This Is Not A Post About Sabrina: The Animated Series
I never watched this show growing up.
Seriously. I never caught it when it debuted on ABC, and I definitely never watched it when it appeared on UPN’s morning weekday filler slot. And why would I? It was just a spinoff of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, a popular sitcom that I never watched either. Even worse, it was produced by DiC Entertainment, who were involved in a lot of crappy shows that I only watched because I had nothing else better to do. Besides, the commercials told me what toys to look for during one of our family vacations to Wal-Mart.
But even though I’ve never seen this show, it’s my duty here at Giant Robot Invasion to review it, since it was (only barely) a part of the era in which I grew up. With that said, let’s take a look at Sabrina: the Animated Series, using information I heard entirely from other people.
This show is about a younger Sabrina who attends middle school and gets into a variety of magical midsadventures. (Or so I’ve been told.) In every episode, she dips into her “Spooky Jar” for a spell that will fix the day’s problem, even though she’s forbidden to abuse magic. However, the spell always manages to backfire, leaving Sabrina with a bigger mess to clean up. I guess that what happens when you keep spells in a jar-eventually they get stale.
After I heard about this concept from a friend (who is a girl and would like this stuff better than guys like me), I have to wonder. Sabrina’s family keeps telling her not to abuse magic, and yet they leave the damn Spooky Jar on top of the fridge or on a shelf. Look, if you want the teenager to stop abusing magic, why can’t you lock the spell-giving jar inside a cabinet with a special padlock or something?
“I bought one of those name-brand locks to make sure no one gets into this jar.”
“Name brand, huh? What’s it called?”
“Smith and Wesson.”
I’ve also been informed that Sabrina is surrounded by younger versions of characters from the original sitcom, like Harvey Kinkle and her aunts, Hilda and Zelda. Now, if you’ve seen Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (which I haven’t), you’d know that Hilda and Zelda were at least 600 years old, and look to be at least 30. It’d make sense that they’d look about 25 or so while Sabrina was in middle school, right? Well, it turns out that Hilda and Zelda were turned into teenagers during these years because they abused magic. How can you tell? I’m not sure, especially when these characters look NOTHING like their adult versions.
And not only have Hilda and Zelda been turned into teenagers, they apparently have to go to high school and learn how to drive while obeying the rules of Sabrina’s guardian, Uncle Quigley. Why? What purpose does this serve? They’re over 600 years old-it’s not like they wouldn’t know how to do this stuff already. I may not be a warlock, but I don’t see how this is an effective punishment for abusing magic. Personally, I think it’d be better if they were turned into trees. The plot twist is that they don’t do anything and we don’t feel insulted when we go home.
My other friend claims that at least they got Nick Bakay to voice Salem in the cartoon like he did in the sitcom. I can’t personally tell you what that’s like, but I hear cartoon Salem saunters around in a smoking jacket a la Hugh Hefner and prods Sabrina into using magic because he’s an asshole. I have to say, if I ever sat down to watch every single episode of this series multiple times in syndication, I’d think Salem was easily the best character out of the whole lot. That’s why when Salem gets on a bus, everyone else has to get up and go to the back.
But even if I wanted to watch this show (which I don’t) I’d be cautious. This is a DiC series we’re talking about here. DiC cartoons are infamous for cheesy plotlines, flat characters, and inconsistent animation. This show is no different. Pouring over the notes that my other friend obsessively took while watching a couple of episodes, I’ve learned that while the animation is passable, this show has several other problems that only enhance how lame it is. (His words, not mine.)
For example, this show has a load of EXCELLENT episode title puns, which every cartoon is required to have by law. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a good reference, and the show apparently drops in some pop culture references from time to time. However, it’s mostly limited to those awful title puns-they don’t really do anything else with them. One episode is called “Field of Screams”, and involves a group of baseball-playing monsters called the “Impalers” taking over the local joints in Sabrina’s town. Look, if you’ve got a gang of baseball players dominating town, why didn’t you model the episode after The Warriors and have the local kids face down the monsters with a team called “The Baseball Furies”?
And it says here that some of these references don’t make sense. In the episode “Boy Meets Bike”, Sabrina offers to take Harvey to a double feature showing the two Armour of God movies. But wait a minute-Armour of God 2 was released first in the US as Operation Condor, and after that Armour of God 1 was released direct-to-video as Operation Condor 2: Armour of the Gods. Are they going to see the original Hong Kong flicks, or are they going to see the American versions, which they probably wouldn’t know are really titled Armour of God unless they Googled it like I did?
