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Some of this is addressed in the later episodes. Also the names make more sense if you remember they're basically opposite Christians.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:03
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Autonomous Monster posted:What didn't you like about it, out of interest? Old Scratch and Mr Scratch are traditional nicknames for that character.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:12
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Gaunab posted:Some of this is addressed in the later episodes. Also the names make more sense if you remember they're basically opposite Christians. Cheers to you and oasax. Can you allude more to which of my complaints are addressed without spoilers? Looking forward to finishing it out. Not sure what you mean about the names though, none of them confused me. Edit: based on the post above me I assume it’s related to Nick.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:26
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simplefish posted:Cool, what changed your mind? I just felt episode 2 was stronger in pacing and character. Sabrina asks a lot of smart questions about the particulars of her baptism, and then during it when she realizes she was lied to she backs out. She's not doing things out of a sense of propriety, she wants things to make logical sense. There was a good parallel between what she's able to do to the jocks with her powers, showing the lure of witch life, and the party with her friends which shows the lure of mortal life. But episode 3 is weaker. It's necessary to establish how she's able to go to Not-Hogwarts and still see her mortal friends, but Daniel Webster cameo was a bit on the nose and while the banned books plot felt a little forced, it went turbo-forced when a friend of hers is like "I'm gonna lose my vision so I only have 3 months to read all these banned books ( and that she apparently can't get at a public library or a bookstore?) If the cause of that is evil teacher making her friend blind that's dumb, the teacher should be trying to make it easier for her to leave behind her mortal friends and not feel she has to help them through a difficult period in life. I still want some wisecracking Salem in this series. Sucks that he's so underused cause of her allergy.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:47
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Ccs posted:I still want some wisecracking Salem in this series. Sucks that he's so underused cause of her allergy. This makes me so sad, to the point where I wonder if a cat allergy shouldn't have disqualified her for the part. I'm not saying the actress doesn't do a great job, I'm just saying I'd like to see how the 2nd runner-up actress might have done, paired with a lot more kitty cat scenes.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:59
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FastestGunAlive posted:Cheers to you and oasax. Can you allude more to which of my complaints are addressed without spoilers? The Weird Sisters get a little more development later on, especially Prudence. The jocks show up again. (very minor spoiler) There is no love triangle. I think it is safe to say that Faustus and Wardwell are not exactly experts or neutral when it comes to the power and behavior of witches versus warlocks. Phenotype posted:This makes me so sad, to the point where I wonder if a cat allergy shouldn't have disqualified her for the part. I'm not saying the actress doesn't do a great job, I'm just saying I'd like to see how the 2nd runner-up actress might have done, paired with a lot more kitty cat scenes. It would probably be incredibly expensive to do that, both in terms of delays and extra filming for a new actor, and I doubt they could just fire Kiernan Shipka without having to give her a big settlement. And it would make the production company look like major assholes. Oasx fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 21:11
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As much as I like cats I like Shipka more.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:12
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Oasx posted:It would probably be incredibly expensive to do that, both in terms of delays and extra filming for a new actor, and I doubt they could just fire Kiernan Shipka without having to give her a big settlement. And it would make the production company look like major assholes. I'm not saying they should have actually re-filmed it, I just mean that should have been a standard question when they were interviewing actresses: Are you allergic to cats? Kiernan Shipka was great, but I just wonder if whoever came in second might have done just as good a job and let them do some more stuff with Salem.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:35
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I don't think Kieran Shipka realised how allergic she was until she was on set.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:37
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Shoud've just used the 90s animatronic Salem. Voice and everything.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:43
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Necrothatcher posted:I don't think Kieran Shipka realised how allergic she was until she was on set. My understanding is that she didn't know she was allergic at all.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:48
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Also goblin Salem was dope and I'm OK with it.
