Plot. It’s all to have Salem rant at Sabrina for jumping to conclusions, but this isn’t the way to teach that lesson.
She should’ve had actual evidence because then it’d be a story about a situation a real kid could be in, where they would jump to a conclusion, and it’d tell them why they shouldn’t. But with her greeting card showing her grandparents fighting, of COURSE she thought they’d divorce! It’s more like, “ don’t jump to the only possible conclusion. “ It tried its best to ruin what would normally be a great episode from showing off Sabrina’s grandparents.
I’m glad they’re magical to be entertaining, and her grandpa was useful by cleaning her room with magic, but for the most part magic was just demonized by their abuse of it, when I only go to Sabrina to see magic be used for good for once.
Salem said that divorce would actually be good for them as a result, so it makes no sense that they still planned to announce the renewal of their wedding vows after that with nothing happening to change their minds about hating each other, other than potentially Sabrina saying that they’re getting a divorce. Salem’s message that divorce can be good is actually a good one, that they should’ve gone with instead. They think giving Sabrina strict parents, is realistic, so why not go with the realistic message?
The plot could’ve been unchanged and harmlessly shortened if the letter never mentioned an announcement and the whole family assumed the grandparents were gonna get a divorce only after seeing them abuse magic on each other… or even just remembering it and talking about it! Then the story could justify all of the magical shenanigans.
I hate that it tried to make Quigley look right because they all went wrong, when the fact is that it could’ve easily not gone wrong. And nothing’s gonna get me opposed to seeing magic, in a franchise I go to to see magic, just because plot convenience forces Quigley to always be right.
They could’ve stuck to Sabrina’s idea to give them a romantic dinner and that wouldn’t have had a chance of going wrong, which is why that wasn’t done as that would be boring to see. Then she shouldn’t have wasted all of that time getting ideas from Harvey and then telling her family her idea, if it was just forgotten. And there’s no excuse for padding ruining an episode. Spongebob and Fairly Odd Parents consist of two episodes. Plus it wouldn’t surprise me if Salem jumped to conclusions before too, he jumped to the conclusion that Sabrina being honest would get her expelled… so…
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 21 I Got Glue Babe:
Harvey’s friend says a ride would make you throw up, and somehow Harvey says that’s cool, which only matters enough to have me talk about it by making him look lame. Gem snarks about how she hates Sabrina and Sabrina uses magic to get her hurt, and Gem says she did it on purpose, without knowing she’s a witch supposedly, somehow. No kid would know that from two episodes ago. Sabrina can’t open her locker and gets taunted. Chloe wishes Sabrina and Gem would try to get along. It’s so forced and Out of Character. I can tell what the message is. Why is she putting the blame on Sabrina when she knows Gem’s evil?
Gem eavesdrops on them – sometimes she’d hear about witchcraft – and wants to ask Harvey out first, so she pushes something into Sabrina and brags that her dad bought her that thing. And this kinda thing is why I don’t buy that she has strict parents. Harvey says he’d love to go with Sabrina and he sounds cheerful, but then says Gem already asked him. There’s no way that he’d say that if he was asked out already. And why can’t he just tell Gem, “ the date’s off, “ because he doesn’t even like her? He says he won’t let Sabrina go with her because she and Gem don’t get along. Why hasn’t she cleaned herself up?
Sabrina says she wishes she was a fully-fledged witch, so she could shapeshift Gem, even though she shapeshifted herself, and in a previous episode she shapeshifted Gem into a mouse! If you want me to take your show seriously, since you’re preaching at me all the time, you need continuity with the rules. The forced out of nowhere message repeats itself as somehow Zelda advises Sabrina to be Gem’s friend. She says the Wright Brothers invented a plane to get away from Hilda on her broom. Her aunts use magic against each other in silly ways right after lecturing her not to use magic on her rival.
Sabrina levitates while venting to Salem and he brings her the spell book, and tells her that if she sprinkles stuff on Gem and herself, it’s guaranteed to bring them closer together. Why doesn’t she just cast a spell to do that? She can brainwash Quigley just by pointing later. Why didn’t they look in the book under getting along or friendship instead of togetherness? Every single time she trusted a magical thing he gave her, it backfired, so realistically she’d give up. She says she better test it out first. At least that pretends that she’s smart.
So she uses it on her aunts, so they decide to go to the mall together. And why would she think THIS is good enough for testing it out, when the problem with the magical artifacts in this show is that they take time to screw up?! She’d wait. It’ll be a narrative cheat if they don’t hate each other later because of this. Sabrina says her thrift store is next to Gem’s groomer’s. I’m glad she’s written to successfully snark back at her.
Gem says she paid someone to write something for her for school right in front of the teacher, so clearly, she’d get detention for this. So she clearly doesn’t have strict parents who would send her to boarding school at the drop of a hat then, because why would THEY wanna protect her from the teachers? This show’s too cynical. She also calls Sabrina a loser in front of the teacher in a silent classroom. It’s just insulting to our intelligence and gives a bad message about a warped version of reality that Gem’s a total Karma Houdini because she’s rich.
This show would have you believe there aren’t any rich philanthropists. Sabrina puts stuff on Gem in front of the teacher without her caring. Somehow the spell has Sabrina and Gem get stuck together, immediately, when that didn’t happen to Hilda and Zelda. If the idea is, they need to learn to get along, to get unstuck, why did it even have any effect on the aunts, when, they weren’t getting along?! And the excuse for this is forced, she wouldn’t overapply it! She didn’t last time. She’d read how much to apply. And somehow Sabrina doesn’t just point to instantly get herself unstuck.
I guess the logic is, she can’t do that if she can’t warp because, she’s too stupid to just erase people’s memories, so she doesn’t wanna use magic in front of people, and she can’t just zap up an antidote to this because it’s a potion ingredient, even though magic can find what you want, without you knowing what it’s made of chemically. There’s no reason that MAGIC would think it should have them get closer together THIS long-winded way to force them to get emotionally closer together the natural way. Besides, nothing about this experience is actually gonna guarantee that.
Sabrina gets forced to hold Gem’s essay that worships her, calling her green eyes brown or a sea brown. Sabrina’s eyes are sea-colored. Sabrina also covers the two of them in soot with a chemistry screw-up. I hate that this episode is ripping off an episode of the sitcom where Sabrina was forced to stay close to Libby. It’s not even like I get to review that too as a result, because the plot events aren’t the same as it later. Gem says she hates corn dogs and wants cotton candy. At least it tries to give the two of them more character barely. The Sonic characters usually don’t even get that.
Chloe wins a bunch of stuffed animals at a carnival, and Sabrina gets her face covered in cotton candy. Gem and Sabrina both hate the ride they shared with Harvey, and Harvey is why they keep taking the ride. By the way in a later episode, Sabrina’s constantly going on amusement park rides, so why would she hate THIS? It turns out that he forced them to go on the ride with him six times, and there’s no excuse for that! He doesn’t even have anything to gain in forcing them to go on it WITH him.
He also wouldn’t believe Gem when she says she loves the ride, because she obviously hated it, and her tone barely tried to sell it. These idiots deserve what they get because they aren’t smart enough to just run away. At least this is hopefully the show telling us that like in the 70s comic we’re not supposed to ship Harvey with Sabrina because he sucks. The 70s comic did it better though, it was more entertaining that he was clumsy in Hilda’s house. Gem wants to come up with an excuse to get away from Harvey so she says corn dog, and at least Harvey says he thought she hated those.
Why does he say that she might miss the ride like he somehow doesn’t know they were miserable? How is EVERYONE oblivious to the emotions of others in this show? What are the odds? Chloe hopes the girls are having as much fun as they are. “ Good thinking, “ Sabrina says. Gem gets encouraged to try a corn dog with mustard, and Sabrina says that wasn’t bad. I disagree.
They go on a boat ride where creepy animatronic elves sing. Sabrina’s naturally annoyed by their singing, and Gem uncharacteristically loves this place. This would only make sense if she didn’t love it and was just trying to torture Sabrina on purpose. It’s not like her to actually want to enjoy something sickeningly sweet, because she’s evil.
Sabrina calls Salem because the substance is getting harder, and he wipes away a forced stain on the book and somehow reveals that the spell could become permanent. There’s no reason that could be possible. The spell could become permanent if not reversed in 8 hours. Gem would hear Sabrina shout permanent. The Witches’ Council would get tons of complaints about this vindictive part of the spell that’d only be the case if billions of witches cast a spell, to make that the case for magic in general. Why isn’t it explained that she can’t use magic? She’d warp away! Why didn’t they wipe away the stain earlier?
Gem breaks Sabrina’s phone and Sabrina warns her about the stakes and says that her uncle has solvent to get the substance off. The story gets repetitive. Sabrina goes the same thing and they can’t decide where to go together. They end up having to wait for a ferry for 20 minutes. Salem says he can’t find the antidote and tells the aunts the problem, instead of warping the antidote TO him since he’s more experienced than her. Gem feels jealous of the elf animatronic and reveals indirectly that her parents expect her to dress for success and be popular. Since when?
Sabrina opens up to her that her parental figures suck too and Gem’s phone breaks. Sabrina has an idea to push a log into the water for a raft but then it sinks. I wish I knew if that was realistic. We see logs go down rivers in the media all the time! Then she uses a bunch of animatronics as a raft. So the metal things float but not a log?! Somehow they get threatened by a shark in the water, and they get off the raft and hi-five when the shark goes after something other than living creatures.
Why would the shark try to eat them if they don’t have open cuts and isn’t starving? If it’s an animatronic shark, it definitely wouldn’t go after them. They go into the green goop in the bathtub to get separated. They take too long to celebrate that they’re free, when they would’ve known it instantly. Zelda hammers the message into our head that they learned that working together can benefit them. I hope THAT’S the message and not, “ you should be friends with someone who abuses you! “ Gem admits that she liked eating a corn dog with mustard. I still hate her so this episode fails.
Zelda says they made a good start to a friendship. Why are these aunts okay with the idea of her being friends with a bitch? It turns out the goop isn’t what freed them, and instead the only reason they were separated was that they learned to cooperate, when no, she forced Gem here, Gem didn’t learn yet. But this is very stupid then because they clearly learned to cooperate with each other as soon as Gem agreed to push a log into the water with her.
And there’s no way there’d be an antidote at all if the antidote never did anything. The episode’s obviously all a waste of time because Gem and her are always gonna hate each other as much as they did before. It could’ve had a point, by marking an end to Gem being mean to Sabrina forever.
This episode could’ve done a lot more to give Gem some likable moments and develop her character, but instead it had her be annoying for most of the time she was onscreen as usual, which ruined the episode.
Working together doesn’t look fun, not with HER, screw this Aesop. And it was already bad enough that it’s a rip-off of an episode of the sitcom, that did an inferior job, because in the sitcom we actually had Sabrina meet Libby’s mother. Here Gem just IMPLIES that her parents might be bad, and it’s such a cliché excuse for her personality that’s so evil anyways that I don’t care. And the plot had no excuse for even happening.
I understand the reason for the creator of the goop making it like this if he thinks brainwashing is always evil, because he’d rather make the two people actually closer together, but not only is there no guarantee that it would get two people closer as friends, but there’s no way the goop would even be in this house, if there’s somehow any chance of it being there permanently, which could only be possible if it was immune to magic. The Witches’ Council would get so many complaints about this goop that they’d do something about it, make creating it with magic impossible, and remove it from the spell book.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 22 Boy Meets Bike:
It starts off with an annoying male voice taunting Sabrina as she’s riding a bike in a race. Eventually Harvey falls over a fence and the bully wins and somehow expects people to cheer for him, when he’d know he didn’t deserve to win. Sabrina asks him if he’s OK and says it’s OK. Harvey says it’s his bike’s fault that he lost. At least it was the bike’s fault and not the bully’s. Harvey plans to quit at the bike shop and then he changes his mind just because he sees another bike. Sabrina’s incompatible with him again saying it’s just a bike. Why does he waste time thanking her?
Gem wants Harvey to go with her and Sabrina passive-aggressively says that if he’d rather ride a bike than see a movie with her, and he happily says she means that and rides away from her. How is he this stupid? Even early Harvey wasn’t oblivious to her feelings. Hilda used to be sick of Ben Franklin paying too much attention to his inventions instead of her, so she kept him from doing that for a bit and it didn’t do good. A lock gets zapped up, and Sabrina gets told she can’t buy friendships, totally, forgetting that he IS her friend.
Zelda says Harvey’s a friend so he’ll come back, she should know that, and Hilda mocks her cheesy dialogue, even though they’re usually on the same side in these situations. So they waste time shapeshifting each other. You’d think they’d have started wearing amulets to become immune to magic. Salem encourages her to use the Spookie Jar. This moron calls her half-wit with no punishment! He’s just slimy because he’s clearly a bad influence on her and he should’ve learned that this always backfires on her and so even if he still wanted her to be like him, she’d only be taught not to be over and over.
This show’s ruined Salem for me. His appeal was supposed to be that he’s like a normal cat. And Sabrina has no excuse for continuing to trust him, especially when she doesn’t need to to get what she wants. A character can only keep making a mistake so many times before she loses the audience’s sympathy when she does it, as it just gets replaced with frustration. If your show needs an idiot protagonist to have most of its episodes, it didn’t deserve to be aired. Sabrina uses a magic bike pump, and there’s words on it saying do not fill past this point.
Then not only would she have paid attention the whole time and avoided this plot, but the person who made it wouldn’t have made it possible to do that, unless he was just making it available to people in the hopes that it WOULD backfire on everyone. Eventually, Sabrina brags to Harvey that she got him a custom bike to enjoy. She should’ve zapped up a cool bike herself because then she’d have no chance of failure. The bully asks him where he got that bike and I assume he only calls it junk out of jealousy.
He’s called Slugloaf and takes offense asking what he called him only to get reminded that he called him by his name. This is so confusing. Why would he keep letting people call him a nickname he’s tired of and somehow forgot about? If it literally IS his name, his reaction makes even less sense. He threatens him and Sabrina says that they should settle this in a bike race rematch. The scene drags out. There’s no reason nobody would be able to hear the bike laughing evilly. I have to assume no one can ever see the green swirls in his eyes as he’s obsessed with winning. And now I’ve lost interest in his plot.
You don’t need to spend any more time than that on this plot point, and you’d have to be sadistic against Sabrina to enjoy it. Sabrina falls into the mud. At least this plot causes him to tell Gem he doesn’t want to ride her bike. But you know the curse of the bike is aggravating when it causes me to just skip through the episode bored. After all it’s obvious there aren’t any interesting forced writing instances I’m missing. At times in the episode like this, it’s clear that only one boring thing’s gonna happen the whole scene, and one thing that already happened.
Salem tries to make her think this was all HER idea, the LIAR. Salem reads ahead in the magic book and finds out that go figure the spell’s about the bike forcing mortals to compete until they drop. I know Salem AND Sabrina are impulsive idiots, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not forced as hell that they never read the entire section in the magic book, before using the magical artifact for the episode. Literally anybody would do that every time. Sabrina eventually sneaks around at night to go after the magic bike and the bike talks to her in a scary voice.
I hate this scene because I’m just wondering why Sabrina isn’t using magic on it instantly. Every time she just stands there scared in this show I hate it with a burning passion for how little it respects the character. I have to assume the bike’s immune to magic, and that’d only be because the creator of the bike is evil. The creator of this bike spell is outright murderous. Harvey eventually goes to the garage and somehow instantly assumes that Sabrina’s the one in the garage even though she’s disguised. Guess he’s brainwashed to find the bike normal, because he’d see it look weird.
I hate that he asks her what she’s doing to his bike, and is mad. The story didn’t need to have Harvey see her. Zelda tells Sabrina the cheesy way to break the spell. It’d make sense if every instance of this had the aunts just be lying so that Sabrina could learn a lesson, and instead the spell could actually be broken by a single point. In every other continuity Sabrina doesn’t need to learn lessons because she’s a goody-two-shoes! And they didn’t have Quigley in it, I really think Quigley’s why she’s not so nice! She’s the most evil in this show.
There’s no reason that someone evil enough to make a cursed artifact would also make it so that the curse can be broken, let alone by something as sappy and easy as Sabrina biking after Harvey and reminding him that they’re friends. The writer’s so sadistic he writes an old man to feel humiliated and a random woman to have pie thrown at her face by the wind of a race, and she breaks up with someone for it. If you wanna write sadism, why not just have Gem be the one suffering? The thing tying Sabrina’s bike to Harvey breaks and she crashes.
I don’t know why she doesn’t just freeze time to have all the time in the world to get up and catch up with Harvey. She could also give her bike super speed. She gave a person super speed in a 70s comic. Instead the episode drags out in an inherently boring race where all that happens is that the bikes are going ahead. Sabrina eventually lassos with a sparkling ribbon and she holds onto it when she’s about to fall to her death inexplicably. How is she even remotely scared? She knows she can teleport!
She says she’s losing her grip and SOMEHOW Salem tells her to cast a spell instead of casting one himself, and she somehow says she can’t think of one, after all of her experience with impulsively using magic. It’d be a bit better if she said she knows Harvey will save her and that the spell will break because of it, and that even if he doesn’t go save her, she could always use magic to float out of the pit or something later. This whole show is like if Tails was constantly too stupid to know how to fly. The bike falls and he grabs and pulls her up and asks, “ Are you OK? “
He asks her twice what happened to the bike. Wouldn’t he know it fell? I have to assume that part of the curse on the bike is that it makes the person who biked forget their evil behavior but why? Sabrina offers HER bike to Harvey and he wins, and the bully cries.
The show gained nothing by having a stereotypical bully character. I get it feeling the need to have a jerk for Harvey to prove himself against, but it gained nothing by making him as over-the-top unlikable as possible, in personality AND appearance, when it’s more realistic that he’d look and sound normal. It hurts the immersion to have stereotypical bullies in this series when Sabrina knew better before.
This episode is about Harvey getting given a magic bike, to buy his friendship back, because he preferred biking with a cool bike over hanging out with Sabrina, and the entire episode punishes her for, giving a gift to her friend, being despicable to watch because the bike arbitrarily turned out to brainwash him into being a competitive asshole even to her. The concept of someone trying to buy someone’s friendship doesn’t make him or her EVIL. So this won’t teach the audience anything. This lesson should have been taught with a new character Sabrina was trying to befriend instead of making Harvey look bad.
The lesson was meant to be about not buying friendship, but because he’s already her friend, her plan didn’t deserve an episode about demonizing it to us, as it would’ve worked out if she simply created a cool bike for him, which she would’ve done! Besides I’m sure Zelda wouldn’t have told her not to give him a gift, if it was his birthday! Sabrina should’ve been taught a lesson that just because her friend wants to do his own thing one time doesn’t mean he won’t hang out with her most of the time.
There’s no chance the plot would happen if it could be prevented by Sabrina reading the entire section on them in the magic book. She’s even established to be more cautious than Salem because she always says “ I dunno, “ and stuff in response to him. And she would’ve paid attention when using the magic pump! I get them still having the spell book though because, Sabrina’s gonna use magic anyways, so they need to have it around so that she can undo her spells.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 23 Upside Down Town:
Sabrina says something she should know is stupid and Chloe says that’s an urban myth. You mean legend. And somehow some of the cafeteria food is alive and no one questions it burping. Obviously the cafeteria worker’s a witch. Sabrina’s friends continue talking about silly rumors. Harvey asks if Sabrina’s got a cool family recipe for the block party. Gem gets Sabrina jealous Chloe reassures her that no one should care about Gem’s family tree. She finds out Sabrina’s ancestors built Atlantis. Salem was the architect of it. A bat gets sent into the cauldron.
Sabrina wants to whip up a batch for the block party. Zelda somehow tells her that she can’t cook witch food for mortals and should know better. If she should know better there’s no excuse for her considering it. If she doesn’t know the reason why she shouldn’t do it, there’s no excuse for her not explaining herself. There’s also no excuse for mortals not reacting to witch food the same way witches do. Why would witches eat that food, if it’s gonna have a magical effect on anybody? Salem’s proud of her initiative when she plans to use her old family recipes anyways.
You’d think he’d be opposed to the magical effects on mortals, because he LIKES the idea of her using magic for good. Why the hell didn’t Zelda tell her why she SHOULDN’T do this? This show is just a PSA against that kind of lazy parenting. I like seeing the recipe get made with magic, but the episode’s just frustrating because it’s so forced! Somehow even when Salem eats a piece of the cake, magic happens to him too. The aunts get shocked at seeing the kitchen totally clean because of him. I wish he was always like this. Quigley’s smart enough to wonder if he did anything wrong.
Salem wants to raise money for local charities. But they don’t figure it out somehow! And I’m wondering why witch food is cursed to be this way. This is just gonna BENEFIT mortals. I suppose THIS specific witch food was made by a well-intentioned witch, then. The plot takes a needlessly long time before the mortals eat Sabrina’s cake though. There’s nothing but boredom before then, and Harvey getting to enjoy a chicken leg. He eats something, and again I wish it was explained mortals wouldn’t be able to see the obviously magical effect of it.
The witch food makes Harvey a bully when we just saw it make Salem nice. Sabrina wipes off a part of the recipe book’s page and finds out that the cake turns someone’s personality upside-down. Why aren’t they reacting to this? There’s no chance in hell that Sabrina would’ve not cleaned off the page before following the recipe. I like the idea of an upside-down cake recipe turning people’s personalities upside-down. Whether it’s a bad thing or not depends on the individual affected by it.
So I think the inventor of the recipe isn’t outright evil or a saint, just irresponsible and fun-loving. I wish that was explained because this feels so arbitrary. This episode doesn’t have a real plot after this point. There’s really nothing to say about the story for quite a while. It’s just about showing you characters acting the opposite of how they usually do, in ways that don’t matter to the plot. I guess it’s wrong in that they’d be embarrassed when told how they were acting later on, so fine. It makes sense because the inventor of the recipe did it to be spiteful.
I wish it was explained right away that when you ingest magical food, casting a spell won’t undo the spell right away. Gem asks Sabrina if she’ll use magic and fix this mess. Why does Sabrina take so long to react to this? It doesn’t make any sense that the witch food would make her figure out she’s a witch when nobody else had that happen to them. She thought she used magic in Episode 21 to move a thing. She’s humoring her letting her think this clued her in. She says Sabrina doesn’t even wear a disguise… So what?… That comes outta nowhere. I really love seeing Gem be helpful to her.
Why doesn’t EVERY MORTAL know her secret now, except Chloe, if that’s the logic, so we’d know it? Also Gem has always been smart aside from the fact that it’s stupid of her to be mean to Sabrina, who’s the only person she’s usually mean TO. Sabrina cures Salem for no reason and he bitches about her hug. He didn’t act that mean the last time she hugged him. The aunts eventually get given drinks to get returned to normal. Hilda tells Zelda she’s wearing a cute toga.
And the whole time I have to assume a part of the spell is that nobody remembers how they were acting differently when they were cursed. But why would someone evil enough to make a curse be that merciful? I DON’T see why you’d forget how you were acting before, just because your personality was returned to the way it was before. Sabrina keeps turning people back to normal with the antidote. We see Slugloaf entertain kids by playing a harp and singing calmly. Gem spends time holding cups for Sabrina. Sabrina could’ve cast a levitation spell to have them float alongside her the whole time, but still it counts.
It’s nice of Sabrina to tell Gem that she shouldn’t follow her to Harvey because it’s too dangerous. Sabrina encounters some resistance from Harvey, and somehow she doesn’t just instantly brainwash him into eating the witch food, even after he says he plans to alter the water supply with the magic food so everyone would be just like him. Harvey thinks he’s doing everyone a favor. Eventually out of sheer dumb luck Harvey gets returned to normal in a forgettable way. Sabrina says Gem saved the day and hugs her. Sabrina’s called slick.
Sabrina’s forced to say she’s glad everything’s back to normal, when she’d know no one would believe that. But Salem, she wasn’t fine with?! She smartly throws a cake into the garbage. Then Gem somehow says with a smile that she should change her back to normal because she doesn’t wanna live a lie. Why? If she’s nice now, she’d know that she should remain this way for the good of the world. The normal Gem was selfish. So she wouldn’t have any selfishness IN her.
The point of the upside-down cake was turning people into the OPPOSITE of what they once were. There wouldn’t be any ounce of what they turned into in them after they reverted. It’s like saying deep down Quigley IS like that motorcycle riding dude he became. The writer would know that we’d want her to stay like this. And he could make a new character like Gem if he thinks that’s so mandatory.
Sabrina’s smart enough to want her to stay the way she is, but she keeps getting told to change her back to normal, with what she should know is a blatant falsehood that the nice Gem would always be deep within her. Gem admits that her family didn’t really come over on the Mayflower, and apologizes to her, even though the apology is meaningless here because it’s not from the real Gem. Gem reluctantly apologizes to her for calling her a loser.
So she subconsciously remembers that she’s not so bad after all, which makes no sense, if the reason that nobody remembers what happened is that their brains were turned back in time. Sabrina gives the toxic message that there’s good in everyone when that’s not really true. Why does the episode keep wasting our time showing the cockroaches talking? It could only be the case because a witch made it that way and it wasn’t undone yet.
I think this is actually a good episode, because it was just interesting to see everyone act the opposite of how they usually do. While it does need some better justification to not feel frustratingly arbitrary, so on a casual watch it’d be a little annoying, it’s okay because it’s easy to assume that the cake has this effect because the recipe’s creator is an irresponsible monster, who wants people humiliated when they get told how they were acting.
The whole plot wouldn’t have happened though because Zelda would’ve told Sabrina that the reason she shouldn’t give mortals witch food, is that they’d all fall under a spell, which isn’t even supposed to be true most of the time, because it’s almost never shown that if you eat witch food like bat wings or something, a spell would happen to you. It affects Salem so if it’s not that witches are immune to it, even witches wouldn’t eat it.
The plot also needed to explain that the reason Sabrina can’t just point to instantly undo the problem is that the witch food’s still being digested by everyone, and it’s immune to magic that isn’t from its antidote.
The episode may have mostly wasted the concept of Gem being nice, since she just did what Chloe could’ve, and if Sabrina was in-character she’d be smart enough to do what she did anyways, but that keeps it from being too tragic that she nonsensically tells Sabrina to return her to normal. The Aesops suck as everyone was better! I disagree with Sabrina and Gem. It’s a good episode, but still demonizes magic.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 24 The Importance of Being Norma:
You’d think the episode title was misspelled but it’s actually not. After I have to listen to an alarm clock, a rooster plays a trumpet, and Salem plays the guitar scaring Sabrina into waking up, because she wanted him to make sure she wouldn’t be late for school today. At least he says sorry. Zelda says Hilda needed special eggs for a spell. I wish I knew what that spell was for. I HATE how awful Quigley is that Zelda has to try and fail to keep her from saying spell to fool him SOMEHOW. He’d hear spell anyways. And he condescendingly says he’s proud of them for not relying on magic, and they’re showing maturity.
Hilda uses magic to reveal that Sabrina was wearing an invisible hat and they lecture her not wanting her to disgrace the family. She wouldn’t know she was wearing it, and how is this called for?! Sabrina whines for a while that she has to wear a special outfit to set herself apart, because it’s a day about individuality. I don’t remember that! The Imagine Spot was only worth it because it showed Gem running from a polar bear screaming. Sabrina lectures that the only thing that matters in school is what others think of her, because she’s a kid. She shouldn’t have to explain this to Quigley.
Why does she even try asking them to let her use the Spookie Jar? Quigley says until her mom gets back from a city she’s excavating he’s in charge. And she doesn’t want magic being used because she’s just as bad as him. Chloe says someone’s being a phony, and it’s annoying that she and Sabrina look impressed because she’s good at it. The scene’s just annoying. One of the best things about the Sabrina series was NOT having any cliché school scenes like this. Chloe’s annoying by gushing about the fact that the most socially influential cheerleaders are talking to Sabrina. She talks too much.
The cheerleaders approach her because she’s got a sock on her head. Somehow one of them talks like Sabrina has a chance at being a cheerleader because of this, which could only make sense if really they were never planning to pick her and were just giving her false hope. One of them says Gem gives them phones and matching jackets, which is why she’s their favorite, so it’s good that Gem’s making people happy with her money. Why annoy the audience by having these girls talk in a condescending tone, and waste our time doing a cheer? Students only have a few minutes between classes.
They wouldn’t have all this time to chat in the halls! Sabrina kicks Harvey for some reason. Because the cheerleaders are in front of her, she doesn’t want him to suggest pulling pranks, on Pi, the jerk! So she kicks him uncharacteristically yet again and he calls her out. He’s been a jerk, so good! He made her nauseous at the amusement park! Sabrina wouldn’t have pulled pranks without magic anyways, especially not on Pi, the traitor, so it’s bad that Harvey acted like it was like her to do that.
I’m also confused at them acting like a prankster wouldn’t be popular with cheerleaders who are stereotypical mean popular girls. If they’re in favor of being mean to people they don’t like, why would they even imply that they disapprove, of, a prankster being mean to someone he doesn’t like? They would clarify that they LIKE Sabrina being a prankster because it makes her relatable, and cool! Sure it makes her childish, but, THEY’RE NOT?! One of them calls Pi Pele on purpose! Why’d he ask her twice?! Sabrina doesn’t exactly get my sympathy by saying that her life is over if she’s not picked over Gem.
The story spends a needlessly long time on Sabrina being polite and nice to a clearly lame kid who has cartoonishly obvious dandruff and eats paste. There’s no reason that, if she’s nice, she’d happily remind Sabrina of the time her teacher somehow didn’t excuse her to go to the bathroom until it was too late. It’s a miracle that the cheerleaders decided to walk away without taunting her very much. All she did was say she’d love to hear the rest but somehow she didn’t insist on it. I assume the reason they’re just being subtle, is that the writer thinks it makes sense because they’re girls… which is just sexist.
And the principal says she’d love for Sabrina to spend every moment together with the loser kid, I assume out of pity. I get it if she wants to teach her that she’d be a lot happier hanging out with HER than trying to impress people who clearly already made up their minds that she’s a loser. Well Sabrina DOES wanna impress the popular girls, it’d be better if she CHOSE to hang out with the loser girl because it reminds us that she’s supposed to be a goody-two-shoes, not just Timmy Turner. Sabrina keeps getting stuff on her out of clumsiness in a Montage.
At least it’s satisfying to keep seeing one of the mean girls act melodramatic and exhausted. The cheerleaders get terrified when an ant farm gets loose. There’s no reason she’d bring the ant collection to school. And like with Rotor I don’t know why the ants were able to escape. Doesn’t she have a lot of experience with ant farms? Sabrina says her friend’s loyal and Chloe says she’s a social outcast so she’s gotta get rid of her. I just have to HOPE that she’s only saying this to keep Sabrina from continually being humiliated in front of the cheerleaders, and so there’s SOME compassion in this.
Isn’t she supposed to be a good person, and that’s why I’m supposed to like her?! I don’t see her constantly showing talents and being useful. Why write this? Why am I supposed to believe that a kid CAN’T join the cheerleading squad, because of the arbitrary whims of the cheerleaders when I’m sure that it’d REALLY be about cheerleading talent? But I guess it still is because she’s also competing with Gem who presumably does have cheerleading talent. Sabrina lies to the loser that she’s gonna be busy for a long time, and then decides to try to give Norma a make-over to make her more popular.
She DOES make her look better but I just have to assume that it fails, because a snorting noise is arbitrarily made and it cuts to them giving up on her, because her geekiness shines through anyways. And the whole time they were just ignoring her wishes. The family considers using magic, somehow with more than just Sabrina caring about this. If Zelda’s against using the Spookie Jar why didn’t she zap it into another universe?! Zelda reminds them that they always get caught and gets reminded that it’s because she somehow always rats them out, so WHY would she say they always get caught?
She lectures them that they’ll stay teens forever if they keep getting discovered for using magic, somehow thinking that being youthful is bad. They DO want to be ugly again! It should be explained that she’s saying this because she wants a husband. Being youthful is still worth being single!
Spookie wastes way too much time boring me, rhyming for no reason. It got old in just a couple episodes that Sabrina keeps thinking she can trust magic to make a major change when dozens of episodes disprove that! WHY didn’t Zelda get rid of the Spookie Jar in the first episode, if the idea behind Zelda not doing so after the first time is that it’s too tempting to them?
With Norm the genie in the Fairly Odd Parents, the first time someone’s wish on him screwed up, he was like, “ I wish I never met you! “ so how is this not the case with Spookie, when they don’t need him, and it’s never implied that magic runs out very quickly, because we never see it happen?
Why isn’t Laura freaking out at Salem insulting her?! There’s no way the spell wouldn’t instantly improve things. A kid going by Norma says he likes Norma’s hair. The cheerleaders flattering Norma after this is predictable. The only reason Spookie would be nice to Norma instead of Sabrina would be that he wants her to realize the error of her ways, but why would he care if he’s this evil? It sure is nice of the spell to make Norma popular for who she is instead of making her look and act normal.
Harvey’s nice and Sabrina kicks him because they’re in front of the cheerleaders. Even Gem doesn’t do that because she’s still clearly trying to get him to date her. Sabrina says in front of them that this spell could get annoying. Why don’t they care? Predictably the cheerleaders decide to make Norma join their squad. Norma says she doesn’t wanna join, but then she says she won’t join without Sabrina. And the cheerleaders decide to agree to replace one of the new cheerleaders with her.
Some of the students are dressed like Norma and Norma wanted to get away from those people, and says she used to like being herself but if everyone else is being like her, she doesn’t like it anymore. That tells you she doesn’t have a good self-esteem. She says she just wants to be herself. This message doesn’t work if she’s been acting like herself the whole episode.
Eventually Sabrina gets intimidated by Harvey wanting her to be like Norma, and a bunch of people walking towards her talking in monotone. Sabrina’s tied up, and I see Zelda dressed like her too when she’s not supposed to be at her school. It makes me wonder if Sabrina’s just imagining this because Zelda’s responsible for all of this.
Eventually, Sabrina says she just wants to be her, so the spell’s undone because of that, which could only be because that’s how Spookie designed the spell to be. If magic happened just because Sabrina wanted it to, it’d happen before she even got the chance to go to Spookie and it’d happen way more often. Still how stupid does Spookie think she is that he didn’t think she could just point and visualize to end the spell much earlier?
And the story forced him to be right because she somehow didn’t think to do that. Sabrina turns down becoming a cheerleader, unlike in the 2000s comic. Sabrina gets asked to help Norma find her ants and she agrees. Quigley decides for her! The story drags on until it finally ends!
This boring episode has Sabrina want to join the cheerleading squad but instead of it being realistic like the comic, and having her succeed in joining just because she’s good at cheerleading, and really I find it hard to believe the preteen cheerleaders would have a choice over who joins their squad, somehow she’d only be allowed to join if she stops letting a weird kid try to spend time with her. But she would’ve given up after the first time she got humiliated in front of them because it was obvious that there’s no reason they’d give her a chance after that.
What were they THINKING having the unpopular kid snort, let alone so many different times, when they wanted us to sympathize with her? Instead it ruins the episode. It’s about teaching us that you should still be friends with someone nice even if they’re a social outcast for being weird, but the snorting makes her annoying too.
So it’s forced that it doesn’t bother Sabrina, making the message too heavy-handed AND bad, because it tries to teach you to force yourself to be friends with a consistently annoying person just because it’s nice of you, which would usually result in a false friendship that’d end pathetically quickly, or be annoying to one of the people involved the whole time.
Spookie gives her the magic to cast a spell to make her popular to solve the problem with their friendship, only to find out that the spell overdid it and Norma doesn’t appreciate it, go figure. It’s yet another episode that demonizes magic. Without the snorting they would’ve had Norma be a likable character who tries to be interesting by having hobbies and interests, which is better than Chloe has.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 25 Stage Fright:
I love seeing Zelda use magic to make the household appliances do housework themselves. She scares Salem and says the Witches’ Council is planning to do a surprise check-up on her. Why does she know about it if it’s a surprise? I assume she heard it from someone outside of the social group we usually see in this show. But there’s no indication she has any friends. Who’d eat dust bunnies? Zelda shouldn’t need to explain to Salem that Enchantra’s her parole officer and that she somehow hopes she’ll get her and Hilda out of their teenage bodies if they think they learned their lessons.
How the hell is this supposed to be a punishment? Anybody would want to be youthful again, and nothing about this would make them learn to only use magic for good. Living together just keeps encouraging them to abuse magic on each other. So logically they should be sentenced to staying away from each other as the punishment. Having a teenage brain makes you more likely to make mistakes, be overly emotional so it’s just giving them a handicap making it harder for them to stop abusing magic. Why not turn them into old people?
And it’s so unclear it was a punishment, we wouldn’t even know it until it was explained. There’s also a flashback about Zelda’s date with Edgar Allen Poe, that has to do with one of the aunts, but it doesn’t have any lasting impact on my memory anyways. Plus I was too busy focusing on typing about how I felt about the aunts’ supposed curse. So the crow’s his wife, I’d rather see what they did to be turned into teens! Still I always like it when they establish their past. It makes better stories than Sabrina’s stories.
Why should I care about the plot’s conflict, when we all know the aunts are always gonna stay in their designs? Y’know I doesn’t even have to be that way. The story wastes my time with Sabrina at a school play rehearsal. The director sure takes his time telling the students that they’re getting their roles. The director talks in a bad impression of Christopher Walken. It’s unfunny and lame. If this is what you have to resort to to make this entertaining don’t even have this scene.
Eventually magic gets used to clean the house again and Zelda asks Sabrina what’s wrong right away and puts her hand on Sabrina’s head when she sits down sadly. Usually she isn’t immediately sensitive to her. Sabrina angsts that she doesn’t know about love. But she loves Harvey. Then Hilda derails things by arguing with Zelda that she isn’t one to give her advice. And one makes a bet with the other regarding romance. Zelda abuses magic on Salem and says she’s never gonna find a hunkier date than Hilda. Sabrina calls Zelda pretty and gets thanked.
She says that she loves the look of the Romeo on Sabrina’s book. She says if she walks into the homecoming dance with him, she’d win the bet. Sabrina says that’d be cheating for her bet, but immediately gets talked into it because she’s told it’ll spite Gem. They hug and jump, and predictably Zelda creates a person who speaks poetically to worship Zelda. Logically why wouldn’t she just point to create him, when EVERY time that potion ingredients or a magical artifact are used in this show, it backfires?! Hilda says Romeo can stay because she thinks he’s in love with her now.
Then he acts like he loves Zelda. I hate his melodramatic way of acting. He sees the beer as poison and drinks it and falls over. Sabrina asks him about love, and Romeo holds hands with Hilda and flatters her. Magic gets used to summon food that looks normal, so why does Zelda know it’s witch slop? Zelda summons a magic vacuum to impress Romeo even though obviously he’d be scared of modern technology, not to mention witches but I assume him not being scared of witches is how he was created.
Somehow Sabrina thinks the wind from the window is from the vacuum and says it’s a powerful engine. Instead it’s someone from the Witches’ Council making a dramatic arrival and I’m disappointed to see Enchantra’s botched design. Why the fucking hell doesn’t she look like she did in the comic? I may have criticized her silly upright hairdo there but this is worse. Her face is masculine and I hate the blue highlights on her hair. Enchantra talks their ears off and Salem gets abused before she warps away. She’d hate these cat abusers.
Obviously their magic use would constantly be monitored, as it’s the only way to keep total chaos from breaking out from every witch having powers. How did Salem even get caught and turned into a cat if they don’t spy on witches? Criminal witches would DEFINITELY still be spied on. It’s forced that the spell can’t be undone until a full moon, just to force a plot where Romeo and Sabrina’s aunts have to go to high school. Sabrina never goes to high school in this show! And there was never any indication that her aunts go to high school on a daily basis.
Romeo’s behavior is so forced and lame in the basketball court. I don’t know why he’s reciting poetry there. It’s a miracle we don’t see him get beat up by guys. For once the writer isn’t sadistic in this show. And I have to assume the principal was brainwashed into saying that, she doesn’t need to see his papers, so that no one questions why he doesn’t have any parents since he got born. Sabrina gives her aunts some news that upsets them. Enchantra sees Romeo who flatters her poetically. There is no way she wouldn’t instantly figure out what he is based on the way he’s talking like an ancient person.
I guess she assumes he’s a warlock and that’s why but, witches don’t constantly talk like ancient people, SHE doesn’t! She plans to go out for dinner with him. Why don’t they tell her he’s a teenager? Then she wouldn’t. But I thought he WAS made to be in love with Zelda at first because why else would she bother making him, when it’s so obvious he might just reject her anyways? I guess she was really desperate, to think he would say yes, even though it’s so likely he would just think of her as his mother because she made him, but somehow THAT isn’t addressed!
So THAT should be why Enchantra would be against, her making Romeo to date her!I guess the aunts think Enchantra’s immune to magic so they can’t make her forget Romeo and then warp him away. Maybe Enchantra is always being monitored so that people can punish anyone who uses magic on her. Why would only she have that advantage?! Sabrina’s family is spying on their date to try to keep Enchantra from finding out what Romeo is. She has to think he’s an adult! So Hilda uses magic to bring all the crabs to life and make them jump and dance around. This couldn’t be an accident.
I hate that the crabs sing for a billion years. It’s padding and their voices are annoying. I like that Enchantra gets sprayed in the face though, but only because I hated her in the comic. She uses magic to reveal them and Zelda tells her the truth and she gets humiliated at dating a fictional character. It’s too bad she has such pride that she thinks it’s bad and zaps him to death. It doesn’t matter what his origin is. His age should be her problem. She says they’ll spend 500 years as teenagers. Boo-hoo. Again she SHOULD be written to say, “ which means nobody’s gonna marry you! “
Zelda conveniently gets allowed to say one more thing. She tells her this was all her fault and she should serve both their punishments. It comes outta nowhere that she’s that good that she’s self-sacrificial, when she was only like that in the sitcom, not this show. It’s so predictable that Zelda’s gonna get rewarded for her nobility. Enchantra gives them 3 more years probation and says they have to dress up like penguins. But she has no idea Hilda was doing any magic here. So she has no right to punish HILDA. It’s believable of her to be petty enough to wanna punish them for embarrassing her.
Sabrina gets scared on the play for a bit, before making a speech about love being self-sacrificial. But that’s a toxic message though because you shouldn’t be self-sacrificial for someone who doesn’t deserve it, and most of the time Hilda’s a shitty sister who abuses magic on Zelda at the slightest excuse. Not to mention the lesson she learned was about sisterly love, not romantic love.
It’s hard for me to know how I FEEL about this episode. It’s good unless Romeo talks! In this episode, Zelda and Hilda have a bet over who would get the best-looking date because Zelda wanted to teach Sabrina how to make a speech about love in a play. The conflict of the episode is that the horribly drawn head witch’s somehow gonna be mad at the aunts, because one created Romeo to get the best-looking date to win a bet.
The conflict of the episode where they don’t want Enchantra to find out Romeo’s fictional is just not real conflict, because we have no reason to want the aunts to get old again faster and are just confused that they aren’t glad they’re youthful. At least the conflict of the story being too weak keeps the story from being super frustrating though.
I hate Enchantra both from her behavior in the comics and her looking horrible in the show, so I didn’t mind the concept of them trying to ruin her date, but the only good scene valuable to the plot was ruined, because her only suffering was being sprayed in the face after crabs sang for a trillion years. How do you screw that up? You’re supposed to have a big variety of things happen in the scene to make it interesting! It feels like the episode was just worthless padding until the restaurant scene, because that’s the only part of it that has a real plot.
Romeo’s existence is just there to force Zelda to unfairly win a bet and it upsets Hilda, so it still demonizes magic. And the only episodes that are really worth watching, are ones where magic gets to be used for good, ‘cause you can watch ANY series to see magic demonized. It’s just not good for a Sabrina episode when I can only recommend tiny tidbits of it.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 26 Witchitis:
I doubt there’d actually be cafeteria meat called mystery meat. Sabrina says she’ll make Harvey a sub. Sabrina reassures Harvey who says he’s got an appointment to get vaccinated. Why is Harvey’s friend telling him that someone’s arm swelled up because of a needle? Why is he trying to scare his friend? Sabrina reassures Harvey that getting a shot is a good thing. So this episode aged well, actually. She flatters him. Sabrina says she walked Harvey to the clinic, making me think I’d rather see her do good things than mention it. And a levitating lemonade jug pours lemonade.
Salem’s buried in lemons, because we can’t even have that not be demonized, and Hilda says the family’s overdue for a booster shot. Sabrina wouldn’t spit. Dumb cliché. Sabrina’s scared of the idea of getting a booster shot. It makes no sense that she lectured Harvey that there’s no reason to be scared of getting a needle if she’s also scared of them. The goody-two-shoes Sabrina I know and love, would’ve told him she’s scared of needles too, to make him stop feeling alone.
Her family takes her to the shower and turning a knob warps them away, and Salem wants to go with them, and water lands on him and somehow he takes a little while to go with them. I’m so glad I was reminded of the sitcom’s closet portal to the OTHER Realm. Why wasn’t this used a lot more often? Why did the artist want to make the people in the waiting room look this ugly? The episode starts dragging out with nothing happening. Salem gets told the doctor will see her, and I’m a bit confused at the idea that a Witchitis vaccine would affect him the same way.
Sabrina remembers how scared Harvey’s friend tried to make Harvey to get a shot. Why did we see that scene, if we were just gonna get reminded of it later? It’s always been predictable that she might end up wussing out of getting a shot even though her family are witches who would just warp her to them instantly. But go figure she takes off anyways, because she somehow convinced herself that something horrible would happen to Salem from the shot.
To be fair magic always backfires in this show, but there’s no way a vaccine would be given out if it had horrible consequences like making Salem hollow so she wasn’t using common sense at all. It turns out there’s something on Sabrina’s chair that’s contagious to anyone not vaccinated. But, doesn’t that mean her getting vaccinated would’ve been pointless because she was already infected by the time she ran away? Vaccines aren’t cures too! I can believe a vaccine that’s magical, being a cure as well, it’s just weird to use something like that as an allegory for an actual vaccine then.
Sabrina uses magic and Quigley doesn’t bitch at her this time. Somehow Zelda asks Sabrina why she disappeared from the waiting room. It needs to be explained why they didn’t instantly warp her to the waiting room! Zelda says they need to get her another appointment. Hilda says they can’t because it’s an HMO, one visit a year. Huh? How screwed people would be in 2020 if missing a vaccination meant that they weren’t able to get one all year? That can’t be realistic. The witches in charge of vaccinating could make copies of themselves to get it all done faster, so it wouldn’t matter how busy they are.
They could zap up as many copies of the doctor’s office as they want! Zelda says maybe the doctor will come to them, just because he used to make house calls during the Black Plague. He wouldn’t do a house call. Sabrina tries to rationalize away that she doesn’t need a shot because she can only get Witchitis from other witches and they’re the only ones she’s around. Somehow they don’t explain that they have social lives. Magic viruses like Witchitis would only exist if witches made them out of spite like computer viruses. Why can’t witches teleport the vaccines into people? There’s no reason a needle would be required.
Hilda asks her if she’s afraid of shots. What took so long? Zelda says she’ll make more lemonade. Hilda reassures Sabrina that they all got their shots and lived. There’s no reason the doctor would arrive through the chimney instead of warping to them. How does he assume Quigley is Sabrina? Obviously if THAT was her problem, they would’ve warned him about that! Why would you have the doctor in charge of the shots, be portrayed as a quack in a pro-vaccine episode? I get that it was just a joke they didn’t think through but THAT’S BAD!
He says he’s in terrible shape and somehow the family just stands there and lets him bother him, but it makes sense that they’d wanna get back at him. His foot gets hurt by the unrealistic quack who says Quigley has a skin condition. He somehow has a bottle with a vaccine in it, and says they need the needle instead of the potion already being in the needle. There’s no reason that after Sabrina excuses herself, nobody in her family would follow her, and insist on holding her arm the whole time. She shrinks and hides, and somehow her family looks for her the mortal way instead of just warping her to them.
It’s almost like Sabrina isn’t SUPPOSED to last entire episodes because it’s based on short comics! Even if they were outta magic they would still use potion ingredients or magical artifacts to warp her to them! There’s no reason Sabrina would’ve evaded the shot so long that the doctor would’ve left. I assume he had a very busy schedule. She sees that her tongue turned green, and somehow she doesn’t point to turn it back to normal. So she coughs and causes harmful magic a bunch of times.
