New episodes are out on netflix.

 

Nah, the rest of season 1. Nine new episodes.

 

I'm rather disappointed with the second season.

During the last it felt that they are using all the after school special bullshit as a way to comment on the sanctimonious self absorptive nature of all these teen shows. After all it stood in such a stark contrast to the rather visceral art style and Sabrina always got punished for it.

But three episodes in and it's been some sort of a boring lgbt story that I mostly skipped over, something about sexism in public schools (even though the little exchange between Lilith and Blackwood gave the impression that this is a female dominated society, also it being witches and all) and abstinence propaganda.

First season gave me hope that this is building to something bigger and better, but now it appears that this show is going to wallow in being another supernatural teen drama. Should have guessed after the rather prominent Riverdale tag line on the announcement poster.

 

The Baxter High storyline almost feels like it's part of a separate series. That said, I'm somewhat curious as to the powers of Sabrina's friends.

At this point, I feel like I'm still watching the show for the same reasons I like cheesy teen drama, and good fucking lord, how many dances are there in that series!?

@KGB, try episode four. In general, the episodes not involving the high school are a lot more entertaining.

 

They really should stick to the witch-centric parts of the show. Neither the writers nor the young actors (save maybe Sabrina's actress) are talented enough to tackle the laundry list of social issues they've clumsily thrown together in part 2.

 

Damnit, Sabrina. Why you so gullible?

 

Yeah, I also feel like this season falls somewhat short of the first one though it has its good moments. I like the teenager drama and one of the things that drew me to this show is that, similar to for example Magcians, magic and teenagers generally results in an unholy mess rather than a happy end.

Indeed one of the biggest issues I have with the season is that instead of concentrating on the highschool experience and Sabrina struggles with temptation the overall story feels the need to endlessly ramp up the scales and introduce yet ever more plotlines to follow which result in a pretty unsatisfactory ending in my opinion. I mean the last three episodes especially make it seem like the showrunners ran out of time and wanted to bring everything to an end which makes absolutely no sense considering season 3 and 4 is already ordered.

I got to ask, in what way is the show pushing abstinence propaganda? I mean sure Sabrina hasn't had sex yet but quite a few (young) people in the show got lucky without ruining their lives (most prominently Ross who lost her virginity during summer camp of all things) and the advice that Sabrina gets when the question of her first time comes up is "go for it if you really like guy and feel ready for it". That doesn't exactly sound like abstinence propaganda to me...

 

Lillith/Ms. Wardwell has been the star of season two.

 

I appear to be a week late, but this was... vaguely disappointing. It was very rushed and far too condensed. If they wanted to cover Faustus' dive into the LARPy magical altright and also Lucifer's apocalypse attempt, they shouldn't have spent an entire episode on Tarots or highschool social issues.

I suppose it's reasonable that two random wannabe inquisition angels get whacked by Sabrina to show how powerful the Herald abilities made her, but making Lucifer "just another" uppity angel who straight up lost to a handful of witches just seems kinda lazy. If the theme of the pantheon being artificial and his "strength" being built entirely upon lies and deception was explored more, maybe it would be reasonable. But ultimately getting musical-ed and locked up by one student warlock makes even Voldemort's defeat seem impressive.

Scene upon scene of Anti-Christ imagery didn't really have any payoff. The church scene with the bolts, crown and overhead shot was really well done, making the result all the more disappointing.

2 more seasons, and the "Dark Lord" got knocked out just like that? It's quite possible that Nick Scratch's "provocative" name will still come into play when they go play action heroes and fetch him from perdition (...what is she thinking?) and unleash the Morningstar once again, but it seems unlikely. And with such an embarrasing performance this time when all went according to his plan, what good will a rematch do?

I only hope that parts three and four dives deeper into lore and fetches some more interesting, threatening villains. And not Cthulhu please, that would be lazy. Show has already shown itself open to Biblical interpretations, so there's bigger bads to get if they want to - Lucifer isn't really Satan (and Satan isn't the Devil, in any case), and several other key figures also fell at the same time and messed around with the Nephilim. An argument could be made (if you consider weird Ethiopian texts canon) that "Satan" is a corporate entity of several important fallen beings (none of which are Lucifer) acting in unison. And if you start cracking open the alternative Hebrew translations and uncanonical texts (like Enoch, oh my), a strong argument could be made that the Abrahamic religions are, in fact, Polytheist. In any case, there's an abundance of material to pull from for fanfics, no need to be limited to this pathetic Lucifer.

I'll end on a good note: magic. Seeing magic (especially without wonky lens) is always good. This season had some nice magic. The instant neck-snaps of juiced up Sabrina powerlevel doesn't mesh quite as well with a HP crossover, but it can still be done. And writing these might be more satisfying with all the extra material we have now.

Season 2: 6/10, would have been better if Carrot!Sabrina took over as main character. Mandrake Sabrina was fantastic, and I would very much read fics featuring her. Sadly I don't think her mannerism would carry over to the page very well, and in any case be quite challenging to write well. But I sure hope someone tries.

