Newbie's Perspective Sabrina the Animated Series Episodes 9-10 Reviews
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00:00 Sabrina The Animated Series, Episode 9.
00:03 I don't like the title.
00:05 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.
00:12 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.
00:17 She isn't that stupid.
00:19 She asks him if it's safe to cross the bridge, so of course it wasn't.
00:25 He falls into the river and the current brings him to dry land, so he assumes she saved him.
00:31 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.
00:39 Why couldn't the story have rendered to save him for real?
00:43 She obviously would have used magic to save him.
00:47 That'd be Sabrina acting in character.
00:49 She's supposed to impulsively use magic.
00:54 He asks her out after all as a reward, so she smartly agrees.
00:58 The whole plot would have been avoided because she would have erased his memory of what happened.
01:03 That couldn't be hard to think about and do.
01:06 Jim really has no reason to assume Sabrina didn't save Harvey and therefore ask exactly how she saved him.
01:14 Because she thinks she's a goody-goody.
01:16 And you'd think that people would assume that Jim asked a stupid question.
01:21 Because there wouldn't be any extra details to how she saved him.
01:24 And if she has a good reason to doubt it, she would just say that instantly.
01:29 This episode is just horrible to watch.
01:33 Hilda would have instantly understood that Sabrina was gonna say she didn't save Harvey based on what she tried to say.
01:40 She wouldn't have interrupted her twice and gotten a picture taken of her.
01:44 Quigley says anyone who'd lie about saving someone's life should be tarred and feathered.
01:50 It's obvious the writer wants us to hate him, so why is he here?
01:54 It's smart of Sabrina to lie that she did save Harvey.
01:58 Especially since she'd get her bike taken away by her abusive parental figures if she did tell the truth.
02:05 She obviously doesn't trust them for good reason if she doesn't assume she'll get it anyways.
02:10 Based on how ambitious the message is, I bet the writer somehow expects me to disagree with Salem when he says she was smart to lie.
02:19 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.
02:28 Sabrina not saving someone's life is as forced as Sonic or one of his friends not saving someone's life.
02:34 Or Superman.
02:35 She would've been smart to lie about it, if she wasn't the type to feel guilty at the drop of a hat.
02:41 Salem says that Sabrina could go back in time to when Harvey fell into the river and save him for real.
02:50 Actually, good writing would make her succeed, so the plot can move on to be about something else.
02:56 After all, they had a whole Pet Show storyline, and then they went off to a different plot after that.
03:02 You'd think time travel would be illegal for witches, since if any witch could do it, there could be chaos.
03:09 Sabrina pushes Harvey and says she saved him, and he says from what.
03:14 The bus drives onto the bridge, so the bridge starts collapsing.
03:18 She should've known that he wouldn't think she saved him.
03:21 It's so obvious that she would've saved Harvey by pointing to make sure he'd get out of the water immediately.
03:27 Instead, the students think she's cool when she saves them.
03:31 Why in the world is it that she didn't go back in time again right away to try saving him the proper way?
03:37 Even an authority figure unrealistically declares a school holiday just because a student did something heroic.
03:46 Even though she's realistically sad because all she did was cause a bus to get wrecked.
03:51 If she was actually competent, she would've erased the memory of the disaster from everyone in the accident.
03:57 She could've reversed time and made the bridge sturdier.
04:01 Instantly.
04:02 She's given a horse, and somehow her family is completely unable to tell how she doesn't appreciate how they're treating her.
04:09 Somehow, even when she screams, they don't comment on it.
04:15 There isn't anything wrong with their brains, so how in the world are they so oblivious to her feelings?
04:21 They can see her mouth, and they're not deaf.
04:24 She goes back in time to when the sunspots rise.
04:28 Her spell causes the dam to start breaking.
04:31 There's no way in hell that would happen if she doesn't want it to, because if magic doesn't work by visualization,
04:37 or even by telling the spirits what to do, Hal wouldn't know how to interpret what she wants.