I like that Gem gets splashed from it, but again I wish it was explained that the reason these magic effects happen when she wasn’t visualizing them is that an AI is randomly picking what to make happen because it’s like a computer virus, that infected the computer causing her magic. The episode’s trying to be interesting because who knows what could happen next. But I’m still apathetic to it because it’s just a rip-off of the episode Hiccups, and two other times where Sabrina had “ the hex-cups. “
And the 70s episode Hiccups, was just dedicated to THAT, it was a lot faster-paced. It’s not even explained why her magic didn’t cause everyone to find out about magic, and instead they forget about what happened. Why would the person evil enough to make Witchitis also make it so that it makes people forget or be unaware of any magic that happens? Salem spends a bunch of time talking to Sabrina instead of just using magic on her to make her unable to keep coughing, like turn her into a statue. I assume transformed witches can’t do that.
His solution predictably fails, but the perfume he gives her seems to make her feel better. She shows him affection, and Sabrina starts overheating at the picnic. Moral, is homeopathic cures suck. I can’t understand why her aunts left her without supervision ever since she started hiding from the doctor. Quigley’s supposed to be strict. But I understand them not warping the doctor to them because he could be in the bathroom at the time. The picnickers get attacked by monsters thanks to the Witchitis. Gem’s not scared at first, like she knows about magic creatures from her attic portal.
Somehow Harvey’s friend just thinks the monster is cool, instead of being scared it’ll hurt him, just because he likes aliens. Sure is convenient that this is before every kid had a cell phone with a camera in it. She goes to the doctor’s office and says it’s an emergency. Nobody stops her from approaching the doctor when he’s busy with a patient. Why didn’t he get rid of the soot on himself with magic right away? He’d be in pain. The episode wastes time with the monsters scaring the mortals, but at least Gem’s scared too.
The doctor says the monsters would only disappear when Sabrina gets the shot, because it conveniently forces her to use magic, to undo everything that happened. She says it didn’t even hurt and then says maybe just a little. Why wasn’t she told from the start that apparently the shot was magically enchanted so that it would barely hurt? Realistically Harvey’s friend asks her how she’s gonna explain all this.
Thankfully the doctor uses a magical artifact to make the kids forget the magic they witnessed, even though they’d still be suspicious of the trees being damaged all of a sudden, so he should’ve healed them too. The Sabrina I know would’ve made them forget about all of the magical stuff herself! Cheerfulness is forced here. Harvey wouldn’t just be happy after this. They’d wonder why they all blacked out.
Sabrina again lies to the audience that shots barely hurt to try to trick us, although that’s a white lie that’s worth it, except it’s not gonna fool anybody who’s actually had a needle before. So what is this, for four-year-olds? And she gets handed a list and says her allowance is gonna get spent on it. She was already punished by the events of the episode!
This episode was about Sabrina being too scared of needles to get a shot for a witch fever that causes magic to happen in a rip-off of the magic hiccups, to be more interesting than a boring illness. I wish it was explained why Witchitis exists to keep the story from feeling arbitrary, because it’d only exist if it was made by witches out of spite. The overly scary consequences of Witchitis were visually interesting, and the message was good enough to make me wonder if it’s a good episode for once.
But it was forced that witches wouldn’t warp the shot INTO people, and it was distracting that it had no excuse for dragging on as long as it did, because her family is magical enough to warp her to them and grab her hands the second she disappears! She should’ve expected that and stayed put. And it’s another episode making magic look like a bad thing.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 27 My Stepmother the Babe:
Students pull a rope to get something pulled up. I never saw students do stuff like that in school. I never heard of a student self-portrait wall either. Sabrina tells someone good job on hanging the student portraits. Sabrina’s looking forward to her funny smart dad coming here, who’s supposedly a good dancer. She says she’ll have him to herself for three days. There’s no way she’d let go of Harvey’s ladder, especially not twice. Sabrina’s supposed to be considerate at least. Chloe gives her good news too boring for me to remember.
Why does she get mad at Sabrina when she says she’s gonna get her dad booked to be with her for three days? The whole episode has me expecting disappointment for Sabrina because she’s looking forward to something. She gets upset that clothes that her dad gave her for her tenth birthday don’t fit. Logically magic would be used to grow them. We see a living room’s looks get changed multiple times by each of the aunts in a failed forgettable attempt to give them different personalities from each other.
Salem returns the room to normal and Quigley thanks him. Sabrina’s dad hugs her, and then he instantly springs on her the idea that he’s marrying a new woman, with no warning! She screams, and somehow no one reacts! Sabrina’s aunts want to cater to the stepmother who’s also a mortal because her dad doesn’t learn a simple lesson. One of them summons nachos, and when Sabrina says she doesn’t look like a waitress, one of her aunts uses magic to give her a waitress outfit for a bit. Sabrina relatably hates the stepmother for keeping her from being alone with her dad. She’d hear this if she’s in the next room.
She sits next to her dad and hugs him, and the soda sprays at her stepmom, who could have easily not decided to COME here. She has an antique shop. Sabrina’s talking that she thinks her dad will get rid of her stepmother should’ve been heard by everyone. The stepmom says that they’re together because of all the things they have in common like visiting art museums and horseback riding. Sabrina likes that too, and her dad says all three of them should do that together. When I see Sabrina fly on a broom and use magic to send the stepmom off the horse into the mud I know it’s just an Imagine Spot.
We see a picture of her hugging her father. He walks into her room and says out of nowhere that he loves her. It has to be that he knows why she’s upset and is sucking up to her. But I shouldn’t just have to assume that. So far he’s just been unlikable. He should’ve told Sabrina about his fiancee a lot earlier so she’d have time to process this, and maybe warm up to her. Sabrina can’t get advice from Harvey because he’s busy raking leaves.
He walks into the house and she uses magic to rake the leaves into the bags and he says that if she’s gonna have a stepmom, she should have one fun and cool. But she goes horseback riding. That’s at least showing some willingness to have fun and take risks. She hugs Harvey. Then we see the aunts suffering because they’re covered in lobsters. They’re busy making a soup for the stepmom. Why are the animals alive? They’re idiots because they aren’t just using magic to instantly create it. So I don’t care.
Sabrina’s perfectly happy to change her stepmom’s whole personality to suit her, making it forced that she didn’t do this to Gem a long time ago. She bribes Salem with cat stuff. The stepmom finally is sympathetic. She says she was hoping she’d have a chance to chat with her and apologizes for being a surprise, hopes actually, and says her shitty father insisted on it. She relates to her that she’s been in her same position before. Sabrina still hands her the magic mirror. The Sabrina I know would’ve waited until after she went horseback riding with her first. Why would she need to get in really close?
She disappoints her saying what actor she prefers because she gets reminded of her dad by him. Sabrina gets mad because she thinks the mirror doesn’t work. Her dad says he’ll go out to dinner with just Sabrina tonight, on the stepmom’s suggestion. Then the stepmom sits down on the stair banister and slides down it. Spell delay is forced. It’s too hard to hear what her name is. It seems to be a weird name, so I can’t take it in. Her dad is off-put by her acting like Sabrina. The stepmom insists on them going to an amusement park and Sabrina likes the idea of bumper cars when she suggests it.
Sabrina’s dad doesn’t like this, saying they’ve been on a ride three times already which makes her almost as bad as Harvey and just wants a quiet dinner with her. But considering what a jerk he’s been, and a boring one, I don’t care. He was more fun in the sitcom, even if he was too confusing, like why was he in a book? He forced her on Sabrina right away suggesting a walk with her when she’s sad! These things take time! He’s sad during a montage where his fiancee is just hanging out with Sabrina.
It seems arbitrary that a willingness to have fun at an amusement park is pigeonholed into just being a thing young people are allowed to do. He angsts to Sabrina and says he shouldn’t have sprung Futura on her. That’s such an on-the-nose name for “ her future stepmother. “ It’s annoying that Sabrina’s wasting time opening up to Harvey’s friend who has his head in the clouds. Eventually Sabrina’s dad says he thinks that his fiancee is acting like Sabrina just to get her to like her. He hugs her and she doesn’t appreciate it and he walks away sadly.
Sabrina thinks she ruined her dad’s life when all she did was make his fiancee different when he lived just fine without her, I assume. She kisses her dad’s cheek, and spends some time ordering Salem to undo the spell. Why in the hell didn’t she just instantly point to undo the spell as soon as she regretted it? Salem says the spell will wear off in three days, or two somehow. There’s NO way that’d be the case. Magic would be however the witches would want it, they’d have to intentionally imagine that the spells would last only a certain amount of time.
Sabrina uses magic and serves her dad food and she gets told Futura left him a note that she’s gone boarding. He puts his hands on her shoulders and Sabrina says she’ll be back to normal in 3 days. just NOW her dad figures out that Sabrina changed his fiancee. Since her dad is a witch, how did he not instantly blame Sabrina after she changed?! At least Futura comes back into the room for a bit and is nice to them all, so it’s not like she was trying to leave him.
I’ve always assumed that the reason her dad isn’t raising her, is that the Witches’ Council made it illegal just because he divorced a mortal, but it needs to be explained here. No divorce would not even allow him to visit her every weekend, and it’s not explained that he has a job that keeps him extremely busy, and it wouldn’t matter because he’d still warp to her to visit her every day. So yeah he’s just neglectful for no reason! She tells him the truth and it’s needlessly depressing as he’s quiet and she tells him to say something.
He calls her a spoiled brat and says he loved her, and he asks her to tell him exactly what she did to Futura. HE’S the spoiled brat! He doesn’t wanna deal with raising his own daughter, because he doesn’t wanna put up with being a father! There is no way she would’ve shown him the mirror, and ended up turning him into her basically.
He’s shown standing on his head, and now she feels bad about it. Exercise is healthy! I expected them to do something to end the spell faster instead of the plot ending without his fiancee being normal again. Salem’s spell being temporary ends up being pointless anyways considering how the episode ends. It could’ve had her back to normal by the next day and had the same plot events.
This story was needlessly frustrating and was doomed to be that way no matter what; it spends some time building up how much Sabrina looks forward to her dad visiting her, all the while not bothering to explain why her aunts raise her instead of her parents, so without us knowing it for sure it just looks like he’s neglecting her for no reason! And predictably she’s disappointed because he brings his fiancee with him, when he should KNOW that his daughter wants him all to herself because that’s always how it’s been on the rare occasion he visits her, and with how neglectful he’s been to her, he owes her that!
She felt like her life was being unfair, so of course she’s gonna use magic to fix a problem that could’ve easily not happened. And it’s more merciful than her just getting rid of her with magic like she fantasized! So she was being nice!
It’s relatable that she’d wanna have more fun than she would otherwise by going to an amusement park. But still she wouldn’t have done this because she would have already learned from her first day as a witch that she’d feel guilty about brainwashing someone to be nice. She wanted to keep Gem nice, so, she already learned that she should keep someone the way they are.
This story didn’t botch its message, I’m sure it’s relatable to people, but I still hate it because her father had no excuse for bringing his fiancee here in the first place for the only time they have alone together, so the message that she should accept her for who she is comes off as heavy-handed. Why didn’t Sabrina think to simply brainwash his fiancee into going home instead?
The impulsive witch could’ve easily thought to make her go home and done so, instead of taking so long wondering what to do somehow that she complained about her to Harvey! She wanted her home right away so I don’t know how she never thought of that.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 28 Absence of Malissa:
The teacher’s got an exaggeratedly bored tone in her voice. She’s upset by the sound of a ringing cell phone, when she made it clear there were to be no cell phones in this class. I don’t remember phones being barred from the classroom when I was growing up. Gem puts a cell phone in her bag to frame her and get her in trouble. Sabrina somehow doesn’t tell her to look through the phone, which would instantly tell her it’s not her phone. So Chloe motivates Sabrina to use magic to make Gem trip and fall in pie making the students laugh at her. She looks sad, because she wanted to make her hair fall out.
Gem would hear this, she’s in the same quiet room. Chloe looks moralityless by asking why she didn’t just do that, so that’s surprising. She says she doesn’t have the power to change major stuff. At first I thought she meant that every episode that she tries, it backfires on her, but somehow she’s talking about the false idea that she isn’t as powerful, because she’s young. And why is she talking as if making Gem’s hair fall out counts as a major change? She could just buy a wig. She turned her into a mouse, I’m sure she could make her hair fall out! She shows ALL of the abilities that could cause major changes by herself.
She can summon things, teleport, use telekinesis. You summon the wrong thing in the wrong place and that could cause a major change. Zelda says Sabrina has to go to witch boot camp like every other witch. Why does Sabrina think she’ll love BOOT CAMP? Has she not watched TV before? Why is Zelda smiling when telling her that the camp is torture? She tells her that somehow she has to complete the camp to get her full powers. This was never the case before this series, and even without that it’s still forced. Every witch would zap the Council for this, so they can’t be too mean! First half-witch, yeah right Hilda!
Time is different in the Nether World, out of complete nowhere. So she can still complete her camp sessions and not miss school on Earth, because of a different chronotron speed apparently. But wouldn’t she get jet lag? Her aunts take advantage of potion ingredients, and expect Sabrina to get brought into the Nether World by a giant hand, rather than simply warping her or taking her into the shower entrance like I liked, or the attic entrance. I’m gonna HATE this episode for torturing her the whole time with a drill sergeant, which would NOT be something kids would be put through without doing anything wrong.
Salem talks to her from her bag. Why did he go here? Did he wanna see her suffer? How does he not know by now that he does nothing but make her life worse? He could just ruin her chances! I like seeing her in that outfit. Salem says he’s here to mock her humiliation. How is she being humiliated? Nobody surrounding her is finding her funny. Someone says she’s scared and Sabrina says me too and they shake hands. It’s silly that Sabrina replies to what Zelda said to her in her memory because she’s talking to herself around these girls and they aren’t reacting to it.
Every time I see people like this in the show I’m just wondering how they exist when, all the other witches don’t look green-skinned. They could be a separate species but that needs to be explained. A stereotypical witch shows her face and somehow she doesn’t react to Salem calling her hideous. Again if it was explained that they were a separate alien species it would make sense that they don’t shapeshift to look good because their species thinks they do look good, and they don’t care what other people think. She talks to the girls in a mean way for no reason because she’s a drill sergeant.
How did she take until now to hear Salem? Why did she think it was SABRINA talking when clearly she wouldn’t have her voice sound like Salem? Well I can assume she thought that she was talking in a male voice to disguise it, but I still hate this. And she should have explained that! The drill sergeant was already warned about Sabrina because Sabrina’s half-witch. The girls around Sabrina are shocked that she’s half-witch. One’s somehow dumb enough to ask what half-witch means.
But then some of them just act fascinated, asking when she gets to use her magic. So fascinated alone doesn’t come off like they hate her. It’s not mean dialogue, tone aside. Then someone whispers some bullshit that she steals people’s spells… from, her aunts I guess she means. Witches would be able to look up info on half-witches on the internet and fact-check in seconds so they wouldn’t think this… although, that would require someone doubting the misinformation enough to check it in the first place.
Sabrina calls out the drill sergeant on bullshit because she just said she never met a half-witch before, somehow in all of her lifetime. I hate her voice. It’s too hard to tell what she’s saying. She tells her not to count on graduating because she’s the one in charge of deciding who passes. This could mean that almost every half-witch never gets her full powers. So I have to assume the reason she doesn’t turn this bitch into a frog is she knows she’ll just get in trouble and it’ll be undone. If she got alone with her, no one might know because, no one is being spied on.
Blue-haired girl says, “ Sorry Sabrina! “ before leaving her. WHY are the witches expected to run with backpacks? What’s the purpose of them being put through a boot camp that’s like a boot camp? Later on they’re shown using magic a lot so you’d think they’d be expected to levitate their backpacks. Sabrina cries without her acting sounding like it and tells Salem the girls hate her. He says they don’t hate her because they don’t really know her and are buying into stereotypes, unusually wise words, so they need to get to know her.
And the Sabrina torture continues. She flies the broom better than THAT! A curse, that’s all! At least some magic is used to take her out of a body of water. If someone changed ALL her spells this montage would make sense. The montage is trying to be visually interesting because of the magic, but it’s just a bunch of stuff happening that doesn’t matter to me. I like when she succeeds. Sabrina’s told she has to conjure up her own food.
There’s NO WAY in HELL that she’d fail at conjuring up pizza and make something different, because if it doesn’t work by visualization, how else would it work? By asking the mystic spirits in her head? Because even then, you wouldn’t be able to screw up asking, “ Give me pizza! “ Her food’s changed to be horrible by the drill sergeant, who should’ve explained that she made sure she wouldn’t be able to summon pizza. It makes sense that she’d be treated like a loser. The girls only smirk at her after being glared at by the drill sergeant.
Sabrina’s embarrassed and wants to leave, but somehow she thinks she’ll still get her powers if she pleads with the Witches’ Council, even though they’d hate half-witches too with this logic. Why do they even get to keep their powers at all? Sabrina puts ingredients into a potion and uses a makeshift wand, so it’s cool to see it look different than normal. The girls scream, that’s good karma. The drill sergeant says she’s making a mess of a transportation spell. A SPELL is something that you SAY!
It makes sense that you could misremember a recipe and so not make a potion correctly. But I’m just used to Sabrina always being good at making potions! The drill sergeant summons a cauldron because she is allowed to go home. It’s so annoying that the drill sergeant has a mocking voice. Sabrina tells her off for insulting her parents and says she’ll stay in front of the other girls.
The girls gasp and one of them ends up congratulating her on standing up to the drill sergeant, but she assumes that if all half-witches are like Sabrina, they must be amazing. So she’s still a bigot, because she still tends to think every person of a group is alike. There’s another montage of stuff that’s worthless to the plot overall. This episode doesn’t have enough plot to last an episode. Again, as usual magic is always kinda visually interesting, but it’s not important enough to be memorable and make me wanna single out examples. I’m sure it’s all stuff I saw before.
Why is Sabrina using a wand anyways? She never does that. Any explanation, would make you wonder why she doesn’t always use a wand, like, it conserves magic, increases magic’s likelihood to work, or, it makes her more powerful. Sabrina uses magic on a clock, and the old man yells at the drill sergeant for getting him up for inspection time an hour early, and he says she’ll pay for this. I assume I’m gonna SEE that because THAT would be COMPETENT writing. Why didn’t Sabrina start abusing magic on this girl way earlier?
Sabrina eventually makes a potion to make ghosts and the old man holds them to his sides affectionately and says Sabrina’s really going places. Why did the jerk take SO LONG to start the magic duel? Sabrina starts running so it stops being visually interesting as it’s just a bunch of magic beams and shots of her running. You’d think there’d be a huge amount of variety in what’s happening and it’d be the bitch suffering over and over. Sabrina tells the jerk to watch out for a falling branch and she uses magic to save her life.
The only reason I’m okay with this is because I’m sure Sabrina would be traumatized by the memory of letting her die. She’d be in trouble if it landed on her. But it’d have been better for everyone if she didn’t save her because she’s mean to EVERYBODY The jerk asks her why she helped her, and Sabrina starts lecturing and is inexplicably nice saying that she should treat people the way she wants to be treated – even though she abused magic on Gem, so why is she helping HER up and giving her a chance when she’s worse than Gem, because Gem isn’t acting like a drill sergeant to EVERYBODY?
She says the jerk’s great at magic, and they could be friends. She says being nice to a bigot who bullied her the right thing to do. If someone’s bullied you, you’ve got the right to not befriend them and get to know them! Imagine if everyone was pressured to try to befriend their bigoted bullies. Sabrina was told by Salem earlier that if they got to know HER, they might like her because they never really hated HER, so that’s what led to this, but I thought Salem was just talking about the students.
Sure, treat people the way you wanna be treated, but you shouldn’t even interact with them if they did nothing but mistreat you because that’s only gonna result in more abuse, and if you wanna be nice to do a right thing, why not just be nice to someone who won’t abuse you instead? I wish everyone was nice to everyone, but it’s dangerously dishonest by not showing a single bigot who still hates her after she’s nice and shows who she really is beyond being part of a different group than them.
It’s hard on you to be nice to someone just to get mistreated, so it’s common sense to just ignore them because it’s better for your mental health. I GET venting, but, even responding with bitterness can just stress you out. It’s not portraying her as an idiot on purpose because it does work out for Sabrina instead of torturing her even more. The drill sergeant isn’t mean to her anymore and sends her a nice letter. It’s never been in-character for Sabrina to be nice to someone who was mean to her. This girl isn’t relatable at all.
This episode’s about torturing Sabrina at boot camp, because somehow every witch has to go through this as a preteen, and she’s an outcast for most of it because somehow the drill sergeant was told in a letter that she’s a half-witch and exposes her, but then she stands up to her because she’s provoked. Her magic duel could’ve been great because I liked any time she abused magic against her, but instead it’s mostly just boring shots of Sabrina running away and magic beams, until she saves her life, and somehow out of nowhere she talks like she wants to be friends with this bigot. And it works out!
That’s a bad message! She says that Zelda taught her not to judge a book by its cover, but you should make an exception in cases like this. Apparently the moral of the story is, “ if you’re suffering from prejudice, be nice to the bigots and ask to be friends, and they’ll always agree to it and change, because they’re all still good people. “ THAT’S idealistic. I would say you should just go about your day acting like they don’t exist, not set yourself up for disappointment by trying to get them to change their minds. I’d know!
I once replied to someone with the word slut in his username who stereotypes all Brainscratchcomms fans as having a certain personality trait and I explained that they’re NOT all like that since I’m not. And I was just treated like dirt, as if I WAS like that when I just proved I wasn’t by trying to be nice and put faith in him. And that’s not mentioning the actual minority groups I AM a part of, but this was just the one anecdote I experienced.
So it doesn’t even matter what group of people is being stereotyped, ANYONE who’s bitter enough to think in hateful stereotypes about a group, who thinks ALL of them are alike, is NEVER gonna turn out to be such a nice person that they’ll be nice to you if you’re part of that group. If they’re nice to most people and haven’t mistreated YOU you should still be polite to them. But in the context Sabrina was in, where she was already mistreated by her, her message didn’t APPLY! She realistically would’ve just been wasting her time being nice to her.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 29 This is your 9 Lives:
Sabrina says it took her forever to make Salem’s birthday gift. Again he’s unsympathetic this time freaking her out, since she doesn’t want him to find the gift early, so he asks her what she’s doing. Then he obnoxiously begs her to give him a hint about what his gift is. She magically slams the door on him. The furniture gets made to move as the aunts sarcastically cheer Salem’s name. Meanwhile they’re busy watching a soap opera about amnesia and heartbreak. Both of that happened in Sonic comics. This episode’s been boring. Eventually the TV gets unplugged because Salem wants to know what his gift is.
Magic gets used to float him and put him down. He hopes they didn’t get his present from Cousin Ambrose. WHY isn’t HE in this show instead of Quigley then?! The whole point of Quigley is he’s supposed to be the adult raising them in the show. I didn’t know he was canon to this series! Of course he doesn’t have a unique character from the aunts, but it’s better than Quigley. Predictably Sabrina thinks Salem will hate her gift, because he just expects big impressive gifts, and doesn’t appreciate the sweater zapped to him. Why is it’s a pink sweater?
The person was intentionally trying to give him a bad gift. That’s why Hilda can close it over his head. Why does Chloe say that because Sabrina’s a kid, she can’t give Salem an extravagant gift? She’d know she can create anything she wants! Chloe shows her a time machine novel because they’re at school so Sabrina gets an idea. Sabrina tries to get Salem’s address book. Why are there talking mice in the mortal realm? I assume Salem made them like this, but WHY? That’d make him feel guilty about trying to eat them. He’s not an outright killer of sentient beings.
Sabrina gets talked to by something she’s holding and throws him sociopathically. She finds a box, and assumes that it’s a spell to travel back in time. She wants to get Salem’s old friends to wish him a happy birthday. Chloe says this is dangerous, instead of being fun by egging her on. She has magic to protect her! Somehow for the person to get home, she needs to have the magic compass, making me wonder if she’ll lose it, when realistically she’d be able to point instead. Why would that condition be the case? The Witches’ Council wouldn’t approve of that!
And if Chloe’s worried for her, why does she insist on coming with her? Harvey goes into the attic and takes too long to scream at the magical tornado, and they see someone wanting to run in fear and they start running away from angry tennis players. Harvey’s presence justifies Sabrina not using magic against them, except there’s no excuse for Sabrina not warping Harvey back to the attic. Sabrina finds Amelia Earhart on an island. She died there in real life because she crashed. At least here I can assume she used a magic artifact to save herself because of a friendship with Salem.
She asks what the favor she needs is, even though they’re still being chased, so she’s sweet. Why did the people who chased them start behaving? Sabrina videotapes them and when she says Salem, Amelia says Salem said that he’d take her around the world, but he’s the reason she’s stuck on this island for an unintelligible reason. It was a map to the star’s homes. Why did she say Salem’s name again when she was told she never wanted to hear the name again? Sabrina wouldn’t say that she really doesn’t want to say happy birthday on tape for him, because no duh!
Salem would’ve just warped Amelia off the island a long time ago. This makes him inexcusably evil, because, she used to like him, and she wouldn’t still be in his address book, if he didn’t like her. And sure, he wouldn’t want her to go bother him. I assume that he wanted to keep conserving magic, not waste it by warping away from her every time she went to get back at him because she wasn’t on the island, but he could’ve erased her memory of what he did to her. I hate when characters look cartoonishly angry like this! Sabrina says she read that George having wooden teeth isn’t true. That’s true.
He says his teeth are wooden because Salem’s accident from tripping broke his teeth. It’s SO horrible that a show meant to educate kids goes out of its way to mention the truth, just to insist that the common urban legend IS true! Meanwhile Harvey’s always assumed that he was having a nightmare and spent the whole boat ride seasick. Still waiting for him to do something interesting. Sabrina and her friends get warped to a ship. She says that a guy having 3 stars by his name has to mean that he’s good friends with Salem. At this rate it looks like it’d mean, it means that he hates him more than the others.
WHY would Salem keep all of these people in his address book if he’d know they all hate him now?! How would he not know that he did things to make them hate him? This plot may be constantly interesting, and it’s satisfying to constantly see people say they hate Salem, so I think it’s good. But it would’ve never happened, unless his address book was just meant to be his book of enemies that he’s glad he outlived. And it’s not like Salem to be THAT spiteful. And I shouldn’t need to say this, but if George was upset about losing his teeth Salem would’ve zapped up new teeth for him!
Chloe says it was bad for Sabrina to mention Salem’s name. It’s not like they have a choice. They don’t know any other friends of theirs, that they’d agree to say happy birthday for. The pirate rants that because of Salem his sword was taken. He takes her compass, and she cries and says she just wanted to give Salem a good present. Predictably somehow the evil pirate pities her and says that it’s the thought that counts.
She tries to get the compass from him, and somehow the good in him he showed means nothing because he says he wants his sword back instead of giving her back her compass, and he orders her friends to be put in the brig, and has Sabrina get threatened by sharks and follow her. Chloe says Harvey had better save Sabrina. Wouldn’t SHE want to be the one saving Sabrina? It’s like she assumes he’s more reliable just because he’s a guy. That wouldn’t happen because it’s not the 50s, and he’s an idiot. The pirate somehow says about the compass that it lies.
Somehow Sabrina says she can’t get his sword back because somehow her magic doesn’t work like that! She can SUMMON ANYTHING! It’d summon believable if she said she doesn’t know what his sword looks like but then he’d just describe it to her. And I guess he used a long thing to get the keys that had no excuse for being in the same room as his cell anyways. I get why they wouldn’t anticipate him escaping though, because they’re so stupid that they wouldn’t think he’d use the long things in his cell, when they have no reason to still be in the cell.
He gets in danger, and Sabrina hammers the message into our heads. Who ever told her NOT to give Salem her old gift though? Chloe saves the day so effortlessly that I missed what she did, it had no impact at all, and she gets the compass back and they go home. You’d think someone with magic would’ve gotten this accomplished a lot earlier, y’know with teleportation Sabrina lets Harvey believe that he was just dreaming like he already believed. It was exciting that Harvey was with Sabrina. Sabrina tells Salem he thought he’d hate her gift.
Predictably he says this is the best gift he ever got given. I assume it’s because it’s a gift from Sabrina. He likes having a framed photo of himself with him AND Sabrina, and says every photo he has of himself just has him in it. I hate when a whole story could’ve been avoided if people talked, but it makes sense that Sabrina didn’t because she’d think that even having that conversation would already give away to Salem that her gift wouldn’t be big and extravagant.
This episode has Sabrina time travel with a different artifact this time to try to get Salem’s old friends on tape wishing him a happy birthday, but every time, they get furious at hearing Salem’s name because he screwed them over, in a way that he could’ve effortlessly made up for with magic. It was always interesting to watch and hear people explain why they hate Salem, so it was a good episode, even if it’s another one where magic just didn’t work out. Salem would know they ended up hating him and not bothered to keep them in an address book when they’ve long since been outlived.
If he still liked visiting them, he would’ve had written down the time where they still liked him, so Sabrina would’ve gone to THAT time instead. The episode has a good message that just because someone says he wants extravagant gifts doesn’t mean he’ll hate a handmade gift from someone he loves. I always knew his bond with Sabrina was this strong, but Sabrina should’ve known that more than anybody then.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 30 Planet of the Dogs:
It’s nice of the students to say goodbye Sabrina for no reason like she’s popular. Why is she walking home, why are they all doing that instead of taking the bus? Why is Sabrina really nervous and looking behind her a lot? She’s a WITCH. She finds out it’s only a dog following her and she hugs it and says she’ll take care of it. Why is she being such a scaredy-cat? She tries to hide the dog in her jacket and nervously lies about the noise which shouldn’t fool anyone. She made a hat invisible!
If she knew she wasn’t allowed to have any pets in the house how did she even think it was worth it to bring it in the house? She can’t keep it invisible forever. Quigley eventually says Sabrina has a bad track record with pets because once she gets bored, he’s left to take care of them. She’d know that, not ask, “ What? “ Sabrina never changes the water of her goldfish. This is Out of Character. He says her other pet, she got bored and stopped playing with the hamster, who somehow can talk to a bunch of other hamsters. She must have used magic to make her able to talk to them.
It’s Out of Character of Sabrina to be bad at taking care of pets. If she isn’t compassionate, she’s not Sabrina. The scene’s really dragging out, being very generic. The only interesting thing is she magically summons a halo, and it’s nice that her aunts are affectionate to the dog. Salem gets licked by the dog. Since when do dogs instantly act affectionate to cats instead of chasing them? Then there’s a boring generic montage with Sabrina having a dog that goes how you’d expect. Someone threatens the dog with a newspaper.
I can only find value in this story because I’ve seen two comics where Sabrina got a new dog, only for it to disappear next story. But it shows how pointless this is because this does nothing with her being a witch. Sabrina talks on the phone with Harvey and uncharacteristically doesn’t feed the dog. She thinks to keep the dog from using the Spookie Jar, but doesn’t think to feed it. Huh? It’s disrespectful to Sabrina’s character to make her heartless! It forgets why she was ever popular. She’d hide the Spookie Jar after this, not put it back where it was!
Why would Quigley say he needs to talk to her about that pooch of hers with an antagonistic tone when in the next sentence he starts complimenting her on the dog? Why would he not be suspicious and mad at Sabrina putting her hand on Salem’s mouth? Salem snarks that dogs are idiots who don’t just pick up on things, so the dog turns on him. Why would Sabrina not believe Salem about this when he lives in a witch household with the SPOOKIE JAR?! She usually has too MUCH faith in him when she should’ve learned!
It’s just there for padding which is so pathetic that they’ll have really bad parts of an episode just because the writer was too incompetent to make a plot that lasts a whole episode. It takes a long time of boredom before Salem spies on the dog and sees the normal dogs walking around. The dogs talk in the dump, with one of them having a magic bone put on his head causing him to complain about his abusive owner. And this happens again. This just reminds me of the Rick and Morty episode where a dog gets smart and turns evil, which only demonizes intelligence. It makes me wonder if this is a cliché story.
I shouldn’t need to explain this but there’s no point in having the show tell the audience that pet neglect and abuse is wrong more than one time. Wouldn’t it be better to have a lot of messages in every episode? Salem somehow walks ahead and gets their attention accidentally, when obviously he’d use his magic on them instantly, or warp home, not fall and act scared and get picked up! And while he does get his claws out, it cuts ahead to the dogs running from him rather than showing him be awesome. Eventually Sabrina sees a protest and gets told someone stole every dog in town.
Sabrina’s shown a newspaper with a photo of her dog and realizes Salem was telling the truth, no duh. She also sees pawprints all over with the house being a mess and walks around with an umbrella. Salem has a black eye that he obviously would’ve cured with magic, and he blames Alvin. There’s no way Salem would be such a failure when he has magical powers. Sabrina even says don’t be so pathetic. She’s one to talk though because she’s somehow scared at reading a note trying to manipulate her when she could obviously warp her aunts and Quigley to her right now.
Instead she’s finally wearing a new outfit for once, which makes her look badass, but I won’t be manipulated into thinking she IS when she should just be using magic, not trying to bribe Salem with a ball of yarn to get him to go with her, when she’s supposed to be powerful on her own and not need him. Instead of creating a portal that’d home in on Alvin, she gives Salem something and eventually throws a treat to get the two dogs to go after them, letting her and Salem progress, when magic could’ve also worked, but I understand wanting to conserve magic.
And somehow her aunts are still sitting there tied up when they would still be able to point. And these idiots let the dog talk when they have magic, and SOMEHOW Salem gets hurt and Sabrina and Salem end up tied up too, when they all have magic! Alvin complains that she tried to fool him. Sabrina asks him why he’s doing this and gets the message hammered in. These writers think we’re complete idiots if they think we’re not gonna get the message instantly.
She says she didn’t mean anything by it and apologizes and calls him sweet. This reminds me of that episode of the Fairly Odd Parents where an evil monster magician stopped being evil just because Timmy said sorry. The aunts reveal that somehow if Sabrina’s speech reminds the dog of what it was like to be her happy pet, the spell will go away, because that makes TOTAL sense. If Spookie made it like this because he disapproved of his spell, then why did he even grant his wish in the first place, when he’s just a dog, and he’d obviously rather side with Sabrina’s family over him?
Spookie must have used a mind reading power to even know what the dog wanted with him. The dogs get made affectionate again, and the cop asks Quigley if he’d like to ride in a police car with him for fun, and at least Quigley gets made to ask if he’s not toying with him like last time. But he doesn’t get nearly enough abuse in this show. Eventually Alvin’s owner finds him, and like Sabrina she says she loves him. It’s good that it actually did explain why the dog won’t be in later episodes. I knew it wouldn’t be.
This episode’s about Sabrina getting a dog and uncharacteristically not feeding it when it clearly wants to be fed like she’s a sociopath, so the dog gets a hold of the Spookie Jar because she somehow didn’t warp it to a place where the dog couldn’t get at it, even though she just saw it try to use it, and the dog somehow wishes it could be smarter and that somehow turns it evil.
Why wouldn’t the dog instead wish that Sabrina would never ignore it and its needs? If it can talk, why not just tell Sabrina to not ignore it? After all of its good times with Sabrina, it wouldn’t make a spiteful wish and turn evil that quickly because dogs have LOYALTY to their owners.
The episode went from a story that was boring and pointless from how generic it was to an insanely frustrating one when Sabrina somehow doesn’t believe Salem about an obviously witchcraft-related thing being the case, and so she doesn’t instantly turn to Spookie to get his magic undone. Even if I didn’t believe Salem, I’d still go to Spookie just in case! And then Salem sees the dog try to get the other dogs to rebel and he somehow doesn’t point instantly to get everything back to normal, nor does he even warp to the Spookie Jar to do so!
He’s always a cat because he used to be a warlock, so he wouldn’t forget he has magic. We didn’t need an entire episode to hammer in the message that pet neglect is evil, at the expense of the smartness of these witches who never thought to use magic. The first scene where Sabrina was ragingly Out of Character by not taking care of her goldfish was already successful in having the message be memorable.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 31 Hex-Change Students:
Harvey says Sabrina gets to hang out with him and have fun playing a game with him. Gem gives her a nice new haircut, and makes her smile with her advice. It takes years to learn hairstyling, so Gem’s a genius for doing that. Chloe says to Gem “ You’re finally getting that personality transplant! “ Gem says she’s hosting exchange students, from Canada. Sabrina says that’s exotic. How’d the writer not realize it’d be more interesting to see exchange students from ANYWHERE else? But with this show’s track record I don’t trust it anyways.
Why is Gem not caring that people are laughing at her just for bragging that she’ll get to eat Canadian food? I don’t get it, why am I seeing into Gem’s head? Chloe says Gem knows nothing about Canada. Then out of nowhere we see some people with magical powers who arrive at Gem’s mansion. Since when is the chef the one answering the door? He asks how they got past the security guards and he gets transformed into a giant dog treat, and the dog doesn’t freak out and get scared of them. Why’d he freak out just from hearing him say mortal, does he know about witchcraft from Gem?
He freaked out before seeing the beam of magic. I can’t muster up any sympathy for Gem’s family as they were shown to be evilly strict before. So I look forward to this episode. I guess their butler, quit. Why did Gem ask who these two are? Uncharacteristically Gem tries to be nice to the exchange students saying that they’re gonna be her new best friends, and she puts her arms around them both, and she somehow talks slowly saying that they speak English very well. They weren’t talking in French accents, so why would she ever think they couldn’t speak English natively?
And if she really thought they spoke English well, they wouldn’t speak slowly. They plan to mess with her. She gets convinced to make a phone call for an interior decorator to go to her bedroom, and she isn’t sure she likes how it’s changed, and the witch bullies decide to do something about Gem’s look, which DID get old granted. I wish I knew the names of these people because I love that they’re gonna bully Gem. Why would Gem say that Sabrina’s not as cool as her when she should immediately know that she looks ridiculous?
Sabrina recognizes the exchange students, calling them Dawson and Felicity, and the girl hugs her. I’m glad I was shown that they have a heart instead of just being evil stereotypical witches. Dawson walks with his hand on her shoulder. Apparently they used to go to Camp Nether World five years ago. Felicity summons soft chairs, and I have to assume the spy witches only are hired to erase camera footage of magic. She says she’s got a vacation in the mortal realm, which is why she’s here. Gem gives her soda and spits it out calling it awful.
She uses magic to make it look different and lies to Gem that she got her the wrong thing. I’m glad Sabrina laughs at it, because earlier when she gasped, I thought she was gonna feel bad for Gem for getting bullied finally. Sabrina says she can’t just leave her friends. THEY’RE her friends TOO and they’re clearly more entertaining to the audience.
Felicity and Dawson get demonized by the writer because they wanna make Sabrina’s friends leave HER, when if they’re like that why don’t they just brainwash Sabrina? Instead they convince them that Sabrina doesn’t want them to stay here, instead of just brainwashing THEM, and Chloe says Sabrina did NOT just diss HER. To be fair she has no reason to expect them to lie to her. She doesn’t know them.
Sabrina and her old friends ride flying carpets into a whirlpool into the ocean, and I assume the green light around them is an air bubble. I’m happy for them that the novelty of using magic hasn’t worn off for them. You only have so much creativity. Then they get warped somewhere else and the octopus is warped away. Nothing that matters is happening, but at least it’s interesting to look at. So I wish the whole show was like this. It just doesn’t motivate me to talk about it.
It’s so obvious that she’s way happier hanging out with THEM than Chloe and Harvey. Sure, it was wrong of them to make Chloe mad at Sabrina because they were somehow so desperate to hang out with HER. But I can assume it’s because they like Sabrina that much, for once. You’d think they’d just think of her as an annoying goody-two-shoes because that’s the only thing likable about her. Chloe tells Sabrina that her new friends uninvited them. I’m glad she’s not mad at Sabrina. Dawson talks in a way that reveals magic and immediately thinks to try to erase Chloe’s memory. And Sabrina says Chloe already knows so it’s cool.
And what’s confusing is that Sabrina doesn’t say only faeries can erase memories at that age. Sabrina would be the same age as these two since she went to camp with them, and there’s no indication that faeries have different powers than witches. So why doesn’t she talk as if it’s a big deal that they can erase memories since she never did, like they’re better at magic? So why doesn’t she ever erase memories? Chloe has to explain that she can’t go with them because Harvey’s mortal and walks away. Her magic would protect Chloe too, why does she think they’d overheat? Since when are witches heatproof?
And can’t she just go with them WITHOUT Harvey? Naturally Sabrina’s friends point out that Chloe should understand that Sabrina should get to hang out with her witch friends sometimes. And they should really point out that they only have two weeks to spend with Sabrina, so, they had every right to have her to themselves. It’s like how, Sabrina wanted to have her father to herself in My Stepmother the Babe. But it’s not considerate of them to expect Sabrina to hang out with her instead of go to school, because they’d know she’d be behind in her school work.
And they’re not suggesting that you use magic to fix that problem. Her friends are smart enough to point out that she doesn’t have to buy clothes and a dress gets warped to her, and she’s fine with this making me wonder why she says sadly that she can’t afford clothes like this. And she ends up going with them. Sabrina the goody-two-shoes would never ditch school. Somehow I’m expected to believe Sabrina’s been ditching school for a whole week. And I guess Quigley grounded her but she somehow doesn’t mention it? They’d call your parents immediately!
Gem’s humiliated and again somehow doesn’t realize it. So what’s the point of writing it? I just have to assume that the faeries summoned a fake Sabrina to go to Sabrina’s school in her absence. Chloe somehow asks what’s up with the act! Sabrina’s exhausted when she goes to Chloe, who says real friends don’t have to settle for being back-up friends when her cool friends show up. No compassion from her for the apologizing tired girl!
Sabrina somehow wastes time saying, “ You don’t understand! It’s complicated! “ and expecting them to take her word for it that it’s not like that when it clearly is. EXPLAIN, moron! Rather than saying they only have a few weeks to spend time with her, Sabrina says she’ll make it up to them, but she has to check her schedule. Chloe selfishly forces Harvey to leave her! Naturally when they ditch her, Dawson says “ see how mortals don’t understand? “ and Felicity says that they’re just JEALOUS, which could be true. It’s strawmanning it to have her say that. Why wouldn’t she be jealous of people with omnipotent powers?
She says if Sabrina wants to be cool, she has to stop hanging with boring mortals. Yeah she barely gets to do cool stuff around them. It’s a shame that they’re only being demonized, when the whole audience would agree that they’re more entertaining to watch than Chloe and Harvey who never do something interesting. Chloe missed her so she’s gonna NOT hang out with her! That’s not logic! Felicity summons a fairy rule book, saying a fairy can remain in the mortal world if she can trick a mortal into letting her take her place. A mortal who eats fairy food will forever remain a prisoner. This would never be the case.
So the jerks plan on tricking Chloe and Harvey. It’s really a shame that these two are being shown as heartless with the exception of the fact that they like hugs. You wouldn’t see a Sonic villain admitting that they like hugs. Chloe gets invited to a party and says she doesn’t trust those two. Then regardless of Harvey’s faith in them because it’s only a party, when she knows he’s an idiot, Chloe has no excuse for going to the party anyways with a bunch of witches evil enough to make Sabrina behind in school work. She could at least ask for magical artifacts to defend herself.
WHY doesn’t the show ever tell you the consequences of missing school?! It’s always about teaching you lessons! At least have that amount to something good at one point. Sabrina remembers how she’s known Chloe and Harvey since they were kids, but sadly nothing interesting is revealed. I have to assume Dawson and Felicity are so far away or talk so quietly that they can’t be heard saying that all they have to do is give them fairy food to trap them. But it doesn’t come off like they’re whispering. And there’s no reason Dawson would say this when he already did.
Gem doesn’t question seeing her chef look like a giant dog treat. And why would Gem think she’s not just being bullied when she’s being expected to act like a waitress? All she’d have to do is be skeptical one time and Google what she’s being told by them and she’d know she’s being lied to. She’s in denial. Sabrina gets a convenient phone call because she called Harvey’s mother to learn where he is. And it’s totally forgettable, and SHE warps to the fairy world to prevent her friends from getting trapped. Sabrina says real friends don’t make you give up your other friends. Chloe wanted to.
And her friends warp away and Sabrina says they were forced to go home and apologizes. I have to just assume all the mortals who witnessed obvious magic had their memories messed with, after this scene. The chef remembers. Then the real exchange students show up and Gem screams and runs away. It’s really annoying to me that one of them pronounces about like, “ aboot, “ when I don’t, and they both dress in the colors of the Canadian flag which is also unrealistic.
This episode is about Sabrina’s fairy friends from a witch camp having an entertaining time hanging out with her, because I guess they like her that much, but not enough to feel like it’d be wrong to make her have to catch up on a week of school work because they somehow convinced her to hang out with them ditching school for 2 weeks, making her friends upset. It’s good that we didn’t get an episode where she met them because then we’d be more sad that they’re misbehaving.
Then somehow it turns out there’s a rule where fairies can live on Earth forever if they trick a mortal into eating fairy food, when already the people who made the fairy rules are evil so why would they give a shit? They’d let them live on Earth.. It’s disappointing how the fairy friends are unimaginatively evil just to explain away why they don’t stick around, because the writer just has to demonize people with magic who encourage Sabrina to use it, when he didn’t HAVE to.
So the moral is that real friends don’t try to get you away from your other friends, no duh. How stupid do they think the audience is? Then they should’ve shown the consequences of missing a week of school instead of teaching us that it’s harmless! The person who DOES need this episode is the writer, but with Chloe and Harvey being the bad guys. THEY’RE the ones who want her to get away from THOSE friends. Like of course they would wanna occupy all of Sabrina’s time! They only get a fortnight with her!
And Chloe knows that she doesn’t have a chance against her magic, so of course she didn’t try to get Sabrina to give them up, that doesn’t make her better morally. They’re no better than her in My Stepmother the Babe, actually better since they don’t brainwash her friends.
For the most part, I actually enjoyed the episode, because it was refreshing and cathartic to see Sabrina get to enjoy hanging out with people who heavily use magic with no nagging against magic, and it was a stroke of genius to have Gem be bullied all episode, but it was very stupid to write her to be oblivious to it and try to ruin the satisfaction. Sabrina’s friends would’ve still wanted her to hang out with them instead of go to school if they had no powers, so magic wasn’t really demonized until they got Chloe and Harvey to go to the fairy world.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 32 Saturday Night Furor:
We see Zelda trying to pull a shirt away from Hilda because they both want it Saturday night. Why doesn’t Zelda zap up a copy of the shirt for herself?! The aunts land on Sabrina, and eventually, Quigley selfishly says from now on they’re spending every Saturday night together. Why would all of these WITCHES humor this MORTAL on that, especially since even Sabrina says they already tried that and hated it? I don’t care that he’s physically the oldest, they wouldn’t care. The aunts satisfyingly ask him about his girlfriend, and he says she left him.
Hilda says she’s got the perfect woman for him who’s getting too old for wrestling, so of course he tells her not to help him. She must have not even been trying to do a good job, being as sadistic as HE is. Quigley offers them tickets and says they’re gonna go to a barbershop quartet to sing and do lame stuff. He’s so selfish he’ll force them to do stuff they obviously don’t wanna do to take advantage of them being too scared to not humor him, which proves that he isn’t forcing Sabrina to not use magic because HE’S a good person. It’s another result of his selfishness.
He even says they have centuries to do whatever they want so that’s why he’s doing this! Sabrina tells him his idea isn’t fair. Salem says the answer is simple, but rather than saying “ brainwash him out of this, “ he says that Quigley needs a girlfriend. They’d need someone very desperate. And they can’t zap one up because she wouldn’t have an official house so he’d figure out she’s not real. We see Sabrina in front of a scroll she wrote, a personal ad for Quigley about who he’d wanna date. It’s lampshaded that it might be a bad idea for Quigley to date a witch. Hilda says there’s no one more fun than a witch.
The witch with a seductive voice flusters him and warps him to the Netherworld. Why does he ask what this place is? Did he seriously never go visit this realm before? Coward. It’s satisfying to see Quigley get scared by his forced experience here. Why was he chased by a dinosaur fossil? It’s lampshaded that his ad said he liked museums. and was looking for adventure. Why did his family think he was looking for adventure? And she accuses him of lying, and says she punishes people who lie. I like the idea of an episode dedicated to punishing Quigley.
Hilda says the pig transformation spell he went through will wear off in a day. That’s a miracle. I just wish there wasn’t so much time in the episode where he WASN’T getting tormented. Hilda talks as if, that kinda spell usually wears off in a day but she says usually like it’s not always like that for everybody so why does she assume it IS gonna wear off in just a day? Hilda doesn’t like the idea of going to a lecture and Sabrina says that Quigley hated his date because it wasn’t his choice. Yeah I’m sure the fact that he was sent to the Other Realm has nothing to do with it.
