Newbie's Perspective Sabrina the Animated Series Episodes 15-16 Reviews
Transcript
00:00 Sabrina the Animated Series, Episode 15
00:03 Harvey's friend is somehow able to believe in blatantly untrue paranormal things reported on by a newspaper.
00:11 It goes on long enough to make you enjoy when the stereotypical bully hits him, even though hitting is wrong.
00:17 Sabrina uses magic to embarrass him so that everyone on the table laughs.
00:23 What was the point of this scene?
00:26 Sabrina wonders why her family is going through so much trouble cleaning the house.
00:30 Zelda uses magic, so it's hypocritical that Sabrina is forced to dust the normal way.
00:35 It's explained that their uncle is the head of the family and sucks.
00:40 I also get to see Harvey's annoying friend fall, and Harvey shows morality by going after someone that wronged him.
00:48 This kid looks like a really bad ripoff of Miles from the Sabrina sitcom.
00:54 Miles had a normal voice, making me care about him.
00:58 This guy... fuck it, I'm calling him Miles because I don't know his name.
01:02 Miles notices a UFO and wants to follow it, and it turns out to be the flying chair of Sabrina's uncle,
01:09 which crashes through the house without him caring about the fact that his family will have to use magic to fix it up.
01:15 He calls this place a pigsty and says some honor, even though he should know he caused this house to look bad.
01:23 He insults Hilda for being single, says he'll speak slowly because Sabrina's half-witch,
01:29 which doesn't even mean if he's not gonna speak slowly when talking to her from now on.
01:34 It refers to Quigley in an insulting way that sadly doesn't match his personality.
01:39 If witches are more advanced than mortals, then it would make sense that he thinks mortals are idiots.
01:46 He says that since he's mortal, he'll be dead soon.
01:50 Why doesn't he make a big deal out of a mortal knowing about witches?
01:53 Apparently, this is normal in the animated series universe.
01:58 He's also surprised at Salem being here.
02:01 Zelda's upset because he got rid of her furniture.
02:04 He also tells Quigley to make him a sandwich, and Sabrina's ordered to carry his luggage.
02:10 This writer was working something out.
02:13 Why does this guy have to be so unlikable if there's so much focus on him, with no slapstick against him?
02:20 Looney Tunes is way better than this because it constantly gives villains punishment.
02:24 And while I get wanting to punish these characters, silly cartoon slapstick would be better.
02:31 Then the story goes back to blatantly wasting my time.
02:35 Sabrina has no excuse for going back to her house until her uncle leaves.
02:39 She could zap up her own food and water.
02:42 She agrees to go along with her friend, who tells her that this is a drawing of the UFO.
02:48 And she says she agreed because he's her friend, because he's Harvey's friend.
02:53 She finds out she agreed to hunt down her own family.
02:56 Zelda's told that the jerk needs his nail clippers.
03:00 I guess he doesn't want to waste magic by catering to himself.
03:04 I don't know why the many witches in his family are working hard for him.
03:08 When every witch is equally powerful, equally capable of turning another into a frog.
03:14 So what makes him think he can treat people that way?
03:17 I guess they quickly get warped to another dimension.
03:20 Sadly, the scene instantly ends and it's not really shown why he hated there other than him being away from home.
03:26 It seems like a vacation to me because he doesn't have to serve on him anymore.
03:30 Miles activates the device and Harvey says Sabrina because the device figures out Sabrina is paranormal.
03:37 It has to be that a witch made it.
03:39 It'd be lazy writing if, like in the sitcom, they don't explain that.
03:45 Conveniently, somehow Miles assumes the device needs to be tinkered with.
03:49 While in the sitcom when this happened, all of Sabrina's friends instantly got afraid of her and shunned her.
03:55 Why did Sabrina's hair get changed?
03:58 Sabrina says at least he tweaked it so that it won't pick up her signals anymore.
04:03 Why didn't she get written to do that?
04:05 You're supposed to make the main character be a little competent at least.
04:08 How am I supposed to think it makes sense then that the device will pick up their signals because they aren't half witches?
04:14 Because if half witches are different in any way, it has to be because they're half as powerful.
04:19 So they would be picked up easier.
04:22 I guess Sabrina's aunt is kidding herself saying that Miles can't really be a threat.