04:43 If her idea was she wanted the river gone, then she would've just pointed and had the river disappear.
04:49 Sabrina runs into town and yells out that the dam is gonna break.
04:53 There is no way in hell that anyone would actually listening to her warning to evacuate.
04:59 They'd assume she was just pulling a prank on them, especially because it sounds like she has a little girl voice.
05:05 I like that someone says that she'd give Jem a wedgie.
05:11 Even if it's out of character, because we never do that.
05:14 Of course, I also liked earlier when someone said Jem should go to the nerds' table.
05:18 Even if again, it would never happen.
05:21 People surrounding Sabrina are being nice to her, and are somehow oblivious to how she's feeling.
05:27 If the writer hates Sabrina, which I can relate to, he should either not write the show,
05:34 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.
05:41 He's just torture Jem instead, since I'm sure he'd hate her too.
05:45 Why did Sabrina take until now to figure out that she should use magic to make the bridge a lot better?
05:50 That was obvious immediately because it would make the world a better place as well as save Harvey.
05:56 She casts a spell to get taken back in time 100 years to when the bridge first appeared.
06:02 She wants it to be made of stone, and it happens.
06:06 So obviously she has no excuse anymore for not going back in time to undo anything bad that happens to her from now on.
06:12 If Salem suggests using magical artifacts at the drop of a hat for her, then why doesn't he tap through with the hourglass a lot more often?
06:19 Why did it take until now?
06:21 The episode should've ended with her making the bridge become stone.
06:25 Instead, people see her act of magic, when they could've easily not, so it feels unfair.
06:31 They're pilgrims. Won't they still be working?
06:36 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.
06:46 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."
06:54 I assume they think she's literally a saint.
06:57 Even Chloe is wearing a wig in her honor and says she's a Sabrina fan.
07:02 Everyone here acts like they're seeing Sabrina for the first time.
07:06 This means that in this timeline, the real Sabrina never lived in Greendale.
07:10 Probably because of what she did.
07:13 They didn't want to attract attention to her.
07:15 And again, these people that supposedly admire her are somehow ignoring her sad expression.
07:21 She throws and breaks the hourglass, which very conveniently undoes all the changes she did, instead of making her stuck in this timeline.
07:31 Because that's apparently how it works. It has backup data.
07:35 You'd think you'd have to press a button to undo all this.
07:38 So she gets sent to the point where a reporter was going to take a photo of her for saving Harvey.
07:43 I can at least compliment that smarter gem to know there was no way Sabrina could save Harvey from the River the Mortal Way because of the strong current.
07:52 But why didn't everyone else know that then?
07:54 She tells the truth, and her aunts are clearly disappointed.
07:58 But at least they're trying to be nice to her.
08:00 I'm also glad that it's never said that they're gonna get rid of the bike they bought her.
08:05 They should be rewarding her honesty.
08:07 But this does the opposite by acting like they're disappointed.
08:11 It's convenient that the reporter believes her, when none of the students did.
08:16 It's a miracle that Harvey instantly believes her now, even though before this he never believed her.
08:22 At least this was all worth it for Sabrina because he still agrees to go with her to the chick flick.
08:28 It's still evil of her to expect him to go to a movie he doesn't want to go to.
08:34 Or maybe a play. Like it matters.
08:36 He could be worried about getting bullied for going to that movie.
08:40 But I don't have any sympathy for him in this episode.
08:43 What is the point of having this show and the sitcom obsessed with teaching kids lessons?
08:49 You can't change people based on the force obnoxious lesson of a kid's show.
08:53 If anything, it'll make them rebel against it.
08:56 Only life experience changes people.
08:59 And I'm sure there's a way to teach a lesson without having an entire episode making the main character miserable.
09:06 Nobody should be defending the show's insistence on teaching lessons all the time,
09:11 when I'm sure it was a universally mocked part of an entire era of cartoons.