It’s explained that they don’t even know what his romantic tastes are. Hilda uses magic to look into his heart and summon a scroll showing them which women he likes the most, including Sabrina’s junior high principal. Why would she say junior high principal instead of just principal? That’d be faster. It’s kinda interesting that her principal is a woman. I like that Hilda didn’t hesitate to pry into his mind and Zelda didn’t stop her even though she refused to give Sabrina a perception spell for Harvey. and just made her ask him something.
Here I have to assume they have tried asking him his tastes and he never answered them. I assume the fact that he’s gonna date her principal is gonna factor her into the plot, instead of it being pointless who she is. But the only way it WOULD factor into the plot, would either not make sense because principals aren’t supposed to play favorites, or it’d be awful because she’d mistreat her. We end up seeing Quigley on the phone awkwardly asking the principal out, because he was pressured into it. I always love the magic. Why does he say “ I understand, “ if he wasn’t rejected? I hope he hates his date.
It turns out Sabrina’s aunts are going to Mars in astronaut suits, being entertaining because of how fun-loving and random they are. Them having astronaut suits for going to alien-inhabited places is inconsistent with the rest of the series. But it’s better than things not making sense. Sabrina plans on making sure Quigley’s date doesn’t fail, and Salem doesn’t have faith in her and says to leave him out of this. Why did Salem jokingly ask if she suggests riding along on his date when he didn’t want her to get the idea?
And he won’t even bother explaining to her, why she shouldn’t, not that it would help because, she’s doing this even though he said he didn’t want meddling in his love life. Sabrina uses magic so that she and him turn into dangling fuzzy dice in his car. Why is Salem with her? I guess so she can conserve magic. Salem should explain that while he always could use magic to stop Sabrina from doing something easily, he’s going along with it anyways because a part of him enjoys the adventure and risk-taking, of going along with her, not that he’s acting like it.
I’m still wondering why he doesn’t remove her powers temporarily or turn her into a statue or mouse. Sometimes Salem smiles so it should be canon that he likes this. Salem uses magic to change the way his car looks and he doesn’t appreciate it. Salem doesn’t like that he was riding empty-handed and summons roses for her which she appreciates. Quigley would know that witches are tagging along in his car. Thankfully he does look behind him. Why does she ask if he’s saying something instead of making it clear she heard every word he said about how he knows someone’s making magic?
Sabrina has a good excuse for helping him, but it’s very frustrating because Salem keeps making me think the date will be ruined by her. Already Quigley’s making a fool out of himself because he freaks his date out looking paranoid in front of her. Him saying the word grounded should make it clear that he suspects Sabrina’s nearby. It sure would suck if the end of the episode didn’t specify that he isn’t gonna ground her. Sabrina effortlessly brainwashes him into ordering a bunch of the French restaurant stuff with an accent, the kind that I couldn’t understand when the waiter talked to him.
He gets brainwashed into asking his date to dance with him when there’s no music, and singing. It’s clear that making too good of an impression on her would just set her standards too high. She says she was just embarrassed because he made a spectacle of her. Maybe she could’ve told him to stop, a lot earlier. In fact she chose to stand up, so of course he danced with her. She calls him an unrealistic insult. At least she plans to pay for her half and leave. Sabrina casts a love spell on him. There’s NO WAY that all the other women in the joint would also want him and fight over him.
Sabrina would have to imagine that for it to happen. There WAS a Sabrina story demonstrating that, Sabrina’s spell kept prematurely turning off, because she wasn’t using magic ENOUGH… At least this IS a story about Quigley getting tortured like I wanted. But the episode’s trying to make me feel tense about it instead of enjoy it because if his date goes poorly, he’ll force the entire family to give up their Saturday night dates. He runs away as I wonder why Sabrina didn’t just brainwash him into not forcing them to do that if she’s fine with brainwashing him. Why is he saying, “ so it’s you two? “ like he’s remotely surprised?
The aunts are away, and they’re the biggest troublemakers in the family. And he SAID the word grounded! How did he get disguised as a bell-hop that fast, was there a time skip? Did magic do it? Salem gets told to do something by Sabrina, to summon the aunts. Why did he destroy a chandelier? He couldn’t do it by accident. He summons the aunts who are conveniently happy about their day being interrupted. I like that Hilda says “ Oh, is that all? “ They’re perfectly happy to fix things. Hilda says happily that the women will remember nothing about this other than going to the movies.
He says she’s not his type out of nowhere. Somehow he meets his ex, who says she’d give anything to have their Saturday nights back. I guess it makes sense because a lot of people have bad taste. Too bad he needs a happy ending so the family would have their nights back, because I feel like it misses the point of a Quigley Torture Episode.
Hilda somehow says they should follow them to make their date goes right, even after what just happened. Hilda doesn’t mind that her date was ruined because she was with an 8-armed guy who wouldn’t keep his hands to himself. But what about Zelda? Sabrina wonders why no one’s working around here, and it turns out the bellhop was sent to an island.
This was about Sabrina making sure Quigley’s date goes well just to ruin it. I think I liked this episode actually because it was all about torturing Quigley. I wish nearly episode was like that because it’s a guarantee of quality. The story made it hard to enjoy his date being ruined because we’re supposed to think there’s a huge consequence to it being ruined. So it should’ve been explained, that if THIS doesn’t change his mind Salem will just brainwash him into not ruining their Saturday nights.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 33 Scare Apparent:
It starts out with us having to listen to Sabrina’s annoying scream as she’s falling through the Nether World, even though she could warp home at any point. She’d levitate to save herself from the whirlpool! Salem asks if that was fun and Hilda says she was so close while sadistically smiling, and Zelda says the bullshit that if Sabrina spends enough time in the Nether World vortex that wouldn’t exist without quitting, she’ll be able to upgrade in her witch level. Witches wouldn’t have levels! I wonder if the test has a way to detect cheating at it, like would be realistic, like an anti-fear potion.
Salem tells a scary monster to take Sabrina instead. They eventually meet an alien who’s scared of THEM. Salem tries to scare him and Sabrina tells him to cut it off and greets him. I hate that he says he’s the boogey-man, instead of simply an alien. It’s too kiddy. Sabrina asks why he wants to scare people, and he says it’s because he wants his dad to respect him. He’s scared of things it’d be impossible to be scared of. What lazy writing. He says sometimes he gets this feeling that his dad’s watching him somehow, and
Sabrina says everyone gets that feeling about their parents, which says something really bad about how bad her family is. But Sabrina’s family never spies on her, or else the whole show would be a lot different. Somehow the alien loves the Vortex… doesn’t even explain why. Sabrina realizes they could learn from each other to become braver. I just can’t get past how forced it is that he’s here. Somehow he runs through the wall. And how did he get in Sabrina’s locker? How would he know which one it was? He’d need a homing spell from a magical artifact he’d have bought, and he isn’t a witch.
Sabrina shapeshifts him to be a human, which scares him… for the same reason you’d be scared if turned into a monster. SOMEHOW he turns back to normal, and he tells her to give him a stronger spell. It’s never been explained that her shapeshifting is temporary. If it was that temporary, she’d have failed to resolve the plot of that episode with the evil white cat. It needs to be explained that, this is only the case because she used it on this particular alien species and it’s just that magical. But it’s confusing because he doesn’t use magic himself.
It’s weird that Gem says Sabrina spelled herself another loser, even though she doesn’t know she’s a witch, supposedly. Her knowing would make more sense. How would she know that, SHE’S the reason he’s here? It’s so lame that the episode’s gonna keep having Sabrina need to cast the spell again. It’s such blatant padding. She had no reason to call his family rich. When does she want Gem impressed? Sabrina tells him when he’s alone with her that he has to take the time to get to know something he’s scared of to become braver, which is bullshit.
At least the show had the restraint to not make this coward French like Antoine. He starts running and returning to normal but wills himself to keep in his human form. Good thing there’s no security cameras in the school! Then he runs into a bully. He’d see the slime. Why is he standing in front of him instead of instantly running away? The principal is somehow here in a Deus ex Machina to pull the bully away to the science lab, when she could’ve been anywhere else in the school. The boogey-man goes into Sabrina’s classroom and I’m expected to believe the teacher won’t wonder why this new student is here.
Instead she says a number and he gives her the right answer. Somehow Gem compliments his intelligence, when I’d expect a cliché show like this to make her hate him for being smart. It feels like it’s just happening to convince kids that being smart makes you popular by lying. Class gets dismissed early because there’s nothing left to cover so the students cheer. Sabrina explains to him that he wasn’t afraid because he knew a lot about math. The bully gets stood up to by Sabrina a little. It’s easy for HER, he’s not allowed to hit her! Why is the alien not running away?
Why is nobody reacting to the slime coming from him? I can give it SOME leeway because who would ever look down at someone’s shoes, especially in a fight? Sabrina uses obvious magic to send the bully away, and somehow he asks if he did that and the kids are impressed instead of scared. Somehow none of them saw what really happened, even though some of them WOULD. I guess they’re impressed because they think he’s a witch. The father’s annoyed at his cringey lame catchphrase to shine a light and banish fright. Salem lampshades that soap operas use evil twins too much, like Archie Sonic.
And I have to assume the father used a homing in spell to warp to Sabrina’s house, as how else would he know what it looks like, and where to go? It can’t be that he sent him here to scare Sabrina because he’s a kid so it’s not like he’d be allowed to have a job. It’s not the type of job that teenagers would be allowed to have. The boogey-man says he never wanted to be a boogey-man. Why did he assume Sabrina didn’t already know that? He somehow talks as if he could never become an accountant just because his father would disapprove. Sabrina spends some time trying to talk bravery into him. This is SO boring!
Gem overhears her conversation and wants to make a social call. It turns out both of his parents are in Sabrina’s house, arguing, and his mother is on HIS side. And hopefully Quigley’s suffering more than just being scared. The mother compliments their sandwiches and he thanks her. Sabrina inexplicably says this time you won’t need anyone’s help even though she didn’t want to tell him that she used magic to help him. So he freaks out and returns to normal. Gem somehow thinks that his parents are rich so she has the right to meet them.
She’s told to look over there and the door’s slammed on her and she says she can’t believe she fell for that again. She’s smarter than THAT. The story wastes more time on the father pressuring him, and when he tells him what job he really wants, he yells at him and grounds him for a hundred years, even though he could leave his house at 18. Hilda says “ And you think WE’RE strict! “ You ARE! She better know that. Too bad she doesn’t TELL HER she’s strict. Gem tries to get into Sabrina’s house with a helicopter and Sabrina uses magic to send her flying away. I assume this’ll be a pattern that’ll be very entertaining.
Every episode should have her use magic to keep Gem away from her house. No one would believe her about it anyways. The father’s already running late for a scare appointment. At least the mother thanks Sabrina’s family for no reason, like they had a choice in being hosts. The father agrees to let his son say goodbye to his friends, then how is he always a monster? Did he say he’s not allowed to have friends? I guess he really doesn’t want a baby in the house again because he could always have another kid if he’s that obsessed with having a kid that has the same job as him.
Sabrina expects me to believe that it was wrong of her to help him beat Slugloaf. According to this show, it’s wrong to keep someone from getting beaten to death. Somehow the boogey-man laughs at Sabrina for still being scared of the Vortex. And why would he be hypocritical? He says he wants to handle the bully on his own when he shows up at Sabrina’s house somehow already aware that he’s at her house. He tells him that Slugloaf’s afraid of a fair fight, and he returns his head to normal to scare him into falling over. I assume Gem called Slugloaf to tell him where to go.
Gem sees some light and screams at seeing the alien’s father. She’d hear him say “ and that’s scare number 12. “ Why would she be back in bed after that?! She wouldn’t ask “ who are you people? “ because she’d recognize his son’s voice. She should’ve been written to say, “ I guess I’m dreaming. “ He says by using modern accounting methods, he could become more efficient, causing more people to be scared in a day. So he says, “ You’ve made me proud! “ It’s amusing that Gem’s sitting in bed bored at this. It’s so weird that she isn’t scared at all at seeing that Sabrina was associated with these aliens.
You’d think eventually she would ask why she’s having these dreams where Sabrina’s always associated with supernatural stuff and see a therapist. You’d think she’d ask, “ What kinda nightmare is THIS? “ She tells her to explain and Sabrina tells her this is all a dream. Gem says, “ It IS? “ You’d think she’d have been thinking she was dreaming since she saw the monster. She says that in HER dreams she’s her maid. Them ALL, yeah right! Her lying would actually make sense.
So Sabrina magically gives herself a maid outfit which fools her, when it could just as easily be that she’s a witch, because she knows the boogey-man! OR she makes her just think she was fooled as she says, “ THAT’S better! “ She really wanted to see her in a French maid outfit. You’d think she’d have been assuming this was a dream since she saw the monster. And then she says she’s not chickening out of the Vortex this time, not that we get to see her succeed in it, because time was wasted in the episode on boring stuff, even though we could’ve not seen it in the first place, and only seen it at the very end!
This boring episode is about an alien inexplicably meeting Sabrina just to force a plot where she constantly teaches him to not be a coward, and this drags on the whole story without the principal or teacher wondering why this new kid who’s not on the attendance sheets is here, until he eventually goes to Gem’s room and impresses his father with his accounting skill, getting him to realize that it’s not so bad that he doesn’t wanna follow in his footsteps scaring people like a confusing rip-off of Monsters inc.
If you’re gonna rip it off, you need to explain that they’re scaring people to generate electricity, or it’s just gonna feel forced. The whole scene with his father disapproving of him was completely pointless. So the moral of the story is that things are less scary when you know a lot about them and you can always get your father to approve of not following in his footsteps by helping him using your talent. Well those morals don’t always apply to the real world.
I’m sure that if you were scared of snakes, learning more about the specific ways their poisons make people suffer would only make you even more scared of them, and that’s just one example! And a lot of parents would NEVER soften up like his father did, inexplicably.
Most of the time you wouldn’t be ABLE to be useful to your parents because of the job you plan on getting. I don’t think he was getting braver because of knowledge but because of SABRINA’S emotional support. The episode was boring and the alien sucked to look at, but it’s almost good by this show’s standards because it was a story entirely about Sabrina helping someone, which should be standard. Why isn’t THAT the show’s formula?! Sabrina could be like Arnold from Hey Arnold. It still demonizes magic because Sabrina says it was wrong of her to save him from being beaten up!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 34 The Hex Files:
Harvey plays a video game ignoring Sabrina and she unnecessarily taunts him. Too much time is wasted on this. Salem’s in her bag. He ends up in a museum with Sabrina because I guess he was bored, and he says in his day he called the moon Planet Kitty Litter, even though witches could just zap away ANYTHING to Never Never Land. Other kids would hear him and look. Sabrina uses magic on Harvey’s Game Boy to ruin it, and says the batteries wore out, because she doesn’t want him missing the whole trip to the observatory. I never went on a field trip to an observatory.
The story really exaggerates Harvey’s addiction to gaming. It’s clearly written by someone who never played a video game before. Why would a kid run with his head looking backwards? Sabrina pulls something to find Quigley’s office. Since when does he work in an observatory? He has a top secret project, so secret that he’s telling Harvey; the search for aliens. It should be a lot more clear on what his job is because it seems completely unproductive.
He reads messages in space to find a response, and we see him broadcast a video of himself, where he hopes the stupid humans won’t destroy their planet by then. He could’ve easily not said this. It comes out of nowhere that he’s this cynical about humanity, because usually he’s obliviously smiling all the time. By THIS point he’s spent so much time in the house, that I’d rather still think of him as not having a job because I’m USED to that! I still prefer assuming that the household still makes money off the fact that it has witches in it, just to spite Quigley’s insistence on no magic ever.
Sabrina hears laughter and says he’ll never be a laughingstock in her eyes. I hate that she feels sorry for him. The writer has Harvey say everybody likes Quigley. Screw that. They hear someone say he wants Quigley fired, but Quigley’s boss likes him. Then why even show this scene if it doesn’t have any tension? The guy has horrible acting when he says this institution has to shut him down. He’d be fired for saying he won’t leave until he fires Quigley. They’d hear her gasp. He’d hear Sabrina say this is horrible and confront her! Why is this show so allergic to just having the characters THINK, instead of talk?
Eventually Sabrina says her uncle isn’t excess baggage. How is this writer SO stupid? It has to be that he doesn’t know anything about the franchise before this point. The whole franchise did without him just fine. And there has to be a reason the series abandoned Quigley right after this series ended. Harvey says Quigley should stand and fall on his own and discourages her from meddling in others’ business. Salem snarks and somehow Harvey doesn’t react to what he’d be able to hear. It’s doubly annoying that Sabrina still makes a mistake despite being told not to. SHE’S supposed to be the good one!
Harvey lecturing HER feels wrong! Sabrina tells Salem he owes her for eating her tuna sandwich, so she wants his help. Zap up a new one, idiot! Does it mean that much to him that he didn’t have to expend magic, to just zap it up? She wouldn’t need his help! She wants to create an alien response to Quigley. I had assumed from the start that he’d get a response the NATURAL way because we’ve already seen tons of monsters, which are from another planet, so they are aliens. Salem picks up a phone and says love you too because he knows it bugs Spookie.
How convenient that he didn’t use magic on him from a distance or over the phone. Why the hell aren’t they just pointing to instantly create the alien signal? WHY does Sabrina say “ how would I know what an alien’s supposed to look like?! “ She’s seen TONS of aliens! And somehow Salem messes up and screws up the control panel, which messes up Quigley’s video so that it looks like he’s threatening to destroy an alien planet. And they’re gonna totally ignore the cheerful smile he has! I don’t wanna see the result of this. It’s too frustrating! I hate seeing Quigley get popular because of this message.
Harvey wants to talk to Sabrina alone because the footage of the approaching aliens look like his video game aliens. Then her STALKER Gem somehow was here to overhear her and plot against her. So Gem’s uncle proves to people that the alien are just video game aliens. People would’ve ALWAYS known that because they always looked like 8-bit enemies. So I get to see the audience boo Quigley. Sabrina asks Salem how he could let her do something so stupid. No it only failed due to Salem’s clumsiness! It wasn’t inherently dumb! Just another way that she’s an unsympathetic excuse for a protagonist.
Instead of her taking responsibility, she shifts the blame. Salem COULD’VE kept her from making a mistake, ALL of her mistakes because he’s a warlock, and it’s shameful that he’s presumably too addicted to her adventures to stop her. But she pressured Salem into helping her in the first place! Why doesn’t he point that out? There was NO reason for them to use the aliens from the game instead of fake aliens? The main characters get kidnapped by aliens, and eventually one tells Quig that they give up so there’s no need to destroy their planet, which is at least a twist.
But I guess they’re just so used to advanced technology that they assume Earth has it too. This is SO convenient, he’s trying to make Quigley their leader. Why don’t they immediately believe him when he explains that he was never threatening them?! Then the plot would already be over! I’m sure they’d have heard Sabrina say that when Salem spilled coffee it messed up the signal. You’d think it’d have not even SENT IT then. They would try to open it and it would be a corrupt file. Then he says he’s gonna freeze all of them. I’m so confused. Why aren’t these WITCHES warping out of here or destroying the tubes?
Harvey would think he’s dreaming so why not? Do they have to have the witches dress in stereotypical witch costumes all the time so the writers wouldn’t forget? Harvey always assumed that the aliens MADE Salem able to talk, and he says they could build a whole show out of Salem. Salem recites the end of Spookie’s letter, and assumes that Spookie’s spell created these aliens, who want to make the humans like them. Why doesn’t Harvey care that they made the spell happen?
Very conveniently Harvey gets free of the tube so easily that I forget how it happened, and they arbitrarily listen to his advice and he tells them to fill the balloons with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen and tells them to water balloon the video game aliens to death. And the other heroes get free. Then there’s a boring sequence where Harvey and Sabrina shoot alien spaceships. I know they’ll win, cut to the chase! And Sabrina’s hair resembles Leia. The last alien would’ve had time to dodge that. How convenient that they’re all perfectly fine with killing aliens.
The alien spaceship eventually lands on Gem’s uncle who somehow is alive afterwards. Keeping slapstick to offscreen just makes me angry! An alien asks how they can repay him and Quigley says he just wants to go home so they’re returned home. How convenient that the tractor beam’s able to make Harvey forget anything.
No one told the aliens that Harvey was a mortal who needed his memory erased. It has to be a spy witch who did this, when it could’ve been Sabrina or Salem! Why would SPOOKIE be responsible when he was evil enough to make this all happen in the first place? It’s a miracle he doesn’t just make every mortal know about magic just so he can sit and laugh at the world being in chaos.
This episode’s about Sabrina arbitrarily trusting Spookie again, this time to make Quigley get respect for contacting alien life only for it to turn out that the spell made the aliens come to life to kidnap him when no one wanted that. And somehow instead of Sabrina or Salem just pointing to brainwash the aliens into letting them go home, since Sabrina effortlessly brainwashed Quigley in an earlier episode, the pacing drags, and Harvey somehow gets let go, and can convince them to let him pilot a spaceship to shoot invading aliens to death. And he’s conveniently fine with causing their deaths since they’re not humans.
At least I got to see people get upset with Quigley when the lie was revealed but it never should’ve taken more than a second for people to figure it out. And all of this was to teach a lesson not to meddle in someone’s business, because somehow the writer thought, “ Don’t help someone EVER, “ was a good message! As long as your friend’s clumsy anyways. As usual the pacing’s too slow, and I hate that there was ever an extended part of it where people loved Quigley. What kid is gonna be in the kind of position where she could try to make her uncle get more respect? Who needs this message?
She could’ve easily just had actual aliens contact him so that it wouldn’t have to be a lesson about how fooling people is wrong, even though realistically they would never find out the truth, so, why not just make them happy? If she picked up Salem the plot wouldn’t have gone wrong.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 35 Stone Broke:
Harvey says he could get Sabrina to go to a movie with him Saturday. Normally she agrees right away and that’s smarter. And eventually Sabrina wants to look like a cowgirl for a ball. She’s zapped clothes to her, why would she ask how she could look like a cowgirl without a cowgirl outfit?! Salem asks her why she’s going and she says it’s because Harvey’s going. They didn’t need to show us the scene with Gem! Salem eventually zaps up a cowgirl outfit for her. This better not backfire on her somehow with the outfit being cursed. It looks like it is because the hat is sparkling.
Why did she even wanna go to the party for that reason when she didn’t wanna go to her party in Witch Switch? People laugh at her at the ball and she looks down and says oh man, and eventually someone says she got lost looking for the rodeo. It’d be easier to understand if she said it was a COSTUME party and she dressed like a Halloween monster. Everyone’s dressed normal because Gem only lied to Sabrina that it had a country western theme. You’d think she’d ask someone else instead of assuming Gem’s always honest.
Seriously why would she think Gem would tell her useful, honest info if she didn’t have to? Of course she would only invite her to her party if she got humiliated. Gem makes a toast to embarrass Sabrina so Sabrina uses magic to make a lobster claw grab Gem’s nose, which would make everyone freak out from witchcraft because the lobster’s supposed to be dead. The story’s really wasting my time with either boredom or mean-spiritedness. Eventually Gem’s dad says he invested in a company that made cheese logs. The story should’ve started here.
And I’m supposed to assume that means it totally makes sense that their funds are depleted. Wouldn’t cheese logs be financially valuable too, because people would wanna buy them to eat them? Sure they’re like, you can’t build things with cheese logs, but, still! NO ONE would make a house of cheese! And that’s supposed to be why they went bankrupt?! The plot didn’t lead up to this at all, it was padding until this point. Like if he was buying them because he thought they were logs how would he ever not know they were cheese? They wouldn’t be called a logging company.
Gem falls over and has a forced line that they’re too rich to be broke. What she should say is that they would still have other stocks they could sell to get more money. I get to see Gem’s possessions get taken out of the house. Just because he made ONE bad investment and the stock fell on ONE thing? This would only make sense if it was the result of Sabrina’s spell. Eventually Quigley talks to Sabrina happily that he’s got a big surprise for her. Why the hell is he HAPPY that GEM is gonna be living with them for a while? This won’t make them stop using magic.
He’d know she hates her. Pretty sure her whole family knew she hated her and why in the comic. Why does he call Gem her friend? If he’s ignorant to who Gem IS he wouldn’t ever think she was her friend anyways because Gem wouldn’t have introduced herself to him as her friend? Why am I supposed to think that he’s someone to listen to when he lectures if he’s stupider than Homer Simpson? I’m sure even Homer wouldn’t think Nelson was Bart’s friend. This episode feels unreal. Quigley says Gem’s only staying a week. They’re bankrupt but they think they’ll only barely have money for a week.
And they hate her, that’s why she’s staying with someone else. And I have to assume that her uncle hates her too so that’s why she’s not living with HIM. This better be a whole episode of Gem suffering to make this a good episode. Why would Salem run away from Gem’s dog scared instead of just shapeshifting him? There’s been so many old Salem comics where he abused magic on dogs! Gem tells Sabrina to get her bags. She’d just levitate them behind her. The very idea that Gem’s gonna expect Sabrina to be her servant and somehow BOTH these WITCHES are putting up with them!
This episode is something you should skip. There’s especially no value because it doesn’t even have her find out she’s a witch! At least I get to see Gem’s dog jump into a goldfish bowl that floats. Not literally see, he lands in it offscreen. Salem uses magic to torment him, and he asks if he’s gonna behave. Dogs don’t speak English. And I don’t know what took so long. None of Gem’s dialogue is valuable. Gem tells Sabrina that she needs to learn everything about how to handle being a simple peasant. At least the episode’s gonna have value in teaching the audience how to wash clothes.
Gem says she always throws out her dirty clothes. So much for her having strict parents. Why does the episode skip ahead after she puts the clothes in the washer?! Why not show her press the buttons? Moron leaves Gem alone unsupervised for no reason! The dog brings Salem the newspaper and at least he pets him. The washer screws up because she put the dishes in to wash them. Gem would’ve unplugged it before her. There’s no way anyone would be that stupid, because I’m sure she would’ve watched television before! She’d know about sharing from TV too.
It should be explained that Gem did this to mess with her. Why have this story? There’s obviously no value in it unless you’re a sadist. After all that guy at the ice cream parlor hated giving her a free sample of everything at once. No one would ever enjoy seeing anything Gem’s doing. She’s got great cooking but why’d she say it’s from trash cans?! Gem saw Zelda’s spell book recycling it and sold empty potion bottles! Oh good, at least I get to see Quigley be upset that his roses died because of Gem. He called the aunts liars for no reason, he deserves this.
Sabrina says that to get rid of Gem they need to make her rich again. Eventually someone tells Gem she won a huge amount of money. There’s NO WAY she’d ruin the check and say there must be 25 cents of paper here. You’d think THIS would send her to boarding school. She’d waste it all at once, if she wants to stay poor. I can at least assume that she’s doing this to keep torturing Sabrina. So at least it can make sense even if when looking at this I think it’s just here for padding. Gem says she never felt happy when living at home. Gem’s dog strikes oil because of Sabrina.
It’s too bad Sabrina didn’t think to just brainwash Gem’s uncle into wanting to adopt her. She shows appreciation for Sabrina for teaching her things. Then how is she the type to bully Sabrina? This is pathetically manipulative of the writing, making her be Out of Character to trick us into liking her just for this one scene where she gives Sabrina a gift, when we all know she’ll be back to normal in the next episode. She laughs at herself here! Sabrina thanks her.
She says she’d rather go into the limo herself as the story ends. How convenient that when Sabrina used magic to make Gem’s family get rich again, the head witch didn’t bitch at her. It may have been a whole story about Sabrina helping someone, but I don’t care because it was Gem, and she didn’t do it out of the kindness of her heart, and she took forever to use magic!
This boring episode had too much focus on Gem and her annoying voice, and by that I mean ANY focus on her at ALL. How would she still have designer clothes? They lost everything! And the whole time she was annoying Sabrina with her stupid behavior that would only make sense if it was on purpose, because she was made to live with Sabrina, when somehow her family went bankrupt immediately from the stock on ONE bad investment going down, even though they’d just sell their other stocks.
Them losing their furniture and house could make sense if they just lied to Gem and instead the government was repossessing their stuff because they didn’t pay taxes. I also have to just assume that the reason Gem’s being told by her dad to live with Sabrina, as if he doesn’t know Gem at all, is that he knows Gem would love to torment Sabrina. It’s confusing on a casual watch because you’d assume he always knew that she thought Sabrina was a loser to bully. That’d be the only reason she’d ever talk about her.
And it has the gall to try manipulating you into liking Gem and thinking she became a respectable softie at the end, when the writer should KNOW that we know the show would never change her. There’s a difference between showing occasional human moments for the Alpha Bitch, which I applauded for Amy in the 90s comic, and outright making her completely Out of Character and changing entirely.
This episode could’ve had value if it taught the audience how to use a washing machine and a dishwasher and how to cook a breakfast and a lunch. It’s all about teaching us moral lessons so why not? Moral here, be nice to bad guests and independent. It’s cool she’s a brilliant cook. Leftover soup! And I’m sure being educational would be boring but it’s better to be boring in a valuable way at least!
The idea of Sabrina trying to teach Gem to be respectable and independent is sweet, but I don’t care since we know it’s not gonna stick, and since Gem was a nuisance who was mistreating her, I didn’t wanna care about her! I wanted an episode where she was being tormented with magic in a bunch of different ways, even if it’s just her seeing magic be used without them knowing she’s witnessing it. And there could’ve been ONE scene like that where they did that to scare her only for her to come back because she’d convince herself she just dreamed the whole thing.
What is even the moral of this episode? I guess it’s that you should torture yourself teaching your spoiled BULLY how to be independent, because in EVERY situation where that happens, if you’re nice enough to her she’ll become a nice and respectable person, because being rich, was totally what made her a jerk to Sabrina! What a naïve show.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 36 Salem’s Plot:
Somehow I see little aliens slide down a rope with one reassuring the other that they’re safe and Chloe signing her name for a charity auction for singing scares them. Why are aliens on Earth? Chloe’s reassuring. Sabrina says to Chloe that she’s got a shot, and Chloe says she’s been taking singing lessons since she was 6. And she hopes Sabrina won’t use magic to cheat. It turns out Sabrina had been the lead in a musical. Chloe talks in a nice way not wanting them to fight saying, “ Let’s white flag this, “ and Sabrina says to her she still needs help with algebra. I hate the annoying voices of the aliens.
Salem gets annoyed by all of the noise around him. Why doesn’t he leave the room instead of telling them to shut up? He can warp. Zelda says he’s just playing tic tac toe against himself. Hilda asks him what’s bugging him and he says Hephaestos is going to visit him because he was his best friend in wizard school, and he doesn’t want him to see that he was turned into a cat. So if school was compulsory for wizards centuries ago but not mortals, it’s proven that witches were more advanced. It’s needlessly confusing to give his friend the same name as a Greek god if he’s not that person.
We see the two of them ride on flying carpets. Sadly it inconveniences people. It also makes the Tower of Pisa lean, even though it really leans from sinking in the foundation. And their carpet ride also causes people to get mad. HOW is it causing so much trouble? Hephaestos says because he won, Salem’s his servant for the next 50 years. Why does he still call him his friend? Salem says Heph has still got all of those magical powers. But Salem still has magic too! Is this writer somehow unaware of that? He uses magic in this very episode and no one questions it!
Obviously it’d make sense if he didn’t have all his powers, but it’s too late now! It’s a constant annoyance that Chloe and Sabrina are competitive with each other this episode. Why is she constantly either useless, redundant, or a bad friend? To be fair, all of the other female friends of Sabrina from the sitcom were ALSO useless, redundant and could be bad friends. Salem begs for help and kisses Sabrina’s shoe and she at least just says it tickles and agrees to help with a smile.
The Sabrina I know wouldn’t need someone to CONVINCE her to help him! He shows them a book and Chloe finds something and says, “ How about this? “ She would’ve found that herself but it’s something. Sabrina’s reading out a recipe and says a spell, turning a big jar into a clone of Hephaestos. Sabrina says he’s a dead ringer so I have to assume she was shown a photo of him ahead of time, because she never met him. Salem says he commanded a golem squadron back in the second World War. Then him failing to control this would be dumb. And why be needlessly dark?
How would there be a second World War for the Other Realm? The reason the first World War happened was an assassination but witches would use spells to make that impossible, and the whole reason the second World War happened was because the first World War happened. My point is this is an interesting bit of lore and it, never gets developed on. I hate seeing Sabrina and Chloe try to make each other feel bad about their chances of winning when they’re SUPPOSED to be friends. Real friends would just be encouraging.
I can assume that they want their friend to give up because they don’t like the idea of disappointing her friend when she wins, but that should be explained. Chloe leaves the room and she meets Salem’s old friend, who’s annoyingly arrogant in his tone of voice. The reason Salem’s piloting a mecha looking human is that he wants to make his friend think he’s human. The mecha gets wrecked from walking into walls so Quigley nags him. Salem says actor which makes Quigley brag that he’s one, and he flatters him and convinces him to play the role of Salem.
If he just brainwashed him into agreeing that’d be so much faster and he’d deserve it, but instead I had to see the awful character be happy. Quigley lampshades that he has no script or wardrobe. I really hate that Quigley is talking in a stupid voice for no reason. It’s smart of Salem to tell Quig to say goodbye but there’s no way that he wouldn’t be heard. The stupid voice makes it impossible for me to interpret what he’s saying most of the time. Quigley is such a selfish jerk that he insists on continuing with the act when he’d know Salem disapproves!
Eventually Quigley gets told that he looks like he’s slowed down and Quigley says he could beat him in a race. And he’s told the stakes of losing but I don’t care because I know the show won’t ever change the status quo in a good way. At least when he leaves Quigley regrets that he lost his head. Out of nowhere Salem tells him he’s not giving up NOW. Sabrina says a spell to make some carpets into flying carpets. I never saw this whole “ auditions sub-plot “ as anything but padding. Chloe can’t sing. It’s cringeworthy. How can she not sing, if she had singing lessons, for several years?
She would already know that she’s bad at singing then because someone would’ve told her. Why is the story tormenting us with Sabrina’s falsetto generic singing? It could’ve skipped this. She’s told, “ Very good, “ but then told she needs to work on her pitch. Sabrina’s embarrassed so at least she knows she was mediocre at best. Sabrina sees Quigley scared during his race and Hilda says Salem’s pushing the flying carpets too hard. It’s so out of nowhere that the aunts are following them in the race they didn’t even know would happen.
I have to assume they were called and told about it, either through flower phones or telepathically, just in case. Quigley wonders why the carpet won’t obey him. They’re Persian rugs so they don’t speak English. He’d be heard by Heph. Why doesn’t any witch in this scene point to slow down the carpets right away?!
And if magical artifacts only understood the specific language you were saying rather than skipping straight to understanding what your thoughts are without a language barrier, how would any of their old magical artifacts work if they predate the English language? They somehow don’t warp the people in danger to safety right away, which pads out the story.
There’s no reason the carpets would start unraveling from going too fast because they’re already MAGIC, so why would they be done so badly? Eventually Salem tells the truth to his friend. Quigley’s somehow totally casual saying that Heph’s head fell off. How convenient that he didn’t freak out. It turns out Heph was also transformed. How convenient for Salem. Why? We’ll never know! Quigley could’ve easily assumed that the sheer force of getting hit at a high speed would take someone’s head off and freaked out anyways.
And again why is Quigley acting like Salem doesn’t have magic? He had magic in the comic and I KNOW Salem cast a spell himself in the show before. He scared Gem’s dog with it episodes ago! Sabrina eventually catches Salem and somehow he doesn’t get hurt along with her. I have to assume she cast a spell against that. Sabrina gets Salem to shake hands with his friend. Salem picks him up by the tail and threatens him, and he gets bit and decides to chase him. And we see the padding sub-plot get wrapped up.
Sabrina tells Chloe she’s her best friend and apologizes for being mean. Chloe should too, she was worse! She’s told they got in, somehow. I have to assume every other auditioner sucked even worse than them. This is just so condescending. Gem was a great singer in an earlier episode. And the aliens from the start are happy about this ending. Why were they in the show if they were never gonna be relevant to Sabrina? And how is the spider talking?
This episode was about Salem not wanting his visiting friend to know he got turned into a cat, so he cleverly manipulates Quigley into pretending he’s him, and he hates him enough that he challenges him to a carpet race that somehow starts ruining the carpets they’re on, because it’s so fast, even though witches could make carpets invulnerable. This episode was boring because I’ve already seen a few stories where Salem didn’t wanna admit he was made a cat and I hate this show, but at least the plot was done differently this time.
It should’ve explained that he’s cursed so that it’s impossible to turn him human, but we can easily assume that. At least the story didn’t center around Sabrina, but it still sucks because it forced magic to backfire because the carpets start apparently unraveling.
Magic backfiring alone didn’t ruin Sabrina stories before the Animated Series, but this show is boring with a terrible foundation, and I’ve gotten extremely sick of magic being demonized every episode and I hate all of these characters. The plot up to the climax was fine, but magic HAD to backfire to force Salem into a situation where he had to tell the truth, just because in THIS episode he can’t use magic as a cat, except one time. Summoning is still a big deal, it’s not even that he can’t do big stuff!
I guess the moral is, if your old friend visits you, you should tell them everything embarrassing that happened to you in the past that they would’ve figured out on their own. WHY? I don’t even need to mock that. The other moral is good, “ don’t be competitive with friends. “
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 37 Molar Molar:
Salem somehow finds a clear jug of milk in the fridge and drinks from it. Milk cartons are in WHITE jugs. I guess he wants to conserve magic all the time so he won’t warp milk to him. An egg is in a nest under a lamp because the aunts are looking after it for biology class. I don’t remember that from my high school. I like that Quigley’s miserable here. A floating rope is dragging him along the floor. It’s Salem’s prank. I get them not saving him. He’s smiling, so why don’t they do this all the time? They always take it seriously when he grounds them like they’re actually gonna humor him on it.
If they’re not putting him through this, they would just point, to free him from this situation, to avoid grounding. He somehow doesn’t. Sabrina finds out that her molars need to come out. Her wisdom teeth, specifically. Episode title says molar, so. Somehow the dentist does something he knows will scare her, holding a hammer and saying she won’t feel a thing. He says they’ll make an appointment for her and she says it’ll hurt for her teeth to be pulled out. He SAID she won’t feel a thing! Why doesn’t someone so gullible believe him?
When I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out, I was offered anesthesia for it and I agreed. Sabrina would’ve gotten that option, so the whole plot with her getting scared is forced. She seems to be living in a big house so I’m sure they would be able to afford it! Why are a bunch of giant teeth appearing? Is that person always gonna stay a tooth? That’s needlessly dark, so I assume a spy witch is gonna undo that. Harvey says he’s trying out for the talent show. So was Sabrina just hallucinating all of that out of anxiety? Quigley really messed her up.
I’ve always been assuming that this was happening because she’s a witch so she’s casting spells out of fear, but there’s no way she’d cast a spell without meaning to. The whole time there’s been no sign of Quigley. Why would she go to the dentist’s without Quigley? Who’s gonna pay for the dentist’s appointment? Harvey guilts her trying to get her to vote for him in the talent show. What a bad friend. And Chloe is aggravatingly manipulative calling Sabrina her favorite friend and dances.
I always hated this kind of plot in Archie when people wanted Archie as a judge to vote the way they want. Why does the writer torture us with this? It’s not fun. Chloe thanks her. Why doesn’t Sabrina quit being a judge? That’s always the plot hole in this kinda plot. What’s supposed to be the appeal of her friends if they don’t have any morality? If they don’t think, “ Y’know maybe this is cheating, trying to get an edge! “
Sabrina says she wonders if she should’ve told her friends what she really thought of them and says nah. I WONDER what the MESSAGE will be about. Maybe it’s another self-destructive moral telling the audience to sabotage themselves in the name of morality. Zelda confuses me by talking as if she and Hilda will stay young forever if they don’t pass high school without magic. Huh?How are they adults in Sabrina’s Secret Life? The rule must have changed. They couldn’t pass it without magic. I assume they’ve very recently been turned into teenagers.
It doesn’t make any sense that they’d have to pass high school again, what does that have to do with actually growing up? I’m sure they already went through high school. Salem says wish and it’s so obvious what he means so why does Hilda ask what’s going on in his head? Why are they talking as if they would NEED Spookie when Hilda’s a witch? Why is Hilda scared of Spookie? Then why is she turning to him for help? I feel like Spookie changed voices in this episode. It’s awful to see them trust Spookie again!
It could be explained that the witches are just under a brainwashing spell that makes them think Spookie can always be trusted. They should’ve explained that in episode 1. At least that’d be a proper in-universe justification for him instead of it looking like lazy disrespectful writing every time where they get handed the Idiot Ball. Why not? Spookie can’t possibly get any more unlikable! At least this episode makes me wonder if I was never expected to like Spookie. Spookie talked to Hilda but she didn’t open the Jar! So why doesn’t this happen more often?!
Sabrina goes to the dentist’s chair saying that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Predictably she’s scared. Then she screams in bed because she was having a nightmare. Why didn’t Hilda turn to Sabrina to cast the spell if she wanted to conserve magic so badly? She tells Salem she has to get rid of these teeth and she’s not going to the dentist’s. Doesn’t she realize her aunts would use magic to force her to go, if they’re too stupid to simply zap away the teeth themselves, and pay the dentist? Why doesn’t anybody instantly realize they could just point to get rid of the molars?! Why is Sabrina going to Spookie instead?
There would be nothing wrong with, zapping them away, if you still give the dentist the money! Spookie plans to go on vacation. He gets paid by the wish. So he gets paid double if his spells suck. Sabrina flatters him and at least he has a brain, telling her to cut to the chase. Sabrina says she needs her wisdom teeth gone. The whole time I just have to assume that she thinks her aunts wouldn’t zap them away FOR her. There’s no reason that Spookie would get rid of what little wisdom she has just because she asked him to get rid of her teeth, unless he’s just doing this out of sadism.
Sabrina almost walks into a car. I assume he didn’t realize THIS could almost happen to her because if he thought he could get away with almost getting her killed… well I think he thinks that anyways because, she wouldn’t tell her family she used the Spookie Jar! If he hates doing nice things with his magic to the point where he’d rather jinx all of his spells out of sadism, and he thinks he can get away with getting her killed, well I hate him and I hate the idiotic witches in this show for not thinking to get rid of him in the first episode!
Even if he can’t un-jinx his magic items, he’s still evil for giving them out, like Rick and Morty’s “ The Devil. “ The episode is nothing but cringeworthy from this point on by having Sabrina say rude things when she doesn’t want to, rather than instantly warping herself to Spookie to get the spell undone since she thinks she’s too stupid to do it himself. Why doesn’t anyone explain that Spookie’s too powerful for someone other than him, to undo his spell? The dentist shouldn’t gasp. He should KNOW his family’s goofy-looking!
Sabrina compliments Gem’s sweater when she clearly doesn’t want to, so Gem gives it away because she hates that she likes the sweater. Then realistically she should always compliment her clothes from now on, because, that would result in a good deed being done, and that’s supposed to be what she WANTS to do. It’s sweet, she could’ve burned it! Chloe was smartly gonna ask to borrow her clothes for the talent show. Why doesn’t Sabrina immediately explain to Chloe why she’s insulting people all the time? I thought she was forced to tell the truth! Instead I have to be frustrated by Chloe telling her to take a long nap.
Chloe’s a bad friend. She can’t handle the truth! Zelda thanks Hilda. She says she told Hilda she could get through an assignment without resorting to magic. And they’re fine with using magic on themselves here! Sabrina complains to Salem that she somehow managed to get even stupider. Salem says a few restful years in a rubber room never hurt anyone. Why does she ever confide in him? She could zap up a person out of scratch to confide in! Why is Sabrina’s spell against witch rules?! Spookie was too evil to warn her! How does the show not see how stupid it is?!
He shows her a spell book and says they need to find those wisdom teeth before she says something really unwise. So why didn’t she get forced by the spell to tell everyone who’s not in the know that she’s a witch? How does this magic computer virus determine what to make her say? It made her try to walk into a vehicle, so it’s not about making her tell the truth she secretly wants to let out, not all the time. She lied to Chloe saying, “ I dunno why, “ she’s acting weird. How?!
Her always saying dumb lies would REALLY show off having no wisdom, if that’s the only rule. And yet she was still made to admit the truth most of the time! Obviously if she wanted to tell someone she’s a witch, she would have already been made to do so! Salem CAN use magic! He warps her and him to a beach and then zaps up clothes and shades. Sabrina tries to visit Spookie when he’s on vacation and he refuses to undo the spell. “ Dark is Not Evil, “ bullshit! Salem summons a scary fish to ruin Spookie’s floaties. Why does he scream and sink instead of just warping back to the beach?
Then a helicopter with a rope saves him. He says he’s still on vacation. He’s really not a good person! Salem says he stole his shorts, and Spookie says he’ll do anything to get his clothes back even though he could just use magic. Why does he agree to give her her wisdom back and warp her home, if the whole show proved that he does nothing but torture people out of sadism? I guess he assumes that if he says no, she WILL get the courage to tell her aunts she used the Spookie Jar, so her aunts will beat him until he agrees. Why does she wear this white headband around her chin when I didn’t?
The story doesn’t show Sabrina losing her wisdom teeth. She didn’t talk funny the whole story in that comic where she just went home from getting her teeth pulled. So the episode tortures the audience with Sabrina talking funny because she lost her wisdom teeth. She lies it only hurt a little! I never understood why she lost her wisdom teeth so early. It took until I was an adult to have mine taken out. Sabrina says sorry to him. Harvey reveals out of nowhere that he’s able to handle the truth, and he overreacts when his clothes are insulted, but then he reveals that he was just messing with her.
She says chicken and somehow he says that she doesn’t need to call him names. Why is she trying to tell him to look at something that clearly would only exist because of magic? She’s pointing, so why is he not looking behind him? Why is he trying to prove he’s not a chicken? He skateboards at the end so at least she motivated him to try out in the talent show. But I can’t understand why the episode ended without resolving Hilda’s plotline. Only the most idiotic of writers would not resolve someone’s plotline in a story about it, and never do so in any of the subsequent stories!
What kind of a moral is, “ It’s good that Sabrina made herself have to be miserable for weeks when she could’ve zapped the teeth out of herself, AND PAID THE DENTIST! Oh yeah, it’s the devil’s work to save the dentist the trouble of pulling your teeth out! The Animated Series comes off like it was written by pilgrims.
This episode has Spookie be at his least sympathetic. It’s another episode that’d never happen because these witches would NEVER turn to him for help when they’ve got magic themselves and he does nothing but betray them! It’s another episode that acts like it proved using magic is evil and should never be done.
If the moral is trying to be that you shouldn’t turn to someone other than a dentist to get your wisdom teeth removed, it failed to teach that lesson because in real life the consequences of that would not be that you’d start embarrassing yourself saying things you don’t want to admit for a horrible amount of time, and I don’t even know how it’d be possible to get your wisdom teeth removed without a dentist anyways if it’s not referring to something as simple as the old “ tie a thread around the tooth and tie the other end to a door knob and close the door “ trick, which would cause a lot of bleeding.
But all you’d have to do is hold something against the hole and it’d eventually stop bleeding. If there’s any unexpected consequences, then we need to be told about that for the story to teach a useful lesson. So what’s the point of this horrible episode?! The only lesson I see is the one I already learned from the show long ago. “ DON’T EVER TRUST someone who does nothing but betray you when you can do what he offers you yourself! “ Well duh! Anyone impossibly stupid enough to have not learned that lesson after the first time would NEVER learn that lesson!
And again Hilda could’ve just gone to Sabrina for that favor, and then erase her memory of the fact that she did so that she couldn’t hold it over her. A Sabrina continuity that does nothing but make magic backfire is no different than a Sonic cartoon where Sonic’s speed and Knuckles’ super strength does nothing but backfire, with the message that it’s wrong to us them!
This show preaches about the value of honesty. Well it’d be honest to just say, “ Fuck this franchise “ on Twitter. The moral was about how Sabrina should’ve instantly told her friends they sucked, even though it always came off like these idiots would’ve STILL tried out in the talent show after going into denial.