04:27 The uncle says that Miles is a threat and they have to turn him to a fronk.
04:32 The uncle agrees to leave Miles alone for a little while because he wants someone to perform a disgusting chore on his back.
04:40 I assume the reason he's not just saying "let's erase his memory" is that he hates mortals that much.
04:46 I have to assume the device is immune to magic, so good thing that first episode exists.
04:52 I guess they assume it's always with him so they can't just warp to it and smash it with a hammer.
04:57 And so far it hasn't been explained that they can freeze time and do that anyways.
05:04 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.
05:10 Sabrina throws out a magic beam to lure Miles away from her house.
05:15 Because it doesn't make him give up, this ends up pointless anyways.
05:19 Sabrina instantly thinks to start firing beams of magic to get the guy to chase after it.
05:24 But you'd think that the device would still keep detecting it coming from her house,
05:29 and he'd be more interested in continuing to go after the bigger source of magic.
05:34 If she can do that, it makes sitcom Sabrina look stupid for not doing it.
05:39 You'd think her saying that he tinkered with it so it wouldn't detect her would mean something.
05:44 Meaning 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
05:51 is detecting is.
05:53 So it should have been Hilda going along with Miles invisibly and doing this.
05:58 Harvey wonders if the UFO already left, and it's polite to say that he isn't saying it wasn't here.
06:03 He usually wears a shirt with an alien face on it, so I'd expect Harvey to be the one with this device.
06:10 He even believed in aliens in a few issues of the Savaties comic.
06:15 The uncle asks who touched his chair, and we get shown Miles. Hilda says all she did was fluff his pillows.
06:23 He gets mad at her for ruining centuries of work because it takes forever to break in a chair.
06:29 It sadly is realistic that someone would get mad about something that they've known for centuries being changed just because.
06:35 But it's not realistic that a warlock would get furious because he can just use magic to instantly return it to normal.
06:42 I just have to assume that the launch of the rocket was just because he's mad.
06:47 But it's forced that he would make that happen if he was mad rather than causing an explosion.
06:53 Miles makes a call, and then the uncle says he isn't totally displeased, and he won't smite them.
06:59 At least his temper can calm down confusingly fast. Is he bipolar?
07:04 There's 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.
07:12 This would only make sense if someone filmed what happened.
07:16 Ironically, it should have been Jem. She could have witnessed what he did.
07:22 Finally, Sabrina calls the uncle a sour-faced old bully who doesn't know what it's like to have friends.
07:27 She says the only reason people put up with him is fear and that she's not afraid of him.
07:32 He says nobody spoke to him like that in a while, and it seems he'll inexplicably like it.
07:37 Because her grandma liked it in the comic.
07:40 But he says he'll hate it.
07:42 He plans to use magic on the mortals outside the house.
07:47 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 too obvious.
07:54 Sabrina says "I'm sorry, Pi."
07:57 What is his name freaking Pi?
08:00 Sabrina uses magic on a satellite dish. It fires magic at the magnet beam.
08:05 He ends up falling, and the device burns itself, and a radio signal talks to him.
08:10 People laugh, and one says it's a radio signal, and it gets abandoned.
08:14 Harvey doesn't believe him, and he obviously needed to lie to him that he did believe him.
08:19 It's condescending of him to just say "I believe that you believe."
08:24 The uncle says Sabrina should have turned Miles into Bean Dip, and wonders what happens to family values when it doesn't mean what we'd mean.
08:32 He's got Hilda's personality from the 70s, but with none of the charm or charming moments.
08:38 He notices there's almost no food.
08:41 He says he's leaving, because I guess he cares so much about not wasting magic zapping up food.
08:47 And none of the family will ever see him again.
08:50 How did the plot even happen?
08:53 Not to mention he could tell them to zap up food for him. Salem says he needs him to beg the witch's council to return him to normal.
09:00 Miles sees the flying chair. Why does Sabrina tell him to take a picture of it?
09:07 She even summons a camera for him to use, so that Harvey can say "wow" about seeing a picture of it in a magazine.
09:13 He says he's sorry he doubted him.
09:16 At least this is harmless.
09:18 People assume it's aliens instead, even though it's a flying chair, so it looks way more like a magical thing.
09:23 But it makes sense, because belief in aliens is far more common than belief in witches nowadays.