09:15 Why else did Sonic Says Exist come to think of it?
09:19 Even AOSTH is more respectable because it keeps the messages to the end of the episodes.
09:26 So they were allowed to do that.
09:29 I knew this episode was annoying to watch even when I was first watching it.
09:33 So Light 6 is especially bad.
09:36 Torturing Sabrina by having her feel guilty that people are praising her for something she didn't do.
09:41 And no matter how much she tries to do things differently back in time,
09:45 inexplicably needing an artifact to do the time travel now,
09:49 she only makes her problem worse.
09:51 When you'd think turning the bridge to stone wouldn't backfire.
09:55 First of all, if she was in character, she would've saved him.
09:58 What's the point of using Sabrina as a character if she's almost never doing good,
10:02 when she's not Sabrina at that point?
10:05 Especially not when she doesn't possibly think to use magic every time she thinks she can get away with it.
10:10 Second, it was instantly obvious how she was supposed to save him after going back in time.
10:16 She would've used magic to warp him out of the river.
10:19 Or at least used magic to force the river itself to send him to dry land.
10:24 That's what she would've done because that would actually be subtle.
10:28 So this story could've been way shorter.
10:30 But instead it forced things to go wrong every time in an unfair way because she held the idiot ball
10:36 because the point was to teach her a lesson about honesty.
10:39 When I'm sure there were better ways to teach that.
10:42 But the Sabrina I know would've always known the value of telling the truth, in non-magic cases.
10:48 Otherwise she feels like a bad friend to Harvey because of how much she lies about magic.
10:52 To make a show about Sabrina learning lessons requires writing her out of character
10:57 so that she needs the lessons.
10:59 And it thinks that it makes sense because she's a kid so he'll just out
11:03 because she can't go to school and give plots an excuse.
11:07 But the show should've had Ezmeral to live with her while she's in character
11:11 and use her for the lessons instead.
11:14 There's no reason the Pilgrims would've seen her because she would've gone back in time
11:19 only a little bit and turned the bridge to stone instantly.
11:24 Sabrina the Animated Series, Episode 10.
11:27 Sabrina walks out of school and eventually the students stare at someone skateboarding past them
11:33 over and over because they're easily impressed.
11:35 And it's Harvey showing off.
11:38 It's in character for him to be good at this.
11:40 Someone says Harvey's just average despite him amazing everyone else
11:45 so I have to assume he's the better skateboarder.
11:48 Sabrina gets away with using magic against him and his jerk friend.
11:53 Then Jem tells the students there's gonna be a skateboarding tournament.
11:58 Her acting gets even more monotone and boring when she tells Harvey he could be a skateboarding legend.
12:04 This may be the first time when she says "matters".
12:08 Sabrina warrants him that he might need more practice
12:12 and Harvey arbitrarily says she's supposed to be his friend
12:16 and he thought she'd be on his side
12:18 when clearly she is because she's trying to improve him.
12:22 Jem makes a call and says it's clear who his friends are
12:25 and uncharacteristically he agrees with her and goes into her limo.
12:30 I hate that.
12:31 Sabrina tells Chloe what she missed.
12:34 The show's always repeat exposition for cheap padding.
12:38 Sabrina complains she was just trying to be honest.
12:41 What kind of broken show is it where the first episode has a preaching that being dishonest makes you miserable
12:48 and the next episode it demonizes being honest?
12:52 Well really the previous episode had the message that
12:55 you should never stop correcting positive misinformation about yourself
12:59 because you never actually lied.
13:01 Then we see a tour guide giving people a tour of a mansion apparently belonging to Harvey
13:07 and we only find out it's just Sabrina imagining things
13:11 after he says the picture of Sabrina's that a kitty forgot because of Jem.
13:15 So it makes sense that there's no reason the picture would be there
13:18 because it's just an imagining spot.