Showing her see them humiliate themselves in the talent show because she didn’t warn them not to try out, would’ve been telling us the realistic consequence to her mistake, so we’d have a chance at learning from it. How can I blame her when the last time she was honest with Harvey he was like, “ I thought you were supposed to be my friend! “
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 38 Harvzilla:
The mailman crawls backwards up the staircase and gets hit by a door by Sabrina and I have to assume all the spider webs are just because Sabrina’s aunts are witches. Why does the writer think we’re so sadistic that we’d like seeing the mailman get stuck for a while and scream at a spider? Harvey says he’s not gonna make the wrestling team because he failed last year. At least he doesn’t STAY overly confident about it. Why is the spider taunting the mailman and showing him pictures of his kids? It’s Earth. If he’s supposed to be from the Other Realm, we need to be TOLD that.
Harvey gets wrestled and mocked. Better him than Sabrina. He says he practiced. It is realistic that he’d fail despite practicing but it spits in the face of a previous episode’s lesson. And a cowboy talks way too much in a cringeworthy speech that has an American flag behind him for no reason. He puts his hand on his shoulder so why does he do that when he’s just gonna mock him afterwards? Why doesn’t the writer put Gem through misery instead?
Sabrina tries to reassure him but fails so that’s a waste of time. I don’t think they have a good dynamic when he never cares and gets reassured by her successfully, or listens to her. The episode makes me pity him with unnecessarily showing him get mocked again. Sabrina uses magic to send something flying around the room and hitting someone, causing a patty to land on the floor, which causes ice cream to get sent on the bully. We didn’t see the impact so that failed. It’s nice that he was laughed at though. Why did Sabrina do this so convolutedly? She could’ve just created a patty on the floor to be tripped on.
None of this would’ve happened, the waiter would have open eyes, not slip. Sabrina annoys me, the episode in general does with boredom, but at least I get to see a pencil write a note automatically. After forever Zelda says no one’s ever allowed to use Spookie. Then why do they keep him around? He’s got a union contract and is paid, he’s working for them! She’d fire him! There needs to be an episode that explains that if they ever try to get rid of the Spookie Jar, Spookie just warps back to them! Sabrina lampshades, “ But what’s the point of having cool magical powers if you can’t abuse them? “
She wouldn’t say abuse though, because she doesn’t think of it that way. If she’s supposed to be seen as evil in this show, then it REALLY would be better if she was Esmeralda! Hilda agrees with her but the question’s unaddressed. Salem says if she wants to help a mortal, use Spookie. Why does he ever say that? He and Sabrina have their own powers and his spells always backfire! And if we’re constantly supposed to believe HILDA’S okay with abusing magic and not Zelda, there’s no reason to go to Spookie instead of her then?
I got tired of pointing out the same plot hole a long time ago. But I wouldn’t be doing the review properly if I didn’t. Salem talks to someone and he gets soot on him from a chemistry mistake, SOMEHOW, despite ALL of his experience potion-making for probably centuries. Real reliable, Sabrina! Why is Salem turning to someone else for help when he has his own magic? It must have been an executive decision that, Salem doesn’t have magic anymore. I thought they were gonna turn to Spookie for help. This guy really doesn’t wanna help them.
Eventually for a reason I couldn’t really gather, he does help Sabrina. Why did they take so long to meet this newt just because he’s small? Who would name their kid Eye of Newt, without him changing his name afterwards? He takes forever to make a perfume for her. None of these artifacts or potions, don’t have a catch. Sabrina convinces Harvey to agree to try a perfume just for her. The scary music already gives away that this will backfire. Can the episode end then? I’ve already seen stories where Sabrina uses magic to make Harvey more athletic, with faster set-up and no jinxed things!
I’d enjoy him calling Slugloaf fish bait more if it wasn’t obvious that Slugloaf’s not the right guy to provoke. It’d be better to experience if Sabrina thought BEFORE he started insulting him, ” I’ll just use magic on Slugloaf if he ever tries to bully Harvey again. “ He also calls him stupid. I like seeing Harvey tackle him. But what’s the point if he does nothing interesting when I wanted to see him repeatedly hit him? He eventually puts his arms behind him to make him say uncle, and Harvey’s praised, repeatedly. I like that he tells Gem he doesn’t have the time to hold her notebook.
Sabrina would just point to undo the spell on him after this. Why can’t she just summon the antidote? Witches can summon things all the time without knowing the exact chemical make-up of it! That’s why she doesn’t need to have a degree in chemistry to summon ANYTHING! She annoys me by saying he was too mean to Gem. What a hypocrite. If he hadn’t, she’d still be mad! He asks her for more perfume as he’s muscular. This is obviously meant to be a message against using steroids. A kid would only get it, if he already knew what steroids were, like from other shows.
And if you’re allowed to show this through a magic perfume, why not use actual steroids? Because it’s not kid-friendly? Then this is too adult of a message to tell in a little kids’ show. I’m sure they have anti-drug PSAs that are aimed at children! It’s called cologne, I know, same thing! It turns out the one-eyed newt misremembered something, that Harvey’s a kid, SOMEHOW! All newts are forgetful which she wasn’t taught! And he warns Sabrina that because Harvey’s a kid, he might never be normal again if Sabrina doesn’t get something from her locker. Sabrina, warp it to you! He’d say this!
And Harvey bores me with an unnecessary scene to himself. He damages the locker, and turns into a purple Hulk. Sabrina, use magic you idiot! Hulk is copyrighted, and I don’t think they should be allowed to get away with this just because he turned purple instead of green. What’s the benefit in the story being lazy? It feels like it’s just there for a joke, but it’s Narmy if we’re supposed to take it seriously. A lot of the times the show thinks we’re supposed to take it seriously AND think it’s funny at the exact same time! Eventually he turns green anyways!
Why doesn’t Sabrina just point to return him to normal?! Don’t write a plot like this if you need to force it to last! I understand the appeal of making this happen for the sake of having a memorable exciting climax. But really this is just there because, there’s plenty of time left in the episode. Sabrina, DO SOMETHING! It’s always arbitrary that potions are immune to magic that’s not from their antidote, which has to be the case, or she’s written like trash casually standing there! The roof gets damaged and the episode keeps being scary.
Witches are omnipotent, why have a scary Sabrina show? It only ever worked when it was being funny. The episode’s boring until Sabrina tells her aunts the truth. Hilda somehow didn’t know that there was a magic newt in the basement. You’d think Quigley would’ve found out before her and then freaked out and told the aunts about it because, he’s in charge of cleaning the entire house! So I assume the newt JUST MOVED here, because he, lost his home and doesn’t have the magic to zap up a new home. If he explained himself, his voice sucks too much to make me listen.
Zelda endangers Sabrina telling her to remind Harvey of who he really is, without saying, “ from behind a screen. “ but to be fair, Sabrina has magic to protect her, it’s just that she’s always too stupid to use it or use it the common sense way, so in this show she needs adult supervision 24/7. Why do we have to get shown the military ruining a building because of Sabrina? And the mailman is STILL tied up in a web. This writer is sadistic. He would’ve gone to the bathroom in this web, he’s been there so long. Just because
Sabrina tells Harvey to remember who she is, he says Sabrina and asks for more spray. Then why didn’t he just say that in the first place? How did he take so long to recognize her? The aunts turned to a man for help for some reason so the perfume gets sniffed, and Harvey gets lured to the house. You’d think with all of their experience with making potions THEY would’ve made the antidote. And the newt misremembers things so HE isn’t better than them. He damages it and looks at the aunts, and the mailman somehow survived what would be a lethal injury.
Sabrina gets thrown and that’d be from a lethal height. Somehow she keeps asking for help, when she could just use magic to save herself, since she knows she can warp. Harvey remembers his good times with her so what took so long and decides to save her. She at least realistically says ouch when she lands on his hand, but then she’d be way more hurt than this! Harvey remembers everything. He says he’s allergic to that good luck cologne and she hugs him. He HAS to know about magic! He’s way too casual about this.
He SHOULD be saying, “ A mad scientist must have made this thing! “ Quigley bitches and at least he gets laughed at but I don’t get why. Quigley may be right to hate magic in this show but that won’t trick me into liking this bigot when the show just forces magic to always go wrong!
This episode is about how using steroids backfires, but it replaces steroids with a magic perfume that Sabrina somehow used instead of just pointing to make Harvey a good wrestler when using magic items always backfires. It’s good that the episode showed the real consequences of steroids before Harvey turned into a dragon, and that happened because of a side-effect of him being a preteen, not because the potion itself was cursed. But that side-effect still felt arbitrary! Once again it demonizes magic and was forced, so it sucks!
You’d think the newt would’ve asked her, “ I forget, is Harvey a kid like you? “ since that was common sense! It was cringeworthy as soon as Harvey started being mean. But there’s far worse episodes of this show. He may have had no reason to get reminded he’s a preteen but he should have ASSUMED that because, a preteen is coming to him for help for a friend, of course her friend is a preteen! I have to assume he has a lot more experience with potion-making than Hilda and Zelda who are over 600 years old, since they turned to HIM for HELP for some reason.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 39 When in Rome:
Sabrina’s teacher has unintelligible dialogue and Sabrina and Gem both wanna be Harvey’s lab partner, and an adult says Gem’s gonna be Sabrina’s partner. Quigley gets magic used on him to give him a pirate costume, but he starts singing to enjoy magic for once. It makes logical sense to be fine with costume summoning magic because that’s always harmless. Then he should never be acting like ALL magic is evil. Sabrina comes home complaining and a parrot makes Quigley miserable. Sabrina says Gem is her partner, and SOMEHOW Quigley says that doesn’t sound so bad. Why does he need Sabrina to explain herself?
He says Gem might bring something useful to the table as if she won’t make her do all the work and victim-blames her telling her to give getting along a shot, when obviously she was gonna do that because that’s in her nature and it’s gonna be Gem who’ll make things awful. Sabrina didn’t try hard enough to have things go well though. Let her read the book, Sabrina, it doesn’t matter! Eventually, it turns out Gem hid something in the Spookie Jar to be spiteful after being nothing but annoying, and she opens it and gets sent to Spookie.
She put a rupture in the fourth dimension of time because she put a mortal object in the Spookie Jar. Why is this the case? This makes no sense. She could warp away, and warp Gem to her. I assume that mortal object never includes clothes, like Chloe’s. So, all along people were supposed to just make sure they didn’t have anything in their pockets, before they went into the Spookie Jar. If clothes were the exception he would say that, not say, a “ mortal object, “ in general. So they get warped to another universe based on the novel they had just because of that.
Gem would’ve heard Salem talk when he was in the kitchen earlier, so why does she just now hear him? Salem saves Gem from being trampled by horses which is only good because it saves her parents the money for paying for her funeral, since they’d be annoyed at having to do that. Why wouldn’t Gem let Sabrina explain?! So she thinks she’ll lie anyway. Why would she tell her she sees what’s going on? The curiosity would be killing her, she wouldn’t waste any more time.
Gem says some higher power chose to grant her humble request to rule the world just because she was sent back to ancient Rome. Why would she want to rule the world? The only thing she would want would be for her family to love her, and not force her to do a bunch of exercise every day. Why does she think she’d have any chance of getting to take over Rome because she was sent here? And I wish it was explained that they’re in another universe where everyone speaks English, because somehow they speak English. Salem still speaks Latin, he read the English sign in it, so this is definitely not HIS Ancient Rome.
Gem somehow expects credit cards to be still useful, and somehow speaks slowly. Why does she think her money would be accepted in the past? Somehow this guy says there’s no such thing as paper. Gem says she’s a princess somehow. How’d she make the guard’s hand leave her shoulder? Why are they being called thieves? Her theft would have to be offscreen. But nothing impressed her! Somehow this guy says Caesar is ruler of the whole world.
Well it IS another universe but there’s a reason no one country took over the whole world in the past before. It’s too big and there’s competing countries and the technology back then just wasn’t good enough for that to be possible. And this country isn’t super advanced, so that’s not it. And obviously if a world was so small that one country was the whole world, there would be much smaller gravity, and I don’t think it’d be livable. All the water and atmosphere would escape the planet, that’s Mars problem.
The carriage rider would’ve heard Salem. Gem and Sabrina get taken away in a barred cage and the whole time I’m wondering why Sabrina doesn’t just warp home with Gem and Salem, and then lie that Gem’s dreamed this whole thing because it worked for Harvey. I have to assume that Sabrina WANTS to keep this adventure going out of curiosity to see what’ll happen. Sure she’s scared, but people are scared of horror movies but they still stick around to see what’ll happen in the whole thing. Sabrina planned to abandon Gem! Who IS she?!
She’s told to tell the emperor about the future. How convenient that he believes them that it’s the future. Sabrina bores me talking about the car engine. Why would Gem waste time telling the emperor to bow down because she’s his new princess? It’s obvious he wouldn’t give up his authority. If there was any chance of it being that easy she wouldn’t have had to put up this effort. Quigley’s message seems stupid here, Gem’s NOT helpful! Why the hell is a dust cloud censoring Gem fighting with her? Why did she wait until NOW to fight her? It’s Out of Character of her.
If the show’s ever shown the impact when Salem had to deal with slapstick, then there’s no excuse for this! The emperor decides to make the two fight in public for fun. I guess it’s because he’s so generous he wants a lot more people to get to enjoy the fight. Girls aren’t made to be gladiators. But it’s a parallel universe, anything goes, like them eating pie and cake. Why does the scene keep going? It’s nice of the gladiators to shake hands with Sabrina and Gem. It’s confusing that they’re offered tea and crumpets. Somehow, hurting people ISN’T their job like Sabrina says.
They figured out that they have to put on a good act and work together because if they REALLY fought, they’d die quickly. But that WAS the case. Again, it’s another universe, anything goes,. But that needs to be explained right away. Why mis-educate the audience in a show all about teaching lessons? There’s no reason to put them in Ancient Rome if you’re not gonna be accurate. You could have them be actual wrestlers and it’d make more sense. Why have MULTIPLE episodes about teaching Sabrina to work together with her BULLY?!
I can understand the appeal in teaching someone to be willing to act cooperative and work together no matter what, especially if the teacher is forcing her to work with. But Sabrina’s overly nice by nature so she wouldn’t need to learn this lesson. Then the story starts wasting too much time by trying to teach Sabrina and Gem combat moves. I don’t care. At least it shows Sabrina push Gem down but the rest is offscreen. Why bother writing violence if you’re not allowed to show it often enough, and it’s not an action series?
Salem greets Sabrina, and says the time portal is still open, but somehow it’s only temporary. Why doesn’t he just use magic to save them? Instead he tells them to give each other a boost. Sabrina says she’d rather sit in prison than trust Gem. Yeah, but even Gem wouldn’t be so dumb as to make her fall because if she lands she’ll get killed from the impact, trapping her here. I guess Sabrina assumes that she’s operating on cartoon logic. It makes sense that she’d assume Gem’s a complete idiot, considering how stupid she was in this episode.
Couldn’t Salem say, “ I’ll give you guys a reward if you do what I say. “ If this guy has a megaphone, where’s all of the rest of their technology?! Don’t megaphones require a connection to the electric grid to work? Why does the audience know to boo Gem? For all they know her title is arbitrary. I guess the emperor told the audience ahead of time, to boo Gem because she wants to take over Rome. Gem has standards because she finds out her weapons ARE sharp and doesn’t want to actually kill her. Sabrina’s not surprised by this.
Sabrina tells her to duck so the audience boos. She’d have whispered it! The emperor doesn’t enjoy the battle and calls them fakers, so he tells the guards to chase them. I’m wondering how the other gladiators kept themselves from having this consequence, when they would’ve had real weapons. Some padding could have been cut out of the episode so they’d have time to show us how the gladiators got away with this. But I guess the writers knew it’d be too hard to write it in a way that makes sense.
Sabrina can’t reach something to get the door opened, god forbid she use magic when they’re in a magical situation, in Ancient Rome so I’m sure everyone already believed in witches. Gem stands on her shoulders to try pulling and then they swing into the guards and the door opens anyways, when Gem just said that she wasn’t strong enough. If only more impact than a split second’s worth was shown with the guards. They hold onto the reins to get horses to pull them to safety.
How convenient that their enemies don’t catch up with them and instead vanish when they get to the portal. I have to assume Sabrina cast a spell to make the horses run a lot faster. Salem gets sent out of it just because the episode didn’t last long enough! Gem says they ripped the book in half and so they decide to fix the book because somehow for them to come home everything needs to be the same as when they got here and somehow the book being fixed returns them to the house even though they’re wearing different clothes.
But again I guess this makes sense because, clothes are the exception to the no mortal object rule. But how would the things they’re wearing, that are made of metal, count as clothes? Nobody who made the clothes are allowed rule would consider metal armor. Then Gem finishes the book report and she says that’s right partner, being Out of Character again for a sappy ending. If so many writers wanna redeem Gem why don’t they just let them do it?! Then she inexplicably plans to tell everyone at school what she went through, in front of Zelda. Why is Zelda smiling?
If she knows about witches, then she’s counting on them not being able to erase memories or thinking that they’re too good to do it. I assume she’s only saying this to try to get Sabrina to be her slave to keep her from talking, because anyone would know nobody would believe her! So Zelda makes her think all of that was a dream, instead of just saying that nobody would believe her! If Zelda can do this in the show, Sabrina thinking that she’s weak because of her age has to be why she almost never does this herself, and I hate that! I’d love to see her use magic a lot more often!
This episode has Gem and Sabrina go to a parallel universe and somehow put up with being gladiators because Gem put a novel in the Spookie Jar to spitefully hide it from Sabrina, so already the episode’s irredeemable by making Gem be around the whole time, but it was satisfying when she finally learned to work together with Sabrina and save both of their lives.
Gem didn’t assume she was sent back in time because Sabrina’s a witch, instead she assumes that some higher power did this for her so she’d take over the world, but her assuming that, was only there to make Sabrina think she doesn’t have to reveal she has magic, which means the episode drags on a boring way! It’s frustrating the whole time, Sabrina hates her entire experience so there’s no excuse for her not warping home right away! Why would they be reliant on a portal?! Why didn’t she just warp to the portal? We don’t need ANOTHER episode about teaching Gem and Sabrina they can work together!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 40 Field of Screams:
Quigley cares enough to watch Sabrina at her baseball game and cheer which embarrasses her. Sabrina doesn’t want kids to run into each other. Why even bother having slapstick if it’s gonna be offscreen because of censorship? How the hell was Sabrina playing a game against Gem, another member of her school? Quigley somehow thinks Sabrina had fun, and he hammers in the episode’s message that playing sports is always supposed to be fun, even if you lose at the end. No duh, now end the episode! Eventually Sabrina uses magic on a magic hat and says that making everyone better with a spell is cheating.
Salem tells her that the whole town will be calling her a loser which convinces her. He might as well be brainwashing her every episode. Sabrina wastes time being mad at him for bringing the Spookie Jar, when I know she hasn’t decided to never use it again. Why won’t she do the magic herself? She can summon! Somehow it doesn’t help them. If it actually does, then it’s Out of Character for that to not show up in front of them and explain the spell.
Only Sabrina and Chloe can see that the team looks like monsters. That’s because they were there when the spell was cast, so they can see them for max sadism potential. Why doesn’t Sabrina point to return things to normal? The episode’s boring from this point on. Why would anyone wanna watch a Sabrina story about just baseball? Get to the magic. Someone catches a ball with his mouth. There’s no point in mentioning anything here that isn’t really taking advantage of the monsters concept. Someone trips somebody. But wouldn’t he get in trouble for a foul? Most of this is just normal baseball!
I don’t care if Sabrina’s team wins. It’ll just make her the people I don’t care about happy for a few seconds and Gem annoyed for a few seconds and then it’ll be over. At least it’s being lighthearted in how she’s winning for a long time. But this isn’t what I come to Sabrina for. Sabrina says you can’t take out Harvey when he’s playing great. He just missed one catch. Somehow the vampire says they aren’t winning by enough even though obviously they were giving off the impression that they were guaranteed to win.
The vampire says he’s captain of this team now. What took him so long? Sabrina would brainwash them all here. She brainwashed Quigley in an earlier episode! Why did it take so long for Sabrina and her friends to be benched? If Spookie’s spells are always cursed just because he’s sadistic, there’s no reason that he’d have his spell work out for her for more than a minute. It’d work just as well at crushing her hopes either way.
Any episode where it works without a catch, I guess even the spells that undo the previous spells have a catch and we just don’t get to see them because otherwise that would completely break the rule. The writer sadistically shows someone trip for no reason. And somehow there’s a sign saying, “ No Greendalians Allowed. “ Why is the writer showing off that the monsters took over the soda shop? Harvey takes too long whining and storms off. Hilda changes her pants with magic, and the shirt and makes a hat.
She hypocritically says SABRINA’S the one who messed around with magic. If she was good, she’d help Sabrina. And they wonder why she uses Spookie instead! She doesn’t need to teach her a lesson because she already learned her lesson! The aunts start bickering because the show has a bad idea of humor. Sabrina goes to the graveyard and sees the monsters inexplicably running around a bonfire. Why doesn’t she just undo the spell? Why doesn’t she tell Spookie to undo the spell? That always works!
I assume the reason that they’re fine with being outside is that they have a house somewhere and they plan on going to it as soon as they feel like going to bed because it’d make no sense for them to not need to sleep at night, or put up with the freezing cold night, or sleep outside at night when it’s cold. When she says she’s sending him home I immediately predict that she’s gonna fail and somehow she fails. Why do the monsters look scared, why would only the vampire know they’re immune?! So she has no excuse for just standing there now instead of warping to Spookie.
Why does the vampire think Earth is nicer than the Nether World? Salem says racistly that the undead are competitive, giving Sabrina an idea that if the kids of Greendale win, they have to leave. Why would they hold up their end of the bargain when they’re unrealistically evil? Spookie made them out of sadism so why would he make them reasonable? The jerk says they’ll be banished to the Nether World if they win. Yeah that totally wouldn’t alert Enchantra. Yeah that TOTALLY wouldn’t get the aunts to beat Spookie up until he undoes it. Why should I keep paying attention when Gem starts talking?
All that matters is, Sabrina gives the kids an encouraging speech that works. I don’t see the value in this episode. Gem is smart by thinking that the other team is too good. Sabrina remembers that her job as captain is to find out the strengths of the people on her team. This story’s so boring, why would I care about baseball?! The only appeal of this is happy music is playing when the short kid cheats. They’d freak out at this monster. Any time the teammates act in a way that’s not normal, you’d think that’d be called cheating.
Sabrina stands on the bandage of the mummy making him trip. So everyone thinks he’s insanely clumsy for no reason. Harvey puts his hand on Sabrina’s shoulder and says they’re having fun again, which is the only thing that matters to him. It’s annoying that he says who cares about them winning? Well I have to, because if they lose, they get banished to the Nether World! Someone asks if Salem just talked. And he wouldn’t be fooled by Salem talking in a human voice saying meow, but it’s clear that he’d just assume he was imagining that. Everyone around Salem would’ve heard his underacted lines!
Another thing that never happens in baseball, and eventually Sabrina gets cheered for. So how did the magic cover up the other team warping away? I guess it made people think that they were still standing there. And it’s able to detect that whenever someone would go up to them to try to make physical contact with them they’d see them go away from them.
This episode is about Sabrina inexplicably trusting Spookie again when she could’ve used her OWN magic with no consequences, so out of sadism he creates unrealistically evil people to be amazing teammates for a baseball team, who insist that they’re the only one who should get to play because they aren’t winning by enough for their insecure selves to be comfortable with. Why did this take more than a minute to happen if the spells are only backfiring because Spookie’s a sadist? Sabrina would’ve tried to brainwash them out of this right away because she was fine with doing that to Quigley!
She would’ve come to Spookie to undo the spell because that always works, somehow even though he’s sadistic. I guess he knows he’d be kicked out of the house otherwise. It should’ve been explained that he warped away from the Spookie dimension, because he wanted the spell to take longer to get undone, and that she visited Spookie again but it was offscreen. It’s a very boring episode because it’s got way too much focus on a mundane activity I don’t care about instead of magic, and clearly the WRITER knew it wasn’t interesting enough on its own because he wrote the characters to cheat without getting in trouble.
It’s about teaching you that winning isn’t everything, SUCH AN OBVIOUS MESSAGE that the story is worthless, especially when no kid would actually be convinced. She’d be just as miserable as she would from losing if better players forced her to sit the game out, but that’d never happen to a kid this way in real life. Sabrina felt worse about losing. Sabrina’s right to care about winning because she’s never gonna stop hating when Gem taunts her for losing. Then don’t play against Gem!
She can create fake people to compete with her for fun. She gave a hat legs! It’s unfair of the episode to demonize her like it’s victim-blaming because she can’t help it! It’s impossible not to hate that you lost to GEM. It teaches you that you should just be glad you had fun in the game when she COULDN’T because her team SUCKED, and that’s not her fault! It’s her fault she’s choosing to play against Gem but I’m sure she doesn’t have any other choice, in terms of a team to compete with. And it taught us winning isn’t everything when winning kept them from being banished.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 41 Driver Ed:
I get to see Quigley terrified, even if it’s from the forced concept of Hilda driving too fast like in a 70s comic, even though a witch would make herself an expert at driving. She says she somehow thinks she’s getting the hang of driving. Why did we have to see her cause damage? You might not get the idea that she used magic to fix that damage. There’s no reason she would think he isn’t scared. She has to be just saying that to mock him. This has the same problems as that shitty Jetsons episode, though at least no one’s joking that all women are bad drivers.
She’d know how to drive by now! Women have been allowed to drive for decades and she’s 600 years old. And if she wasn’t driving all the time because she could just warp or fly, she would just do that, not want to drive when Quigley has no power over her. I can assume this makes sense because she’s knowingly torturing him though. There’s NO WAY Sabrina would assume Hilda’s not that bad at driving. And it’s not like she just met Hilda? Why would she not believe Quigley when he’d inevitably complain about Hilda’s driving.
Sabrina wants Hilda to become good at driving because then she could drive her around even though she still has Quigley to drive her around. So I guess she assumes Quigley’s very stingy with driving people around because he’d rather do housework all day… She could just fly on a broom to get where she wants. He wouldn’t know. And that happened happens in the comic, but not in the show. I like seeing Quigley trip. It’s good that it doesn’t guilt-trip us by having him be injured the whole episode from it. Hilda gets reassured by Zelda when she whines about failing.
And I guess they’re just too scared of Quigley to use a, “ get good at driving “ spell. It makes sense that she’d wanna, actually get good at driving for the sake of her own pride. Why is she going to Spookie again when she wasn’t prompted to do so, when he always betrays her?! And basically every spell he does is something a witch has done at some point, so it’s not like he’s more powerful than them. He at least suffers from some embarrassment because he can’t rhyme something with orange. But he should’ve known better. But since he even warns people his spells are gonna backfire, why do they still trust him?
Sabrina throws a steak to keep dogs from chasing Salem anymore. Didn’t she throw it in Salem’s direction? Why did one of the dogs not go after the steak? Why isn’t Salem using magic to protect himself? He says the cookie and the dog becomes the driving teacher. Salem asks if she’s sure the transformation is complete. Why didn’t they just summon a person by pointing instead of thinking they have to transform an already living being? He says what’s he doing by that fire hydrant if the transformation is complete. How would he still act like a dog when he has a human brain now?
It’d be forced if he never acted like a dog again then. I like seeing Hilda wear that thing on her head, even if no one ever does that because they’re doing housework. And finally the show does show off the aunts’ boy craziness which was apparently Flanderized in the comic. I know she’ll never stay with the guy the rest of the show, so it wastes my time. Then the driving teacher flirts with Zelda and goes off with her and he gets to enjoy cookies. Her tire pops. He says he’ll teach her to change a flat. Sadly I don’t get to see that because the episode cuts past Zelda doing that!
And Zelda’s flowers get ruined. That’s wrong because Ed isn’t dating Hilda. She also freezes Zelda, so good thing she can still melt it just by force of will. If a witch doesn’t need to even move to use magic, why didn’t they get themselves free of the ropes earlier? And then we see the aunts get shapeshifted a bunch. The house gets split in two so that each aunt could have her own half, which rips off the sitcom. And Sabrina almost falls and gets killed, and Salem saves her. Her aunts wouldn’t keep that crack there because they don’t want her dead. And Zelda’s supposed to be the responsible one.
Sabrina says she’ll have to get rid of Ed. Then why doesn’t she just point to do it? Sabrina thinks her aunts would split her in half if she told them she created Ed, which she’d have to do to consul them after they’d be upset that he vanished, and file a missing persons report for him. It’s annoying to see the aunts bicker, and pointless. Zelda creates fire on the table. She calls an operator wanting the number of the department of motor vehicles, says thank you, and makes a DMV call and say she wants to uncancel her driving test.
Wouldn’t the guy know it’s not Hilda? I guess he assumes that Hilda’s voice sounds different over the phone, if he even recognizes Hilda’s voice. Wouldn’t he expect some ID? If she can disguise herself as Hilda complete with getting HER voice, why didn’t she get written to do that before she made the call? She goes off with Ed, and Sabrina hugs Hilda. Hilda gets a normal driving lesson. And now she’s driving normally. He says casually that he sees someone on a flying vacuum behind him, and then he looks mildly confused by it.
Hilda uses magic to knock down the trees rather than her just turning Zelda to stone for the time being. She uses magic repeatedly, making it rain frogs. This is entertaining to see. It’s Little Sabrina style where the witches don’t even care about revealing magic to people. After all everyone assumes they’re dreaming anyways! I guess the teacher’s laughing to reassure himself because he thinks he started dreaming. No one ever questions the idea that they started dreaming when they wouldn’t remember going to bed during the day. No one ever freaks out that they fainted!
Hilda drives so fast her car starts flying. At least she gives herself a helmet. Why is she pulling him up manually when she used magic so much? She could warp him back to his seat. She would think to do that! And it’d be fine if she said, “ Oh no I’m outta magic! “ Sabrina takes the wheel, having warped to it. A car scares people a bunch of times because sadism is the humor of this show. The teacher thinks he’s losing his mind when he could’ve assumed this was just a dream the whole time. That’d be the more likely assumption. I mean how is he not freaking out a lot more, before, then?
Eventually a marshmallow gets summoned to give them a soft landing to stop the car, because that was all she could think about in a panic. Zelda gets her real appearance revealed. The teacher acts happy to reassure himself and gives her a license. Sure would be dark if it’s not explained that he goes back to normal after this, instead of permanently going crazy. Smartly Quigley says she’s not driving HIS car until she REALLY learns. She only started not driving well because she was protecting herself from her sister. You’d think she would at least try to explain that even if she thinks she won’t be believed about it.
Zelda asks Hilda if she can ever forgive her. But then Hilda goes from forgiving her to continuing to say Ed likes her best. Ed can’t really choose which one he likes the best. He says he’ll teach Sabrina to drive when he gets conjured up by her again, and inexplicably he turns back into a dog and runs after Salem. How did he know that the spell would be temporary? I have to assume it makes sense because Spookie’s spell was intentionally temporary out of sadism. But if he’s sadistic, why did he make it so that he’d be fine with being very temporary?
This episode’s about Sabrina’s aunts feuding with each other over a driving teacher for Hilda who is inexplicably a dog Sabrina turned to Spookie of all people to shapeshift for her, when she can summon anything. While it is another episode about demonizing magic, I feel like I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate this episode because it has magic happen in it SO OFTEN that it’s entertaining to watch, especially when Hilda chases Zelda when she’s driving.
And SO many different things happen! It’s entertaining to see the aunts feud, but it’s Flanderization to have it happen too often when it was rare in the 70s comic. It just goes to show me the show can only be good when Sabrina’s not the focus. Someone would’ve used magic to make her a good driver. So the plot wouldn’t have happened.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 42 What Becomes of the Broken Hearted:
Sabrina’s wearing a shark head while giving a report in biology class. There’s no way that’d happen. I don’t remember that. She says she never knew biology could be so interesting. It sure is convenient that they didn’t laugh at her, and that she thought, that wouldn’t happen. Then she’s trapped in her head and somehow the teacher ignores her instead of helping her. At least no one’s mocking her when she keeps bumping into things. Chloe reveals that it’s not Sabrina the students were fawning over. Sabrina reassures her that he’ll pick them for being the best students.
Quigley loses his temper with holding a camera and I like that when the aunts see him he’s embarrassed. The camera also takes a picture of him and he can’t see and embarrasses himself. Finally the show shows off his obsession with taking care of plants. Apparently it was Flanderized in the comic, which is good because it’s more interesting than him being a housekeeper. Then he somehow gets himself tied up with black film and Hilda saves him, making him dizzy. Sabrina smartly asks to borrow the camera and he agrees.
Zelda says she never knows who the teacher might pick because mortals can be unpredictable. Why does she think witches aren’t? She doesn’t mind when he does and somehow she keeps gasping over and over because people other than her are picked when she would’ve known how unlikely it’d be that she’d be picked right AFTER Chloe. She takes too long whining to Salem that she wasn’t picked.
He summons a card and she says he’s usually full of bad advice and lampshades him referring her to someone else. Just have Zelda be the one who refers her to someone else. There’s no excuse for her ever taking his advice again, then. She goes from deciding not to use the card to being talked to and deciding to say the spell. So she has to suffer from a blizzard without winter clothes. Salem should’ve given her some! He should’ve cast a warmth spell on her! He just said he had compassion! You’d think she’d suffer some ill effects in all that time! I guess she cast a heat spell without even knowing it.
If the card was meant to get her access to the Wise Warlock, there’s no reason she’d have to take so long getting to him. There’s no reason the Warlock would waste all day levitating and humming. It doesn’t look like he has any television. But we haven’t been shown that he DOESN’T. We haven’t been shown that he DOES live that way. He then says he’s in pain and tells her to move his legs and asks how people sit like this.
Based on his unnecessary accent I hope he’s not portrayed in an offensive way, because in vacuum the accent gives him charm, much needed charm for a stereotypical wise man sage. I would’ve been wondering why I was expected to take a character seriously in this show. What annoys me is that the show only gives him this accent because it thinks it’s funny. The stereotypical music gives it away. He already knows she’s got a broken heart as Salem told him and expects her to walk away to a gift shop. Why does he expect her to leave? Of course she already knew what was wrong and came for a cure.
He says he’ll tell her what to do and expects her to go on a quest when he could just point to solve her problem. He says she has to find a person who never had her heart broken and then she’ll get her cure from him. I think he doesn’t even plan to give her anything. He can’t show her with a screen someone who never had a heart break. He tries to sell her the screen beforehand, being greedy offensively. She says he’d go WITH her if he really wanted to help her, so he agrees to help her.
I like that she’s become cynical as the realistic consequence of Salem and Spookie always leading her wrong and betraying her. How else can she become smart? He says he’ll lay a curse on Slugloaf so it’s too bad he won’t. But he said he’s invisible to everyone but Sabrina, so how’d he see him? Gem doesn’t object to her arm around her! Sabrina brings Gem into the closet and somehow he says she didn’t have to kill her. And she says she didn’t kill her, she just froze her in time. Then I have to assume she didn’t know she could do this until now, because this would’ve come in handy.
She gets to use the TV screen on her chest to get herself to see a memory. She sees that her parents were telling an audience all of the gifts they gave her. I assume it’s just so they can show off their wealth in front of people, because if they liked her they wouldn’t send her to boarding school. Gem whines that she got given the wrong ice cream flavor. Sabrina says he calls THAT a heartbreak. I expected REAL heartbreak because her parents are abusive.
The story would’ve been less confusing if they said disappointment instead of heartbreak. I thought NOW it’d be explained that her parents went to Guam without her! Then he shows her a memory of Harvey’s. I always knew his lesson to Sabrina was meant to be that everyone’s suffered… except people who never got to really live a life because they died right away. Harvey gets shown playing an arcade machine too long, and the janitor goes from telling him to give up to giving up and cleaning anyways.
Somehow he doesn’t lift the wire before vacuuming despite not being blind, so the machine gets unplugged and he can’t save his high score. It’s the 2000s and he’s still playing at an arcade. This has to be an alternate universe where arcades aren’t going out of business outside of Japan. Sabrina says Quigley’s too sensible to let heartbreak happen to him, what kinda line is THAT?! She saw him manhandle a camera! That’s victim-blaming and how is an anti-witch bigot sensible? If he could make a wish to get rid of Sabrina’s powers he would.
Sabrina has to know she didn’t get picked because she didn’t get good enough grades and so, that didn’t make her sensible. Otherwise it’d be hypocritical to say, you have to be non-sensible to get heartbroken. What wasn’t sensible about Harvey refusing to leave the arcade? And Gem would’ve been disappointed, no matter how sensible she was. She had no control over which flavor of ice cream she got.
I’m continuing to complain about this because, the story actually wants me to agree with her. Quigley’s plant grows when he’s busy talking on the phone and it dies, and he cries because he missed the one moment he had to take a photo of it. Only a magic plant would be like this. I like the IDEA that he’s at least open-minded enough of witch stuff to enjoy growing witch plants, but I think he said it was Irish instead. How am I supposed to enjoy all of their suffering if it’s nothing but forced contrivances?
Then the sage says Hilda’s heart is full of ex-boyfriends and shows Sabrina a memory of hers when she was admiring a painting of herself. Zelda admired a painting of herself too. It’s always nice to see episodes that mostly don’t focus on Sabrina. Zelda puts her hand on Pierre’s shoulder and holds his hand. She says it’s not fair for him to go on dating them both. She should really be saying, “ It’s not fair of US because YOU only have so much money. “ It’s nice of one of them to give him money. Zelda and Hilda ruin each other’s painting portraits.
Pierre hates them until someone loves them and offers him a lot of money. Ancient paper money? Thanks, witches! You advanced the progression of technology for mortals. He’s smart enough to agree to paint like this from now on. He walks away and the aunts assume that he’s leaving them just because of that for some reason. Why would he stop dating them just because of that? It looked to me like they were just insecurely jumping to that conclusion. Hilda’s unfrozen and summons a croissant and eats it. And Salem’s thrown out of the aquarium and cries in front of Sabrina. His scream would scare that mortal!
I’d expect Sabrina to have more compassion, not be annoyed every time seeing everyone’s problems as petty since they aren’t her own, which is too relatable for her to be Sabrina. Why even show us this montage if it won’t show us what she saw? The sage uses a vibrating back chair, and Sabrina says she couldn’t find one person who didn’t get heartbroken. Why did she take so long to say there is no person who didn’t get disappointed? She says there is no cure. But there is, just drink a potion to feel better.
I GUESS the idea is, neither of them wanted to make a brainwashing potion. That must be what she wanted! Why does he say it’s beyond even his powers? SHE was able to brainwash Quigley effortlessly! He SHOULD say, “ it’s beyond even my powers to make it so that you’d never be disappointed again, because it’d mean changing all of the events in your future. “
The episode should do that, and then show her getting bored, because she never has any conflict in her life, and she’s too stubborn to play video games. He tells her to help people to cheer up. He shows her her aunts hugging after their earlier feud. Then he smartly gives her a card and tells her to recommend him to others. Chloe tells Sabrina she has a cool bag and the story ends.
This episode has Sabrina get constantly shown a memory of plenty of different people getting disappointed for underwhelmingly petty reasons, which are usually contrived. But it’s not bad for being mundane because there’s so much variety in what’s happening that it’s interesting. And the memories don’t last way too long and I never know what’s gonna happen in the next scene, so it was always interesting. The moral that everyone’s had a disappointment was obvious right away so I don’t know why Sabrina kept wasting her time. And it’s not even technically true.
Stillborns would still count as people who never got the chance to be disappointed. Good thing she went on to say that disappointment’s a part of life to clarify the real moral, and Captain Obvious Aesop, even if a better moral would’ve been, “ You need disappointment or you’ll just be bored. “ Like that janitor. For once magic wasn’t demonized the whole time, even if we did see her aunts abuse it, because magic is what got Sabrina to get given this experience with the sage, and while she was constantly disappointed by it, it didn’t come off as outright torturing her this episode.
She wasn’t scared, not even of Cyclops Baby! Magic only worked out for the best, because she’s happy to learn a lesson and feels better about what she was originally sad about, so at the end of the day magic WAS worth it. Why can’t every episode be like that?! It’s not enough to get me jealous of her because she still had a much stricter upbringing than I had, and was disappointed all story.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 43 Send in the Clones:
Chloe asks Sabrina if she’s ready for the first day of school and she smiles replying to her, so that’s a nice moment if you stretch it and they find out there’s a school fair to check out. I don’t remember THAT. The story’s boring after this. Why would I wanna see an extended amount of focus on something mundane? Chloe calls Gem a hypocrite when she calls Sabrina empty-headed. Quigley says it’s impressive that Sabrina’s researching history and it’s because she signed up for the history club.
It only makes sense because she’s got aunts that have lived for hundreds of years, except that doesn’t cause people to research their grandparents’ time. Zelda threw card games for Elizabeth the 1st. Zelda complains about royalty. Sabrina signed up for girls’ water polo too and Hilda asks a question that didn’t even insult Zelda so she gets turned into a sea dragon for a joke. Why isn’t Quigley bitching about actual magic abuse? He hopes Sabrina isn’t overloading herself, while I guess being too scared to bitch at them for magic abuse.
He says there’s no time in her schedule set aside to sleep and she just casually says she could make that up on the weekend. There’s no way she wouldn’t have any time for herself to sleep, because the school clubs wouldn’t take place during the night! She’d instantly learn the moral here. The show thinks every preteen is impossibly stupid. How would she even be allowed to sign up for too many clubs at once? It turns out she signed up to learn how to play the tuba because it was the only instrument left.
He tells her it’s not how much you do, it’s how well you do it, and she asks if he’s been learning from Chloe, when usually she’s not about spouting adult-level wisdom. And Salem gets turned into a clam for wanting to eat Hilda. Sabrina gets greeted from outside her bedroom window by someone who wants her to go to rock climbing club, somehow. And the show wastes my time when Salem tells her she’s stretching herself too thin and again she’s an airhead by not instantly believing him. Why would they think this is a good protagonist?! I can barely stand her.
At least every time I get bored the show cuts to showing her try out a different thing. She jogs and looks at her watch and runs into a yoga class with a tuba. Somehow she got her schedule mixed up. She uses magic on her face and I keep wondering why she has a band-aid instead of her having healed herself. Why does Salem tell her she should be twins? He should’ve known that’d tempt her to use the Traitor Jar. Why does she come to the idea to trust Spookie on her own? The Sabrina I know would summon clones herself.
Why does she have to wait until she wakes up in the morning for the clones to greet her in her bed? So she does have time to sleep. And it shows how little she trusts Zelda that she magically puts a chair against her door knob when she knocks on the door and doesn’t want her to see them.. She says she heard voices. She’d have heard what they said too! Besides she has no reason to be opposed to her plan. Why didn’t she instantly warp into Sabrina’s room and prevent the whole plot, or warp Sabrina TO her?
She wants Sabrina to spend time with the family because she doesn’t see her anymore. How sweet. She would’ve seen her every time she went home from school. And somehow when Quigley sees Sabrina too much he assumes it’s from sun stroke even though he knows she’s a witch. So again he would’ve ended the episode right there yelling at her. I assume the red-shirted Sabrina is the real Sabrina, who NOW knows what they don’t when earlier a clone knew something about Zelda already. Why did Sabrina sign up for rock climbing if she’s scared of heights?
She COULD say, she wants to get rid of her fear without brainwashing. A clone ends up catching and juggling, and hands people back the things they dropped. Gem complains that Spellman beats her at cross country and she’s suspicious. The clones hope there’s enough spaghetti for seconds and thirds. Sabrina’s so desperate to conserve magic, she won’t just zap up more. Because Real Sabrina joined another club, one of the clones asks why she gets to decide what they do, when it should be obvious, so she must just be asking a rhetorical question.
It makes sense that they didn’t say that right away because they probably assumed the clubs would be fun before they actually got to experience them. She gets jealous at seeing Harvey get hugged by a clone and Sabrina complains about her clones disobeying her. Sure was spiteful of her to hug Harvey instead of zapping up a fake Harvey to hug. Gem sees Sabrina and the clones. I get her not wanting Zelda to find out she screwed up, so that’s why she doesn’t warp her to her to get her memory erased.
I get Gem not figuring out magic exists if she assumes she’s always been triplets, but no, she totally bought that it was all mirrors when you can see mirrors and there’s no reason mirrors would BE here. All of one would be the one color if the mirrors were tinted. All of the Sabrinas’ talking would be suspicious. Gem would never genuinely end up believing she was just seeing triple and get glasses later because of this. Sabrina’s lies are so obvious. Why doesn’t Sabrina just point to instantly get rid of the clones? Well she’d be attached to them. Why doesn’t she brainwash them into obedience?
She brainwashed Quigley to dance with his date, so that was brainwashing him into obedience because he was doing what she wanted. I guess she only does it for well-intentioned reasons. Gem figured out that there’s multiple Sabrinas and we see Sabrina struggle to cook and say a spell about an awesome flambe. There’s NO WAY that it’d result in the chocolate splashing everyone, because she’d have to imagine that. She said “ awesome. “
Then the story gets dull until finally Gem sees all the Sabrinas again. As if only Gem would see this! Why even show her see them all again? There’s tons of kids and only Gem sees this! Sabrina says a spell to make her forget she ever saw them, but she still says it’s over, rather than making fun of her for saying a spell, because split apart, they have no powers, APPARENTLY, despite the pink light around the flambe. Gem would hear her NEXT to her, or THEY wouldn’t because they’re further away from her than Gem.
If Sabrina can even think that she can erase someone’s memory of magic herself, she shouldn’t have taken until now! And now I’m gonna wonder why she doesn’t do this EVERY time a mortal witnesses magic! Now I’m wondering why she doesn’t use magic all the time. Gem doesn’t have to put her hand on Sabrina’s shoulder. Why can she motivate herself to do an affectionate gesture like that if she doesn’t like her, and she doesn’t bring herself to say she wants to be her friend because she’s so lonely, and she’s just sadistic? Why does the show torture us with her mediocre singing?
Gem grabs her saying she sang her last note. Why would she talk like she’s planning to kill her, if she showed earlier that she wouldn’t? Sabrina gets a net put over her. I hate how it’s impossible to tell who the clones are. The audience should get a better indicator of that that wouldn’t make you wonder why the normal people don’t catch on immediately. The smarter one’s Sabrina, the yellow-shirted one. Her changing shirts makes it even more confusing. Different clothes aren’t good enough because the original Sabrina still has a different outfit from the one Sabrina usually wears.
Gem somehow convinced authority figures to follow her to the room. The Sabrinas decide to hold hands and use magic and warp away, and only Sabrina is here. Somehow the adults laugh at her. It’s still sad because I feel like they were still people, so they gave up their lives, and somehow Sabrina’s just happy about this. How did no one point out that, usually Sabrina wears the same outfit every day? I guess in between episodes she does wear a different outfit every day, and we’re finally getting to see the different outfits she usually wears.
This story’s the cliché clones cartoon plot, and it fails on Sabrina because she trusted Spookie for no reason to do something she can do, so I assume he purposefully made it so that the clones would eventually stop following her orders to go do what THEY want, how dare they. More likely his only curse was that they’d only have powers when they all use their magic at once.
I assume the reason Sabrina doesn’t instantly undo the spell is that she got emotionally attached to them because she engaged herself in conversation with them like they were her friends. She cares enough to educate them that tomatoes are fruits.
It was a constantly interesting episode though because it always kept switching up the clubs it showed us, so even though it still demonized magic, can I really say I didn’t enjoy it? It’s like all you’ve gotta do is be creative! For example Penders’ stories have plenty of Idiot Balls too. Most of the time they were doing new things so all I usually remember them for IS the new idea. And that applies to every writer.
The plot’s about how you shouldn’t sign up for too many school clubs or you’ll exhaust yourself, a worthlessly Captain Obvious Aesop, but that was properly told in the first scene where she was lectured about it. The story doesn’t make any sort of effort to explain WHAT’S too much. It doesn’t explain what exact amount of clubs you shouldn’t sign up for, which would actually be helpful in getting you to follow the lesson of the episode properly. A lot of people are still gonna make Sabrina’s mistake, because, they have no way of knowing what’s too much.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 44 Feats of Clay:
The story wastes my time showing a fictional movie in the theaters for way too long. The shouts sound silly. Sabrina says out loud that she has a use for Hilda’s anti-popcorn hogging spell. At least she and her friends got to enjoy a movie. Sabrina unnecessarily jokes about the protagonist of the movie when that just annoys the boys and she stands there doing nothing when the bully grabs Harvey and throws him. I get her thinking that there was no way she could defend him without revealing magic though. It would be a hassle to erase memories, which she can do!