09:29 But still very weird that any Sabrina would help someone get proof of witchcraft made public.
09:35 This story is annoying, because it centers on two unlikable characters.
09:39 As it's about Sabrina's friend using a device that attacks magic somehow, with no explanation for why, just like the sitcom.
09:47 And Sabrina's evil uncle just abusing her family by ordering them to slave on him, while giving them unprovoked insults.
09:55 And it has too much focus on that.
09:57 But a part of me actually liked it, because I've got grudges against all of these idiots.
10:01 They should have been shown doing something to deserve it, though.
10:06 The concept of Sabrina's family having a head of the family has been done in the sitcom and better.
10:10 He isn't constantly using magic, so he doesn't look awesome.
10:14 The matriarch in the sitcom spends a long time abusing Harvey over him knowing Sabrina's a witch.
10:19 This guy just acts like a typical cranky old man.
10:22 Why doesn't he always live here if he wants to be slaved over? I have to assume he has servants back home, too.
10:28 It should have been explained that the reason the witches don't just turn into a powerless object is that it's illegal.
10:35 And they think they'd be found out.
10:37 People would miss him, apparently.
10:39 At least the show using stories from the sitcom sort of makes me feel badder about not being able to review it.
10:45 Because I'm getting to get my thoughts on those episodes anyways.
10:48 At least how not constantly abusing magic means it's not demonizing magic, even though it does make
10:55 Harvey's friend look like an idiot.
10:58 So for most of the episode, yeah, it is demonizing magic.
11:02 It's tame compared to most of the bad episodes of the show, though.
11:05 Sabrina the Animated Series, Episode 16.
11:08 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.
11:16 Harvey looks relatable by looking forward to the arcade.
11:20 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.
11:29 Someone snuck in the doorway, so Sabrina uses magic to solve the problem in a way that makes magic too obvious, even for Harvey.
11:36 To be fair, no one has any way of knowing the magic was from her, so I get her not even being punished.
11:42 Plus no one believes in witches, so they would think it's demons at worst.
11:46 For once, they have different personalities, because while Zelda says her name disapprovingly, Hilda says "cool move."
11:53 Sabrina ends up seeing a clown who has a voice so stupid that it can't understand him.
11:59 He gets relatable when he says he hates his job, basically.
12:02 Then Sabrina's told no adult, no game.
12:05 I get why she doesn't zap one up, because it's in public and Harvey's nearby.
12:10 That's also why she couldn't just turn herself into an adult.
12:13 He makes a suggestion, which gets her to follow him and try to buy a CD.
12:18 The guy at the desk is somehow openly judgmental, saying his name condescendingly.
12:24 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.
12:31 I guess he only sticks with the job because he can't find any other job or think of another one he'd like.
12:37 At least she finds her CD.
12:39 And Harvey gets to enjoy listening to music, but somehow she can't even buy the CD because she's too young.
12:46 Harvey even admits that that's dumb.
12:49 Now I'm gonna look it up. I googled it and got nothing.
12:54 Like with the game that's no adult, no game,
12:57 I have to assume that she didn't know there would be adult mature content in it that wouldn't actually appeal to her.
13:02 And that's why she tried to get it in the first place.
13:05 She just seems too goody-goody to want a mature CD or to play a mature game.
13:11 She isn't allowed to see a movie she wants either.
13:14 It makes no sense that even when she's separated from Harvey and other mortals,
13:17 she still doesn't shapeshift into an adult, even though she shapeshifts in one of the previous episodes.
13:23 So the plot would have gone a completely different way if it was written with talent.
13:27 Not to mention she would have just zapped off the stuff she wanted to buy.
13:31 And I just have to assume she didn't do that because she thinks it'd be wrong to do that when she could just pay for them.
13:37 But again, she could just write down a reminder to herself saying "pay for them when I'm an adult."
13:43 Sabrina says that if she was an adult, she'd get to do whatever she wanted.
13:48 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.
13:55 And she might still hate her job even if she was self-employed.
13:59 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.
14:06 Sabrina complains to Salem. He refuses to show her compassion because he's busy goofing off.
14:15 And when she says he doesn't remember being a kid, he says spitefully that she doesn't have the brains to know when she's got a maid.
14:21 And talks in a clearly spiteful tone before handing her a magical ticket to adulthood.