13:22 It's never been in character for Sabrina to be the type that
13:24 gets so overwhelmed by anxiety that she has all these daydreams about how horribly things could go wrong.
13:31 It's all Quigley's fault because this is the only continuity where she's like this and he's in it.
13:37 There's padding and so Chloe puts her hand on Sabrina's shoulder and then helps her grab a car.
13:42 We need a lot more moments like this.
13:45 Sabrina complains about Harvey ignoring her.
13:49 She complains about the fact that telling the truth makes someone think you're not on their side.
13:53 I know that feels.
13:55 It's why people get mad at people who criticize their favorite work of fiction when they just want it to be better.
14:01 Chloe says oh no when she has no excuse for not just telling her what she needs to know.
14:06 Eventually Harvey angst is to Sabrina that it'll take a year to be really talented.
14:12 I'm glad he's not being mean to her this time like he's forgiven her completely.
14:16 I wish the episode started here.
14:19 You could use magic to add padding.
14:21 Sabrina walks into her house randomly talking to her aunt as if she's continuing off a conversation when she's all alone.
14:29 She spends a long time convincing Hilda to let her go find a spell to help her friend.
14:34 Thankfully Hilda's fine with it this time which means that's always arbitrary when her aunts don't want her to use the spooky jar.
14:43 And Salem uncharacteristically congratulates her on combating negative witch stereotypes even though no one would know.
14:49 They go to spooky for no reason to get offered a spear to make Harvey a star on the skateboard track.
14:56 Spooky spell objects seem jinxed because they always backfire unless they're used to undo the last time one was used.
15:03 But explaining that would just make spooky look even meaner.
15:06 Sabrina can't find Harvey when she's calling for him.
15:10 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.
15:17 She uses the spell on him and he unusually thanks her for smacking his head because he needed that.
15:23 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 spear spell.
15:32 As usual there's way too much wasted time in the episode.
15:36 And I don't find the plot engaging because it's instantly obvious where it's gonna go as soon as Sabrina plans to give him fame.
15:42 She obviously didn't even need to give him fame.
15:46 All she needed was to make him a slightly better skateboarder so he wouldn't embarrass himself at the skateboard tournament.
15:52 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.
15:59 Eventually she sees boring commercials with Harvey in monotone one after the other no matter how much she changes channels.
16:06 She somehow hears Harvey say skateboarding is a metaphor for life's emptiness and gets asked if there's anyone who inspired him to rocket his way to the top.
16:16 He says no and while that's supposed to be annoying how is he supposed to know she inspired him?
16:23 She never skateboarded in front of him hitting him on the head according to him made him a better skateboarder.
16:29 But he can't explain that because they'll think he's crazy and that's not the same as being inspired.
16:36 Not to mention she's not the reason he started skateboarding in the first place.
16:40 She turns the TV into a gorilla in front of Chloe and she doesn't react.
16:46 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.
16:56 It makes me wonder if they expect you to read the comic.
17:00 And uncharacteristically when ants walk into the room they don't complain about the TV being gone.
17:06 It's all it takes forever to explain that Harvey's spell will wear off any minute because of its class.
17:12 The only way the spell would be this way every time is if the witches council forced all the witches to cast the spell to make it so that the spell would be temporary every time.
17:21 Spooky was never told to make the spell temporary so we wouldn't have.
17:25 I can say why it would be temporary in order to keep people from taking advantage of such a spell for life.
17:31 But the thing is if the witches disapprove of talent spells why wouldn't they instead cast a spell to disable talent spells entirely?
17:39 There's no reason spells would have separate classes where some of them are forced to be temporary.
17:44 Somehow there's no mention of the idea that a witch could just instantly remove the spell.
17:49 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.
17:57 People would see the green flash of light when Harvey returned to normal.
18:01 I have to assume that mortals can't see magic flashes of light.
18:05 Or beams of magic.
18:08 Like many things in this show this should be explained.