Harvey says the bully would’ve been beaten by Devon Dagull, and Sabrina somehow wastes time saying that he’s not a hero. Harvey keeps revealing he’s gonna be too busy with his Devon obsession to hang out with her. Sabrina complains to Salem and he says she has a whiny voice. She uses magic on cookies to send them to the living room and sees a reporter. WHY is she trusting Spookie again?! And his scene takes too long because he inexplicably does a haiku so he’s told that it didn’t rhyme and then he mocks Sabrina.
Sabrina uses magic HERSELF to brainwash the director into saying he’ll do filming in Riverdale, I mean Greendale. She’s using Spookie’s borrowed magic. Hilda somehow says she might be given a part even though she’s not an actress. Salem insults Quigley. Sabrina brainwashed Quigley herself without needing to go to Spookie. Harvey convinced himself that if he shows up dressed as a ninja, he’ll get Devon to hire him as his sidekick, but somehow tons of others had that idea, so he decides to sneak onto the set. And Sabrina goes after him.
Somehow the guard only noticed Sabrina, and it turns out the moving camera is a shapeshifted Sabrina. Instead of her brainwashing him into changing his mind she meets him anyways. He meets him anyways but he’s in a disguise to sneak off the set for a few minutes. He must have carried that disguise with him ahead of time, after leaving his vehicle. And he conveniently decides to go out for a coffee with some preteens he just met. It’d make more sense if Sabrina brainwashed him since she was fine with doing that to the director. These are just any random fans to him.
Devon’s overworked, and his voice is annoying. It’s too whispery to sound like that of a real action hero. Devon must be a real monster to make a preteen pay for all of the arcade games for him even though a movie star would be rich. At least he gives him his gold watch and says to see what he can get for this. So he’s not above sacrificing something he has. So then why doesn’t he just pay for it directly? Devon reveals to Harvey that some of the things he thought he knew about him were lies. So his whispery voice was foreshadowing.
Why is Devon spending so much time with these preteens he just met? I just have to assume THIS is a part of her spell from earlier. And eventually Harvey gets disappointed at finding out that Devon gets replaced by a stunt man when it comes to doing the really dangerous things. Harvey thought he did his own stunts because of his training cards. So why is Devon smiling and assuming that he loved his acting job anyways? Hilda wants to flatter Devon even though she’d have seen that the stunt man rescued the CGI agent not him. She invites him to dinner at her place.
Harvey’s seen at Sabrina’s house disappointed, and Salem gets abused for talking annoyingly for no reason. Quigley flatters Devon on his cooking skills. Mortals never ask about their cauldron. How polite. Then Devon gets scared of a spider. You know, the story didn’t need to spend so much time showing how lame Devon is. Not to mention it’s a little sexist to portray someone as amazing at cooking while also portraying him as not manly enough for Harvey in that he’s scared of spiders and dances. It’s really satisfying to see Harvey call him out that he’s nothing but a big fraud.
Sabrina tells him that he’s not a jerk, just a guy trying to do his job, even though obviously he IS a jerk because he had no reason to lie! People would’ve admired him anyways! Harvey says that Quigley didn’t portray himself as a hero on TV. Sabrina would’ve known that. She has the ridiculous logic that an actor can’t portray an action hero if he isn’t one deep down. Does she not realize how many actors there are? Harvey’s somehow sitting in a bell tower that’s gonna be blown up by a director.
I assume he’s here because it’s associated with Devon but if he’s disillusioned with Devon there’s NO reason he’d be in anything associated with his movies then, not to mention there’s so many other places he could’ve been associated with Devon, unless this is his only movie set in town. It’s like the show is forcing it to happen to spite Sabrina for her magic at every turn. Why does Sabrina assume he’d do something foolish? NOW it’s good that she jumped to conclusions!
Sabrina’s magic summons a mirror showing her where Harvey is so that she can instantly warp to just outside of his window and fall. Why wouldn’t she die from that? Well she does summon a big baseball glove to catch her, but there’s NO WAY she wouldn’t have warped to right beside him, like she did earlier. At no point has she ever warped to the wrong place by accident. She did something as competent as Little Sabrina and they immediately felt like they needed to make up for it!
Sabrina tells Devon the truth which predictably inspires him to try to save him instead of simply getting the stunt man to do it because he feels like he has something to prove. He even overcomes his fear of spiders. Harvey jumps away from fire and grabs a rope. Why should I be supportive of the plot forcing him to respect Devon all over again? It didn’t need to write a scene where he had to save his life. It would be cool if SABRINA saved his life, directly.
He was supposed to learn NOT to put someone on a pedestal. Instead he learns that he CAN be a hero. What’s this supposed to tell us, that you’re right to put someone on a pedestal because in rare situations they COULD impress you? They never take advantage of the opportunity when they DO repeat a message, to show that it DOESN’T always apply. Harvey reminds Devon that he promised to give him a cooking lesson this weekend.
It’s instantly predictable that when the bully says he’s got one thing to say, he does something nice instead. He asks for an autograph… which makes sense, he is a celebrity. He made a movie with Devon. So why did he have an antagonistic tone before? It’s a bad idea to portray an overweight friendless kid as the bully all the time, because in real life bullies roam in packs, and overweight friendless kids are pretty likely to be bullied themselves.
This episode is about Harvey finding out his favorite actor doesn’t do his own stunts because Sabrina brainwashed a director with Spookie’s borrowed magic into filming in Riverdale, I mean, Greendale. It’s got someone other than Sabrina learning the lesson for once, which immediately makes me wonder why the whole show can’t have Harvey be the one learning the lessons, because he’s supposed to be stupider than Sabrina, and he learned that she was a witch in the sitcom so why wasn’t he written to know that from the start in this show?
It’s a miracle Chloe even exists! Sabrina didn’t like the result of her spell because she felt bad for Harvey for being disappointed, but it did work because it cured his obsession with the actor and it’s really a minor temporary problem.
It was totally forced that he ended up in a tower that went up in flames. I think Spookie wanted that to happen. It’s… way too over the top! The writer just wanted a climax that spits in the face of its message that if you put someone on a pedestal they’re gonna fall off. Apparently he IS capable of being an action hero JUST like he thought, even though most action hero actors aren’t. This wasn’t necessary. It’s a bad episode because most of the time it’s boring with too much focus on the lame mortal. But it’s just barely bad because there’s a lot of worse episodes.
It should’ve been explained at the end that THE AUNTS have seen a lot of people that they put on a pedestal just for them to turn out NOT to be how they wanted them to be. So it’s still getting the message that most of the time if you idolize someone you’re gonna get disappointed by them. SOME people “ worth idolizing “ really ARE all they’re cracked up to be.
Some people who are worth idolizing, while not literally all they’re cracked up to be are still awesome enough to deserve to be admired. I’m thinking of Dolly Parton right now, because she’s really charitable. But I think the simple message that usually putting someone on a pedestal is gonna disappoint you is a much more valuable message for impressionable kids, because that’s more likely to be the case.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 45 Generation Zap:
Hilda levitates a basket and an invisible dog bothers Quigley. They’re not invisible, we can see them even before they look normal. It turns out they’re gonna make Enchantra’s favorite dish to suck up to her when she visits to evaluate Sabrina’s powers. Why would she do that? There’d be SO MANY witches. Why would one person, let alone the head witch, be in charge of evaluating the witchcraft of every single young witch? Surely she’d have a lot of other more important things to do. And she makes the rules so she can change them. I like seeing the books are floating too but still.
Sabrina says Enchantra has an easier life than her. “ Sabrina “ wants to “ invoke terror, “ now! Salem shows her a wish crystal, which grants a wish for 24 hours, ONE wish and then it burns out. So obviously it’s inferior to normal magic, and is only ever gonna be useful to people without magic, like transformed warlocks. It would be nice if we found out how he got this thing. He wants to be a human again for 24 hours. It must be a really powerful crystal if it can overcome the wish of Enchantra or whoever transformed him.
Why did he ever show her the wish crystal right after she envied Enchantra’s life? He KNOWS she’s the type to go to Spookie all the time! This is just a better Spookie! Why do they even, USE Spookie, do they just? I have to assume wish crystals are extremely rare, and they’re hard to get, AND they’re immune to magic so you can’t just zap up as many as you want. And you can’t just create them you have to buy them. Why did he tell her to put the crystal in her clothes instead of just hiding it under the bed? He never even needed to tell her about the wish crystal.
Enchantra has a show-off entrance again. It’s nice of her to call them darlings. Then she gets mad at being told “ Welcome, Enchantra, “ because of her ego. What did she expect? She should’ve told them ahead of time how to greet her. They’re centuries old, they’d know how to greet her. I hate that her minion tells them to apologize. She’d hear him insult her and fire him! Why is he here when he wasn’t here earlier? It’s an alternate universe clearly. She’s smart enough to say she knows they’re kissing up to her and zap away the bribes like a moron. She zaps up zippers to shut up Sabrina’s aunts.
She tells Sabrina to summon the tower of Pisa, and pizza shows up, even though she would’ve been visualizing a tower! She DOES know how to summon things! Why not show her failing at actually hard spells? Well it’s very hard to even, think of what an actually hard spell would be. Since when do witches need eagle feathers to warp people to them? And all she says is it’s a summoning spell, it doesn’t specify people. She doesn’t need it for things for sure! Sabrina says she hasn’t gotten far in witchcraft, because this is a very disrespectful episode.
And Enchantra was smart enough to already suspect that her pushy mortal lifestyle weakened her powers. “ Cushy “ is what she really said sadly. Her powers couldn’t be weakened, and it’s her aunts’ fault for not teaching her enough. Sabrina tells Enchantra that HER life is easier than hers and she wishes their lives could switch. I hate that they switched voices. Whenever someone changes bodies in this show, her voice changes too. The vocal chords are PART of the body! I guess Sabrina said she’s wrinkled just to spite her, when she’d know it’s not true. Paused interruption like in The Jetsons.
Somehow Enchantra can’t use magic for something Sabrina can definitely use it for. Meanwhile Sabrina’s impressed because she can summon a mirror even though she summoned a magic mirror last episode! You know what, they SHOULD have just had the same writer for every single episode, because the pilot episode was kinda written great, and it probably wouldn’t have had continuity errors that way. Enchantra would succeed, her spell wouldn’t require a different method! I hate that she said, “ without a clue how to use them properly. “ She JUST PROVED she could use her powers properly!
Enchantra says she has a great idea to have Sabrina impersonate her. Of COURSE that was the plan! Enchantra tells her she’s not allowed to tell anybody about this. I’M STILL WAITING for them to explain why no one would know they switched voices… because that wasn’t a part of her wish! Enchantra could’ve told Sabrina how hard her life is right away and kept her from making that wish. She always seemed like the type to rant angrily. We’re supposed to think she’s, a grump! I have to assume that a part of the spell is keeping people from noticing the different voices.
How is Enchantra allergic to all animals? First off that’s impossible – and Salem never affects her – and second, she would’ve used a potion or spell to cure herself of that curse. Sabrina explains away why Salem is with her in front of the minion, who doesn’t question her suspicious, “ uh… “ She says she “ found a spell that cured me! “ HE doesn’t doubt it so why didn’t she do it?! Enchantra wants to watch TV, and Hilda uses magic to turn the TV because Sabrina’s late for school.
They notice that she’s talking with Enchantra’s accent, and she’s mad at them for mocking her accent, which is fake since she’s from the South. It can’t be fake if she’s just mad saying, “ Fake? “ Realistically she’d punish them for this, and not just by doing something petty like extending their lives as a teen. Zelda calls Enchantra an old bat. They’d notice her eyes are green now and comment. There’s no way Enchantra wouldn’t be able to use any evil spells on her own. Gem’s magic-abused a lot easily! Gem used Sabrina’s magic to turn them into statues! Why even use this idea if you’re not gonna use it naturally?
The aunts warp her in front of the school. A reporter thinks Enchantra’s playing games with them by saying, “ No comment, “ and Sabrina has to run away from them. She’s expected to discuss more diplomacy and is told some forced ridiculous greeting protocol, which of course she screws up, causing magic to get used to hurt her… because… I guess they’re on the same level where she’s just as powerful as Enchantra. I wouldn’t expect DELLA’s life to be like this. How is Enchantra not immune? Why leave that a possibility? How’d he know which page to open when he JUST saw the book?
Enchantra’s sub-plot would be great if I didn’t have to see her fail at magic somehow. It’s cathartic to see Enchantra rant about how awful Sabrina’s life is. I thought this woman was her MATH teacher not history teacher. She wouldn’t waste time bitching that nobody knows who Enchantra is. She’d know mortals don’t know about her. She’d know they aren’t ALLOWED to know about witches. This would only make sense if she WANTED Sabrina to get punished. So she gets put in detention.
Sabrina reads an article saying that Enchantra doesn’t know what she’s doing, miraculously written by someone who isn’t afraid of Enchantra’s wrath. Enchantra’s expected to do laundry. It’s always been obvious with how she’s been talking that she switched places with Sabrina. It wouldn’t be like Sabrina to start talking like Enchantra for that long. Hilda would’ve known she was switched with Enchantra. I’m pretty sure witches would have that good of an imagination and they’re old enough to be able to think!
Hilda says she has to do witch work and the scene ends before we get to see it when that would’ve been interesting. The minion hears Salem’s complaints, finding out what really happened. They’d hear him. It turns out he wants to take over the world, and somehow Sabrina tells Salem to get the scepter rather than using magic on the minion instantly. Somehow when he tells guards to take her to the dungeon, she doesn’t instantly use magic to prevent that, even though she can use telekinesis on Harvey and warp him to another dimension.
This part of the show would’ve never happened because the minion would’ve thought that magic would be used on him. He plans on doing something to make the wish crystal’s effect permanent. Why is Sabrina not warping out of the cage? I have to assume it’s got potion on it to keep her from escaping it. How convenient for the bad guy that there even IS a way to make it permanent! And he clearly isn’t memorable, or at least his name isn’t because I don’t remember it. He doesn’t deserve to be called by his name anyways. Enchantra’s washing the car the mortal way somehow. This episode’s a disaster.
Sabrina plans to summon Enchantra with the summoning spell she taught her in order to teach her how to use her spells. He shouldn’t need this explained to him. Somehow to complete the spell she needs an eagle’s feather… when that’s never how spells work. She’d still have the feather. Enchantra put it in her dress. She tells Salem he’s resourceful, smart and handsome, and Salem goes under the bars without turning his head to escape it and progresses in a boring way to eventually get a feather.
Salem wouldn’t simply get the feather without warping back to Sabrina right away, because he abused magic on Gem’s dog so he has magic himself. If the minion was really dangerous he would’ve used magic on Salem instantly so he never would’ve gotten to Sabrina. Why isn’t the bad guy using magic to interrupt Enchantra’s spell? Why was I ever expected to be afraid of this villain if he’s so stupid? He gets turned into an animal. HOW could Sabrina have been unable to do it without her, when she turned Gem into a mouse? They all return to normal.
Enchantra puts her hand on Sabrina’s shoulder and tells her she does her life well, with no evidence. For all she knows this was a normal day in the life of Sabrina. She doesn’t know her detention history. Then she freezes Salem for saying something he should’ve known not to in front of the bad-tempered Della rip-off. Enchantra tells the aunts to keep flattering her and we get to see the aunts wash the car, and she makes it dirty again. A few seconds isn’t really enough. This is an amazingly petty minor punishment from the head witch.
This awful episode is about Sabrina and Enchantra switching lives, which NEVER would’ve happened because the wish crystal would’ve been hidden under Sabrina’s bed, and Salem had no reason to TELL someone who constantly turns to Spookie ABOUT it, especially since he HAS to be cynical if he even WANTED to take over the world. And I really wish I knew where Salem just got it. The episode sucks because it expects me to believe Sabrina can’t do things with her magic that she’s been able to do effortlessly in earlier episodes.
The show had to have her suck so that she’d get put in detention instead of turning the teacher into a frog. So what, then Zelda would come undo it and make the kids forget what happened! That’d be more interesting to see than her suffer through a mortal life. Even when Sabrina’s threatened with a coup, she doesn’t instantly use magic against the bad guy. Why does she need Enchantra to tell her to recite a spell to do something she basically already did, and why does the bad guy do nothing to stop the spell?
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 46 Board & Sorcery:
Harvey thanks Quigley for somehow including him in a family trip. He must have included him to force the witches not to use magic, but they’d covertly use it anyways if the show was being good. He has stiff overly expository dialogue. No one would call a place Mt. Hairline Fracture. The family going on a ski trip is nothing new. And Sabrina hopes Salem’s okay being left home alone. Why are they trusting SALEM home alone?! It IS entertaining to see him do creative things enjoying himself. They’re lucky he didn’t throw a party! At least they avoided THAT cliché!
The writer forces him to scream for help because he can’t get up even though he’d just get up. He warps to Sabrina later so he does have magic! Zelda says she and Hilda used to love Billy Go Boom Boom “ when we were kids. “ They’re over 600 years old! Was Billy Go Boom Boom something that existed over 600 years ago? Why isn’t Harvey questioning this? Gem somehow shows up at the same place and time as them because this show sucks with no self-awareness. What’s wrong with having Sabrina say, “ Are you stalking me? “
Quigley smacks into someone and apologizes and gets told he killed someone. He wouldn’t keep his legs straight after a big fall. Harvey gets himself in pain and wants to give up while Sabrina reassures him not to. And the bully wastes time and Harvey and Sabrina take a fall wanting to give up. You’d have to TRY NOT to bend your legs falling. Why am I being expected to listen to someone with an annoying voice talking to Quigley? Why would they be so stupid as to give Quigley his own sub-plot, if he barely suffers at all? He says the person Quigley crashed into is the only one who fit in the beaver suit.
Quigley doesn’t know what size he is exactly in all of his lifetime, which is rare, and gets picked for the replacement for the mascot. Salem pours something from a vial onto his hands when he should’ve expected it to be an evil potion because he’s in a witches’ house. Then he screams. Home Alone rip-off there. Nothing this bully says is worth not skipping past. Quigley doesn’t like being expected to take the mascot’s place. If so little was gonna happen in that scene comparatively, why include it?! He’s not suffering enough. Sabrina tells her aunts Harvey got himself in a ski competition and may not survive.
Her aunts go from saying that’s awful to instantly cheerfully changing the subject because they only care about what they wanna do. I have to assume that they don’t care about mortals. This forces Sabrina to have to turn to Salem over the phone and she threatens him into warping to her to help her. Wait, did he warp to her with his own magic, contradicting a few of the previous episodes? Then why didn’t he use magic to save Sabrina last episode? He tells her to say a spell over some snow. The Sabrina I know would just point and visualize.
Why did Harvey briefly become a snowman before taking a painful fall? I don’t blame her for using the spell though if she thought he was gonna die otherwise. The bully says nothing made him rotten and he chooses to be a jerk, but he blames his actions on cartoons. Harvey gets the hang of skiing, and then we see him sweat and say he’s not even cold. He takes off his sweater and Sabrina gets worried. I understand her not instantly undoing the spell though because if he becomes bad at boarding, he could get seriously hurt or killed.
He just says it’s weird that he’s seeing an orange spot between his eyes because he’s gradually turning into Frosty the Snowman. But then he freaks out when he sees that his hands are twigs. He turns into a snowman. Too bad he’s still able to talk. It pads out the episode. The Sabrina I know would point and turn him back to normal instantly because that’s how magic works. HILDA turned someone into a snowman in a 70s comic, and THAT was resolved pretty quickly! She can make a sled move and send Gem into the other bully effortlessly! Why can’t she return him to normal?
Then he starts melting too much way too fast to be believable. If she thinks she can return him to normal, she’d STILL use a spell to keep him from melting! Why would he be immune to magic? The only reason it would exist, is as an evil witch’s curse out of spite! We hear some music before we see girls catering to Salem. I never have the time to mention it, but that music’s a rip-off of the Wicked Witch of the West music done slower with trumpets, which demonizes magic. Sabrina took an unreasonable long time to get the chance to get to Salem for help.
He says she SOMEHOW needs to use that snow she made the snowman from or Harvey’s gonna be stuck as a snowman. I hate this stupid show. Magic is way too dark. If it worked this way, there’d be millions of times where a person was stuck under the effect of a spell all over the world. The Witches’ Council wouldn’t put up with that. Harvey says he’s gonna go somewhere and melt because he’s a freak. I hope Quigley has a humiliating time. No, he does fine, until he crashes into somebody, but he’s still smiling.
And he doesn’t get called out for injuring someone, he gets called out for spinning too much. It defeats the appeal of the Quigley torture if he’s just having fun. Good thing he gets pushed into a dark tunnel. But he still doesn’t care because he just thinks the kids are excited. Why don’t they skip to the suffering?! He gets shot from a cannon. Sabrina doesn’t want Gem getting away so she skis on one board so it’s just snowboarding. I never saw Sabrina do THAT before! She goes off a cliff and Salem lands on the short kid.
Why would Gem let him hang out with her even to serve on her whim when she’d think it’s not worth it to be mistaken for being his friend? She’d have to explain that he’s working for her every time someone sees them together. Sabrina grabs Salem’s tail when he’s holding the kid who would hear the talking cat! The snowball falls and Sabrina magically brings it back to his hand. If she can use telekinesis on the snow why doesn’t she think to use it on Salem to bring him back up? I suppose because then she’d reveal herself as a witch.
Apparently she cares more about keeping her secret than their lives until they’d outright fall anyways. The aunts miraculously show up for some reason and a Yeti pulls them up saving them. And eventually Harvey gets turned back to normal and told he won. Harvey would ask where Salem’s voice came from if he was really oblivious, not to mention ASK how the hell he was turned into a snowman. And then the story ends with Salem talking right beside him!
Harvey supposedly being oblivious to the existence of magic and wanting an explanation every time it happens, adds nothing good, because it just makes the show look stupid every time. Again I can make it okay in my head by assuming he’s playing dumb to keep Sabrina from being scared that he’ll hit her up for spells or tell everyone on her.
Both times Salem talked next to him in the episode, it ended the scene before we could hear Harvey’s reaction, and this time his facial expression doesn’t even change in response to it. And there’s only one reason why that’d be the case! What’s so wrong about just writing it so that he knows Salem can talk and so on the whole time?
In this episode, Harvey wants to get good at snowboarding, so Sabrina makes him good at it. It could’ve removed the bullies from the episode and been a much better story for it, because it’s self-explanatory that someone would wanna get good at snowboarding. It’s also bullshit that a spell Sabrina read out to make him a better snowboarder causes him to gradually become a talking snowman. Why’d they trust a spell that said, “ one with the snow “?! It was obvious what it’d do!
The only reason that spell would exist would be if an evil witch came up with it, (Spookie did), but then she would’ve cut out the middle man and had the spell skip straight to turning the person into a snowman, not done a good deed with the spell making him happy! If she made the spell like this, why would she make it so that she can’t undo it if she regrets it? Wouldn’t she make him immune to magic from everyone except her? It’s just another frustrating episode that demonizes magic with a made-up bullshit side-effect because religion hates witchcraft.
It should go without saying that Sabrina making Harvey good at snowboarding was doing the right thing, because it made it so that he wouldn’t get hurt from it or get humiliated snowboarding in a race against the bully. It’d only become sort of bad if she kept such a spell going while he wanted to make a career out of boarding, and that’s very unlikely, realistically. Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll try getting a job in that field. Not everyone who plays video games becomes a beta tester when he grows up.
The plot’s in a ski resort and Slugloaf is skiing in it, it’s confusing to discuss this, and I’m so used to Harvey skiing instead. The bully was so annoying that we wanted him to think he was proven wrong, so I don’t care, she was justified, especially since she thought his life depended on it! Another episode with the moral don’t trust Spookie.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 47 Enchanted Vacation:
Why is Tim reading his escape plan out loud? People would hear it and stop him. What kinda prison wouldn’t have any prison guards? And did they do NO RESEARCH on his pet to see if it’d be able to dig through the prison’s ground? It’s totally unrealistic that they’d even put his pet in a prison. This is insultingly lazy writing. How is a MAGICAL PRISON escapeable? Sabrina complains that her vacation’s gonna be ruined by her piece of shit family with no consideration for her. Hilda’s not gonna be allowed to go on a skiing vacation because she can’t ski. Why doesn’t she point to make herself good at skiing?
Salem imagines going on vacation and Zelda actually warps into his Imagine Spot and insists that she’s gonna decide where they’re gonna go. It just seemed, surprisingly overpowered for an episode of THIS show. Quigley’s too sick to go. He says they’re going on a Nether World Adventure tour this year. It’s satisfying that when Sabrina says she’s not going on another stupid vacation with this family she isn’t punished. They had no moral right to ruin her vacation when she’d been looking forward to it all year.
I guess she only said this to vent, because she should know her aunts could warp her TO them so it wouldn’t matter what she said. Tim breaks into the house impossibly with his ray gun and talks, but somehow the family doesn’t hear him even though they’re still in the house and you’d hear everything that happens in the house from everywhere. Zelda reminds Sabrina that she got to choose last year. At least she had THAT. The family warps to the Nether World from the shower again. Tim even looks in the toilet. I guess he figured, the portal to the Other Realm could be in there. But why?!
He finds their Nether World tour pamphlet and the pet instantly shows them that the portal to the Nether World is somehow still open, when the Other Realm closet isn’t supposed to work like that. He should’ve gone into it from the door in the attic then! It immediately wastes the concept by having him get to the Nether World instead of finding out what all of the magical artifacts and potions do, which would teach us! But to be fair, if he encountered Spookie, Spookie would kill him right away, if HE didn’t strike at him with his gadget first.
And I get the writer thinking that him being in the witch realm would be dramatic and more visually interesting. A centaur wastes tons of time and the aunts are fighting over him even though they’d know he’s got only one good half, and they’re only teens, so they’d only have a shot if he doesn’t find out they’re physically teens. They go on a boring boat ride. I don’t care about the weird background. The tour guide says there’s a scissorfish. That’s more goofy-looking than I expected, but still intimidating. They’d have heard Tim.
Weight on the wrong place makes him slide off without them noticing him, and he uncharacteristically tells the monsters to eat his pet, when from his first appearance he showed that his pet was the one creature he loved. I guess it makes sense that he’d get tired of it after the end of his first episode where it wouldn’t stop bothering him. And he says he’ll use his invention to play the family against each other. How’d these two return to normal after the scissorfish? Self-healing clothes and a fast healing pet?
Conveniently he can shapeshift himself. That couldn’t happen with science. This guy hates witches so it’s ironic that he’s using inventions that could only work because of witches’ talismans. The centaur sub-plot’s just a boring waste of time. How do you fail to make a witch realm tour interesting? They just do normal rock-climbing and nothing happens until Tim saves the day for the audience. Why does Tim have the same voice and still need glasses if he can shapeshift? Zelda wonders what’s wrong with the fake Sabrina’s voice and she’s somehow not questioning the glasses.
He says something to make Zelda competitive with Hilda. Then he turns into Hilda and says it’s fun being evil, despite thinking he’s in the right. He says he has a frog in his throat. Then he tells Salem something about Sabrina to make him mad and says Salem should push Sabrina off the clouds. Salem asks how she could say that. Zelda says she SHOULD push Hilda off the clouds. But to be fair witches could save themselves from any fall anyways, and while they look like idiots, they don’t know somebody would be here to impersonate any member of their family.
And they have a quirky bunch of relatives, so they could assume Sabrina or Hilda’s just wearing glasses to be funny, out of extreme boredom with this. They narrowly avoid falling and the family apologizes to the guide… who’s injured because somehow these witches can’t heal him… How inconvenient that somehow this guy’s immune to magic, including healing magic. Tim then disguises himself as the centaur and somehow nobody questions his silly Arnold accent and the split being on the wrong leg somehow, OR his glasses.
Sabrina’s questioning all of this to Salem. It’s sad when only she’s suspicious. The centaur isn’t known by them for being a silly joker. Sabrina says she saw aardvark tracks in the mud so she accuses the centaur of being Tim. It’s brilliant of her to instantly jump to the conclusion that Tim would be able to shapeshift himself because he’s a gadgeteer when we never figured he had that kinda device, and she thinks he’s supposed to be in prison. Also how did Sabrina recognize aardvark tracks? Hilda actually lampshades this.
Salem says it’s their education tax dollars at work, so I like that it tries explaining… even if it’s still obvious no school would actually teach you about such an obscure animal. I mean it’s not a ranch animal so it’s not as important. I don’t remember that from MY school. WHY does Tim give away that he’s Tim? He could’ve pretended she was wrong. And I love that they believe her and run from Tim, who trips and somehow turns back to normal.
I assume that they all think magic will just be reflected back at them because it’s Tim, out of force of habit, even though it would be common sense for them to have destroyed the device that, trapped them in a force field. It doesn’t even make any sense that he’d instantly have a shapeshifting device because why wasn’t that confiscated and why didn’t he just use that to escape prison?
It’s a miracle he even had his original clothes, although SOME prisons don’t HAVE prison uniforms, but a prison without prison guards where he’s only shown in a cell like a stereotypical prison doesn’t come off like it’s forward-thinking enough to not bother with uniforms. How inconvenient that these witches didn’t make themselves unable to tire out from running. Salem thinks they’re gonna die when a net’s put over them. And the animal people drag them all away, and they get covered in acorns.
So the manga stole the idea of the enchanted forest from this show… either that or they came up with it independently because it’s such a cliché idea. Sabrina says they didn’t go to their territory on purpose and warns him about Tim. Why does a guy with an accent like that tell Sabrina judgmentally that she sounds low class? It’s a failed attempt at a joke. And Hilda warns them about an aardvark when they hate them. Salem lampshades how convenient it is that this’ll get them released. We didn’t even need this to happen, because the forest could’ve easily not been enchanted. So these so-called rodents were just padding.
Sabrina tries using magic on Tim and somehow her aunts also waste time with that anyways. And the squirrel people put a net on Tim. So I assume the girls KNEW that their magic wouldn’t work and they were just stalling to make him stand still for the net, but that’s a gamble, OR the writing’s trash and their surprised looks were genuine. And I assume it working made sense because he wanted them to be embarrassed that their magic didn’t work before he’d shoot them. With what? He would’ve gone home! He can shapeshift into non-people after all.
But he just becomes a mouse to escape the net instead of poison gas or something menacing, like a giant dragon. If he can compress his molecules to become smaller, he’d have to be able to expand them to become larger so he could get back to normal. So he HAS to be able to be bigger! And I guess the mouse chewed the net because he’s not small enough to fit through the hole. Shouldn’t they have anticipated that he’d be able to, go smaller to escape a net, because he can shapeshift? I guess they were just hoping he would not get that idea.
After the witches started talking about a plan to pool their powers, he had plenty of time to start running away. Instead he gets lasered. I’d never imagine that an enchanted forest would have people able to use magic even if they pooled their powers. It’s believable, but that wasn’t the case in the manga. And at least the manga tried to explain why the forest was enchanted!
It is common sense that a place would be enchanted like that because of a spell. That spell, which would only exist because of the Witches’ Council, in an effort to protect the natives from witches, that spell would be made strong enough that a few witches wouldn’t be able to just pool their powers. A goldfish bowl with water lands on Salem’s head but at least Quigley says sorry. Good thing Sabrina ends the episode in a cheerful mood but the episode should be ending by showing Tim back in prison. It feels like she only spent a day in the Nether Realm anyways.
This boring episode about a hike around the Nether World forces the concept of Tim escaping a magical prison insultingly easily to the point where I wonder what took him more than a minute the first time, so that Tim could have Sabrina’s house almost to himself just to squander that interesting idea to spend the day following Sabrina’s family when they’re hiking. The only thing interesting about the Nether World hike was the scissorfish, which didn’t matter to the plot, and the squirrel people hating aardvarks because I guess they eat their crops, causing them to help the heroes catch Tim in a net.
But he broke out anyways so they could’ve just not existed. The forest could only be enchanted because of a spell but what’s the point of even having a spell if it could be overcome so easily? This episode was boring unless Tim was spicing it up, because it was just a normal hike through normal outdoor places that pretended to be interesting because of the background.
In theory that’s good because it is realistic that a planet would consist of normal outdoor areas, so in terms of worldbuilding it’s a huge step up from the place not making sense with no attempt at an explanation for why it is like that, like usual. This is what I WANTED! It’s sad that it took THIS long for “ the Hex World “ to feel like a real planet. My problem is the story needed more weird aliens in it then.
The Nether World was a lot more interesting when Sabrina was trying to stop Salem from marrying someone. As arbitrary as that lake was at least it was interesting. How did Tim have a shapeshifting device when he just broke out of prison and didn’t make it to his old house? All Tim got to do was shapeshift and lie, that’s not why people liked him. He made things exciting though.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 48 Moldy Oldie:
I saw that title in a comic. Quigley somehow created a new plant because of Sabrina’s invaluable help. I guess he used a cutting from his own plant and that’s HIS part of the creation. But the only way Sabrina could have any of the credit and the only way he could make a new plant is if he made it partially out of an Other Realm plant. The plant’s criticized and a leaf already falls off. Hilda tells Zelda her invisible cloak came right in front of the anti-magic bigot who conveniently doesn’t lecture them not to use it. Wouldn’t it suck if it was never explained why they wanted this?
I don’t think they should’ve even written this because there’s only one thing they would want this FOR, because they’re boy crazy. I get wanting to conserve magic, so that’s why they didn’t simply point to make themselves invisible. It turns out Sabrina’s great-great-grandpa is coming to visit. He’s a jerk who pinches Sabrina’s face, and keeps telling the same old stories that fascinate Zelda even though they hear it tons of times. And he hasn’t visited Sabrina since she was 2 somehow, so why is he pretending he loves them?
He shows them a plant jar with snap-dragons and somehow he’s surprised by them flying out of it and Zelda destroys them. They smartly refuse his other idea of a gift. Why are the aunts carrying a trunk he’s selfishly weighing down himself up the stairs instead of levitating it? He’s a jerk so why should I care about his problems? He says he can visit them more just because his office was moved closer to their house even though a witch would be able to warp to their house at any time, like Enchantra.
Sabrina tells her aunts she had plans to watch videos with her friend at any time, and somehow doesn’t realize she could just warp to them, and Hilda doesn’t have to taunt her saying them’s the breaks, what a bitch. I have to assume that she plans on warping her back to her if she DOES watch videos with a friend, and Sabrina knowing that is why she doesn’t bother. Why can’t they just have compassion and let her go hang out with her friends? The jerk has a stereotypical old man voice so most of the time it’s impossible for me to understand what he’s saying, especially over the loud sound of my typing.
At least the flashback shows visually interesting things like a hurricane. He’s shown using magic to plug the hole of nothingness with a pyramid. Cleopatra kissed his cheek instead of being scared of a witch. I guess she already knew about witches… because he could just turn her into a frog if he doesn’t like her. and the power hungry person didn’t try to take advantage of his magic to take over the world already. The jerk says what could go wrong, which is usually a jinx line for badly written stories. I like getting to see Quigley’s plant get hated by the judge and mocked.
Why did he smile and proudly introduce his plant to her when she clearly looked judgemental and asked what that was? Who’d ever take this plant here? I can only come to one conclusion about Sabrina’s family with them constantly misreading people’s feelings and that wasn’t the intention with their characters from the start! Sabrina tells her evil grandpa he better not use magic, and he won’t feel like a person if he does, but somehow he still uses magic to make the plant giant and cause trouble.
If they kept it simple, and had him do this specifically to torment these judges, like the real Aunt Hilda, this would make sense and be entertaining to watch. He proudly says that’s a plant he can write home about. But then he says oh right and acts as if he wants the spell to stop. That’s what sucks about this! Obviously Sabrina or him would’ve instantly pointed to make the plant that gives away witchcraft become harmless. I actually prefer the patriarch of their family over him because he MAKES SENSE because he’s honest about how he’s intentionally evil, and so is the show!
This guy, I have to just assume he’s doing this all on purpose but pretending he’s not with the act that he’s an old senile fool who’s impossibly screwing up, because he’s smart enough to know that these idiots are so stupid, that he’ll get away with this act, and if he doesn’t put on an act, they’ll use magic against him, because he’s not as scary as the patriarch. Yeah I’m sure the exact person who made Quigley cry getting thrown into a fountain was a total coincidence. Sabrina won’t just brainwash him into wanting to warp home even though she was fine with doing that to Quigley and her stepmother.
He’s told there’s a witchcraft test for him and he’s smart enough to suspect that they want him to go home. And he tries to prove he’s good at magic by saying a spell to make himself disappear. There’s no reason he’d think he made himself invisible if he lost his clothes instead. He’d only count as good at magic if this was ALL on purpose. He’d have to do this on purpose because he’d have to imagine himself still visible. That’s the only reason he’d think that. He sees her reaction! He’d know what it means! Why don’t these idiots brainwash him into leaving? They were happy about brainwashing a nanny!
Salem has an idea and shows them a black and white projection video about everything you need to know to pass the witchery exam, like levitation. Why would witches have settled for black and white film until recently when they’d be more advanced than mortals? Even without technology you’d think witches would’ve just pointed at black and white film, to make it color. The asshole causes more trouble, and walks intangibly though their door, and leaves behind his shoe. Didn’t he warp to their house just fine? How in the world is he always bad at magic if he’s good at that?
I get to see Quigley’s car get destroyed. Again this would’ve only been done on purpose. And somehow the old man doesn’t even apologize, as USUAL, which would only make sense if he did it on purpose. The old man gets asked the password for the witch exam. Why would there be a password? He reads out what Sabrina thinks is the wrong password but by I guess a big coincidence he’s still let in. He sees troll licenses, ogre arbitration, and potion permits. The first two are too vague making no sense and the latter does make sense in a vacuum but makes it illogical that the witches in this show ever used potions.
Apparently any time Sabrina used a potion it was illegal, or you can get a license for it very easily. So what is even the point? What kinda social skills does this guy have that he says an old man’s been around for quite some time? So he greets every old person like that? Even if old men are really rare in the Nether World, this is stupid. It’d make sense if it’s a compliment. Age = respect for witches. Realistically witches would just point so that they wouldn’t look old.
Sabrina makes the old man happy by hugging him though I hate it because he doesn’t deserve it, and the judge expects the old man to make his desk gold, and somehow there’s a drama around it as if this wouldn’t be extremely easy from just picturing the desk yellow. It’s a new test of magic just added which he didn’t get to study for.
And somehow the old man warps them all to a cold blizzard-filled place because he misheard him as telling him to make the desk cold, even though he was just two feet across from him, and witches would be able to zap up hearing aids if not give themselves perfect hearing, like with a potion. So he did deserve to fail for not thinking to do that like a competent mage.
Then he somehow warps them to an erupting volcano and warps them away back to their office. This is so forced, unless he screwed up on purpose to spite him because he was mad at him for springing another test on him. Hotheads don’t tend to make rational decisions anyways. How convenient that he won’t just turn him into a frog to avoid not being a warlock anymore, considering how stupid he was earlier. Sabrina says he SHOULDN’T get to have powers anyways and Zelda stupidly thinks it’s not fair just because he used to do great things with his magic. How is the little kid smarter than her?
And I wonder why the story expects me to believe he’s bad at magic just because he has Alzheimer’s, when Alzheimer’s requires you to also have a bad memory that has you get stuck back in time! He wouldn’t speak English if he did. Being old alone doesn’t mean you’ll suck at what you were always good at. The idiotic family tries to demand a second test. Then aliens bear the judge a gift and he naively expects it not to be a bomb or something, when he was given it by someone that he failed. Wouldn’t he have been given gifts like this all the time?
GO FIGURE, the hole of nothingness concept comes back because we saw it before. I might as well just skip to the end of the episode at this point because it’s so predictable how it’s gonna get resolved. It doesn’t make any sense that he still has his powers at this point after he got rejected as a warlock. I assume the other witches let HIM do it to prove to them that he shouldn’t lose his powers, based on just one spell. But that’d be stupid anyways because he still failed the witchery test! And it’s extremely lucky that he does succeed at this when he failed at everything else.
Again, it’d only make sense if he as failing on purpose. He didn’t even plug the hole with a pyramid like last time so he wasn’t really using his skill from earlier. The judge gets called out on his stupidity. He didn’t know how to stop that Hole. He says he might be able to renew his witchcraft license, on the spot. How convenient. Except not, he still hasn’t proven to them all that he won’t screw up with magic anymore. The old man says thanks. Sabrina says he hasn’t been a pest and she’s stupid if she means that.
Sabrina says she didn’t see how valuable his experience was. It’s only from an extremely unlikely coincidence that he got to be useful, and realistically all of the other witches would’ve also been able to do the same thing as him as that was common sense. And he didn’t even plug the hole with a pyramid again so it was barely a Chekhov’s Gun.
This shitty episode had Sabrina’s great-grandpa be a total nuisance with his magic over and over which was frustratingly insulting to my intelligence because it never confirms that he was doing this all on purpose, when the only way it could happen, when he’s able to warp to them and save the day perfectly fine, is if he did it on purpose, OR had a witch virus like Witchitis. Somehow Witchitis is never said to be a possibility so that’s not it. Why do they have any affection for him?
The episode pretends that getting horrible at what you used to be good at happens to everyone when they get old, which is ageist, because it really depends on the hobby. He doesn’t think he’s decades into the past with a terrible memory so he isn’t senile! He didn’t plug the hole of nothingness with another pyramid so it’s not like he thought he was back in time.
I’m somehow expected to think him getting his witchcraft license unrevoked because he saved the day from an extremely unlikely coincidence with one successful spell was a happy ending, even though he still proved that his magic causes nothing but trouble. This would be like an episode of a show villifying the idea of a senile person having his driver’s license revoked after he kept crashing, which is the only way this can relate to real life.
I think the only moral of the episode was you can benefit from an old person’s experience, but all it taught me was that it only happens in VERY UNLIKELY circumstances, and even then there’s no way all the other witches wouldn’t have also been able to save the day like him so they must have let him do it anyways.
No, the fact that sometimes people shouldn’t be allowed to do things because they’re too old, would’ve actually been a better message. Ironically the episode would’ve only had a chance of being good if it was explained from the start that he was abusing magic on purpose because he was provoked, or is a prankster, which would keep it simple, and instead of him failing from incompetence he could have his license revoked because he was reported on for being evil.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 49 Xabrina, Warrior Witch:
The story starts out boring with people I don’t know bitching until Harvey somehow makes an arcade machine act in an unrealistic way. Just because he’s good at arcade games, someone gives him his own arcade game for a week because it’s a prototype of the latest game. Since when are beta testers for arcade games hired randomly from arcades? He sneezes from allergies and Sabrina uncharacteristically says Mr. Mucus is grossing her out, instead of showing compassion. I guess she doesn’t wanna get him suspicious by zapping away his cold. He gets a VR helmet put on him and raves about it.
He lets Sabrina hold his hand, and Salem somehow thinks he can get away with using gibberish in Scrabble and somehow Quigley just saying that turns his head into a donkey head, despite him being mortal. And it happens to Chloe. Babies say gibberish all the time, so wouldn’t a baby inevitably say this magic word by accident? No wonder magic words don’t make any sense. We’d know about witches by now. If she hates coming over here, why does she keep going if not specifically to see magic some more? What’s so great about this place that it would possibly make up for all the magic.
Sabrina gets worried and warps her and Chloe to Harvey’s basement to see if he’s okay. His front door was left open begging a burglar to come in. His so-called friends try pulling him away from the arcade machine and he somehow doesn’t take off the helmet pausing the game and tell them off. They find out that somehow the machine’s got no plug or off switch, which has to be because the maker of the arcade machine is a witch. This isn’t the future where they can just wirelessly transmit electricity. The maker of it laughs unrealistically evilly.
Then the sage from earlier gets called by Sabrina and calls her cutie pie as she’s smiling. She asks him how he already knew her problem and he doesn’t explain it when it’d be easy to explain that he’s psychic or saw it in a crystal ball, but what would even motivate him to spy on her family? It can’t just be that he wishes she was his daughter because you’d think he would’ve zapped up a fake Sabrina to be his daughter. She shouldn’t have needed him to TELL HER to go inside the game. Why does Chloe think she might not be able to go out?
She then says she’s going with her, even though she’d clearly need her to get her out if she got trapped in it. At least they enjoy hi-fiving each other. Why does she call her clothing retro? I love their outfits. But their outfits don’t seem TOTALLY Ancient Roman. And there’s no way they’d see someone who looks like Zelda. She says that for no reason all the people in this game look like the people they know, as that’s the nature of the game. The episode gets boring with nothing happening for a while. Why didn’t she instantly tell them the goal of the game?
She says they need to get somewhere and gives Sabrina a sword. Why not give her a blunt weapon like Chloe’s that she’d actually be allowed to hit with accurately in a kids’ show? She’s given a backpack. And they start taking a walk. Why don’t they fly? Sabrina would summon brooms that fly to end the story faster. Why are they wasting time letting Salem talk to them? Sabrina could use her witch powers to get past him without trying to answer his riddles. She’d know how unlikely it is that kids would be able to answer riddles correctly.
Chloe did some reading offscreen so she answers his riddle, but she got it wrong anyways so what a waste of time! And a monster shows up. She says she’ll zap it so predictably her power doesn’t work because total bullshit. If we can see ANY magic, she has access. The place’s gotta be enchanted against it. This is like the same bullshit plot hole that was forced into a 90s Sabrina comic where the same plot happened. The spider would attack them by now. Their bodies aren’t in the real world, so her magic WOULD be in here!
The plants around them shapeshift into women that run away screaming even though if they’re so magical they would just kill it with magic, and they wouldn’t waste time returning to normal and endangering themselves for a few seconds then. Sabrina and Chloe are chased up a tree. I always feel like it’s so convenient that someone can climb up a tree especially really quickly. Sabrina remembers Zelda telling her to use the magic book. Somehow she’s dumb enough to drop it thanks to Chloe but that’s good because it crushes its head.
Sabrina could have done that TOO and it would’ve been in-character for HER because it was a stupid time. Why does the evil Sphinx give them rewards if he was just giving them a hard time for their method of success? As soon as the shield started singing badly I skipped ahead to see them slide down. If the story wants me to take its characters seriously enough to call them by their actual names, it shouldn’t have made them look like the pre-existing characters for no reason. It must have been just an excuse for the artist to be lazy. I guess Sabrina’s just bluffing when she threatens someone with a sword.
A bunch of things get shapeshifted. And the shield gets used as a mirror but they were just hiding behind it without knowing that she’d be distracted, when it would have been cool if they did this on purpose, because she’s really vain. Chloe grabs her from behind, and she’s told to stop and conveniently they get given gifts, instead of her still being mad at them. It’s so annoying that they see Harvey and he says he’s not Harvey. And even at this point Sabrina somehow thinks that this is the real Harvey, when there’s really no reason that there couldn’t be a character based off Harvey in this game too.
There’s no reaosn the actual Harvey would lie about what his name is to her. Eventually there’s awful singing again and Sabrina sees a minotaur who doesn’t wanna eat them even though he’s starving and he didn’t tell Chloe she was wrong to assume that he tends to eat people. Huh? Sabrina brought tape or something with her to get around the maze. Chloe lampshades the annoying singing. Then why put it in the episode? At least Sonic Underground had an in-universe justification for all of the singing. Quigley gives them gifts and wastes more time of ours badly singing gibberish.
Why did he go back into the maze if he was lost? Why did he get lost instantly? This show isn’t funny. If the writers really think of him as this stupid, why do they keep using him as someone who’s right for hating magic? Eventually after padding they find something and see Harvey got captured and duct-taped by a character based on the guy who rented Harvey the arcade game. Or maybe he’s the real person. They should’ve known he wouldn’t regret that his game is addictive. It turns out he really IS that guy. He made the game addictive on purpose to make money.
Sabrina somehow thinks the cops and so on would ban a video game for being addictive. This writer never played a video game. Sabrina uses a sword to effortlessly cut Harvey’s handcuff which I assume makes sense because it’s VR so it can be as sharp as possible. Chloe says he still has allergies so Sabrina gets the idea to use the beauty aids from earlier to threaten the slowly moving army that would’ve heard her when she was talking about her plan, and run away from her screaming.
Instead they prepare to sneeze even though they don’t have the actual body from the real world that would be allergic to something, unless he got in with Sabrina’s same spell. And Sabrina hides in the bag that she wouldn’t fit in. But it’s magical because it’s VR. If this guy didn’t program the game then he could’ve still told the person who programmed the game to make his avatar NOT have allergies! There’s beauty aids IN the game itself that he’s allergic to so he should’ve thought of this! Somehow a bunch of them sneezing frees them all from the game. You know, they could’ve just pushed a BUTTON to escape.