 

Watched this over the last few days, and it's a mixed bag. When it was good, it was very good, like the tarot episode, the fight between Sabrina and the hunters, and most scenes with Lilith in. When it was bad, it was almost painful...unfortunately, like most scenes with the 'true' Dark Lord, because boy was he entirely unimpressive. Which, to be fair, fitted with the story they were building around him in the last couple of episodes, but just because something makes sense doesn't mean it's good.

I suspect by the time series three comes around, this will have dropped down to something I'll check out if I remember, rather than something I'll definitely be keeping up with, but we'll see. There's definitely some potential in the hanging plot hooks.

 

I'm a few episodes into S2 and not feeling it. The biggest thing that I don't like is that the format is like a prestige show (fewer episodes, longer individual episodes), but the show doesn't really have a compelling cohesive storyline that's clear through all the episodes, most of the screentime is dedicated to episodic stuff contained to its own episode.

The most prominent overarching plot is

Spoiler

Lilith's machinations to get back in Satan's good graces.

For Sabrina, her most prominent storyline is her boyfriend.

Writing continues to be ham and cheese, and some scenes (Lilith's in particular) are written like the show expects viewers to be complete idiots and explains things like to a moderately dumb 12 year old. Production quality is great, but there are no bones to keep the meat standing upright. And there's an awful lot of "as you know" because witch stuff has to be explained to viewers and Sabrina apparently, like she hasn't been raised by two witches. Seriously, even Witch Valentine's Day was a new thing for her?

Meh. But The Crown S3 drops November 17th, so that's good.

 

FYI, it's just been one season split into two parts. Like with Doctor Who, Arrow, Flash etc.

 

New season came out yesterday.

First impressions: Fuck musical scenes.

Also, everything feels rushed so far.

 

Spoilers ahead

So. That was a thing. I also said the previous season would have been better if Mandrake Sabrina had taken over as protagonist. That holds true for this one as well. This was not a good season.

The musical scenes actually didn't bother me too much, they were clearly unnecessary but didn't really offend. There was basically no high school drama or Intro to Social Justice 101 this season, which was good. Puck the Hobgoblin was pretty good.

Sadly, the pagans were done dirty. Really dirty. The giant plant wickerman fetish was a good concept, but the execution was very bad. Why are these crazy carnie gypsies trying to make The Last of Us real again?

Blackwood was done even dirtier than in the last season. Now he's an insane murderhobo I guess. Why is he ending the world again? He hasn't spent those decades going slowly insane now. There were still the fifteen years he spent in Goku's temporally displaced gym, but why did he go from "yeah, boys rule, let's make misogyny cool again" to "i just want nyarlathotep to eat everything (including me)"?

And finally, the most egregious sin of all: time travel.

Did we need time travel? How does this loop make sense? Why? How? When? At least the cuckoo breaking might be a sign that it has consequences. I can't believe I miss the time when I thought Prisoner of Azkaban was poorly done time travel.

Ultimately the garbage fire this setting and its lore is becoming is making it less and less appealing for a crossover. The Pan was just some random carnie dude who could be killed by a random sword?

The final death sentence, however, is the total lack of cool magic. They are just opening and closing doors and force neck snapping from time to time. While last season wasn't much better for plot, it at least had that. There's also a total lack of Carrot!Sabrina in season 3. Therefore, I give it a 2/10 (thanks, cheerleader scenes).

(Oh, and Salem; why make a Sabrina show if you are going to utterly disregard Salem? Especially in this season where he obviously would have been useful!)

 

Spoiler

Season 1 and Season 2 were pretty good, but Season 3 felt like it was coming apart at the seams. The power creep is real. You thought the Devil was scary? Turns out he's small fry in comparison to the dark eldritch horrors lurking at the edges of our reality. The character development also felt weak and unnatural this season. No one is likeable anymore. The ending (where there are two Sabrinas, one who rules Hell, and the other who is a normal teenager) doesn't make sense. Sabrina's whole character struggle is that she wants to have it all. This doesn't give her that. One Sabrina gets one set of experiences, and one Sabrina gets another. And the Sabrina ruling Hell was all to happy about potentially never seeing her aunts, or Nick, or her friends again, which is off.

 

It's over, and I'm not very torn up about it. HP crossover potential, if visually graphed, would look like a steep descent dropping further every season (or even episode), which was always what interested me most. I still can't get over how these writers took a really good teen's show with fantastic aesthetics and a great mood to... this. Basically every character was done dirty, the setting was done dirty, even the visuals were done dirty. And we never ended up getting a more prominent Salem (come on, allergy medications work).

2 years ago I said Part 1 wasn't enough to write a crossover with and it needed one or two more seasons. Now I think Part 1 is the only salvageable part. This was a disappointing journey, for me.

 

Yeah I struggle to think of another TV show that crashed so quickly from brilliance to complete shitshow.

I am pretending that Parts 2-4 do not exist.

 

HEROES is the only one I can think did a similar nose dive.

 

I watched the first season, then saw some of the initial first impressions of the rest on here and just never bothered. Feeling vindicated in this decision now.