14:26 Does he not remember how awful it was to do schoolwork and homework?
14:31 I mean, he's not even a typical adult because he doesn't have a job to put up with.
14:35 So why would he be jealous of her being a kid?
14:38 It's been centuries since he was an adult.
14:41 So he wouldn't even remember how much it sucks to be an adult.
14:45 He says that she has to undo the spell before 24 hours or she'll be stuck that way.
14:51 There's no way in hell that'd be the case.
14:53 Witches would be complaining about that in droves.
14:56 The Witches Council wouldn't want them to be stuck that way.
14:59 And they wouldn't force every witch to cast a spell to make this have to be the case for every ticket like this.
15:04 Salem would have just been able to cast a spell for her that would not have the 24-hour limit.
15:09 So he gave her this ticket just to be extra spiteful.
15:12 But that's redundant when she's gonna hate her time anyways.
15:16 Sabrina goes to her new house and finds out that her house with Harvey is too small because it's all he could afford with his lame job as a door-to-door salesman.
15:24 It was normal for him to be a loser in the 70s comic.
15:28 His acting is so bad when he says that next thing he knew he was all grown up.
15:32 And when he says what about the kids?
15:35 Usually speaking with too little emotion is Sabrina's thing.
15:40 Also, the kids are horribly misbehaving unrealistically much.
15:43 And Harvey says she can't take them to a PG-13 movie.
15:47 Why couldn't she have gone to the PG-13 movie anyways? Since Harvey was right there to babysit her kids.
15:53 If she was smart, she'd brainwash him to agree to do that and go anyways.
15:57 There's been episodes of the show where she's fine with brainwashing.
16:01 So she wouldn't not do that when she even brainwashes quickly.
16:06 Sabrina also says she doesn't know how to cook because she's just 12.
16:09 Okay, but her aunts could have taught her how. So this still could have been avoided.
16:14 But I don't know how to cook. So this isn't forced.
16:17 It's just that Sabrina shouldn't have been written to say this is the case because she's a kid.
16:22 It pretends that every kid doesn't know how to cook and therefore this is a fair challenge for her.
16:27 Sabrina finds out she can't use magic because of the spell.
16:32 So the spell isn't accurately portraying adulthood for her.
16:36 It already wasn't because she would know how to cook by now most likely if she was an adult.
16:41 But to be fair, her magic wouldn't have fixed all of her problems here.
16:46 She might still think she's too moral to brainwash her kids into being good because her aunts didn't do that to her.
16:52 And she'd be an adult by that point. So she might have changed from how she is now.
16:59 Then the adult in front of her says that eating pizza as an adult has to go straight to your hips.
17:05 So when Sabrina really grows up, she'll zap away any weight she gained anyways.
17:11 Besides, it's not even a guarantee that eating pizza as an adult will have to go straight to your hips.
17:17 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.
17:29 First off, how does the writer not know that adults play video games all the time?
17:33 Second, how did the teenagers even know that she wasn't a teenager?
17:37 She isn't drawn to look that much older.
17:40 Besides, if she had her magic, she'd just zap him anyways and get on with it.
17:45 And it's also unrealistic that Harvey somehow knew to come here and tell her that the kids are getting cranky so she has to come home.
17:54 He's so selfish.
17:57 Then says Sabrina simply playing a game on a console or computer she doesn't.
18:01 The washing machine overflows with bubbles because Sabrina doesn't know how to use it.
18:06 When an accurate portrayal of adulthood would magically make her know how.
18:10 She gets talked to over the phone and eventually says she needs money for the rent.
18:15 The story is even more unreasonably sadistic because somehow she's working for Jem.
18:21 Jem wants to settle for a job as the boss in office.
18:26 And Sabrina's overwhelmed with paperwork after she somehow got hired right away with no real credentials.
18:33 I say that makes sense though because Jem wanted to get to bully her every day.
18:38 Then Sabrina wants to go to the bathroom and makes a call.
18:42 And gets told by Jem that she'd have to get a piece of paper to go to the bathroom in the office.
18:47 Somehow she gets handed money right away and goes to a bank.
18:53 Somehow the bank teller keeps taking away the dollar bills she would have gotten right in front of her.
18:58 Continuously saying that's taxes.
19:01 To be fair Salem gave her the ticket.