And the game is definitely witchcraft because Harvey’s character avatar walks out of the game and then Sabrina and Chloe are still dressed like they were before, until the clothes get returned to normal with magical light. I better not be expected to believe Mr. M is mortal. That’d be stupid. But if he’s a witch he sure is gutsy to casually reveal witchcraft when he didn’t know Sabrina was a witch. Harvey feels dizzy and goes upstairs and the bad guy sneezes in the backpack without leaving it for no reason.
This episode has Harvey get addicted to an arcade machine he was SOMEHOW RENTED in an arcade, and it’s a VR game and somehow even though he’d feel Sabrina pulling him, he doesn’t immediately take off the helmet and end the story. There’s no explanation for Sabrina’s magic not working. I like that she takes advantage of the bad guy’s allergy as a Chekhov’s Gun, but I don’t understand why his clones sneezing would send her and Harvey out of the game.
It would’ve been cooler to have Sabrina have a blunt weapon she’d actually be allowed to attack people with and so she’d fight off the bad guy herself. I hate when these so-called cool main characters do nothing but succeed by accident!
It’s clear that the episode’s a message against video game addiction, even though it does it in a weird way that won’t help anyone, because in real life it’s up to the person playing the game to decide to stop and Sabrina pulling on Harvey WOULD get him to quit the game, at least for a minute, and she WOULD be able to unplug the machine. And I don’t know if it’s realistic for there to be a VR arcade machine all the way back in the 2000s like it’s nothing.
Somehow Harvey’s dad and Sabrina didn’t instantly freak out realizing there was witchcraft afoot from the machine running on nothing, and it has to be witchcraft because of what we see after they escape the game, so I hate that it’s not confirmed the bad guy’s a warlock.
Showing off video game addiction would work better with a World of Warcraft game because that actually causes addiction, NOT an arcade machine where it comes off like Harvey would have no reason to play it so often because Sabrina only had to do a few things in it to beat the game, and there’s no indication that you can do stuff to get extra points for a high score. In real life the way to get someone off their game isn’t just to start playing the game and confront them in it, so what is this story’s point?
I think I hate this episode because it’s mostly frustrating and boring. I hate that Sabrina can’t use magic in the game. If she DID get to use magic it would’ve been a lot more interesting if she was constantly using it. But again at least her not being able to use magic keeps me from wondering why she doesn’t use it to instantly end the story. It sucks because it’s always obvious that the plot should’ve ended much earlier.
It at least didn’t get a chance to demonize magic but only if you don’t think witchcraft was involved in the game existing, and I think it was but at least it didn’t demonize SABRINA’S magic. This story doesn’t belong in the show, if it can’t let Sabrina use magic during any of it. I figured that the episode title would lead to a disappointment. Of COURSE it didn’t lead to us seeing Sabrina beat things up, a bunch, like creatures looking like Gem. This is a show that keeps having the slapstick be offscreen!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 50 Straight Outta Paris:
Sabrina’s aunts ditch her to go shopping, or they don’t care at running off without her. I assume she thinks they’ll abuse magic on her if she doesn’t keep going with them to be their bag slave, and they’re always surrounded by mortals so they don’t wanna warp the bags home in front of them. Sabrina would rather see cafes and discos but isn’t allowed to because she’s a kid. It’s cathartic that she lampshades that her time is being wasted going to stupid towers. Her aunts leave their bags with her and somehow don’t tell her to zap them home.
She wants to use magic and uncharacteristically Salem reminds her that there was a no magic rule as if he CARES, when he always wants her to, break said rule. But all she has to do is bribe him with sardines to get him to agree to bring her the magic book, which has no excuse for being in the bag if there’s a no magic rule on their trip. Why are their roles reversed here? He says to create for them a magical purse, and a building vanishes and somehow he didn’t know how purse was spelled, and they’re surprised at the outcome of the spell.
So a tower gets turned into a boy. The spell wouldn’t have done anything! If you need to say all of the magic words, and you DIDN’T say all of them, there’s no excuse for it happening! SHE’D have read the spell. She didn’t need an extra bribe. She would’ve just summoned a purse! And somehow they warp home with the boy who somehow has his arms above him when he’d know it makes him look goofy. I guess he just has a French accent because he was zapped up from a French tower. Why would the spell not just have him speak French?
Why the hell didn’t these idiots instantly turn him back into the tower?! These idiots can summon ANYTHING, and even Sabrina can shapeshift Gem! And his accent is impossible to understand, especially with my typing despite the volume being as loud as I can stand. The story has the gall to constantly torture me for way too long with his forced stupid dialogue with an accent… although I do eventually get used to it. I at least like that he’s glad the birds are flying away from him because he remembers all the times the pigeons humiliated him. How is this supposed to teach us anything?
We should’ve seen her aunts explain to her why they’re BUYING souvenirs instead of summoning them – because it’s the right thing to do – and then it’d be a lot more obvious that Sabrina’s doing a bad thing, rather than it just being a no magic rule for NO reason which wouldn’t make any sense if they were mugged! Eiffel compliments a machine. The story wastes my time being boring until Harvey generously says Eiffel can hang out with him, gets thanked, and Harvey’s friend pulls a lever to have a snow machine spray out an ice cube.
There’s no way these mere kids could make this giant machine. They’re 12-year-old idiots. Someone says that a bullshit lie is the only explanation for the tower’s disappearance aside from witchcraft, and the two TV people laugh. The kid thinks water would make him rust as I wonder why these idiots didn’t zap up a new Eiffel tower instantly as a cover-up. He says he wants to just have fun and he thinks homework and school sounds fun. He doesn’t ask what that stuff even is. He must have a full English vocabulary based off the fact that he was summoned by an English speaker. So he’d know what school and homework is.
Naturally because he said earlier that he’d be returned to normal any minute, he ends up running away from Sabrina’s house. He makes a joke and Harvey and his friend laugh with him. Harvey’s friend puts his hand on Eiffel’s shoulder. I don’t like Eiffel’s hairstyle. It’s just long enough that it looks like he could be a girl. He says he got to blow bubble gum. Somehow a worm blew a raspberry at him. The school bell rings and Harvey wants to grab the snow machine, and it’s too bad it’s written that Eiffel kisses the cheeks of Sabrina’s friends. I’m glad they aren’t rude about it. That’s very convenient.
Somehow cafeteria food walks, somehow someone does acrobatics in the hallway, and Eiffel makes an explosion with chemicals. Why is nobody questioning this new kid with no papers or records or relatives to vouch for HIM? I assume that Sabrina’s family did the call. But still he wouldn’t be on the attendance sheet. He says he loved school and Sabrina says he made it fun, which makes sense because she had laughed. I like the pink glasses of the girl Gem bitched to. Gem always buys these girls clothes. Sabrina plans to show Eiffel the arcade, not that we get to see it.
Instead the story wastes our time. France would cut off ALL exports to the USA, not just croissants, if it’s this mad. Sabrina says she just wanted a purse because the show won’t let her get away with nothing. It should’ve been explained right away that what she did wrong was not give money to someone who sells purses before summoning a purse.
And Eiffel wishes he could go sledding, and somehow he just stands there to let Zelda read out a magic book. He doesn’t get returned to normal and predictably somehow it failed because he doesn’t wanna go back, because this is ripping off that from the 90s comic. Why wasn’t he smiling when the spell failed, does he think they’re gonna destroy him?
Gem was eavesdropping on them for no reason somehow thinking that she needed a stethoscope for that, and somehow no one heard her talk. What she says is interesting; “ I knew Spellman was up to something. “ Not even, “ I didn’t know she had magic! “ Somehow Eiffel talks as if one of the other monuments was always jealous of his tensile strength when they didn’t have sentience. But yeah about him not being back to normal. I assume the Witches’ Council made this a thing to be merciful to any sentient beings created from, any inanimate objects, why would it just be monuments?
The idea that as long as a sentient being made from nowhere has the will to live, it’s impossible to use magic to return him to what he used to be, was contradicted in the episode where Zelda created Romeo. But it can be believable that, the head witch is the only witch allowed to do this kind of thing. Apparently these witches are thinking that just using any old spell to kill him and THEN returning him to normal is crossing the line.
Eiffel does a motivational speech to Harvey eventually about the Eiffel tower. He asks them if they’re really gonna deprive the world of another tower. This is so cheesy. They could have easily not needed extra motivation. At least Sabrina’s helping unnecessarily by handing Harvey things. He kicks it and they run away as it starts moving unrealistically. At least the kick didn’t fix it. That’d have been stupid. Finally I’m interested in what Gem’s gonna say though she sadly doesn’t instantly skip to confronting Sabrina with the truth about Eiffel.
She says Eiffel isn’t Sabrina’s cousin. Why does she think Pi is a cyborg from the future? To be fair, what else explains his engineering talent? Why does the writer think she’s crazy now? Why doesn’t she realize that nobody would believe her? She hits the machine and somehow makes it eventually spray her with snow. At least she made herself useful. It was condescending to waste time with her confronting her in front of her friends when it was obvious she wouldn’t be a real threat if that’s all she was gonna do.
Why did she even go to Sabrina’s house if she wasn’t planning on recording embarrassing things that she was doing? People cheer for Eiffel when Harvey gives him the credit for the snow even though Gem caused the snow, but sure, she doesn’t deserve good treatment anyways. Sabrina and Eiffel go sledding. At least he’s always been cheerful and desperate to seek out a wide variety of fun things… because THAT makes him likable. I just wish he was easy to understand. The same logic for why he speaks English and not French also means he shouldn’t have an accent.
Sabrina hugs him and somehow he decides that he wants to go back to normal. Him deciding this would’ve made sense if he said it right after he said, “ Are you gonna deprive the world of another tower? “ Instead of making that huge speech, he should’ve simply explained that he thinks he’s experienced every fun thing a kid could experience due to his limited knowledge and memories. Sabrina somehow smiles while saying she’ll miss him as he’s in a snow globe in her room, and I wonder why he’s there and not back in Paris.
I guess he IS back in Paris but Sabrina said that to the snow globe like it was him for no reason! At least it’s easy to assume Zelda erased Gem’s memory of witchcraft, but this would never be done and forgotten about in the SITCOM. This makes it seem like it’d be harmless if Gem found out about magic, because she’d keep making a fool out of herself until she’d give up! And it’d be more believable if the person who always used the magical artifacts or Spookie was Gem, because she doesn’t have her own magic.
This episode was forced to happen because obviously if Sabrina wanted a purse she’d just summon one effortlessly, not trust a book full of cursed spells and Salem would’ve known that the word was person and not purse. Person wouldn’t be cut off, it’d be on the next page in full. No book does this. And somehow the Eiffel tower isn’t magically replaced instantly to force some pointless tension where people nag him to let them destroy his sentience. So I end up feeling bad for him because he just wants to experience as much fun as possible in the time he has left. Too bad he’s too hard to understand.
But if that’s the only constant problem with the episode, it’s a relatively good episode for this show, showing creativity with all of the different activities he enjoyed. He still sounded annoying and it still demonized magic because it was the cause of the stress of some people. What is the moral of the story supposed to be?!
Hopefully it’s just that it was wrong for Sabrina to try zapping up a purse just because it was breaking a rule her aunts arbitrarily established, that had no excuse for still being carried out with no mortals looking at her. So it’s, “ follow the rules of your parents even if the context makes that stupid. “ The lesson should’ve been taught with a DIFFERENT rule. That’s the only intentional lesson, which was good in theory but done unconvincingly. But the intentional lesson is only really mentioned once.
The hopefully unintentional lesson that’s repeated throughout the episode from the aunts’ nagging, is that if morons keep peer pressuring you to do something you don’t wanna do, even if it’s letting them kill you, it’s wrong not to humor them!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 51 Strange New World:
Somehow a kid’s floating in a suit in a kids’ science class. I like seeing Sabrina in a lab coat. She thinks she’ll be humiliated by the science fair competition. Chloe reassures her which would only make sense if she was lying because of her obviously dumb project idea. Somehow her competition Harvey and Gem are planning to make impossible science projects. Harvey’s gonna make cold fusion which is impossible. Out of nowhere Harvey says Pi is the smartest kid in Greendale even though he’s a conspiracy theorist paranormal investigator. The episode starts getting boring with nothing really happening.
Chloe says about the bully, “ Uh-oh, one of the experiments got loose. “ At least the bully eats moldy bread and gags. Why does Sabrina say no instead of running away? The show hates her enough that she got barfed on. Why did Harvey say happily that Slugloaf got her good when Sabrina’s his friend? Chloe’s locker is stuck so out of nowhere it’s revealed Pi can bring out tools he wouldn’t have as a preteen for it. The vice president grabs a kid and yells that there’s no skate boarding. Harvey wouldn’t have brought a skateboard to school. Chloe says she better invent a partner. Why does she give her any ideas?
Pi fails and should know nobody would believe him that he meant to do that. The show kept telling me that he WAS a genius, so why did he fail? It explains the snow machine. Salem insists on mentioning Thomas Edison so Sabrina gets the idea to use him instead of simply creating a partner for the science fair from scratch, and for NO REASON Sabrina trusts Spookie again. He doesn’t care about her shirt either.
Spookie gets told to hurry up and he says she could cause the end of all life by using the thing he gave her and she doesn’t care. She’s not supposed to be a complete psychopath! He is too for giving her it. Why does anyone think she’s only like this in Sabrina’s Secret Life? Why didn’t she zap the barf away already? She reads out a spell to summon a “ young Thomas Edison, “ and he assumes he’s dreaming and she lets him believe it.
It’s interesting to see someone from the past enjoy tech like the boom box, but I ALREADY SAW a story like this in Little Sabrina when Sabrina summoned George Washington, and she did that herself! He took apart the boom box and the kitchen. Why would no authority member in school question this new kid going to school and not need to see any papers? He pops out the locker hinges. How did Pi not think of that? You have to read the TV Tropes page to find out that Pi isn’t his actual name. Apparently his real name is Perry so, his parents are still pretty stupid in the naming department but it’s not TOO bad.
Harvey shows Edison how to skateboard. Chloe asks Sabrina who is this Tom guy? She asks Sabrina what are headphones and they disappear. Wouldn’t they have disappeared before she asked that? Oh god this episode is garbage. It expects us to believe that if he keeps staying in the present, technology will keep disappearing, even though one, the past is not an alternate dimension that doing stuff in it will affect the current dimension with magic. AND TWO, he was always destined to be returned to the past by her, obviously meaning that there’s no reason for this technology to disappear.
And why would technology disappear one at a time instead of all at once? So Pi ends up suffering. How did Sabrina not always anticipate that the kid from the past would just make outdated inventions? Sabrina tells Chloe what she did and she says he invented everything. Edison didn’t invent the light bulb. He waited for someone to die so that he could buy the patent from his wife at a lower price and took the credit, although he popularized the light bulb. But if this episode really cared it would’ve explained that. Movies get replaced with a puppet show. This writer doesn’t understand how to write time travel.
Sabrina uses a pay phone instead of just using magic to call Salem. Why doesn’t she instantly explain her problem instead of saying she has a big problem? And it sure is convenient that payphones didn’t disappear first! She asks what Spookie meant about disrupting time. If Salem can just look in a magic book for the answer, why hadn’t Sabrina done that? Salem says that there was no one in the past to invent what he was responsible for, when obviously someone else would’ve if Edison hadn’t been there.
What’s the point of having him as a character here, if it’s not gonna actually educate us on how Edison was like at that point? It’d have been more interesting, because he had OCD. Pi jealously tricks him into skateboarding to get detention. He had no common sense thinking that he wouldn’t get super final secret detention for endangering people skateboarding in the halls. There’s no way there’d be a form of detention called that where someone would be behind glass.
If the writer knew that mundane scenes and settings were too boring for Sabrina maybe he shouldn’t have written them, because the 70s comic got away with barely showing school! He wouldn’t still have that skateboard. This is normal Earth, it’s supposed to be entirely realistic but with the witchcraft contrasting it. Pi took forever to confess. Every time a mortal sees magic in this show, they always convince convinced by themselves that they were dreaming or hallucinated, so Chloe should’ve took Sabrina aside and told her to warp Edison to her. The vice principal has an annoying voice.
They go into a cartoony elevator with no light in it. Why is Sabrina taking Harvey with her? She’ll have to be covert about using magic then. A rock gets thrown in front of Edison with a piece of paper on it. It just tells him they’re breaking him out of detention. Grappling hooks pull the wall apart because of horses. Horses can’t do that, they aren’t that strong. Even if the horses are there to replace cars, there’s no reason grappling hooks would still exist.
The vice principal assumes Pi is responsible for this. To be fair if he’s supposed to be a supergenius apparently, then it makes sense that he would jump to the conclusion if he assumed he must have used technology for this.. Sabrina reminds us of the bullshit that somehow if Edison stays in the future long enough the world will be permanently ruined.
The Witches’ Council wouldn’t allow that to be possible with magic. Edison’s returned to normal with the Spookie Jar. Why wouldn’t she just point and instantly return him to the past? Floating kids are somehow able to float around Gem as the story ends. The writers aren’t even trying with this show, of course it got a lot less seasons than the sitcom.
This boring episode had Sabrina arbitrarily trust Spookie to summon Thomas Edison for her science partner, because her project sucks even though she could’ve created someone HERSELF, who wouldn’t just make outdated inventions because no duh he’s from the past. And the writer forces tension because somehow technology keeps disappearing, even though Sabrina was always planning to return Edison to the past. And Edison didn’t invent the light bulb, he just popularized it. And someone else could’ve done that even if this was an alternate reality.
And this only happened to force Sabrina to use horses to break him out of the unrealistic detention room that’s just below the ground. I know the horses may be there because technology was going backwards but she must have still used magic to give them super strength. How is the writer so incompetent he had Sabrina use a spell that she was told would kill everyone?!
I ASSUME Spookie just lied to mess with her, but that makes no sense because he must want his magic to get used so that his intentional curses that ruin the spells can happen so that he can laugh evilly about them in private. Since his spells are always cursed, I can assume that the real reason technology is disappearing is that Spookie’s curse is doing it, but that needed to be explained.
The story could’ve been more interesting if Edison’s actual personality was taken advantage of a lot more. It could’ve been a lesson in what OCD is like. I thought the episode would be interesting because Edison was surprised at the modern technology but it got boring quick. All I’m being taught is the Space Whale Aesop, “ Don’t summon your science partner from back in time! “
If it wanted to teach us that cheating at contests shouldn’t be done, it needed to have her win and feel bad for the losers to show us the consequence, but that wouldn’t happen because she uncharacteristically didn’t realize cheating was wrong! How can she possibly learn the lesson that it’s wrong then? Having an unrealistic consequence is the definition of a Broken Aesop.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 52 Witchery Science Theatre:
I can’t stand the way the hairstylist is. Sabrina hates the way her hair looks, and somehow everyone likes it. She says her hair goes in front of her eye. He says she’s being ridiculous. Because SHE’S not ALLOWED to have a different opinion on whether different hairstyles are good or bad. Somehow she asks what’s gonna happen if she walks into school like that when she could just point to return her hair to normal. She’s done that to change clothes. HOW did her aunts fail just because she had too much hair spray and gel? Well that’s not a plot that you should write then.
Since when is hair spray and gel invented by mere mortals a way to make something immune to magic? Zelda says electroplasmic as if magic comes from ghosts. Well, that explains why Tim can make an anti-magic invention! In this universe, they’re potion ingredients! Sabrina covers her head – nope she doesn’t even get to do THAT herself – Chloe says cool lampshade, and haircut she can’t see, sweet. Considering how crazy 80s hair looked, why doesn’t Sabrina ever realize that people might think her hair looks good? I know it’s not the 80s, but still. Hilda could’ve shown her what the 80s hairstyles looked like.
She wants to hide from Gem but doesn’t because she’s stuck waiting in line. Hilda somehow expects a senior citizen rate without brainwashing. She shows her a papyrus scroll with her face on it that was signed by the pharaoh himself and somehow the ticket master gives her a ticket, when it obviously could’ve been faked. I like that SHE succeeded only because it took advantage of her being a witch. Sabrina bowls and people laugh at her hair and go figure that was an Imagine Spot like the previous one. Gee I wonder if no one will mock her hair when they actually see it. I like her hat.
They decide to see Hilda’s movie. There’s no way Harvey would say no sneaking to see something else. I guess the ticket master is thinking, “ I’m not getting paid enough to deny them tickets. “ Someone says there’s a small chunk of ticket stub missing so this is a sub stub, and he whistles at an old lady to get her taken away. I don’t know why he would even CARE. Sabrina gets in, and Hilda summons popcorn for free. People run screaming from an alien. The movie would only be called that if it was meant to be a parody. I guess the reason the aunts could get Salem into the theater was that they zapped him up.
Sabrina should’ve just WHISPERED, “ Let’s make a run for it. “ I guess the reason the ushers that would be here didn’t stop them was that they aren’t getting paid enough to care if no one else is hearing that. Sabrina easily gets in the theater for the other movie. If they just sat down instantly like normal people instead of somehow just standing there, the usher wouldn’t shine a light on them. And so the rest of the story wouldn’t have happened. Sabrina says something to somehow make him turn around the other way and he somehow calls them piggies looking for them.
Chloe asks Sabrina to use magic to zap them out even though obviously Harvey would see, and she could instead tell her to use magic covertly. Sabrina says “ take us back into the movie, “ so even though she said back, of course they get sent to another universe based off the movie and the spell also has the audience able to see them, which she didn’t specify. Sabrina wouldn’t have said the spell, she’d have simply imagined herself in the theater with her friends and warped there. She’s warped before in the show without a spell!
A caption lands on Harvey’s back and somehow he loves that. I guess Sabrina healed him without even trying because she’s so worried about him. Why does he never freak out about being in another universe? I have to assume he either thinks he’s dreaming or is playing dumb the whole time, and asks them what they’re talking about just to keep up the illusion. He would’ve heard Sabrina saying a spell in the first place. Why did the show have the gall to pretend that just because he’s scared, he’s also deaf? He looked at Sabrina when she was saying the spell!
Hilda says she should try to zap Sabrina out. Good, they DID know what was going on. I sadly just have to assume the reason she doesn’t do that is because she finds this movie entertaining, in a So Bad it’s Good way, she just insulted it, but it was established earlier that Sabrina somehow can’t use magic in the movie, even though it’s magic, and they’re still in color! It’s very dumb! Harvey says the music changes with whatever they do. How is the movie focusing on them and not the real main characters of it? What a kooky spell. Maybe it knew Sabrina subconsciously wanted to be a movie star.
It’s satisfying to see the usher feel freaked out at seeing them on the screen and say he’s in control again. He should’ve just assumed they were movie stars all along. He wouldn’t think they got into the movie magically, unless he actually watched the movie before. So how does the film EVER show the audience the real main characters again, if it was able to focus on just Sabrina and her friends at all? The episode’s giving them bad acting to try to entertain us, but I’m just even more bored because of it. What’s the point of a Sabrina story where she’s without magic for most of it?
Sabrina conveniently causes the alien to complain about his girlfriend. He ends up explaining that he used to be a human. The story wastes time with two people saying swell more than once and he trips on nothing. Her dad had every reason to think he wasn’t good enough for his daughter. As a kid you hate that character but as an adult you realize he’s right and that doesn’t make him evil, because naturally a part of growing up, is realizing that just because someone’s acting harsh doesn’t mean they’re evil.
He wanted to look handsome even though that wouldn’t keep him from being clumsy again so he’d have still not been good enough for her. So he went to a lab and got a potion poured in his mouth and went into a transformation machine, which would only work because of witchcraft. And the pet lobster of the scientist crawled in. It’s spending so much time on the story of this non-Sabrina character. Harvey asks him where he got this spaceship from.
Sabrina hypocritically says it’s not his fault he’s in a story with an illogical plot. But it could easily be explained what I assumed, that there’s multiple aliens and he teamed up with them… or that the mad scientist had the spaceship. Somehow the whole audience boos and says the film stinks because Sabrina feels bad for him, when anyone would. And I’m sure that was how the movie was supposed to be. Somehow people are pushing a giant container.
Sabrina tells people he’s Freddy and no one believes her even though Peggy’s hugging him… and she’s not getting hurt by him. People believe Peggy though. They just only trust people from their village. Sabrina hammers the message home that it doesn’t matter what you look like, even though it would if you got mistreated for it. So obviously it DOES matter what you look like because the entire village was planning to kill him for it! I guess the people here are color blind hence them not freaking out at her. If she meant that she’d take off her hat.
Hilda asks if this plot could be any hokier, lampshading how the whole show sucks. It’s sad when one of the best episodes of the show is only that way because it has the excuse that it’s a bad movie, so it’s SUPPOSED to have plot holes. It turns out Freddy can be returned to normal very easily, and Zelda says out loud that she’ll return the kids to her. I was told the film didn’t have the budget. Harvey somehow said after this that he was in an interactive movie, but he should’ve just said he was dreaming. It’s Out of Character that he didn’t say that right away.
Sabrina shows off her new hairdo and everyone applauds, and Gem cares enough to catch the hat she threw because apparently she loves her fashion sense. The usher expects Sabrina and her friends to clean the floor of a theater. I wonder if that’s a realistic punishment for them going to see a movie for free. They didn’t do anything wrong! It’s not like they COULD’VE paid for the movie and so they cheated the theater out of profit.
Wouldn’t there just be a sold out note on the ticket stand? What theater would have someone announce that with a megaphone? What they did bothered him because he’s an idiot, but you could say a lot of harmless things are evil just because they bother idiots.
This episode is about Sabrina and her friends wanting to see a movie that got sold out, and Chloe pressures Sabrina to warp her back into the theater even though Harvey’s there when obviously the real solution was to brainwash the usher into leaving them alone! And Chloe and Sabrina have this whole conversation at full volume, and Harvey and the usher don’t hear them and prevent the plot.
While it makes sense that Sabrina saying a spell to send them into a movie would do that, in that saying that would make her imagine it, because saying that would’ve made her imagine it, it all falls apart because she said back when she never went to the inside of the movie to begin with. She would’ve said to send them into the room showing the movie. And REALLY, she wouldn’t have even said a spell to warp in the first place.
At least the plot holes of the movie were justified in-universe because it was supposed to be illogical. But first even the slightest bit of effort from the writer could’ve justified it properly. The mad scientist is a warlock, and he made the spaceship. And it’s hypocritical of the show. While the film could get boring with all the focus on ITS character, Sabrina was never really in danger because the supposed villain was a normal person, but the story still demonizes magic because she was scared until she found that out.
So combine that with it being boring in the movie and it’s still a bad episode, especially since seeing something in black and white isn’t exactly appealing to look at. But it’s one of the least bad ones because Sabrina’s lack of magic means I’m not always wondering why she doesn’t use them. But you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater at that point.
There’s NO WAY Sabrina would’ve had no powers in the movie universe though. It should’ve instead been written that Sabrina WANTED to stay there because she thought it’d be fun to see the whole movie from inside it and if she had her powers the whole time she’d have nothing to actually fear. If witches couldn’t get out of movies just because they warped into them, there would be SO MANY young witches who were trapped in movies permanently! The Witches’ Council wouldn’t put up with that! Kind of the reason for why it makes no sense for witches not to be monitored!
It’s supposed to be that, it doesn’t matter what you look like. But obviously it does matter what you look like, because an entire town was in an uproar and planning to kill somebody because they looked like an alien! I guess the lesson was it’s what you’re really like that counts, but it DOESN’T count because, nobody would’ve believed Sabrina about it. If it weren’t for Sabrina, for no reason, Peggy wouldn’t have found out who the alien was, when he could’ve told her, so it wouldn’t have mattered that she had a prior relationship with it.
You can’t really compare a new hairstyle, to, looking so ugly that everybody wants to kill you. And it clearly DOES matter what Sabrina looked like, because she got treated differently for it, just in a positive way, because people applauded her. I guess the real lesson was, it doesn’t matter if you look like an ugly alien, you could still be a good person. Then why did he act scary? If he was forced to, he’d act scary later. Sabrina DIDN’T look ugly, and there’s a lot of times where she’s selfish or outright evil.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 53 You’ve Got a Friend:
Sabrina tells Harvey “ nice moves, “ for skateboarding. She says she appreciates him helping her with her books so it’s out of character and inexcusable for him to not help her. He says sorry to Sabrina. He ends up obsessed with a cartoon, because the main character symbolizes the child inside all of us. He says this can’t be right and says chickens can’t play trombones because they don’t have lips, and he’s upset that his favorite cartoon was cancelled. Sabrina puts her hand on his shoulder.
He says, “ goodbye youth, “ just because of that. I thought they were already IN junior high, like in the comic. At least when he was being clumsy breaking stuff in Sabrina’s house it was funny and harmless because Hilda could just create copies. He’s stupid in an annoying way. And he reminds her that he likes pranks like that one Sabrina comic, and shows her a bunch of stuff from his childhood. He complains that one day he woke up and his imaginary friend disappeared. That doesn’t make sense. I’m pretty sure even kids know that their imaginary friends don’t exist, and that you consciously pretend that they do.
I can’t help but feel uncomfortable that Sabrina casually sits on Quigley’s lap while he’s riding a lawnmower. Sabrina says that imaginary friends show up when they’re needed and justifies that Harvey needs his friend Mort back, even though she’s right there. How does she not realize it’s just gonna scare Harvey? Why did it take THAT LONG for the aunts to hide the Spookie Jar? Why won’t it be like this for the rest of the franchise? And why did they ever tell Salem where it was put?! They should’ve known a guy who tried taking over the world couldn’t be trusted. Bribing him is all she has to do.
Come to think of it why didn’t he just ask Spookie to make him ruler of the world? That’s something that can happen without him being found out right because the idea is witches AREN’T monitored? I have to assume that he DID ask that of Spookie, and he just gave him a dream about it where he regretted ruling the world. So that’s why he’s not trying to rule the world anymore. Why is she even considering using Spookie?! She thanks him for the cursed magical artifact she doesn’t need! Spookie says, “ Selflessly. “ He’s paid by the wish, what a liar!
She tells Harvey that she heard that at a certain time of the time, the person whose name Harvey screams will appear in front of him. It’s amusing that he repeatedly says Jackie Chan. It’s silly though because he should know it’d be wrong to freak him out and divert him from his busy schedule. More often than not I’m wondering why people think he’s a nice guy. He reasons with Sabrina that teens don’t have imaginary friends. Somehow this doesn’t prevent the plot. Also why is he saying he’s a teen when he’s 12?
How insecure was Sabrina the whole time that she wasn’t a good enough friend for Harvey, so he needed Mort? He would’ve still gotten upset that his favorite cartoon got cancelled if Mort was there. She gave him cursed shoes once, no wonder he believed her. He literally knows about magic already. Mort suggests to him eating paste as he’s happy the whole time that he’s back. Sabrina gets jealous right away when he walks away without Sabrina. I guess he assumes that he’s imagining Mort the whole time. Never mind, when Mort shaves Sabrina’s head, he laughs. Mort thankfully gets her her hair back.
At least the fact that Mort’s here prevents Gem from sitting next to Harvey. He possesses her when she does that. I like that he only talks with Mort’s voice for a little bit, before getting Gem’s voice back. Gem gets made to say she likes to sniff her armpits and stuff and people laugh. Somehow the writer thought that making Sabrina tell him off for being mean was a good idea when this would only be written for catharsis. And she’s not above abusing magic on her either. She did that to her before, the hypocrite.
Harvey gets written Anviliciously to say he doesn’t have to worry about growing up, even though he would, because with Mort he can have all the fun he wants, even though he should know growing up and having fun aren’t mutually exclusive. Harvey should have known better than to goof around in science class in front of the teacher. He gives away that he didn’t read his assignment. Mort moves around a skeleton making the classroom laugh, and then the skeleton dances in front of the kids. THIS makes all of the kids run out of the room terrified. Somehow they weren’t scared the minute it moved.
Sabrina says she’ll lighten up when Harvey grows up. Shouldn’t he know that he won’t pass science class and get to the next grade if he keeps this up? He says to Mort that he’d better go to class, and Mort acts like the devil on his shoulder by trying to get Harvey to do bad things, saying he double dares him to do a bad thing, with a gibberish word in between the two words. Mort is like a Flanderized version of Salem.
Mort convinces Harvey to get in trouble with the principal, so he gets told to scrub the wall clean with a toothbrush. I feel like this would never happen nowadays because of how small the thing is. Maybe this would happen in an old 50s Archie comic. Harvey finds out he’s got Saturday detention and Mort laughs and Harvey asks him if he’s crazy. It took him that long to figure it out? He would have known he was evil to begin with because he’s the one who thought of Mort. He says they’ve got the entire day to spend together. But he thought he was gonna get to do that every day as it is.
Then Mort possesses Sabrina to make her do something bad to get detention, offscreen because the writer’s lazy. Sabrina says she’s gotta get rid of Harvey as Harvey’s walking away and she throws something at Mort but somehow Mort doesn’t disappear because it’s not the end of the story yet. This better at least be for the same reason Eiffel didn’t vanish; he’s a sentient being who doesn’t wanna die yet so I assume the Witches’ Council cast a spell to protect them out of mercy. Sabrina tells Harvey to please control his friend.
He tells him they can’t keep acting like kids. But that just insults kids. Clearly it’s not normal for kids to act like evil pranksters. And Mort starts crying because he doesn’t like him anymore and accuses him of seeing someone else. And they think Pi is too overly attached to Harvey. I never even saw it compared to this guy. Harvey says he has to move on and the show drags this out too long. Harvey can’t back out of a dare from him for some reason even though he has no respect from him at this point.
Mort would be annoying for being too cartoony if I weren’t already used to this lame show. Instead he’s annoying for being a heartless psychopath. He dares Harvey to drink a week’s supply of cream spinach. That wouldn’t be possible, let alone in seconds. He dares Harvey to kiss Sabrina. He says, “ ew, “ and Sabrina says, “ ew, “ when I thought she was in love with him because when he asked her to a movie she instantly said yes. And somehow it’s not that this episode turned her off him forever, even though that’d be the way to do it and explain her reaction here.
Then the show cuts away from showing them kiss, so what I thought was pandering was just a big “ fuck you “ to the people who ship them. Sabrina says she’ll have nightmares. I guess she’s REALLY AGAINST the idea of Harvey being forced to kiss her as opposed to wanting it.
He dares Mort to go away and he does even though I never felt like he gave a shit about what Harvey thought of him because he kept screwing him over and acting like an idiot, but apparently he doesn’t care if he looks down on him for being a prankster or fun-loving because he’s proud of THOSE traits, but thinks that nothing is worse than being seen as a coward. Why the fuck didn’t he think to do that earlier?! Why didn’t Sabrina think about that? Harvey thinks he has to say sorry about the kiss even though he felt forced to. Harvey thanks Sabrina. And eventually they shake hands and the story wastes time until it ends.
This story is another Idiot Plot where Sabrina decides to bring Harvey’s imaginary friend to life to make him stop whining about the fact that he’s gonna grow up just because a show he liked got cancelled. She should have known he’d be just as upset about the show getting cancelled if Mort was there. She could’ve asked Harvey questions about what Mort was like as basic conversation caused by her caring about him, and then she’d have avoided the plot by realizing that Mort’s evil and would ruin his life.
You’d think she’d HAVE TO ask those questions because otherwise she AND Spookie wouldn’t be able to summon Mort accurately without knowing what he was like, but apparently Spookie just had to get his magic to scan Harvey’s brain to find out. At first I assumed she thought he was too embarrassed to tell her what Mort was like, because that’d be the case with MOST kids, but he was fine with telling her he used to think his parents were aliens, so he has no shame around her!
Why did Sabrina trust Spookie again?! He’s manipulating. She and Salem acted like he was necessary for the plot to happen somehow! And Sabrina couldn’t get rid of Mort. I came up with a reason for why it’d make sense anyways. How convenient that despite Mort dying if he decides to leave Harvey, he’s so desperate to not back down from a dare that he’ll kill himself on a dare from him. How is he so stupid?
Then what took so long for Harvey to do this? It’s another episode demonizing magic and Mort was annoying us in most of it. So I guess the lessons here were, “ don’t ever carry out a dare ever, “ and, “ don’t bring someone’s imaginary friend to life, “ and you “ need “ to let go of everything from childhood. Stuck-up moral.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 54 Hexcalibur:
Sabrina stands there proudly and a witch costume appears on her and she says to Salem she was first in her class at raining frogs, she has a CLASS for that? I thought her aunts were homeschooling her in magic. Salem gets abuse and Sabrina says she’ll need her magic book with a convoluted name, and it appears to her, so she reads about the story of Merlin. She’s relatably bored but Salem reveals when he could’ve easily not, that Zelda has a real book by Merlin, and she won’t let anyone touch it because it’s been autographed by Merlin. Why’d he suggest it just to say forget it?!
If Salem’s the type to stand firm with her on this, why did he even tell her about the book? Why’d he suggest using quotes from her book?! She says she bribed him with tuna and since he uses magic on his tail to lockpick here, I guess he values conserving magic. He sneezes and that somehow reduces the book to dust. Somehow Sabrina says they’re dead meat when clearly she and Salem could just point to fix the book because Sabrina zapped up a book scenes ago. Somehow these idiots think that the only person who could replace it is Merlin.
So Sabrina decides to go to the Middle Ages. You could’ve just written it that Sabrina read Merlin’s story and wanted to visit this place for fun! So the premise isn’t forced, the excuse is. They see a kid and predictably it’s an ancestor of Harvey’s friend Pi, who’s somehow in medieval Europe, even though he’s actually Asian. The whole appeal of this kinda thing is NOT seeing the annoying present characters. How would he look just like Pi? He summons an anvil and it lands on his foot. So THAT’D never happen.
Then he runs at them real fast so apparently he healed his foot and THIS TIME someone hears Salem talk, from offscreen. Sabrina gets asked to teach him magic and she says she wants the “ old Merlin, “ and predictably, this IS Merlin. His father’s somehow NO magician, he runs a catapult. How would a witch not be able to do that? How did they accidentally go too far back in time? They’d have read which period of time to go back to. Merlin would be hearing everything. The next coach leaves hours from now. Why doesn’t she speed up time? Sabrina in the 70s cartoon reversed time.
A magical time compass that actually lets them determine where to go would be pretty useful right about now. Why the hell do we see Harvey’s ancestor too? Dumb that a pig acts human. Harvey’s descended from the mythical King Arthur. It’s nice of Merlin to put his hand on his shoulder. At least I can compliment that it’s creative to show off Merlin when he was younger, but its appeal is destroyed by him having the design and annoying voice of Pi anyways. He tells Sabrina to pull his sleeve and a cheesy magic trick is done. He wonders if his dad’s right that he should go into the family business instead.
Why would Merlin have been a half-witch when we were told half-witches are weaker and Merlin’s the most famous witch? This story is nothing but contrived writing. Even Gem is descended from a witch. She was staring into a crystal ball to spy on Sabrina for some reason because she wanted Excabilur. Why doesn’t she zap the sword TO her? She even has access to Spookie! It’s cool, she even turns into a black bird, but come on. It’s possible but what are the chances that two people Sabrina knows are descended from witches?
Sabrina summons a big ham in front of Arthur to eat. It’s entertaining and satisfying that Sabrina’s shown off as a good witch the whole episode. Merlin turns Salem into a ham and then an ostrich. Why does he keep Salem’s head the same every time? Sabrina returns Salem to normal. Gem talks and Sabrina would HEAR her because she’s not half-deaf. Why doesn’t Gem use magic to bring the sword TO her telekinetically?
Sabrina uses magic to make Arthur pull the sword out. I assume that she thinks it’s good to change the course of history like this because she wants Harvey to have a better bloodline to make his life better, or better yet she assumes he was always destined to pull the sword out and she sped it up. Gem returns to normal and she’s finally got Slugloaf as her minion. What too so long? They’ve got so much in common. The two get caught in a net and fall. If she hates him, why will she keep him around instead of zapping up a better minion? Why is this plot dragging on instead of her just warping the sword to her?
She needs to explain the sword’s immune to magic. Then she’d still just use magic to kill these guys or warp them to torture chambers. A tree falls on Gem and Slugloaf and I wonder why they survive. Sabrina uses magic again and says the meat smells great. Why is Quigley’s ancestor here? So he’s the father of Merlin when Merlin is the ancestor of Pi. Gem shows up disguised as a servant and calls it a work study program. Arthur ingeniously cuts the meat with his sword and a tablecloth is used to blind them so that the sword can be stolen. Sabrina makes a rock grow to make him trip and drop it.
Gem’s Arthur’s half-sister apparently. Merlin uses magic impossibly badly and then sends a ham at Arthur so Gem gets away. There’s no way in hell he’d be this worthless, because he’d have to imagine things to make them happen. Merlin considers quitting magic and working with his dad even though he hates doing so. Why doesn’t he realize he could get a different job?
Sabrina’s proactive enough to do something again for once, using magic to warp him to the broom and fly and make it rain frogs on Gem, in a Chekhov’s Gun, causing her to somehow wait long enough that she gets tickled into dropping the sword, when she would’ve just warped home the instant she got the sword. Arthur gets the sword back and Sabrina gets sent away and grabbed by a talking tree and eaten. She says her magic will get her out of the cage and Gem says it’s an enchanted cage. I always liked that the show used the word enchanted to mean immune to magic like I always thought.
Why didn’t Spookie just warp the sword to Gem? I never did catch Gem’s name in this timeline so I didn’t get it. Don’t make her look that way if you don’t want us to call her that. Why is Sabrina being used as the damsel in distress when the whole episode had been about portraying her as cool as she’s supposed to be? Eventually, Arthur goes in front of Gem and the suits of armor get brought to life so Arthur attacks them, and then steps on something and falls. Merlin summons an anvil and it somehow lands on Arthur’s head which would kill him.
Merlin somehow does nothing while he’s brought to the wall and chained to it. Zelda once melted an ice block she was trapped in so you don’t need to MOVE to use magic. The sword’s power is useless to Gem while Arthur is still alive, so Gem plans to pull a lever to lower Arthur and Sabrina into lava. She’s getting him sent to a cursed dimension. But isn’t it obvious she wouldn’t be able to use the sword when he’s alive? Merlin turns into a dragon and smacks over the cage so what took him so long? Why did Gem fly so low?
And Gem goes into the cursed dimension in all of the commotion. I have to assume now that the nature of the portal is that it’s impossible for her to fly back up to escape it, and when you go into it you can’t go back through it the same way you came. Still why can’t Gem warp right back here? I have to assume the cursed dimension makes it impossible to use magic when you’re in it. Arthur rides off with an ancestor of Sabrina’s. I bet no one complained that THIS made Harvey and Sabrina an incest ship, so people picking on Knuckles and Julie-Su are just jumping at an excuse to be mean.
Sabrina goes home with the new book and it instantly crumbles to dust even though she just got it, so it wouldn’t have gotten the chance to become so aged. So it was ALWAYS like this but then the only way Zelda would’ve ever gotten the first book in the bookshelf without destroying it was by teleportation. Why would you make the whole episode pointless, especially when it was stated that Zelda would ground Sabrina for an abusively long time for ruining her pointless book that’s just there for decoration now, because she’s selfish? It should end with them zapping up a copy of the book
But thankfully the episode as a whole was so harmless that I don’t mind the ending being bad, because the story was worth it! Just because of how badly Sabrina’s portrayed most of the show, it really does have a huge impression that she’s competent for such a long time. So this is one of the best episodes of the show, even if it just transfers the forced incompetence to Merlin so it’s still consistently annoying and contrived.
As usual the whole plot is insultingly contrived, this time because Gem’s witch ancestor would’ve just warped the sword to her, and if the idea is that it’s immune to magic, she still would’ve just warped them to enchanted torture chambers that are lowering into the cursed dimension portal she conveniently had.
The plot had a flimsy excuse because Sabrina or Salem would’ve zapped up a new copy of Merlin’s book when it somehow crumbled on touch, considering that Sabrina has no trouble summoning whatever she wants in this episode. Even going off the episode’s logic that they can’t summon a new book, AND that they’re too smart now to trust Spookie to make one, why didn’t they use the time travel compass to go back in time for the book instead of using a method where they’d have to wait hours to get to go home, because somehow they think they can’t just warp back to the present themselves?
Sadly I have to just assume the reason she doesn’t simply go back in time to before the book was destroyed and told her past self, “ Don’t touch it because it’d crumble, “ is that she’d come back to see the book destroyed anyways, because if she got rid of the whole reason for why she went back in time, she’d make it so that the future version of her past self would never go back in time to do it, undoing what she did. She could get around that by creating a sentient being and telling HIM to do this for her.
Worst of all, it’s also forced that they accidentally went back in time to when Merlin was an incompetent kid when they would’ve looked at the year Zelda got the book as a basis, not gone off Salem’s hazy memory. And again Gem’s an idiot, especially since I have no idea why she thought her having the magical sword would make any difference when she’s already omnipotent.
If the idea is that she needs the sword to be elected the ruler, that’s still flimsy because we know witches can effortlessly brainwash, so she’d have just brainwashed the people into making her ruler, so she’d already have experienced the exhausting work of running a country with no idea what she’s doing, where she’d have to read through every law it has. If all she wants is to be pampered and famous she would’ve just used magic to make THAT happen by now.
Also where are HER parents, why aren’t they preventing the plot? I assumed they were dead from the start, but that doesn’t justify it because she would’ve still been sent foster parents to look after her, and if she got rid of THEM, then when someone got sent to check up on her, she’d have been turned into a cat for it. It’s only fantastic compared to all the OTHER episodes of this show, because Sabrina was awesome and it doesn’t demonize magic, and while she was scared by the end, magic saved her life anyways.
I’d take a plot being forced for a relatively lighthearted story that respects its main character, even if it had no excuse for having the people of the past look like Sabrina’s annoying companions, ruining the immersion. But I wouldn’t feel honest in saying that it’s actually a good episode compared to all the OTHER good episodes of this show, because there’s only one thing that’s genuinely good episode worthy about it.
It’s just that I wouldn’t be surprised if, among all of the other good episodes of this show, of which this isn’t, this had Sabrina be awesome with her magic for the longest amount of time. And this ISN’T good, ONE scene is.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 55 Brina Baby:
A desklamp is automatically typing to do Sabrina’s homework. I hope this doesn’t result in badly done homework because the writer jealously hates her. She would’ve been told that it could screw up the homework, just by reading the magic book for it!Sabrina uses magic to get the phone away and Salem accuses her of goofing off, when he’s supposed to be an evil goof-off. Then an automatic servant brings her something and a call from Harvey invites her to a social event.
She says she’ll make up for her work tomorrow, and Salem says that’s what she said before when the toaster brought her something, and he reminds her of piano practice. Sabrina thanks him. Why does she think that making the piano play itself counts as teaching her to get good at the piano? I just can’t blame her for wanting to have fun. When Quigley says she got an F, and asks her what she’s gonna be doing when she’s 30. I start skipping ahead rapidly in the video out of boredom because this is bullshit. Again there’s no reason the spell would’ve resulted in bad homework.
It would’ve just scanned the universe to learn what’s right. She’d have zapped to get an A on her homework like in a 2000s comic. Her Imagine Spot had her tell each of her friends she wanted to hang out at the mall even though they were all busy at work. And in that imagine spot she somehow still thinks Harvey would get an important job even though Anywhere but Here had him be a door-to-door salesman! She says, “ shop, “ so she has a job! She says she’ll have to do without witchcraft. She uncharacteristically says she’ll take a binding witches’ oath to give up magic forever.
Hilda says that breaking the oath has an awful punishment. Salem says yeah but somehow he didn’t know about the punishment already. Zelda arbitrarily refuses to tell them the punishment because it’s too horrible. This is as irresponsible as a parent not telling her kid the consequences of poisoning herself. Sabrina reads out the oath with the magic book. Why would Quigley ever object to this? This is what he always WANTED Sabrina to do. He fears the family witches punishing Sabrina for it? Granted they had no way of anticipating that she’d ever make that oath. Tearing it out would’ve prevented this.
They could zap the book and erase her memory of this oath. When the aunts wake up in the morning, she walks up to them dressed like an adult with a briefcase with a personal organizer, because she thinks she has to become a success by micromanaging her time. Hey wait how did she get any of that stuff if she can’t summon things? Her aunts just woke up and they’re surprised by all of this. Apparently she always had all of this in the house. She never went back to sleep. She has her whole day and life planned out by the minute, because it’s totally possible for a 12-year-old to care enough to do that.