Eh. Maybe they know a film buff who spends his weekend watching movies like Bruce Lee VS. Bad Guys From Stephen King Novels. (Apparently what “It” fears the most is a roundhouse.)
Then there are times where the references are just plain wrong. In another episode where Sabrina, Harvey, and Salem are sucked into Harvey’s indie comic book, they find that a green blob called the Dreaded Dysphylia is erasing the entire comic book world. Harvey gets pretty bummed about it-he’s come to believe that his comic book skills suck, and so he doesn’t want to come up with a plan. I’d call the Ghostbusters for help, but since we’re stuck in a comic book, the only thing we can do now is try to stall with the Filibusters.
But another character called “Perfecto, Pooch of Power” is amused, and says that you don’t really hear the world “Dysphylia” in a comic book that often.
…hold on.
No it’s not! Dysphylia is a GENUS, which has nothing to do with liking yourself! The closest word that relates to liking yourself is “dysphoria”, which basically means ‘feeling bad’! Did these guys even do any research? If this blob is supposed to represent Harvey’s self-loathing, why didn’t they make sure its name was actually related to depression? Who knows. Maybe one of the senior interns was supposed to look it up, if his ventriloquist hadn’t called in sick that day.
But these notes explain that the biggest problem of this show is the total lack of character development. Now, it’s true that a lot of episodic cartoons don’t really have character development. It’s not exactly a bad thing. But consider this for a moment-the entire premise of Sabrina: The Animated Series involves Sabrina abusing magic to solve a problem, only to learn a valuable life lesson after the spell backfires and she’s forced to settle things herself. Sounds reasonable enough.
So, with this new experience under her belt, what does Sabrina do in the next episode? SHE ABUSES MAGIC.
Really, why do you show that Sabrina “learns a lesson” when it’s clear she doesn’t learn a damn thing at all? People change because of events in their life. You’d think that after lots of wacky hijinks, Sabrina would realize that using a spell isn’t going to work, especially when those spells come in a box that says “As Seen On TV”.
And, according to my notes, there’s one incident that’s probably the worst case of “retaining the status quo” I have ever seen. See, Sabrina has a rival named Gem Stone who often abuses her wealth to show up Sabrina and try to win Harvey’s favor. Okay, no problem. But in one episode, Gem’s family actually loses all of their money, and Gem is forced to live with Sabrina for a while. Gem eventually develops a healthy and profound respect for Sabrina, and though she gets her money back at the end of the episode, you know that she’ll never be the same again.
Does this affect any future episode? NO. Come on, guys. If you’re not going to take advantage of character development, then don’t develop your characters in the first place. I’d rather have cardboard people that characters who develop right into a brick wall. Actually, forget cardboard people-I’d rather have some action figures. Like Optimus Prime. Then Skeletor can steal Barbie so Optimus has to team up with Snake Eyes to stop him. Oh yeah, that would be awesome.
Overall, I can only guess that Sabrina: The Animated Series was pretty forgettable, though it sounds harmless. And hey-the show was apparently produced by Savage Steve Holland, who created the awesome Eek! the Cat. That’s pretty cool. Still, if you’re gonna watch something by DiC, you might as well watch Inspector Gadget. At least his theme song is way more awesome.
Oh! My other Sabrina-liking friend has just shown up and told me that this show got a follow-up called Sabrina’s Secret Life, involving practically no one from the original voice cast. Judging by how much Sabrina: The Animated Series isn’t worth it, I’m glad I also never paid attention to Sabrina’s Secret Life.
(I’m being serious. I don’t remember that damn show at all.)
Related posts:
So, you didn’t watch Sabrina? I similarly didn’t watch the movie Grease about 1,000 times as a child. The lyrics to the songs aren’t permanently etched into my brain. However, had I watched it that much, it would be because my sister watched it over and over again, forcing me to watch it as well, which she didn’t. Also, she didn’t force me to watch Clueless even more than that.
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Matt Willard Reply:
August 21st, 2009 at 3:34 PM
It’s a good thing you definitely didn’t do that. It sounds horrible.
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Come on Sailor Moon was pretty good considering it was DiC cept for casting of Molly (such a terrible Brooklyn accent). But what should be noted about Sabrina the Animated Series is that it was also produced with Disney so there shouldn’t have been an excuse for it being so shit.
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Matt Willard Reply:
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:10 AM
Well, that’s the thing. DiC does make good shows…but not very often. Most of the time they make forgettable junk. You’re right in that Disney should’ve stepped in a bit more to do things better, like having the aunts retain their actual skin color.
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