19:04 So all this needlessly mean stuff can be explained away as Salem making this miserable for her on purpose.
19:10 To guarantee out of spite that she'll hate being an adult.
19:14 And doesn't even have to be out of spite because if she liked being an adult.
19:18 She would stay this way forever and if she did her aunts would go ballistic on him for taking her away from them sending into a parallel universe.
19:26 Where she must have replaced her alternate self.
19:28 She's got to be gone forever because time isn't progressing in the old universe.
19:34 Sabrina somehow doesn't immediately have access to her way to get home.
19:39 She sees a photo from the photo album and realizes that she missed out on every big milestone of a kid's life.
19:47 Because somehow she isn't part of any of those photos.
19:51 Even though she would have been here because she replaced her alternate universe self.
19:55 Hence why Harvey isn't questioning why he's married to her.
19:59 So that self would have had photos of herself in the album.
20:02 But this could be explained away as Salem made it this way because he knew she'd react like this.
20:08 Salem had her get sent to a universe like this to increase the chance that she'd regret the spell.
20:14 She goes from going to a cab to asking a kid for a skateboard.
20:17 Somehow the kid calls her an old lady.
20:20 And I don't see why a cop starts going after.
20:23 She finds the stopwatch and says a spell and turns it.
20:28 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.
20:36 She uses it and somehow she makes a fool out of herself by happily telling Harvey that he looks how he's supposed to look.
20:43 She says she wants to buy a huge pizza and then rearrange all of her stuffed animals.
20:48 She also somersaults and says she's enjoying being a kid.
20:52 But if she stayed fit, she could somersault as an adult too. I knew the title was familiar.
20:58 It's that episode of the Mysterious Mr. Enter Abuse.
21:01 But the title wasn't obvious enough about what the premise would be about.
21:04 And it's yet another mean-spirited episode of the show that only exists to shove a message down your throat.
21:10 So he had every reason to hate it.
21:13 But this episode isn't so bad of an example of that as a lot of the other stories in the series with the same problem.
21:19 At least here, all the times where the story was unrealistically mean to Sabrina could have been easily explained as
21:26 Salem had to take and make her go to a reality like this on purpose.
21:30 To guarantee that she'll want to go back to her old life.
21:33 While Mr. Enter felt like Salem was just being a dick.
21:37 And it did seem like Salem was being spiteful and really wanted to prove to her that adulthood sucked.
21:43 The family would tear Salem a new one if Sabrina didn't decide to return to her old life.
21:48 Even if he wasn't spiteful, he'd still have every incentive to make sure she had a miserable time.
21:54 And he might have felt bad about simply brainwashing her out of wanting to be an adult.
21:59 So unlike the rest of the show where there's no excuse for life being so miserable. At least this episode makes sense.
22:07 Her not having powers while she's an adult prevents the plot from making me wonder why she's not casting spells to make your life easier.
22:14 When really she'd avoid most of these problems.
22:17 I've seen worse episodes, but this is still relentlessly annoying.
22:22 But out of universe when it comes out the message is being given to the audience.
22:27 Mr. Enter's right to hate how the message is mean and heavy-handed.
22:31 The message that you should enjoy being a kid while it lasts is a good one encouraging having fun.
22:37 But it fails to show off the good things about being an adult.
22:40 There's plenty of people who aren't adult yet who are depressed.
22:44 And the last thing they need is an episode telling them that they have nothing to look forward to in life.
22:49 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.
22:57 After she got home, she should have been told that when she grows up.
23:02 She won't have to live in a small house or get a job.
23:06 Because she'd have tons of money from pawning off jewelry she'd zap up.
23:09 Or even just family heirlooms.
23:12 Also, it's very unlikely that she'd have tons of poorly behaved kids.
23:17 Especially if she didn't talk Harvey into birth control.
23:20 But I guess was going with the assumption that the birth control didn't work.
23:25 The audience should have been told that not everyone's guaranteed to have kids.
23:29 She would have gone to the movies anyways because Harvey was there to watch them.
23:34 In fact, she goes to the arcade anyways.
23:36 The audience also should have been told that not everyone's guaranteed to hate their job.
23:42 But I'm sure most people do.
23:45 And it's still possible that someone could have a life like this.
23:47 [MUSIC PLAYING]