She plans to color flash cards. Her aunts smile only to look worried like they’re smart enough to have no faith in this idiot. She seems unrealistically amazing so when is that gonna end? The story skips ahead by two weeks, and she shows her aunts charts revealing that she’s become a better student, and somehow she refuses to go out for pizza because she wants to be a success when that wouldn’t stop her from that. She comes off as a Stepford Smiler because it’s Out of Character for her to be happy with this for so long. Salem is SOMEHOW caught in a tornado and he doesn’t use magic to save himself.
He tells her to save him when he’d know she’d be punished. She says magic vortexes don’t spin in THAT way so that’s a fake one he summoned to ruin her life. I guess he summoned them with magical artifacts, potion ingredients. Quigley clearly knows who eat cookies the wrong way in a way that inconveniences the family, because of how his acting is. Why would he bother approaching her otherwise? I hate how passive aggressive and condescending he is, like he doesn’t just come out with it and accuse her.
Sabrina says she hasn’t eaten cookies in that way since she was 4 and Quigley says that Salem shouldn’t try to tempt her. He literally does nothing but cause them trouble. They have no reason to want him around. Hilda ends up TP’ed when she was asleep and Quigley says someone turned his books into paper dolls, and Salem says someone tied something to his tail and he started chasing it. Zelda finds out her whole room was ruined with crayon and Sabrina doesn’t know who did all this. And it was signed Sabrina. It’s an obvious conclusion that Sabrina did all of that while sleepwalking.
Zelda says the crystal ball records everything that goes on in the house just in case and this is news to Sabrina, which is why she didn’t just tell her aunts to look at the footage and see that it was Salem who always told her to use Spookie. And I have to assume that the reason she‘ll keep doing stuff they won’t approve of, is that she’ll assume they’ll never check the footage, meaning they have no reason to keep it around so it’s just a pointless Deus ex Machina. They see a young Sabrina who uses Zelda’s wand to do magic pointlessly. Zelda has no reason to use a wand!
Zelda says that was her when she was 4. Why did Sabrina ever doubt that was her? Zelda says it’s her inner witchlit, that’s still a kid at heart. Somehow every witch has one and her inner witchlit comes out to play at night when magic isn’t used enough. Seems pretty horrifying that there’s a sentient being trapped in Sabrina at all times! Why doesn’t Salem ever ask the aunts what the punishment is if he wants to make Sabrina unleash it on herself? He should explain that he wants this so Sabrina can be relatable to him again and go on magical adventures to amuse him again.
Sabrina wasted time with an obviously doomed plan to stay up all night and that fails. Why not just give her a potion that’ll keep her awake? Well that’s because she knows she can’t stay awake forever because she’ll die. They could’ve explained that. It was just a waste of time. Gem tells a cop that the Sabrina household stole her ponies. There was never any hint that she had ponies before. So does she KNOW the Sabrina family did it from camera footage or one of her servants or her miraculously seeing it, even though it was nice? It’s more likely that she just jumped to this conclusion.
Why is the story wasting my time with all of this? The ponies run past the cop and Gem who the aunts could brainwash at any time. They’d freak out at Salem laughing. Zelda says it’s good that she convinced the chief that the ponies merely escaped and Hilda says she convinced the chief that this house is a designated pony refuge. Why have such stilted dialogue instead of simply showing them doing the convincing? Why the hell isn’t it explained that they simply brainwashed the chief? Quigley plans to stay awake all night at Sabrina’s bedside because he’s as stupid as she is somehow.
And when she wakes up, he’s satisfyingly covered in yarn. What did he expect? I don’t get why one of the aunts don’t just stay up late at night so that they can point to the inner witchlit to freeze her in time. I also don’t get why they don’t simply demand her to start playing for a little bit every day! Somehow Sabrina tells her aunts she doesn’t need them to supervise her at night when she’s asked if she’s sure, because more shitty Idiot Plot writing!
She says she’d like to see her inner witchlit get past all the traps in her room, that I have to assume the aunts summoned because no mortal would be able to set that up at 12. She forgot the witchlet’s a witch! This show sucks! In the morning they see a big pile of stuff the young Sabrina had. The show wants me to call her Briney. How is she still here? Sabrina even asks that. Briny says she comes out when SHE wants. But then what took so long? The cop finds out his station was stolen from. Why would even a young version of Sabrina be the type to steal when she could just zap up whatever she wants?
She turns Quigley into a parrot who can barely talk for nagging her to stop. Her aunts are forced by the writer to walk right up to Briny like an idiot instead of them freezing her in time like Sabrina did to Gem. So they’re put in a cage that must be enchanted since they immediately think Sabrina’s the only one who can do something? You’d think extremely experienced 600 year old witches, wouldn’t be helpless against a four-year-old half-witch! If it was as simple as summoning pink ropes around Briny, why didn’t any of the other far more experienced witches do that?
Sabrina’s predictably told that she has to go have a little fun every day to get rid of Briny. She would’ve said that right away. The cops try to go to the house and somehow when they get trampled by things running out of it, they decide to go away from the house and never speak of it, because the story sucks. He doesn’t act terrified enough to make me buy this, he acts as if he’s just exasperated. Usually mortals act like they think they’re dreaming or hallucinating when they see magic. Sabrina uses magic to get rid of the cage so why didn’t any of her aunts do this if it’s not enchanted?
And if it IS enchanted, why aren’t any of them saying she’s powerful? Quigley and the aunts are smiling despite thinking of the punishment as harsh? Somehow the punishment is that monsters would chase after your cat. I have to just assume because the writer’s a horrible writer that this is only the case for SALEM. There’s no way this would be the punishment because animal cruelty laws are a thing, and obviously it’d be the witch herself who’s punished. I feel like the episode was lying to me the whole time by having the punishment not be horrible. There’s no point in even having there be a punishment then!
Zelda always knew what the punishment was, so why did she refuse to speak of it, when she clearly needed to to make Salem stop trying to manipulate Sabrina into breaking her oath? If she didn’t want this to happen to Salem she would’ve just warned him! If she wanted Salem to get chased, she would’ve summoned them to chase him much earlier, not cared enough about Salem to keep the punishment a secret. The aunts never need a good excuse to abuse him.
The episode wasted so much space, that it needed to rush its ending, when it could’ve just had the family bribe Enchantra with great cooking to make them not punish her. I’d still wonder why she’d be convinced when she can zap up anything but at least that predictable Voodoo Shark would be better than this Ass Pull, and that’s the same term I’d use to describe the whole conflict of the episode.
As I expected this episode was insultingly forced, revealing some nonsense that if a witch is all work and no play, her inner child will get automatically brought to life by the magic in her to do horrible things, and that would’ve been made impossible by the Witches’ Council a long time ago. If they don’t want witches to be all work and no play out of compassion for them, they wouldn’t use magic to make THIS be the case to punish them, because that’s an unrealistically harsh punishment, and they couldn’t be sadistic if they don’t approve of witches overworking themselves.
Instead they’d just send Enchantra to lecture the witch that they have to play a little bit every episode or ELSE. They wouldn’t even send Enchantra, it’d just be some random mook of hers. This whole story should’ve been avoided because her aunts should’ve warned her about this in the first place, instead of being insanely irresponsible! The story screwed up portraying Sabrina as being in the wrong for being all work, because she seemed genuinely happy the entire time, and I only suspected her of being a Stepford Smiler because she was being Out of Character by enjoying being a workaholic.
My logical assumption that the havoc was caused by her sleepwalking out of stress would’ve been much better because it’d make sense, and properly establish in a clear way that she was secretly miserable, teaching a lesson! But no, she gets punished and told off for living life in the way that makes her happiest, where she showed no signs of stress and misery, even though the Sabrina I know would’ve been constantly bored and inconvenienced by not using magic!
Sure the message is a good one, but making the consequence of not having any fun unrealistic as all hell makes it impossible for the message to be learned, because the audience members aren’t witches. So the episode gives us NO IDEA what the consequence of all work and no play is. Besides, there’s a fine line between work and play that’s harder to determine than you’d expect, which you learn when you’re an adult, because ANYTHING can count as play if it’s something you WANT to do for fun above other things, even though it could be hard work.
She looked like she was having fun being hard-working! How do you know what’s work and what’s play? That’s an important thing to establish for the audience members who ARE workaholics, to have any chance to learning from this message. It’s surprisingly easy to not know what play IS, as easy as you just looking back on it with pride because you accomplished it. For an easy example, beating a bad video game. You would think of it as play, but it’s not because you usually didn’t enjoy it.
You just beat it to give yourself an excuse to never play it again, to say you accomplished beating it, so something you do for play can easily just be work if you don’t let yourself care enough about your own feelings while doing it. So a more valuable message would not just be that you should have a little fun every day, because that’s a Captain Obvious Aesop and what the hell kind of kid would need that message?!
A message of, “ take a 5 minute video game break every 5 minutes while keeping track of time, and keep getting new fun games when you’re done with them, “ might be far more useful and effective than, Sabrina getting treated like she was in the wrong for becoming very successful. And you’d think her inner child would’ve escaped much earlier than two weeks with how childish she is, and that she wouldn’t be pure evil because Sabrina isn’t. She didn’t explain why she WANTED to come out during the day so the whole resolution is forced.
She comes to an agreement with her that she should’ve just, been told to resolve to do a lot earlier! I might have needed this message more than all of the other ones, it’s relevant to all ages! So I think THIS is the message the show botched the worst, not the message of Anywhere but Here. At least there I can totally understand bitter adults who hate working on the show writing an episode where adulthood sucks but there’s no REASON to not do the best job with THIS message. Being a workaholic is glorified here, because her grades skyrocket!
Just because Quigley nagged her once, she somehow came to the conclusion that she wasn’t even allowed a little fun every day or else she’s guaranteed to grow up unemployed with no self-respect. It doesn’t take all day to do all of your homework. I had to assume she was spending all of her play time reading the same school books repeatedly to memorize them. And this is all because Quigley nagged her that she’d be just like this when she grew up, so thanks a lot Quigley. He never apologizes for this.
Also if she could’ve just cast a spell or used a potion to make herself an expert in her school subjects, or simply zapped the grade to change it to an A every time like Sabrina did in a later 2000s comic, she would’ve also avoided the whole plot. She should’ve known she didn’t NEED to give up on all fun to be a success because she could use magic to brainwash people to hire her, repeatedly, and eventually she’d find a job she’d be good at and like.
It’s not like Sabrina to think that she couldn’t be happy with an unimportant job. She loved being an ice cream truck driver in one comic. This story is contrived, though I find it cathartic that Briny’s tormenting the family. Maybe I do like this episode, but it still demonizes a spell she cast and screwed up the message.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 56 Witchwrecked:
Somehow a fish hanging upside-down bites someone when it should be dead and apparently the fisherman tells him to stop playing around and walks away annoyed. And the writer’s sadistic by showing us bullying for no reason. Gem says ew from Sabrina telling her something about history, and for no reason the wizard newt is with Salem looking for a rare potion ingredient. I hate that he says spell component instead for no reason, when not every spell requires potion ingredients.
Chloe wishes she could go on a field trip without being expected to write a paper about it, and Harvey wishes he had no responsibility. Sabrina has a magic idea and Chloe says, “ uh-oh. “ Sabrina’s like, “ Duh I’m gonna cast a spell I barely remember! “ It’s so miraculous that she still likes her despite her being a witch, if she’s characterized like THIS counter-intuitively. Sabrina wants a wind to blow them all to an island on the boat. She doesn’t need to SAY a spell for that! She can summon anything!
It makes her look so stupid that despite Chloe saying, “ uh-oh, “ twice, she still does it, and it makes Chloe confusing that when she’s told her actual plan, she loves it… because what makes her think it’ll work out now?! The boat goes really fast in a storm and somehow Sabrina thinks this is now a bad idea when she would’ve always known what the spell’s result was going to be, because she has to imagine it to do it. And why would someone omnipotent think they’re actually in danger? Logically she’d have full control over the boat! They eventually wash up on a beach.
Why were Sabrina and Chloe ever unconscious when Sabrina would’ve just needed to summon air bubbles? And they were lucky they survived? You’d think she’d feel guilty the whole episode for almost getting them all killed but that’d be too depressing. There’s a long time where the kids just play around for a beach party. Why wouldn’t any of the mortals look back at Salem and Eye of Newt when they start talking? They wouldn’t recognize their voices. Eye of Newt is not a name anyone would give his kid and if he did it out of sadism, he would’ve ended up going by a REAL name out of shame.
I have to assume all of the witches here are fine with this, and Sabrina says she is, and that she just plans to use a spell to get them home when they feel like going home. Newt would’ve known this. Salem wants to go to higher ground to figure out where they are, because it’s up to him. I have to assume it’s still an episode pretending that he never had magic as a cat, they’re still gaslighting us with that. He finds a totem that Eye is scared of. A bully says his monkey buddies want something from him. He’s digging for ice being impossibly dumb. There’s no way the bully would show any compassion, let alone to them.
Sabrina says out loud that she wants ice and then water, and somehow both times she tries to use magic, it fails. He’d hear this. And she somehow shrugs it off, instead of freaking out that she’s run out of magic. Eye’s reading a book with the words Bermuda Triangle and says that HERE, magic won’t work here, because it’s the one place on Earth where the wall between Earth and the magical realm is thin. The Witches’ Council would’ve fixed this problem because they care about witches.
Also if he’s always carried this book, which is bigger than his backpack and just showed up now, why didn’t it get drenched with water during the storm? I guess he was hiding under the deck. Salem suffers for a while, and Eye says the cockatrice’s poison could drive Salem nuts, and Salem says, “ Here’s Salem, “ so he decides to warn Sabrina. Sure is inconvenient that something named after a mythological animal, was here, when it’d only be here if a witch summoned it, and had a spell cast so that it’d swim to this island just because she’s sadistic!
Harvey gets put off by Gem’s advances and the bully gets bit on the nose. Gem just wants him to spite Sabrina. Chloe says they should get home because they’re all hungry. Why does she still think she can use magic? She says she wants a storm to blow them all back to Greendale. The most ridiculous-looking kid with a bad voice talks as if he doesn’t believe that getting on a boat will guarantee them getting blown back home. He then instantly acts cheerful so that makes no sense! And he talks a bunch of boring big words, and Sabrina can’t summon a big wind.
She should’ve assumed she was in an enchanted place right away. It’s cringeworthy seeing Salem act like this. It wastes my time and it’s clear that the writer hates him. Then it’d be better to just see slapstick against him. Why did the kids ever believe her in the first place that there would be a storm any second when the skies weren’t covered in clouds? Why didn’t she just instantly skip to telling them to fix the boat? Somehow a bird landing on the ship makes it fall apart, and somehow only Harvey lectures them for giving up, and gives them a motivational speech to build a boat.
The bully wants to live on sense if he was in love with her. Those kids could’ve easily had the palm tree land on them. It’s impressive that all of them are getting the work done to build a ship when they’re all 12. But it makes sense that the stupid-looking kid can make a working engine because he’s supposed to be the stereotypical gadgeteer. I hate how long Salem’s talking for. It was instantly predictable that he was planning to ruin the “ engine idea. “ Why didn’t anyone hear him and stop him? Weren’t they close by?
The episode was already a blatant rip-off of Lord of the Flies, but it didn’t have to rip off Gilligan’s Island too! Eventually Sabrina finds out the engine was taken and she steps on a branch that sends the newt flying to punish him for having an annoying voice. Sabrina goes onto the jungle boat, and Gem’s been smartly having someone fan her with a giant leaf. She doesn’t have a reason to humor her. What good is money when you’re trapped on an island? She plans on staying on the island for good. She says she’s in control now. She was ALWAYS in control, that’s WHY she was fanning her!
Harvey warns Sabrina to stop admitting that her cat stole their propeller because they don’t believe her. Who else would have stolen it?! The kids wouldn’t have, they’d accuse each other if this is true! So she smartly agrees. The boat is rowed across the jungle river. And they see a pyramid with monkeys all over it. Slugloaf’s dialogue is stupid. Now I have time to say it’s completely forced that their field trip took them near the Bermuda Triangle. That would be really expensive and take forever. All of the kids end up caught in traps, including the bully. Sabrina asks them if they’re alright when she’d know they are.
Harvey tells her to go stop him alone, being smart and unusually self-sacrificial. Sabrina runs away from a giant rolling boulder and grabs a swinging vine to save herself. A cage lands around her in front of Salem. Why have the main character who’s a witch become a Damsel in Distress again? I guess the cages are made of such tough bamboo that it’s impossible for these kids to bend the bars into being broken. And some of them aren’t trying because they assume that. Harvey gets the cat in the bag, and pulls a lever to free Sabrina so she hugs him.
He says the monkeys freed them. We should’ve seen that instead of me just being distracted by wondering how the hell he got free when I could’ve enjoyed him being useful. It’s a Deus ex Machina that the bully was ever able to befriend those monkeys. I’m sure the monkeys would’ve just tried to attack and kill them all on sight, or at least avoided them. The boat starts going off on a trip in the ocean, and Sabrina decides to use magic to make it go to Italy, rather than go home like I always thought she wanted to do because they all missed their parents. She JUST said she’ll never try this again!
She realistically still wanted to have fun and not go to school. But she should know that her aunts would warp her to them as soon as they get worried from her not coming back, and it’ll be right in front of her mortal peers. But they could just blame demons so they wouldn’t know she’s a witch from that, so that would happen anyways.
It’s such a confusing ending at first, because this is a preachy show about teaching kids to become perfect, but it ends with her wanting to extend the amount of time that their parents would be missing them, and they would be missing school, risking being held back a grade when they come back. It is sadly in-character for Animated Sabrina because she agreed to skip school before.
And there’s really no reason that her time relaxing on a tropical island would make her WANT to do school work again. She never actually suffered there until Salem nearly got her killed, which could’ve very easily not happened, it wasn’t the natural result of her spell.
This episode is about Sabrina getting her whole class marooned on a field trip, because she didn’t like being expected to write a report on it, and this time since Sabrina spends most of her time relaxing on the beach, and everyone actually enjoys effortlessly building the boat at age 12, the conflict feels so minimal that it doesn’t feel like an episode dedicated to torturing Sabrina just out of sadism, especially since the conflict wasn’t that forced.
It was forced that rather than her simply running out of magic, a part of Earth exists where magic can’t be used, because the Witches’ Council would’ve cast a spell with every other witch if necessary to make that not the case anymore.
This being the case for the Bermuda Triangle was ripped off from the sitcom, where a cruise brought them to the island. But it made a lot more sense that they were near Bermuda on a cruise, while it’s bullshit that kids on a field trip would be near Bermuda. And if the ship was in America when it started sailing, it’d have to go insanely fast to reach the island.
So now I have to assume there was a Speed Force bubble around it to keep everyone from being flung off the boat from its speed. Or it could make sense because this is an alternate universe where the Bermuda Triangle is right next to America. Or the boat just went through a portal. Anyways they weren’t on the island long enough that the story felt like a punishment to Sabrina for giving her class a vacation, while selfishly ignoring the fact that the parents would think their kids died during this time. How would she not realize that? She should’ve been confronted with this as the real ending.
Salem could’ve easily not been poisoned into insanity, which was cringeworthy every second it ate up, and it happened to force an epic climax that ripped off Indiana Jones and petered out because Harvey had to save the main character because somehow the bully befriended monkeys, so they released him from a cage. You’d think it’d be Sabrina putting Salem in the bag, and Harvey serving as the distraction! But I’d rather have a forced exciting climax with variety than have the uneventful part of the episode drag on longer to fill out that space in the episode.
But once again this is another example of how the show made a mistake having each episode last over 18 minutes. They’d be better off having two stories per episodes to force them to cut the padding, because then we could just have a fully good story sometimes.
I’d say this was actually a good episode, because it really felt like just a vacation for Sabrina and her class, so it wasn’t really magic that was demonized so much as it was the magical poison that made Salem go crazy that he wouldn’t have encountered if they were marooned anywhere ELSE. Magic just got them a beach party and a sense of accomplishment, and I loved that they got to earn escaping the island themselves. Considering what the ending was, I don’t know what the lesson was supposed to be.
It’s not that you need your parents because they took care of themselves perfectly fine, which makes Lord of the Flies look pathetically contrived because of COURSE they’d still act like themselves, not turn on each other and go insane. Of course, they weren’t here very long. But of course they’d simply ingest the island’s food and water and be fine! They would’ve had a problem if they missed school but they didn’t. And she’s getting a punishment for making parents worry about their kids, but it’s not gonna be what teaches her not to do this again, as the ending shows.
While the only lesson I can think of the episode having is that, “ You shouldn’t magically maroon your classmates to give them a beach party just to put off doing a school assignment, “ that lesson fails to be taught because it’s clearly not guaranteed that Sabrina would’ve marooned herself on THIS island. Where did she and Chloe get the swimsuits? And she didn’t know the ship was going for the Bermuda Triangle, because she wasn’t told about its problem or where it was in relation to her.
If her aunts were responsible enough to give her this info, she still wouldn’t have had a map to tell her how close she was to the Bermuda Triangle. She could’ve avoided this by just zapping up an island, far away enough that nobody would see it from where the boat was. The only lesson is, “ Don’t go to the Bermuda Triangle or your witchcraft won’t work and your friend will go crazy, “ which is probably a useless lesson.
The lesson should be that she shouldn’t make the kids’ parents think they’ll never see them again because she’ll feel guilty when she comes home, but that’s not the lesson because we never see her reunite with her aunts. Whatever, it was mostly a lighthearted episode. It wasn’t creative though.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 57 Fish Schtick:
Sabrina tells Harvey he’s getting better at swimming and it’s revealed out of nowhere that SHE’S better at swimming, and Harvey says it’s been his dream to become a lifeguard since he watched Baywatch. He says they can eat a lot of junk food and Chloe happily says alright and they all hi-five. Hilda snarks about homework and a bunch of books get summoned to bury her, because it’s Cliché Week, an outright WEEK because this is a long drawn-out TV show instead of the 90s comic this rips off. Why did Zelda STILL say an idiom if she was just told it was Cliché Week, because of a planetary alignment?
She gets turned into a monkey and somehow Sabrina also says an idiom when she should know it’ll change how she looks. Then something heavy lands on Salem. There’s NO REASON that Sabrina would not use magic to return the way she looks to normal! Why wouldn’t her aunts do that?! Why won’t they do whatever it takes to return her to normal before sending her to school? Not everyone’s as gullible as Harvey! And Harvey buys it when she says it’s face cream that’s wrong with her face, or he’s humoring her.
Sabrina looks normal NOW so that’s weird, and Chloe and her plan to watch Harvey swimming in the gym. Chloe apparently thinks Baywatch sucks because he would’ve watched it for nothing if he failed this test. Slugloaf cut Harvey’s rope so Sabrina magically makes the little kid go across the surface of the pool really fast. Someone tells Harvey he did a great toss. Then Harvey tries CPR on a dummy. Why does Slugloaf care so much about being a junior lifeguard? Sabrina again out LOUD says that Slugloaf’s sabotaging Harvey. So why doesn’t an adult supervising this do something about it?
Sabrina uses magic to bring a dummy to life and make it walk around. I don’t remember there being tryouts for lifeguard duty in my schools. Aren’t they young? A tsunami sneaks up on Harvey. Then he swims over to a little kid who somehow wasted time trying out for the lifeguard job. And Sabrina uses magic to prevent the tsunami from putting him under, and Slugloaf uses the lever to create a big whirlpool, so Sabrina uses magic, the lever is pulled, and a water spout sends Harvey out of it. So Harvey gets to be a lifeguard for the school pool.
Sabrina cleverly lies there’s a 10 for 1 shoe sale to trick Gem and her friends into leaving Harvey alone. Harvey calls Sabrina the best diver he ever saw. Harvey steals Sabrina’s towel so that a girl won’t catch a chill. It seems like for once he’s acting like the 70s Harvey. Sabrina gets jealous of the pretty girl saying she thinks she can dive, so she plans to do a ridiculously high dive. If nobody does that but there’s still a way to do it in a kids’ school, then logically it wouldn’t be guaranteed to be dangerous.
Sabrina just clutches onto the diving board and had to be carried away instead of simply letting go for some reason, because she was too afraid to go diving. I guess because she’s a novice witch it makes sense that she can’t cast an invisibility spell. She was too scared to think of a poem that would make that happen. She goes home too embarrassed to talk about what happened and again Hilda says an idiom for no reason. It’s not like Cliché Week magically forces witches to say idioms, because Sabrina hasn’t been saying idioms in every scene.
And you’d think that’d be happening to her instead of her experienced centuries-old aunts. Chloe puts her hand on Sabrina’s shoulder and tries to reassure Sabrina about her jealousy except not really, and tells her to get to know her competition for Harvey. It’s just not a likable protagonist if she’s always ignoring the advice of her friends. Sabrina complains to Salem that she can only become better at swimming than her by swimming like a fish. There’s no way in hell that one, Salem would know she would’ve said, “ swim like a fish. “ Who’d say her line?! It was so stilted.
And two, why did she say that after being reminded a second ago that it’s Cliché Week?! Salem’s thankfully written to explain that you can’t undo a spell caused by Cliché Week during that week, even if that is arbitrary bullshit for a lazy plot. Speaking of that why is she being trapped in this fish body for longer just because of jealousy? The only reason it would be a part of the plot would be that it was stolen from the 90s comic. I wish I knew for sure if this writer intentionally stole this story from the 90s comic, which also had this happen to Sabrina for the same exact reason.
I’m pretty sure it even had the exact same title as this episode. Sabrina goes through an experience she wishes she could forget in a bathroom as the story decides to drag on in a part of the plot that feels SO arbitrary and forced, that I can’t remember why it’s happening. Salem leaves Sabrina alone to jump on tables in the mall and eat from them, and then Sabrina’s bowl isn’t where he left it because the mall security cop didn’t mind his own business, and arbitrarily dumped her into the fountain she somehow jumped out of, which has a big scary fish. What was he thinking?
Why does a mall fountain have a fish with teeth? Sabrina has to swim through a fence full of holes to escape it, and then she gets nearly sent over a waterfall. Predictably she does go over a waterfall because it’s a lazy cartoon, and Salem runs into the shopping aunts and warns them of what happened. What is the point of this plot if it’s just gonna steal from a comic book? It even results in the aunts going to a bridge outside to try to save Sabrina. The aunts transform into submarines underwater. How’d Sabrina get a shark fin hat?
A giant clam shows up on the surface of the ocean so everyone on Harvey’s beach runs away from it and the clam is Salem. This happened because somehow he said if he could find Sabrina he’d be happy as a clam. So there’s a loophole where he can still use magic despite not having it anymore until next episode. Hilda says if you make a magic wish out of jealousy you have to either let it run its course, or the one you’re in love with needs to kiss you. Again it plagiarizes the 90s comic! Harvey would hear Salem a few feet in front of him.
He might not be able to make out his actual words but he’d know he’s talking. Again, the only reason Harvey would actually kiss a fish instead of just accusing them of pulling a prank on him like it looks like, is that he’s either been brainwashed or is vulnerable to peer pressure. And he’s not vulnerable to it, because he makes an excuse not to, even though he’s told that the fish will die, and he even offers to buy a new fish. Zelda says she’ll get the help of a senior lifeguard because this is too much for him, so Harvey kisses her back to normal.
I liked it better in the 90s comic where he didn’t make so many excuses not to because he wasn’t as much of a jerk there. Why didn’t he faint like in the 90s comic? Why did he JUST act worried instead of freaking out like a real person? This would only make sense if he already knew the family were witches! He doesn’t say that he thought he was dreaming or hallucinating the whole thing! Sabrina thanks him and says he’s her hero.
He says something nice to Sabrina to make her feel better and thank him and says he was only helping out that pretty girl, which is more in-character for THIS Harvey. And why would Salem say an idiom at the end? You’d think an episode about Cliché Day would’ve had a lot more focus on it.
This episode is plagiarizing the 90s comic about Cliché Day AND the other 90s comic about Sabrina getting turned into a fish by her jealousy which somehow can’t be reversed, unless Harvey kisses her, when it’s not fair to punish someone for jealousy because they can’t help it! I think that comic even has the same name as this episode! There are differences from those plots but I don’t care about them. This plot is boring and forced. The fact that it takes place in a mall later makes it make even less sense. At least it doesn’t demonize magic outright and instead jealousy.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 58 Witchmas Carole:
Chloe asks her friends if they’re coming to her party which is weird since I’d think she’d simply give them invitations. Nothing I care about happens until Sabrina donates to a charity Santa and asks Chloe what they should buy. They get splashed with snow by a limo. Sabrina says she heard what Gem’s mom said, that the money was actually for charity. Why would she trust Gem to donate the money? I hate sadistic writing embarrassing her for no reason! The story keeps dragging on until Sabrina tells her aunts she’ll teach Gem a lesson she’ll never forget for being selfish.
Hilda says Sabrina could send her to the North Pole in a bikini, and Zelda cheerfully chips in, and Sabrina isn’t horrified and instead says it’s not Christmasy enough, being totally relaxed in response to that horror. It’s pretty confusing that they’re ALL being portrayed as evil instead of Sabrina being the one not evil one. She sees a commercial and gets the cliché idea to rip off A Christmas Carol to try scaring Gem into being nice… because she thinks she’s too good for brainwashing. Quigley lectures her even though he didn’t care about Hilda’s idea and why is that written if she’s gonna do it anyways?
He could’ve not been in the room! I like that she had the courage to tell him to let the witches handle this. Why does he let the witches do anything when he’s always ordering them around and they always take it seriously when he grounds them? He would’ve just grounded her to prevent the plot. Dust couldn’t cause Salem’s head to replace Gem’s doorknob, she must just be mocking him when she asks who forgot to dust it! For her to only have the reaction where she asks what’s going on here, she has to remember magic.
She could’ve meant “ who forgot to dust it with anti-magic stuff I stole, “ as that’d prevent HIM, and explain her fearlessness. Salem’s head tells Gem she’ll be visited by the ghosts of Christmas. He says he’s none of the ghosts and she’s amazingly brave because she just casually points out that he said there were 3 ghosts, and yet he’s supposedly a ghost. She’d recognize him, she lived with Sabrina once. She HAS to be playing dumb for this not to be trash. How is she so brave? Is this remembering that she found out witchcraft exists because the Eiffel Tower turned into a kid?
She would’ve instantly recognized the voices of Sabrina and Hilda, since she was awake enough to move. Why did she take so long to ask her who she is and what she’s doing in her room? She lived with her once, she’d recognize her! Her mouth gets muffled. I think this story’s gonna be about torturing Gem so I’m actually willing to listen to her dialogue in this episode. Hilda shows Gem a little kid on a mall Santa reading a list to the Santa.
He tells the boy to let the other kids have a turn, and he cries and the mall Santa agrees to give him a lollipop, and the boy says more and gets candy canes thrown at him but cries again. Then he gets handed a whole basket of candy and Gem learns from that. I doubt this would actually happen. So we see her in a pile of gifts with servants handing her gifts after she says more. But if the gifts were already in her mansion, and it only took a few seconds for the servants to get her them, then why the hell did the story pretend that she would only get the gifts if she said, “ More? “
It’d be a waste of money to not give her them at that point! Gem only cries because the kid her was taking a valuable vintage toy out of its box. It’s not like she’s a comic collector! It’s lampshaded that Zelda’s sheet isn’t even white. Gem would hear this, she just moved! Again why doesn’t Gem act like she can hear Sabrina’s whole family talking beside her? She was JUST woken up seconds ago. I always thought this story would happen because her dreams were being altered! Gem says those are her mother’s sheets. She wouldn’t care because she hates her mom.
I have to assume Zelda is using these sheets instead of white ones because she just doesn’t give a shit since she knows Gem is fearless by now, despite all of the times in the show where she was easily made to scream. Gem gets shown a show she loves. She’s asked what about her parents. Her parents always go to Guam without her for the holidays, and they didn’t want Gem to hear them leave. Gem unrealistically just looks bored with her arms behind her head instead of sad.
Well it could be realistic because she has no reason to care about them so she wouldn’t see it as a big loss that she doesn’t get more time with these jerks. She’s shown a kid being happy he got a gift from Chloe. How is he bothering to wear a big sweater? Gem says she’s supposed to feel bad she wasn’t invited to a cheap party without food.
She asks why Chloe’s dad is wearing a Santa suit, because apparently Chloe’s family celebrates Kwanza stereotypically. This is the first I’m ever hearing of this stereotype. Chloe must have said that around Gem or how’d she know? It’s not like Chloe speaks with a Jamaican accent the whole show after all, sadly. She’s told Santa is about giving. No one wants to buy Gem gifts. It’s cheesy that Chloe sings. Harvey sings that Gem got given a new personality.
Gem says excellent because they’re so jealous of her that they have to make songs about her. What is the point of this episode if it’s not gonna actually make her feel bad and she’s unrealistically not intimidated of magic at all? She recognizes Sabrina when she falls over in the cloak because she’s so incompetent. She keeps speaking in a silly voice and uses magic asking if Sabrina can do this. Why does Gem say I’m gonna say no to that one?
But if she never believed for a second she wasn’t Sabrina anyways, it’d make sense for her to not admit that she knows Sabrina’s a witch if she knows she’ll get her memory of magic wiped. Gem’s shown the future where she’s a CEO and Sabrina wants to tell her Harvey lost money on his photography exhibit, so she wants him to get a job in her company, assembling space shuttles or something. Too bad the show can’t decide on what kinda job Harvey’s gonna get, like the sitcom did. Gem tells a guard to get Sabrina out of here.
She’s told off that it’s Christmas and she falls down a tube. Gem might have been justified though. We have no idea if Harvey was unqualified for one of the jobs at the company. And what Sabrina said was a pretty big ask! Sabrina was asking her to engage in nepotism! Sabrina warps with her and Gem gets shown herself cryogenically frozen and says it’s cool. She picks up a visitor’s book with a blank guest register. Gem’s nanny goes up to the tube and kicks it. Logically she would’ve broken her foot or at least hurt it and screamed. I have to assume she had a metal cyborg foot.
And Gem unrealistically doesn’t care about that and walks up to the doors to make them automatically open even though she’s an undetectable ghost, and only cares about treasure. If she’s attached enough to her nanny to say “ Nanny! “ when she sees her, why doesn’t it hurt her feelings that she doesn’t care about her? She COULD think this is FAKE. Also since her nanny is older than her, you’d think the nanny would’ve been dead by this point. Doesn’t it concern her at all that apparently Gem grows up to hate her own life to the point where she freezes herself long before her nanny dies of old age?
She wasn’t as old as her nanny, but her nanny acted like she was only free of her AFTER she froze herself! Either Gem was sick or depressed, she wasn’t old if Sabrina and her friends aren’t! Quigley says Sabrina failed because she wanted this so bad. HUH? So he thinks if you want something desperately you’re guaranteed to be disappointed every time. He lectures her that she wanted to change her for herself. Sabrina wanted to give Gem the gift of a new outlook just to save face. This comes out of complete nowhere. It would for 70s Sabrina who’s really good.
What makes him think that she doesn’t wanna change her for the greater good, just because she ALSO wants to save face? That’s not mutually exclusive! He tells her to go to Gem’s door with him. I love that she calls Quigley, “ Sabrina Spellman and an old fat guy! My holiday is complete. “ She’d know Quigley, she lived with them once. Sabrina invites Gem to her party and hands her a gem. Gem laughs saying sucker and slams the door. Quigley somehow believes that’s gonna work when Gem showed no sign of empathy or wanting anyone to love her… as Sabrina would’ve told him!
She looks sad and sees a gold locket. Why would she have said happily, “ Nanny, “ if she didn’t love her and want her to love her back? And so she didn’t care that she hated her? Gem goes to Quigley’s house with her gifts to donate them to charity. All because the writer wants to flip flop on her character after a whole story of demonizing her as usual.
Wouldn’t she be scared that she’d be sent to boarding school for giving away the gifts that her parents got her? I guess she’s counting on them never noticing they were gone. Quigley ASSUMES she rewrapped them. I thought they were the gifts she got and she didn’t get a chance to open them first. Then Sabrina kindly lets Gem in and the story ends.
This story was a waste of time because while I thought it’d be about Gem suffering, she didn’t care one bit during any of it! I don’t know what this story wants because BEFORE Gem showed a heart for no reason it somehow had Gem not care when being the protagonist of A Christmas Carol. The only reason it’d make sense for the cowardly Gem to be totally unafraid of all of the magic going on, when she never said during all of it that she assumed she was dreaming, is if she remembers magic exists from when she heard that a kid used to be the Eiffel tower when spying on Sabrina and accused Sabrina.
She could’ve been made to forget but then she could’ve found out again anyways and smartly kept it to herself. Being away from Sabrina for a few hours could give her the time to realize that revealing she knows would make her erase her memory since everyone knows witches can do anything. I don’t really give a shit about canon, if the people in charge of it are writing HORRIBLY. I just care about what makes the most sense! It’s just too distracting how Gem’s attitude is.
If she’s the type to be sad that she’s all alone on Christmas and want to go to Sabrina’s party, why isn’t she sad that her parents and nanny hate her? The only value in this story is that it explains why Gem’s a materialistic brat when it doesn’t gel well with her also having strict uncaring parents. She saw someone else benefit from that behavior, and that IS realistic because Caillou caused kids to tantrum and talk in a whiny way because he benefited from it.
He’s threatened to send her to boarding school for much less, so why did she think she could get away with being a brat like this? In Sabrina’s Secret Life it’s explained that she DID get sent to boarding school! So what took so long? But yeah there is inherent value in explaining why she’s a brat. She saw someone else benefit from that behavior. And that is realistic because Caillou caused kids to tantrum and talk in a whiny way because he benefited from it.
And we do need to learn why she started being a brat, because with parents as strict as hers why would she get the courage to act like that without seeing someone else do it? And I only see her manipulate her servants, not the people who can actually threaten her. At least it doesn’t demonize magic, just portray it as a waste of time.
Sure is convenient for the story actually happening that Sabrina must have thought simply brainwashing Gem into being nice, would be too abhorrent, when she brainwashed Quigley, or better yet she was smart enough to know she’d hate the result of inevitably overdoing it when she knows how she really is. And she didn’t wanna risk changing her into a hippie. So what was supposed to be the moral of this episode? That you shouldn’t try to use your magic to make someone nicer? But with any other normal person this would’ve worked!
Or is it that, giving a gift to your domestic abuser and inviting them to a party will make them appreciate it, be nice to you and make them go to the party? This show has toxic morals when it comes to Gem. If it wasn’t gold, she wouldn’t have cared and only magic would give her that. This isn’t imitatable. Portraying her as a monster only makes it even more dangerous that you’re acting idealistic to her.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 59 Truth or Scare:
Quigley’s somehow driving a bus for kids to get them to a camp site, when he’s supposed to be trying to find alien signals for his career and he spends most of his time doing housework. But apparently this is like the old Archie comics where just about ANY adult can get a job as a camp counselor. At least Gem references that she has a paycheck ready for a kid, so she is doing good. The kids groan because of Quigley and you’d think that’d cause him to not do what he’s gonna do next, because he’s not supposed to be sadistic.
He’s shown to be a LOT but I just don’t wanna accept that because I already can’t stand him! Then they groan because he plans to sing a song but he does so anyways because he’s a sociopath. Gem snarks sarcastically that he’s so cool. It’s unrealistic that Sabrina wouldn’t be embarrassed by Quigley. Why is he in this story? She somehow took until recently to notice how heavy her backpack was on one side because of Salem. She tells Salem to get out of her sight but doesn’t warp him home! I hate the sound of this stupid kid’s voice.
He ends up in a hole and Sabrina says she’d pull a prank if she felt like it but is better than that. No she isn’t. Gem dares her and Harvey tells her not to but Sabrina agrees because she’s no better than Harvey the easily dared. The story gets boring showing the kids running with nothing else happening. Salem’s adult voice would instantly get the attention of everyone. He mocks her that she’ll do anything Gem tells her to. He pranked him before, who is he to lecture her?!
He says he never should’ve dared the Witches’ Council to turn him into a cat… Why would you make the foundation even worse, by making it so that it could have easily not happened? Out of nowhere he bitches that he has no opposable thumbs when he never acts like he’s restricted by that in the Animated Series. He played video games in one episode. Why does the squirrel in the tree have a guitar? He must be a transformed warlock, especially since he vanishes.
He can still play a guitar anyways, so apparently this was the first time he tried to in centuries, so why did he ever magically summon one offscreen with potion ingredients, the only way he’d ever get one? Quigley was freaked out by a rubber snake. Salem tells him it wasn’t a real snake, just a rubber one tied to him. Why, he pranked him once! And he freaks out from nearly falling and the tree branch breaks, and he lands on Salem which would realistically kill him. I assume he’s able to heal insanely fast because of witchcraft, since the Witches’ Council are unusually merciful. That’s why he wasn’t executed.
Why didn’t he run away to avoid this? Why is dust there? Why does the episode have the kind of padding where Salem daydreams about hippie stuff before being woken up? You don’t dream during a black-out. You could’ve restructured the episode to have padding somewhere else that made sense for the series, like slapstick or affection like Sabrina and Quigley show here. Salem says who knows why he was pranked and at least Sabrina doesn’t stupidly confess. Then why did she confess to something in an earlier episode?
I hate that she feels bad about pranking this awful character that makes her life miserable. She dares Gem to bike across a rotting log. Why does Gem waste time asking her what she said? Arbitrarily Harvey is the voice of reason, saying that one dare leads to another and asking when it’ll stop. How does this make sense? In an earlier episode, Sabrina acted like Harvey was an idiot for going along with dares, so this is Out of Character. Gem made the little kid do the dare instead of her. This is more in-character. At least Gem says she paid for the dare.
Then Harvey and Sabrina break out in spots and start itching. At least I can understand this being written because it’s to punish SABRINA for the eviller dare. But Harvey doesn’t deserve this in THIS episode. Then there’s no consequences because in the next scene they’re somehow free of red spots. I have to assume Sabrina zapped them away. Harvey wastes a bunch of time telling a scary story we see. There’s no value in seeing this. It’s such a cliché. Eventually Gem dares Sabrina to spend an hour in a mine.
Unless the mine has poisonous gas in it because we saw canaries in the Imagine Spot, why is she thinking that’s a scary dare? Somehow Harvey’s friend says that a double dare with a ridiculous name was outlawed. She says she’d live forever in shame if she didn’t do this. But she’d rather do the dare than erase her OWN memory. No one would repeat the huge name of the dare. She called Pi a good guy earlier. Eventually Sabrina tells Salem everyone’s scared of this cave because of a fear of ghosts.
Sabrina has every reason to think she’d be safe, she even says she’s a witch, and, she’s gonna tell Salem to stay with her. But then she’s scared anyways. And she said her closest relatives are ghosts! This is never good writing. She sees Harvey, who she should brainwash him into leaving, and he says this mine is unstable and when he leans on a mine cart it goes down an amusement park ride track, and Sabrina goes with him. He falls into another mine cart.
I guess the reason they’re screaming is that they all assume they’re gonna get led to their deaths just because this is an old unstable mine, even though it’s just like a rollercoaster ride that kids love. It would’ve been a safe dare without him! She’d have stayed put! And they somehow meet talking canaries. She somehow doesn’t question why these canaries are talking and wearing clothes. Salem just asks why they have bad fashion sense. This story has no respect for our intelligence. It doesn’t bother explaining that they’re former witches and these two never say they assumed that from the start.
Why does Sabrina not feel like warping them out of the mine right away? I don’t think she has to hide witchcraft from animals. And every time she uses magic around Harvey he says he was just dreaming so she can get away with it! If the floor was unstable enough to break under Salem, what took it so long? He holds onto a branch sticking out in an underground cave that somehow exists. Somehow she reaches her guitar down to pull him up instead of either one using magic. She thought to say she’s a witch, but forgets every time she’s in danger! This is all Quigley’s fault! Warp outside, moron!
Sabrina gets the message hammered in unnecessarily again, because the canaries are also here on a dare. Apparently they only pretended there was poison gas to make the miners run out of there screaming. Then they got trapped in it. How did they not starve or dehydrate? How’d they escape the cages? Sabrina somehow screams and acts helpless when she’s grabbed by monsters. Why doesn’t she use magic to instantly escape from it? How are there monsters here? Harvey somehow just asks her if this cave reminds her of pop culture and takes forever to notice she’s in danger.
He swings by her and grabs her to save her because somehow its grip on her loosened for no reason. They end up on a mine cart, and obviously he’d have heard Salem talking right beside him, how stupid does the writer think the audience is? The mine cart lands. Why is Quigley mad and not relieved?! And Harvey says he has the weirdest dream when he had no reason at all to think he was dreaming all of that. Clearly it wasn’t a dream because he ended up here. So he’d only say this as a half-assed attempt to make her think he never heard Salem talk and play the guitar.
The story ends with her being dared to tell Quigley what happened to her. The later episodes barely use Quigley for anything but making him suffer, as if the people behind the show know we hate him. He hasn’t been the focus in a while. So why didn’t they know to make him suffer a lot MORE? I’d rather he be the one in the mine instead of Sabrina.
This episode annoyingly hammers in the message against following dares which would’ve only worked if it was Harvey always doing the dares because that’s his character as of an earlier episode, while Sabrina was the one who disapproved of doing dares. And the show’s had Harvey be taught the moral before. So why would you do it again? She never uses magic so why do the episode?! So it’s a boring shitty Idiot Plot where Sabrina keeps doing dares to avoid her peers thinking she’s a coward her whole life, even though she was fine with brainwashing Quigley, so she would’ve just brainwashed them, not done the dare.
There was no real reason to have talking canaries in the plot. Why does she care when she thinks she sees Gem fall, she abuses magic on Gem! At least it doesn’t demonize magic. In fact she only suffers through the climax for NOT using magic.
But this kind of plot about dares being bad could be done in ANYTHING, and it only tries teaching the message by showing that you can suffer from the consequences of doing a dare, when you’d already know the consequences as you’re doing the dare, so that won’t stop you, as Gem shows, rather than simply telling you that it doesn’t matter if these jerks who will mock you for having the good sense not to do a dare look down on you, because you’re smarter than them.
Fear isn’t bad, it protects you. Gem showed that. It should’ve shown the other kids suffering from the consequences of ALSO doing dares to show that they’re all idiots anyways for thinking that you should always ignore fear. They should’ve gone to the mine. This story could’ve been good if it was about just people happily pranking Quigley. It’s sad when the show could’ve been better if it learned from Spongebob, because HE’S a lot more deserving than Squidward!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 60 Generation Hex:
Sabrina says all proceeds go to the library. I like that Quigley gets hurt so it’s too bad it’s offscreen. Sabrina does a car wash for a while. Why does no one question her super speed? It abandons logic just because she’s a cartoon character so the artist thinks her having super speed makes sense. But it’s needlessly confusing when she’s a witch. She also does a yard sale when go figure, it’s obvious that she could sell people magical artifacts. This would only not happen if she told her family that she’s gonna do the yard sale, so her family hid all the magical stuff.
Salem says he bought something off a pilgrim for a joke and if a witch taps it three times, she’ll lose her magic for a while. Somehow she even considers wearing it as an ankle bracelet after hearing that, when it’s so obvious her life is full of bad luck. This makes me assume she’ll lose her magic as a part of the plot. She could’ve zapped up a copy of it to wear as a bracelet instead. At least Gem EVENTUALLY decides to donate to the library to get a brownie after boring trash. But it’s Out of Character after she refused to donate before. She wouldn’t forget what a library is called! She’s pretending!
She gives chocolate to her dog, which is toxic to dogs! Sabrina looks forward to giving the library money, so I wonder if she’ll lose it all. Why is Pi wasting a ton of my time with very boring dialogue? Sabrina’s friends look forward to futuristic transportation because of a magazine. I wonder how the episode’s gonna go? It’s so obvious that this is gonna get used again. What a waste of time! Then they admire a toy behind a window.
Sabrina shows bad chemistry with Harvey by saying it’s just a toy for no reason. Gee, I wonder if they won’t be able to get it? What’s the point of making the plot too predictable if it’s bad? It’s too expensive. There’s no way that the kids would waste time talking to the store owner for so long after they’re told it’s 200 bucks! They’d just immediately leave! The plot wouldn’t happen! What an agonizingly boring blatant waste of time episode! They’d have left by now even if not immediately. If the writer doesn’t wanna write Sabrina stories, he shouldn’t have taken the job!