18:11 It's easy to have assumed already by now that nobody can see the beams of magic because nobody's commented on it.
18:18 Sabrina and her aunts used magic on Harvey to count from going out of control to try to save him.
18:24 Why did Hilda sneeze?
18:26 Especially since you'd think witches would be so advanced that they'd have a vaccine for the common cold.
18:32 And one aunt says she can't do it without anyone noticing.
18:37 Now it should really be explained nobody can see the magic flashes because it always seemed like obvious magic.
18:43 But now one of the aunts says they need a distraction.
18:46 Sabrina uses magic to make Jem announce over the intercom somehow that she sucks her thumb.
18:52 Harvey relatably asks why the audience hates him for making a few mistakes.
18:58 But it makes sense that they would think that no actually great skateboarder would have a shitty ending for his act.
19:04 It's not like his act was a terrible story.
19:07 You'd think they would still be impressed by the special effects.
19:10 And I don't like the potential subtext that Harvey was written to say this
19:15 because the writer might have been excusing the flaws of the show as just a few mistakes.
19:20 Well, if those mistakes are major enough, then the audience should hate them.
19:24 Sabrina says she's the one who made a mistake.
19:27 That she forgot what really makes someone a winner.
19:30 I hate how vague she's being.
19:32 It's not that she forgot what makes someone a winner.
19:36 It's that she didn't want him to be embarrassed at the skateboarding tournament.
19:39 And Harvey would just be completely confused by this because he doesn't know she's responsible for his talent.
19:45 Luckily, they see a kid get handed first prize for practicing since he was little.
19:50 Hopefully, the moral of this episode is that Sabrina shouldn't have made Harvey that talented at skateboarding.
19:56 Because she'd hate him being famous.
19:59 To be fair, this is a moral that the main '70s Sabrina would need to learn.
20:04 And it doesn't have to be forced and thus launch its message because
20:08 at least I have to assume that the spell had no chance of making Harvey only slightly better at skateboarding.
20:13 Only the best possible one. Force him to get famous.
20:16 It makes sense because if you think about someone being talented at something,
20:20 you're not gonna imagine him making a single mistake.
20:23 Spooky wasn't told to imagine him skateboarding for long enough that he'd make a few mistakes.
20:28 How did he know it looked like good skateboarding tricks?
20:33 I have to assume magic scoured the world to do the necessary research for him.
20:37 Filling in the blanks after he just told it to make him skateboard without mistakes.
20:42 So he'd have to know a lot about skateboarding himself and take a much longer time casting
20:46 to know how to only slightly increase someone's skateboarding skill.
20:50 And if all it did was make him just good enough that he wouldn't embarrass himself in the tournament,
20:54 that'd have been all Sabrina wanted without resulting in the problems of the episode.
21:00 Sabrina only thought about the fact that she wanted to keep Harvey from getting mocked.
21:04 And it wouldn't be like her to fully think through her spell first.
21:08 And the first time she saw people admire his skateboarding skills, all that happened was that.
21:13 So she just thought that would happen because of the spell at first thought.
21:17 So in a vacuum, this is a fine plot.
21:21 Even if it should have been explained why the tournament audience didn't find out about magic
21:25 when it's clearly used on Harvey.
21:28 And there's no reason for special effects to be in a skateboarding tournament.
21:31 But it's mostly boring.
21:33 Because it's immediately obvious where it's gonna go and mostly consists of him getting unwarranted praise.
21:39 Which we already saw Sabrina get an episode ago.
21:41 And it's praised for something non-magical.
21:44 There's already been 70 Sabrina comic stories where Sabrina cast a talent spell.
21:49 And they're mercifully brief by comparison.
21:52 And kids would have already known that fame came with a price.
21:56 So this plot is worthless.
21:58 Other than fame comes with a price, what is supposed to be the moral here?
22:03 Because the writers don't think witches exist, so the moral can't be "Don't use magic to make someone talented."
22:11 (upbeat music)