Why does Sabrina say she wants that doll and offer more than 200 for it? Why does she buy the doll with the library money when she doesn’t even like the franchise it’s associated with, just because Gem wanted the doll? She could’ve brainwashed the guy into not taking Gem’s money. She could’ve cast a spell after she bought it to make sure she’d never get it, or better yet curse the doll! It’s insultingly Out of Character that she bought something with charity money. She says it’s extra money anyways. At least she TRIED, but her friends get mad and walk away from her. The writer hates Sabrina.
Then the story wastes time again. Sabrina pulls a white curtain and then looks sad, and Quigley tells her he’s proud of her for doing a wonderful thing for the whole town, because she STILL had enough money to give to the library after she spent some of it. It’s disrespectful that EVERY time he says he’s proud of her, it’s because he doesn’t know any better.
Then she gets scared by a lightning storm and an inexplicably talking toy with a creepy voice says it’s Sabrina go boom boom time. What ridiculous dialogue for a supposedly scary scene. They think they have to downplay this scary tone. How about not even try because it’s supposed to be a comedy? Is she dreaming? This is her conscience brought to life. Why hasn’t this happened a lot more often? She smartly relaxes because her conscience wouldn’t hurt her. She’s lectured and says she worked hard to earn that extra money. She says he’s alive thanks to her, so yes he should be grateful. She has good points.
Why doesn’t she instead get told that she could’ve created gold and sold it to earn money to replace what she spent right away? Then it wouldn’t have mattered! After all she must have used magic to create the gold locket because her family isn’t rich, and if that was a family heirloom, you’d think it would’ve had magic in it, and so they wouldn’t have given it to her. She wakes up seeing that her house looks awful and the toy tells her Quigley did this. He’d have Googled the info he needed. The library had nothing to do with this.
She’s told she’s 40 years into the future. Why doesn’t she instantly return to her old life just by pointing? I wouldn’t have put up with that! She can go see what it’s like in the future ANY TIME and clearly she won’t have any fun if she goes along with this guy trying to guilt-trip her. I might as well just sum up everything good in this future sequence with one sentence; it’s good that it shows off futuristic technology. If it doesn’t do it in an interesting non-cliché way, then I’m not even gonna have THAT. It’s all a boring waste of time.
Sabrina reminds Pi about his ideas for transportation. He didn’t make any of them come true because the library didn’t have the money for updated reading material to help him out, when OBVIOUSLY he could’ve used the internet to find out more about transportation. Besides he would have been able to go to college! He wouldn’t talk like this. “ Couldn’t find no books… “ Sabrina should obviously at least lie that she learned her lesson to instantly end the sequence. He’s very gullible in that regard if he’s doing this.
I thought Gem would lie that she learned her lesson in the Christmas Carol as soon as she started crying, because that’d be smart… and show off her manipulative side. Just talking makes a boring episode. The story should’ve ended HERE so the episode doesn’t deserve to be described until this sequence is over as it’s just repetitive. Google would’ve solved Harvey’s problem too. Salem looked at Sabrina saying he didn’t recognize her. He wouldn’t look older, he’s a warlock sentenced to this form for centuries. He says this is his first job in years – how did he get hired?
Why did Sabrina think that he’d have gotten his human body back by now? Thanks to Sabrina he shit in a sand trap in the Witches’ Council’s favorite golf course. Sabrina would not be responsible for that. Witches would zap up kitty litter. And why’d he go HERE? He could go anywhere! Pathetic guilt trip. She definitely would’ve just warped him to a bathroom.
And somehow the real Sabrina’s gone. Why was she told that if it turned out she became rich and relies on robots and no one can see her without an appointment? Salem wouldn’t lie. You could stop watching at this point and skip to the end and miss nothing good because it’s tedious from this point on.
Sabrina got an appointment by telling her that she knows the two of them are half-witches. Her old self would not talk like a stereotypical villain. She wouldn’t say she sold over her powers as part of a corporate merger that was somehow LEGALLY classified. Supposedly she ended up like this because she learned that she could get away with cheating and frauding because she got away with the first thing. She’s gotten away with PLENTY of evil things before that! Wouldn’t that mean she was doomed to end up like this ANYWAYS? But this ONE evil thing drove her over the edge?
This story would only be salvageable if it was explained that all of this was a fake vision of the future to manipulate Sabrina and the conscience doesn’t think it’s okay to outright brainwash her. Gem warps here because she got her powers. Somehow she just says Sabrina reminds her of someone. And somehow the old Sabrina holds her and hopes she likes her. Sabrina would never admit that. Gem must have made her ugly. Gem says she hated her because of jealousy. She’d be jealous of everyone, not just her. Sabrina calls Gem icky and asks her why she’d wanna be like Gem.
Guards get summoned to grab her and Gem always knew who Sabrina was so why didn’t she just be honest in the first place? She wants to steal her magic. How would she not be satisfied with the magic she already has? How are there any limitations to what she can do? Such lazy writing. Why didn’t Sabrina warp away from her much earlier? She touches her artifact three times to stop Gem. Wouldn’t the magic still be in the artifact? Because that’s the only way she’d ever get a chance to get her magic back!
Then the robot dogs pull Salem into the room after they somehow knocked over doors offscreen to let him get to Sabrina. Sonic Underground didn’t do stuff offscreen this much! This has my least favorite animation! Salem could’ve arrived earlier, and the artifact wouldn’t even be necessary! Salem saved her because she told him something only Sabrina would know. He says she’s gotta jump and she falls through the roof somehow into her bed where her life is back to normal. She’d be dead.
She pets him and he likes it… but I can’t help but be creeped out a how long it goes on as an adult because he used to be a human. He also says, “ Me likey, “ to make it worse. Sabrina decides to get back the money for the library, which forces her to listen to Gem for too long. Somehow it never occurs to her tiny brain to just zap up gold to sell, and give the money to the library. He lies to barely refund her. I doubt it’d devalue by $125 in a day. Also she says it used to be a hundred dollars more than it actually was and isn’t corrected because I guess the shopkeeper forgot or didn’t forgot.
This episode forces Sabrina to act Out of Character by buying something with charity money so that she could get lectured in a future where her friends all hate their jobs, just because she didn’t give her library the money, even though they don’t NEED the library because the internet exists, and college exists! This would only make sense if the future was just made up, to guilt her.
It’s boring. It’s pointless because what kid would ever need this lesson? Not one that’d listen to this, especially since, she bought something, with extra money! And it never needed her to be a witch because the future could’ve been just a dream, and she never uses magic.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 61 Working Witches:
Somehow the aunts walk home, and Hilda says she can’t believe they “ have to “ carry everything home, even though they could warp home. I assume they think they have to do this because Quigley told them to but he wasn’t watching! Zelda falls over and Hilda makes her bags levitate. See, if they think they can get away with using magic on them, they REALLY have no excuse for not warping home! People always assume that magic is a hallucination anyways! Hilda’s an asshole making Zelda carry them all and Zelda’s an impossible doormat, even though she feuds with Hilda a lot in this show.
They want a car and Hilda sits on the eggs. But again the slapstick sucks because we don’t see it. Quigley says he’ll only let them have a car if they buy it. They freak out rather than realizing that they could sell gold, and get the money for it, or sell antiques of theirs and get the money for it. Instead they don’t realize that, and say their allowances are too cheap. I hate that these WITCHES are reliant on a MORTAL for allowances that they aren’t related to! I assume they have a family car and they’re just asking for their OWN personal car. Is nobody gonna remind them that Hilda can’t drive well? Guess she got better.
Salem hangs up on Sabrina’s phone call and turns on the radio. Someone says he’s looking for someone who knows an answer. Salem says they finally asked a question he knows and answers it eventually. How did he know the answer, the pancreas of a pig? He does know he’d have to hope Quigley picks up the chocolates, pretending to be him right? Why does Salem lie that his name is Sabrina when it’s obvious he has a male voice? “ Salem! “ He’d hear her, and the real Sabrina would be fine with helping! There’s no reason Quigley would refuse to pick up what he won!
She would know what’s wrong! They asked him to claim it! The phone call guy at least says “ you have a deep voice. “ He’d have heard Salem’s request to Sabrina, does he not care? To be fair, I know there’s a realistic explanation for why he’d take his word for it that he’s a girl. It’s too late to magically voice-change and he’s blatantly lying! There’s so much padding this episode. Quigley asks the aunts why they won’t get jobs. They laugh and Zelda asks him happily if he thinks they won’t work? They used to have jobs.
They were responsible for making the Trojan horse, and Hilda once smacked a ship with a bottle and somehow everyone cheered when they’d all see the giant hole that somehow got created by it. They were in front of the hole. Hilda caused the sinking of the Titanic. How dare the show write that! Why make the characters ridiculous comedy relief? It’s not cathartic because it’s usually Quigley mistreating Sabrina. Someone throws them out for being physically teens. Again, why is someone pushing them out? Why do people keep slamming the doors on them instantly?
Obviously they look like adults. 600 years old and no good resumes! And this is exaggerated. They end up getting jobs after all, working for a guy who somehow talks the way he does. Somehow one of the rules is no reading and that applies to reading the rules, just like Robotnik. Sabrina gets carried by people for being the winner. Why is no one reacting to Salem talking for more than a few seconds? He clearly looked surprised. He ONLY reacts to her muffling him! How does the guy who thinks he was hallucinating cheerfully start smiling after this?
Why are they gonna make someone a star for supposedly guessing the right answer? That doesn’t explain it, that he’s their millionth winner. What a waste of money. Eventually the aunts are told to wash things. Zelda would know what they’re expected to do when they’re in front of dirty things! Zelda says they can’t do a spell here because if they’re caught, it’s off with their heads, and “ worse, “ they could lose their jobs. Her saying this would only make sense if she thought witches could survive that, which would only be possible if they had an Operation Phoenix.
Why doesn’t she just say, “ It’s pretty likely that there’s a camera recording this room! “ Why were they able to mistake a rat for a sponge? Why did the show not actually SHOW Hilda using magic to clean things faster? I shouldn’t have to explain magic’s the whole reason people watch this show! You’d think that her magic would’ve been caught on a security camera that’s there to catch crime, and the person seeing it would’ve been able to rewind it as much as possible to see that he didn’t imagine it.
Zelda was crawling through a dark place with a light on her hat somehow and she glares at Hilda for being treated well by the boss because she’s petty. Eventually Quigley says there’s also the cost of gas, and other stuff. This tells them that they’d have to keep the jobs to get the car. Why don’t they ever realize they could just zap up gold and sell it to get money?
The whole episode would only happen if they figured that Quigley would get rid of or destroy their car if they bought it with money gotten from magic. And he would also do that, if they bought it with stuff that they’d only have because of how long they’ve been alive. Hilda gets promoted even though Zelda did all the work again. Nothing that happened in their scene was memorable. It’s just too boring to have no magic for a long period of time. It turns out all of the ten thousand CDs are the same and they all suck, somehow. When Salem brags that no one could take the camera away from him, Harvey steals it.
He’d have heard Salem if he’s that close. At least he does give it back to Sabrina after he says they could go skateboard. Or rather he wants her taping him. Why didn’t Harvey care a cat was holding the camera? Sabrina has to lie to Harvey that it is her camcorder because a cat winning a contest would be silly, so she has to bring the camera with her. This would only be written if she was going to break it, or if there was not enough stuff in the episode. Salem could’ve easily told her to magically make it unbreakable because he usually doesn’t trust her anyways.
Nothing interesting happens until Zelda says Hilda used to be her best friend. I never got that impression with them doing almost nothing but abusing magic on each other or bickering. But this is the flimsy excuse for why they’re even working together. What’s Salem complaining about? She HAD to lie. Zelda wouldn’t say Hilda was taking out garbage when holding a bag with a money sign. Hilda unnecessarily brags that she’s making more money in front of her witch sister. She somehow doesn’t care at Zelda incinerating her coins.
I always liked that the aunts got a job at a restaurant themed off a Renaissance fair because it takes advantage of how old they are. Hilda’s left in charge and arbitrarily Sabrina videotapes her aunts being catty to each other. I assumed that she would use this footage against them, but it’s completely pointless. They don’t even do anything about the tape. Zelda quits and pushes Hilda. Why did Sabrina let go of the camera? She somehow was fast enough to catch it before it hit the floor. Zelda turns into a decoration to hang on the wall to watch Hilda do all the work alone.
Why doesn’t Hilda just create a person to do whatever she says instead of trying to do all the boring work alone? Salem’s immune to chocolate? How nice of the Council! She acts bossy and rude. Why was the excess grill grease kept in a cup? Why is Hilda telling a kid to chew with his mouth closed? It’s common sense to be nice to the customers. This is just cringe comedy forcing Hilda to act like a crazy person. If she was like this in the sitcom she wouldn’t have kept her job as a restaurant manager. A school bus full of kids run into this restaurant for no reason. I wish I had field trips like THIS.
Hilda was the owner of a coffee shop in the sitcom and she managed that perfectly fine. Sabrina screams and says she can’t let people see her like that. Harvey would hear her say a spell. I wonder if the spell will somehow backfire. It does, the guy pulls the curtain and they see Salem behind him because she somehow forgot she was covering for Salem, and she said to make the winner look good, somehow.
Why would she have said a spell instead of just pointing while imagining a photo of herself, when her summoning stuff just by pointing always works, when the writing is good? And when it DOESN’T work it’s never implied to be because she didn’t say a spell. Why didn’t Hilda use magic to put condiments on all of the hot dogs at once? Hilda slips too slowly to be funny and admits she was wrong and she needs Zelda. She helps her up and sweetly says “ Apology accepted, sis. “ Zelda eventually tells the audience to carry out a sing along which gets them to run out of here screaming.
It was obvious their boss would want them to stay so he could make money off them! I know she might want them to leave so Hilda wouldn’t have to deal with all of these customers, but their boss could be back any second! Zelda says Hilda was being a good manager even though she wasn’t. She and her sister both try to take the credit for something bad, and the boss demotes them to being the people wearing a horse costume for catching kids.
Am I supposed to be happy because it’s punishing them for being petty children with each other? I feel nothing with this, because they’re in a costume, not looking normal. I have to assume they were punished by their boss because the kids from the field trip weren’t still in the restaurant and he assumed they were gonna still be there.
In this boring episode it’s never explained why the aunts get boring jobs rather than zapping up gold lockets to sell or selling their antiques, since they can zap up replacements for them, or simply creating the car in the first place, when they’d know they could use magic on Quigley if he ever drove away with their new car and hid it to punish them for using magic to get it. Even TV Tropes points out at one point that they could blast Quigley!
They only wanted the car to not need to walk home with the groceries every day, but if they think they can get away with levitating them, then they would’ve just warped home, and it’s not explained that Zelda can’t drive well so it always makes Quigley look selfish for never simply letting them drive with HIS CAR, at least saying that only Zelda’s allowed to drive it.
I was looking forward to this episode because I loved the idea of Zelda having a job in the comic! But it’s too boring to have them have normal jobs after all this waiting for it and it’s too late to give them jobs, because by this point I started thinking of them as just selling the valuables in their house for money. What’s the point of the episode if they won’t have jobs in the next episodes? Even the sitcom did that.
The episode felt pointless the whole way through because it was forgettable when magic was used, and it was almost never needed, and everything that happened was mundane, despite Sabrina having to take credit for her cat winning prizes.
And it’s unrealistic that she’d get tons of media attention and have to be in front of a crowd a few times just because Salem answered a question over the phone. It goes to show me how horrible this show is that the plots with no focus on magic, are still better than the ones with magic, because they’re that bad at trying to write actual Sabrina stories, so they’re better off not even trying, as then they’re just boring instead of enraging and preachy.
Sabrina’s plot was pointless. And the guy over the phone wouldn’t be fooled by Salem saying that he has a frog in his throat to make him sound masculine. So I assume the lesson of the episode was not for Sabrina, but for her sisters, to tell us to get along with your sibling, especially in the very unlikely situation where you’ll be working in the same place as her. Imagine, they could’ve avoided their entire sub-plot by getting jobs in different workplaces. What are the chances that they would have two open positions in one building at the same time?
The flimsy excuse for this is that, they think of each other as best friends, but that’s an Idiot Ball because they’re always feuding. They should’ve had the common sense to realize that they wouldn’t get along. So the moral of the story is, don’t do what Hilda did, or your sibling will get back at you. So it kinda WAS about magic being demonized because I think the reason Hilda got promoted was because she used magic to clean a whole room. But they were BOTH in charge of their room so wouldn’t the boss have been impressed with Zelda too?
I’m pretty sure this plot would have happened even if she WASN’T using magic. The fact that they’re teenagers really drags down the episode, because if they were adults we could have seen them get a job, that reflected who they are, like in the sitcom! Instead they’re stuck with getting jobs that any teenagers could get!
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 62 Wiccan of The Sea
The writer probably doesn’t have the guts to actually reference the religion of Wicca in this show. After the story wastes my time with blatant padding, the story doesn’t stop being boring torture with nothing interesting about it, besides Gem’s niceness, until Sabrina gets instantly told by her aunt to shovel the walk with a digging shovel as soon as he gets home.
Why didn’t she zap away the snow instead of being a psychopath? What are the chances that there’d be mortals outside besides Chloe, until Sabrina got home? And even then every mortal just assumes they’re dreaming when they see magic so she could get away with it. She must be insanely selfish if, the idea of wasting magic when she could just get her to do it is that tempting to her.
Chloe surprisingly goes inside even though she just said she’d help her for no reason. Sabrina shovels and then somehow closing the door causes a bunch of other snow to fall. Why doesn’t SHE zap away the snow when there’s no one there to witness them? Why didn’t Chloe tell her to do that? She goes on for too long about how she hates winter. Hilda did it. Why is she even considering using Spookie when obviously she knows she can warp without trusting a traitor?
This show is literally the worst show I ever saw, I’ve never seen a show so boring that I kept wanting to skip ahead in it because I knew I would miss nothing. Why is there a stipulation where they have to leave this beach in an hour or they won’t be able to get home? They trip, and find out they’re mermaids. They’d have always felt that now they have one “ leg. “ As usual I have to assume Spookie only did this because he’s sadistic because he would’ve known they didn’t want this.
And he had absolutely no reason to think he was morally justified in doing this, because, what was wrong about them hating winter? It’s not making her a better person! Why doesn’t Sabrina ever tell her aunts to get rid of Spookie because he’s obviously ruining her spells on purpose? Sabrina smartly looks on the bright side and it’s also smart of Chloe to agree that there could be worse things. The only reason there’d be a tidal wave over the island just about now is because of Spookie. How are they talking underwater without gurgling?
Sabrina lampshades that they’re talking underwater but the fact that they’re mermaids doesn’t explain the lack of gurgling. They didn’t expect this so they would’ve been trying to talk the normal way, not using telepathy. What is the point of this story? To teach you a lesson that you’re evil if you want a break from winter? We don’t need a million stories teaching you not to trust a traitor. It’s so gutsy that the show actually shows us Salem eat a fish. Then why does it ever cut away from slapstick if it shows murder?
I don’t care about ANYTHING that goes on in this episode. The story encourages that attitude by having these ridiculous-looking creatures talk on Earth for no reason, so yeah Salem could’ve eaten a sentient being, and THEN having too long without the main characters onscreen. What got them all to the dark place, was just too forgettable. That’s how bad this story is, them being eaten by a giant fish was forgettable. How are they not being killed by stomach acid? This would only make sense if this was all a dream. How are they finding gold coins here?
And wouldn’t Spookie know that making them need to find something to get back home only creates the risk that they’ll never get home, and the aunts will kill him for getting Sabrina and Chloe separated from them? He could have very easily gotten them killed! He really is evil. Chloe tickles the inside of the fish so they end up getting out and getting caught in a net. It’s cool that she was useful but Sabrina could’ve done that.
Why isn’t it ever explained that Sabrina lost her powers as a mermaid? I have to assume that. And you might NOT because this would hardly be the only time Sabrina didn’t use magic to instantly end the plot. Chloe uses the seashell she had to cut through the net. This may be the first time she was necessary and useful. Too bad it could’ve easily been written that Sabrina had this seashell. And that’s why most of the times she was useful, just weren’t memorable to me. She’s never useful for a talent only she has. Any time she has a hobby, it’s something that she shares with Sabrina.
Then Chloe gets hailed a lot by fish on a throne because she saved the fish. She’s gonna be made an ambassador with no qualifications and barely any education. Since when do ambassadors get crowns? I don’t see it as in-character for the praise to instantly go to her head. It was like this in Witchy Girls too. So it’s more like I don’t want her to be like this. She says thanks. She tells Sabrina she can adore her too. If she actually wants to stay here, that makes it seem like she doesn’t care about her worrying parents. How are they all too stupid to realize that their parents are gonna be worried about them?
Then the story’s padded out with a horrible cheesy song… instead of entertaining content. Eventually they get faced with an evil giant jellyfish queen. She says they have to give her a gift and if she hates it, she’ll eat everything and take it all. Chloe wouldn’t think that seashell was a good gift. She’s desperate and it IS from the surface. It’s obvious that someone evil wouldn’t hold up to her end of the bargain anyways so they just started giving her gifts out of desperation. Sabrina says she’ll take her on and drive a seahorse, because it’s her only chance to get the hourglass back.
I’d like to see her run out of time so the aunts would have an excuse to beat Spookie with sticks and eventually warp Sabrina home. Seriously why does she think that won’t happen if she fails this? What’s she worried about? How does she keep forgetting her aunts are magical? The race is boring. She just goes ahead and then gets the hourglass. Sabrina says they’ve gotta get back to the island and the fish wanna help them. This whole story wouldn’t have been resolved if the fish couldn’t inexplicably talk. It’s like the writer wrote himself into a corner. It should’ve taken place in the Nether World.
Or the story could’ve been written that they had more time. The queen gets sent uncontrollably ahead towards a mountain, and why doesn’t she just leave to save herself? What’s the point of showing this if we won’t see her impact it? When they get dropped onto the palm tree they grab the leaves and get warped home. The queen lands in the fisherman’s ship and he says he’ll get rich. Yeah she would die because she wouldn’t be able to keep breathing. Okay, at least Spookie did get something very good to happen because he got somebody rich! That’s what’s great about witches!
The fisherman’s a horrible-looking character though. Sabrina, Chloe and Salem share a group hug. The writer forces Sabrina to say she’s happy to see winter’s day when nothing about her suffering would make her think winter is good. There’s also no way SALEM would end up hating tuna.
This boring waste of time was about Spookie somehow being trusted again and turning Sabrina and her friends into mermaids when they clearly only wanted a relaxing day at the beach in the summer, and Sabrina could just warp to Hawaii like her aunts did for her in the 70s comic. So again I have to just assume he did this out of sadism. There’s nothing evil about wanting a break from winter! So this proves he’s never been doing this to make her a good person! He could brainwash her into learning her lesson, instead of just, risking her getting killed!
Somehow this cliché-filled boring story causes Sabrina and Chloe to love winter instead of hate it, when if that was supposed to be the lesson, the way to teach it would be to show the positive things about WINTER. Instead the only real lesson here is, “ Don’t trust a traitor, “ and there’s no excuse for Spookie never getting karma! Looney Tunes is written better. The story’s too uninteresting and generic to be worth describing, WITH ALMOST NO MAGIC, and stealing the idea of Sabrina being a mermaid from a 90s comic with a different plot.
It would’ve been better if it DID have Wiccans which The Simpsons had. Why do I have to just assume Sabrina lost her magic when she was a mermaid, so that it makes sense that the story isn’t resolved instantly? The characters would’ve commented on it. How is it realistic that Chloe doesn’t tell Sabrina to use magic and Sabrina doesn’t think to, or they don’t ever explain that she must have lost her powers? I wonder how Spookie knows that something he puts her through won’t cross the line so much that he’ll get punished for it. He doesn’t, he just takes risks.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 63 Key to My Heart
Chloe finds their art museum tour lame. It’s a field trip that bores the audience as much as the kids so why show it? Harvey and Sabrina end up riding on a spinning art sculpture thanks to Harvey, because Sabrina was trying to get him down from there, and didn’t simply use magic to make him float over to her, and then tell him he hallucinated it? Why did Sabrina make it spin faster with magic instead of using magic to warp away from it, like she’s proven she can do in previous episodes? She’s cutting carrots later while explaining that it wasn’t her idea, it was Harvey’s and she just fell.
Quigley somehow doesn’t believe her. He bitches that she didn’t enjoy herself. She has the right not to! She’s right, the art object WASN’T important! And it belonged in an amusement park! Harvey should’ve had permission! Quigley says he decided not to punish her but instead enroll her in piano lessons. Sabrina screams no, I remember that she still had piano practice in an earlier episode, so apparently this takes place before it, and then a pickle somehow flies and saves a vegetable from being guillotined. Why have this?! She has a creepy imagination.
It’s not like it isn’t interesting, but we’re actually never gonna see these things again. It’s like the writer got bored writing something too mundane, or thought we’d be bored. The problem is, that we don’t have any reason to be emotionally invested in these characters because they’re not deep interesting people and we just saw them. Sabrina finds the piano teacher handsome so she’s happy at it so I have to wonder why she still tells him that her uncle is forcing her to do this and she refuses to be happy, which just makes me feel sorry for him. She says “ Thank you, “ for reminding her what a piano is even called!
Why did he say he sees this lesson is a punishment, long after she told him she’s doing this under protest?! He says he’s been punished too and he used to be in her school. I hate that he speaks too softly. It’s too hard to hear him. And again she levitates just out of love somehow. There’s no reason that he would never face her and see her levitation. She starts lying that she loves art, she really finds the fat guy pretentious. He lies that she’s smart and that has to be just because he wants to manipulate her into playing the piano. He plays the piano so she imagines having fun with him as a kid.
Why is this whole story about her crushing on an adult? Sure, kids do that. But it’d be a lot less uncomfortable if the genders were reversed. I don’t want all this focus on it. It would’ve been fine if it was just one time. It would’ve been fine if it was just one moment and then she started being subtle. And this is so boring. I know Sabrina won’t go on to play the piano after this episode. Is there any reason this couldn’t have been Hilda, instead of Sabrina? That would’ve saved the episode.
It’s kinda hypocritical of the show to insult soap operas though. It’s not written well either, and in this particular way where he’s complaining that all of the main characters of a soap opera are idiots, it’s the same with this show! Salem complains that the audience of his TV show is just blind. Quigley sees Sabrina come home happily and smartly wonders if she skipped her piano lesson. “ decided not to punish you “ yeah right, liar. She finds out Dave is in the newspaper and begs Quigley to let her go to the concert tonight.
Why is Quigley trying to force the whole family to go? Shouldn’t he realize that it’s better to just accept them for who they are? It’s not bad for them to not be interested in what he’s interested in. At least the aunts are smiling. Wasn’t it always obvious she had a crush on her piano teacher because she said, “ My Dave? “ Why are they gonna take so long to catch on? Why would Quigley think that she really loves art and classical music now? Again he’s misinformed when proud of her! This show hates her! If we’re supposed to think he’s stupid, why are we suddenly supposed to think he’s right any time he lectures her?
The idea that she’s even dumber than him is so insulting that it doesn’t instantly occur to me. There’s a giant waste of episode space from an Imagine Spot or something of Salem’s where I hate looking at people in silly wigs. I wish the story didn’t keep having Sabrina talk. She trips too, and gives the teacher flowers. She’s told she’s his favorite student when no way, she didn’t WANT lessons, and tells him that he’ll play great. The story reveals that he has a girlfriend who worries too much. At least he shows her affection.
But what’s the point of making Sabrina suffer without deserving it? Is this just another lazy plot device? Sabrina’s mad because the girlfriend’s helping play music, and somehow being mad sends steam that burns Salem out of her. Then why doesn’t this happen every time she gets mad? She’s gotten as mad as this in the show before, I’m sure. She also imagines abusing his girlfriend with magic. This is the kind of Imagine Spot that caused Angela Anaconda to get accused of being a psychopath.
While I liked Sabrina being an anti-hero in the 90s comic, this show goes too far, to the point where she only counts as being an anti-hero and not an outright villain because she shows a conscience. But more often than not she ignores the morality lessons and wise advice. Why does Salem talk around mortals again? The teacher assumes it was just his nerves and again Sabrina keeps making it obvious that she hates his girlfriend. Somehow she’s not offended.
It’s lucky for her that she’s never accused of being racist, which would’ve been the only possibility she’d come to if she was stupid enough to not know she had a crush on her teacher. It’s so lucky that they’re all too polite to call her out on it. I guess because she’s just a kid. EVENTUALLY, Quigley gets told the truth and says her friendship is just that because she’s too young for love and her teacher’s an adult. He says that she needs to date someone her own age – although someone literally her own age would be kind of unlikely, because most people don’t get that privilege.
And he does have good advice that she should choose someone with similar interests, but that won’t be a good thing if she doesn’t go on to marry someone with similar interests to her, and she won’t because she’s interested in Harvey and she never follows the advice of her family. Again he says he’s proud of her just for her to not listen to him. He would’ve heard her shout that he wouldn’t know how that person feels and shout especially loudly that this is agony. HOW is she any worse in Secret Life?
Instead she talks to Salem. Every time something like this happens, everyone else in the house would hear their conversation and go up to Salem suspiciously, even if they couldn’t hear all of it exactly. You’d think they would’ve been suspicious of Salem the second he started talking to her. Why is he ever trusted alone with her? Salem tells Sabrina to say a spell that terrifies the teacher’s girlfriend, because he’s evil. Why can’t they ever keep it simple and explain that he hates mortals? Salem gets all of a person’s musical talent get stuck in a jar and he plays the piano. But she’s not a piano player.
She cries and says she can’t play the violin and runs out of the room crying. It makes sense that Sabrina would get jealous of a girl and abuse magic because even the 70s Sabrina acted like that. She also tries to convince him to break up with her, but he says he won’t abandon her just because of one mistake. It’s so not rude of him to not tell her off for being so evil. Salem’s piano playing is horrible. I think he’s trying to imitate the melodies of a jazz musician, but it doesn’t work with a piano. Or maybe he just makes it seem like it doesn’t work. He must be in a Transformed Witch Hang-Out.
Sabrina grabs him angrily and somehow despite him telling her to wait and find out about the glitch first, she bitches not caring. He tells her that releasing the power in the bottle will cause the teacher to forget Sabrina entirely. This is insultingly forced. But I’d rather her punishment require her to choose to do something self-sacrificial out of guilt, that doesn’t benefit Gem, instead of Quigley punishing her. She finds out from the newspaper that Melinda and her boyfriend made it big. I guess Melinda always thought she only lost her musical talent from stress that she bottled up too much.
Sabrina gets lectured that magic is the easy way and there’s no easy answers to love. I’m glad he doesn’t punish her, even if that’s OOC, making every time he did punish her seem needlessly meanspirited. He had far more reason to punish her for this than the other thing. Instead he says he’ll get tickets to make sure Sabrina would get to the concert to see the teacher again. So, the sacrifice isn’t really good enough because it kind of gets undone.
They get to know each other again anyways! She says his music moved her and he thanks her and shakes her hand. Why is he even able to wonder if they met before? Magic would be more thorough with memory erasing than real life amnesia is. I’m sure it’d be able to affect the whole brain just fine. He also agrees to sign something for her and she plays just a little piano at the end.
This uncomfortable episode has too much focus on Sabrina crushing on an adult piano teacher that Quigley forced her to go to when she could’ve just brainwashed him into changing his mind. She brainwashed him earlier with no guilt. It clearly works better to have her punishment be from her being noble enough to punish herself, unless it benefits Gem. While it doesn’t make any sense it’s still good that she had to inconvenience herself to undo the spell. There’s worse punishments that could’ve been written. It just doesn’t make any sense because she already met him by the time she cast the spell on her.
The reason the plot lasts so long is that it also centers on Sabrina wanting to make him break up with his good-looking girlfriend when he could have easily not had a girlfriend, because of, Salem, never mind Sabrina being able to do something herself. It demonizes magic so it especially sucks. She could’ve learned the same anti-jealousy lesson if her crush was a 12-year-old. This show doesn’t believe in realism so it wouldn’t be above having 12-year-olds have the concert tours. It has Pi be a genius inventor.
The story should’ve been about Hilda not Sabrina. She’s 600 years old and we’re already used to HER crushing on adults. And Sabrina already learned an anti-jealousy lesson. What’s the appeal in having a coming of age show that’s all about teaching the kids lessons if they forget them every episode and have to learn them again occasionally, so that it doesn’t actually feel like the character is growing? She’s no better than Gem in this story. Instead it feels like the theme of the show is about people constantly trying to teach her to be a better person, just for her to forget about it because that’s not who she is.
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 64 La Femme Sabrina
It starts by boring me and ripping off James Bond. I don’t recognize these characters, so I don’t care about the story until I see Harvey. If this is seriously gonna waste the whole episode plagiarizing James BOND… Oh good it’s not the whole episode, Harvey was just dreaming. He’s evil enough to jump on Sabrina’s bed when she’s just waking up. He wants her to go to a spy movie with him. She again has no good chemistry with him by not caring about him raving about a movie. He didn’t even let her stop for breakfast.
He says there’s no point in living without this new movie he has to wait just a week for. He’s always bouncing between different franchises he’s obsessed with. What does she see in him? He cares about everything BUT her. Why doesn’t he hear her and Salem talk in the next room? The aunts are gonna take karate lessons. Zelda wastes time telling her “ because magic isn’t a solution for everything, and that Harvey needs to grow up and learn to deal with disappointment. “
She uses magic, and finally I see Sabrina indirectly call out the aunts on being hypocrites, and I see Zelda react and say “ Do as I say, not as I do. “ WHY is Sabrina trusting Spookie? And it doesn’t matter that she’s whispering, he’d still look at her and walk over to her. And she stops whispering anyways! She wants Spookie to make the spy movie release in theaters again earlier. “ All over the world “ was unneeded and forced the plot. I have to assume that she’s warped to Spookie’s dimension for a bit. How insecure is she if she thinks she can’t do this herself?
She doesn’t even say that! Spookie changes the whole world to be like the spy movie out of sadism. Harvey asks why he’s in a suit along with Sabrina. He tells her to finish the movie to finish the spell. Harvey would hear this. I’ve never watched a James Bond movie, does it have a lot of violence? She better hope it’s a G-Rated version of it! Then he gets scared at seeing scientists in a huge room behind the fridge. Harvey doesn’t care that Sabrina’s being mad at her cookie jar.
So why doesn’t Sabrina ever use magic on Spookie until he reverses the spell? I assume she just doesn’t wanna deal with him using magic on HER, but then she could just tell her aunts what he did to her. THEY never punish her for using it! Hilda used it! They run away scared from popsicles and hug. Harvey uses an umbrella to bounce it back. At least the “ paintballs “ is creative. Then the writer makes a guy who’s using a hose get tied up, Harvey says this is a dream, and Quigley is being used to give them exposition that they need to stop an organization of bad guys.
They stand on a manhole cover that takes an inexplicably long time to fall down like an elevator. I really seriously do not care about this story. The only way it could’ve been exciting was if Sabrina was constantly using magic. Why is Harvey being with her ruining it?! He thinks this is a dream, so she would’ve thought she could get away with revealing that she’s a witch! I guess that she thinks he’d only be terrified of her, and this is TOTALLY not worth experiencing for a few seconds just to have the spy movie get finished much earlier.
The exposition’s too boring to be memorable. Do they have to get a MacGuffin? Then Sabrina should just warp it to her to end the movie. Same goes if you replace MacGuffin with person. I love the role reversal where Salem’s somehow petting a little adult human. Gadgets get shown off but the heroes don’t NEED them to be used to survive. AT LEAST the effects are interesting. It sure would be lame if they never got to use those gadgets, though. Harvey’s given something useless and Quig somehow thinks he’d get to use it in a rare situation. That logic could be used to justify him saddling him with ANY object.
Then the story gets boring with nothing happening and cringey when a square dance with a lame singer starts happening. I know padding. Sabrina gets glared at by the audience and they’re threatened by her aunts who waste time doing lame poses so Sabrina lampshades it. What was the point of Spookie getting her aunts involved in this? I guess for actual sadism, but if he really wanted to be sadistic he would’ve had her aunts fight her, and we’d get to see her punch them! Why didn’t he have Quigley fight Sabrina?
Harvey makes a pathetic excuse that it’d be lame if the fight scene didn’t last very long, but this isn’t a fight scene because they aren’t attacking anyone. She also wastes time telling Salem he’s under a spell, but he doesn’t trust her enough to believe her, naturally because she doesn’t explain what spell. Why doesn’t she brainwash him? And Sabrina tells Salem with bad acting something that interests him, so I assume that she wants her stuff to be taken. Sleeping gas knocks her out, and she and Harvey get stuck in a giant litter box. I hate this episode, what’s the point if she’s barely going to use magic?
I wonder if this plot was stolen from something beat for beat, but with the trap replaced with kitty litter. Even Sabrina knows about the James Bond Stupidity trope already, and Salem plays it straight because Spookie wanted it to be a James Bond movie to the letter. Wouldn’t he wanna see this?! At least the story wants to parody James Bond, by mocking it a few times, but it’s not much of a mockery if it keeps playing it straight instead of subverting it to be interesting. Sabrina uses the chicken whistle to summon chickens and save their lives. Chekhov’s Guns are always good.
But I have to assume it’s a magic chicken whistle, because there’s no reason the chickens would just appear. They’re not near a chicken farm. They weren’t being followed by chickens the whole time or people would’ve commented on it. Smoke happens because of damage to the control panel, and Sabrina puts a bucket over a grunt, and Salem rides off in a horse carriage. Sabrina throws something to cause the horse to freak out, and Salem to get thrown into the sky. Again slapstick with no shown impact. I would’ve gotten to thoroughly enjoy the portrayal of him as the villain if I got to see tons of slapstick.
Harvey grabbing Salem without getting to hit him returns the world to normal, and Sabrina plays dumb and Harvey tries moving the fridge. Why didn’t he get his memory conveniently erased? Oh, Spookie’s sadistic that’s why. But, his memory got conveniently erased instantly after he was sent out of the alien spaceship!
He’s so scared he’d rather play outside than watch the spy movie Quigley was gonna get him to watch. So even though they went through a scary experience, it was worth it. He feels better about the spy movie not being released yet, so Spookie’s spell got her exactly what she wanted. THAT’S a twist.
This agonizingly boring episode rips off James Bond the whole way through just like Ken Penders’ James Bond story, which had the benefit of being in an actual ACTION SERIES where the setting could be anything for all I care, and of being a SHORT STORY. This took forever and Sabrina had no reason to trust Spookie to make Harvey’s favorite movie come out again sooner! I admit that I did appreciate the interesting things about the episode like the ways the heroes triumphed and the gadgets. If the goal was always to stop Salem, she would’ve simply warped Salem to her and grabbed him.
The story’s written by a better writer than the writers of James Bond films because it references and mocks the clichés of them, but I don’t find it interesting because I’m not a James Bond fan. Maybe it’d be a good episode to someone who IS, but it’s still bad because it only happens to demonize magic and it takes too long, barely even using magic. Zelda explained the moral of the story that you should let someone put up with disappointment until it passes, but I don’t find it convincing, especially since Harvey stopped being disappointed that the spy movie wasn’t released yet at the end of the episode.
So the spell worked! There was nothing wrong with Sabrina wanting to make a movie get released earlier, unless it’d lower its quality, that should have been said. Delays happen for a reason. Oh no, people get money earlier! The only reason Sabrina’s plan to use magic backfired was because of Spookie totally disobeying her order and putting her through a scary experience. If he can do that why does he ever get trusted, why does he think he can get away with this? Why doesn’t he make it rain frogs on the person or something every time instead of giving them what they want even a little bit?
The episode could’ve been all a dream of Harvey’s for all it mattered. This writer didn’t wanna write a Sabrina story. The most disappointing thing about it, is that Sabrina didn’t get a real satisfying fight scene with any of the annoying members of her family. I get making Quigley Q, because his name starts with Q, but wouldn’t it be cool if he got brainwashed into fighting her by the villain? Why was the slapstick against Salem completely offscreen? What’s the point of using Sabrina’s family then?
Sabrina the Animated Series Episode 65 The Bat Pack
I’m tortured having to listen to a musician with a bad voice sing in front of bored people at a club Sabrina’s at, and blatantly unrealistic people show up that look like monsters. Sabrina and Chloe would know they’re vampires. He has his eyes turn red and Slugloaf says vampire and drops stuff and runs, unrealistically screaming for his mother. Why doesn’t Sabrina instantly turn these vampires to stone? They’re evil because they’re fine with scaring a mortal so they don’t wanna keep magic a secret. They’d be turned into frogs and Sabrina would tell Enchantra why she did it if she even found out.
I assume the reason Slugloaf’s here is that they’re here on a field trip and since when do people have field trips, to a karaoke club at 12? I just don’t see the educational value in it. These vampires are good singers, so they deserve the applause. They turn into bats to scare people out of the building. So they wanted to make them happy just to get an ego boost, not because they have empathy. They’re friends of Sabrina’s aunts from the 1460s. But, the way they’re dressed reminds me of the 20s. Their hats!
We hear some fighting noises but one of the vampires left Hilda at the altar for another woman which is why she was mad enough to summon a piano to land on him, and as we were told, she can’t kill someone who’s already dead. I guess he heals really fast. Why didn’t she turn him into an inanimate object, if witches aren’t spied on? I guess she assumes that if she did something that WOULD kill him, which she could easily do, someone who knew him would file a missing persons report and someone would know to go to Hilda. She’s just being paranoid.
Zelda tells them Hilda just ordered six pizzas with garlic which scares them even though it wasn’t always the case in vampire fiction, so it’s just a wild coincidence that it’s accurate. Someone says there’s no way Hilda will help them do this job. Sabrina was right across the staircase, she would’ve heard them talking like they want Hilda to commit a crime. It would make sense if she always knew but didn’t fear anything because she’s got magic. One of them tries to convince Sabrina to go with them to the Nether World. Salem could prevent the plot by running away to tell on her.
Instead he decides to go with her and cheers about it, so for once it’s acknowledged that he’s always in it just to have fun. Sabrina really has no common sense, casually going off with complete strangers she just met today that did nothing but act sociopathic when she first saw them. But again with someone literally omnipotent it makes sense that she would take risks easier. A musical number makes me skip ahead wondering why it’s in Sabrina and the story takes too long to have the aunts find out Sabrina is gone.
The shower wall is still warm which is a convenient way to indicate to them that someone just used the shower portal. I never knew that but it could make sense because you associate light with warmth. It’s just that, I don’t remember that being the case with the Other Realm closet. Eventually, Salem acts scared of someone, and someone near Sabrina calls him ugly.
It’s needlessly annoying to have more than one of these vampires in the story, because how am I supposed to refer to them other than rewatching the part of the episode where they say their forgettable names? Then I’d have to figure out where I was, and it’s not a good enough show for me to have the incentive to do that, especially when these characters are completely one-dimensional without any sort of distinct personalities among them. One of them is mad the blood is too pricey because of Tony.
The zombie aliens get sent to slowly walk towards them in a half-assed way to intimidate them out of the room for no reason. The vampire says Dead Tony stole some of their blood in a blood bank. Why doesn’t Sabrina just instantly point to summon the blood? Salem somehow never points out that they could tell Sabrina to warp the blood packs to them. Instead he asks for help because he’s above the guard, and the protagonists sneak past him. I guess he’s too slow to chase them. Then why was he hired? I also assume that the zombies aren’t infectious.
Sabrina somehow decides to try to eat all the garlic, when that’s not how you eat it and she should’ve known she could zap it away, or at least turn it into something else, like she’s done to Gem before. She had plenty of time to think of this. The vampires eventually open the vault. Sure was easy. Pretty sure witches could have technology as advanced as they want! I know this is a ZOMBIE’S vault. He could buy it from witches! She burps and the alarm gets triggered by Salem. So Tony sees camera footage of the burglary. How is he here instead of at home by now?
Why would they try a burglary during working hours? The aunts hear him say a phone call about this and Hilda has a little slipping to deal with because the wet mop flies a bit too close to the floor, which she could easily not have happen after centuries of experience. Why didn’t they instantly warp Sabrina back to them from home? Sabrina warped Enchantra to her! Somehow the aunts are intimidated of these vampires even though they’re witches. I have to just assume that they’re immune to magic. The aunts get framed and Sabrina sees a convenient breaking news report showing the aunts trapped.
They would’ve warped to safety much earlier. Why is the story gonna waste my time with a trial instead of good content padding things out? Who ever wants to see a trial with main characters in it? Hilda lampshading that they have no lawyer makes it obvious that the trial is not worth writing. Sabrina says she can’t believe she thought these vampires were cool. Tedium happens, and Sabrina somehow tries to save her aunts the mortal way.
She tells them she went with the vampires because of a promise of how nice-looking the place she’d be taken to would be, and she takes responsibility, but no one believes her. Eventually the vampires admit that they’re the guilty ones. This is forced, what criminals would do this? I guess this is just barely believable because Sabrina’s a kid. Gangsters aren’t usually known for, dealing with a kid or bothering kids. He says robbing a blood bank is settling an old score between the vampires and Dead Tony.
Eventually, one vampire reveals he can sing high enough to break the window and let in sunlight. This is like Twilight where, random vampires have random amazing powers like they’re the X-Men. It seems all the more arbitrary to have random people have one random power. Sabrina’s being threatened with banishment too, and her garlic breath starts saving the day. It wouldn’t travel far enough to save the day. But Chekhov’s Guns are always good. The bad guys get sent into the portal and somehow the witches decide to merely run away to escape rather than warp home.
If only it was explained that they’re out of magic but they’re not because Hilda uses magic here to summon a backpack for the vampires to get into for an escape. It’s nice of her to not leave them behind, but since they were portrayed as slimy criminals who’d endanger a 12-year-old, rather than ask her to summon a sentient being to help them instead, why should I sympathize with them? The story ends with too much time wasted on the vampires singing well again. Goes to show you how much they cared about this show that this is the last episode of the show.
The last episode of this show isn’t about magic at all and instead has Sabrina be unrealistically oblivious to Stranger Danger, and get convinced to follow some clearly evil vampires out of curiousity. This is like a parable against lazy parenting. They constantly don’t tell her enough. You’d think that if not her then one of the many people around her would think to tell her to warp the blood bags to them, instead of them making a risky heist that the aunts get framed for because they somehow didn’t just warp Sabrina and Salem home.
This whole show is written like the worst of bad movies are where the whole plot wouldn’t happen if characters were acting like actual human beings. At least the story doesn’t demonize magic, but it’s so boring with blatant padding all the time like musical numbers and the characters being so incompetent just insults my intelligence that I’m supposed to not question it, when even kids would, just from watching a past episode. The whole plot wouldn’t happen because Sabrina would’ve panicked upon seeing the vampires and turned them all into frogs.
Or it could’ve been explained that they’re immune to magic. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch because in the 70s cartoon when Sabrina used magic on the monsters strange things happened, so them being immune to magic outright would be more believable.
Why did the aunts let themselves get arrested and put through a trial instead of warping home? It should’ve been explained that they knew that witches would be in the trial so they’d just get warped to the courtroom even if they did warp home.
I assume that the lesson was not to go off with adults you just met, even if one of them has a history with your aunt, who you were told were untrustworthy enough to leave your aunt at the altar and didn’t care if they scared people, in a place that you’d think would have security cameras to catch criminals. Why doesn’t the story end showing the vampires get arrested by Enchantra for revealing magic to the world? That’d be a great ending to the show as a whole.
Too bad Sabrina’s Secret Life got released… a show so clueless she uses a wand for every spell. But at this point I’m thinking, how could it possibly be any worse? Chloe’s unnecessary doing almost nothing, so that has to be why SHE wasn’t included in the show. She did nothing that Sabrina couldn’t have done. But getting rid of her would be pointless if there’s still gonna be the same amount of padding. People still like her for being friends with Sabrina, so how was the marketing that bad?
I’ve read that Sabrina’s even stupider and meaner in that show. As if she didn’t have stupid or mean moments in the show before that! But they also got rid of shitty characters like Spookie, Quigley and Gem. So, the only problems with the show are the ones that are already in the Animated Series except they were made more obvious somehow… It sounds like it makes up for it by getting rid of the shitty characters! I won’t argue that it’s not a bad show. I’m sure it’s still a bad show, so bad I don’t wanna watch it, I’m just wondering how the people who hate Secret Life think the Animated Series is a good show.
CrystalMaiden77 