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Oct 28, 2018 22:23
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Ugh I did not like episode 4. By the second day of magic school Sabrina already wants to change all her classes. Hasn't she ever heard of a course of study, where you don't start the really sexy subjects first? You gotta build to that. And she solves a major problem at the school within 3 days. And then she solves the off-brand Lamerchant Configuration to summon not-Pinhead by looking at a journal for eight seconds. That could've been built up over at least another episode! No mention of that one girl's impending blindness. I'm sure they'll pick that plot back up but it would be hilarious if they just dropped it. Ambrose astral projection was boring, felt like they were reaching to make him and Hilda relevant this episode. Zelda and Hilda's relationship is so confusing. She went from casually killing her sister to feeling teary-eyed about bullying her a child. A sudden plot to make Zelda relevant as a mid-wife! Felt like it came out of nowhere. The Weird Sisters feel terribly over-acted, and Ms. Wardwell is even worse. Feels like they're reaching with subplots to give their large cast something to do. And tone is all over in this episode. Makes me pine for Stranger Things where there was a consistent sense of what kind of show it is. I think I'm picking on specific plot points as being annoying or boring but it's more the way they're presented and their pacing feels off somehow.
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Oct 29, 2018 00:55
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Most of those complaints are wrapped up in 8-9-10. Apparently they filmed seasons 1 and 2 concurrently, and that kind of makes sense looking back at it. 8-10 are where things start pulling together into overarching plot coherency using the setup of 1-6/7. That makes sense from a production perspective, where instead of being at the end of a 10-episode run it's the middle "meaty" part of a 20 episode run. Similar in plots to anime 'n poo poo where they have 26 episodes to stretch out and things often don't start getting serious until 10 episodes in.
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Oct 29, 2018 01:02
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Skwirl posted:As much as I like cats I like Shipka more. That's my take as well, I thought she did great in Mad Men (way above par for a child actor) and she deserves to be plopped right into a lead role in a series. I'd honestly just have Salem talking in her head to develop the character. You could add in more cgi or do one of the camera tricks they use to duplicate an actor for the same scene if you want to see them close together. I think you could do a decent looking small cgi demon cat and it'd be a fun look. It's definitely a negative since Sabrina should be playing around with her familiar and carrying it pretty often, but oh well. If it's just a hair allergy, which is what it seemed to be, then you could have Sabrina develop the same allergy and then Salem shifts into a hairless cat, or even into an animal she's not allergic to. You break from the classic canon of "Sabrina has a black cat" of course, but if you want to make Salem a bigger deal that'd be a way to have him on screen with Sabrina way more often, and it's not a bad way to demonstrate a bond between them. Having an allergy or reason for Salem's change be the result of magic or a curse from the Weird Sisters or other witches who don't like her could make story sense too..
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Oct 29, 2018 02:12
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NowonSA posted:That's my take as well, I thought she did great in Mad Men (way above par for a child actor) and she deserves to be plopped right into a lead role in a series. Cat allergies come from proteins and immunoglobins. Mostly spread across the body during cleaning and makes the dander a bio weapon.
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Oct 29, 2018 02:20
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This entire show is an ironic Chick Tract and I love it.
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Oct 29, 2018 02:48
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Binged 7 episodes and I really enjoy the show. Salem not speaking is something I thought was pretty cool, if there's a buildup to him eventually speaking in S02 then it kinda gives more reason to focus on the development of the supporting cast. When he's on screen however and some shenanigans area bout to go down I think SALEM  If he turns out to be the crackin wise murder cat then I'm so for that. Really enjoy the aesthetic and tone of the show, but the end of E07 was 
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Oct 29, 2018 03:40
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SardonicTyrant posted:This entire show is an ironic Chick Tract and I love it. It's the joke that never gets old. I laughed at the opening of episode 2, which was almost tonally identical to any Christian youth ministry routine. The only thing missing was Father Blackwell sitting on his chair backwards so that he could be more approachable. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 04:02
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FastestGunAlive posted:Watched six episodes. Episode 1 was a fine intro but I was not feeling it until ep 5, which I loved and was what I expected going in from this show (although I've never read the comics). Like, I could not care less about not-Hogwarts and a half-blood fulfilling destiny UGH, just give me some more of that dark humor/horror vibe, let Sabrina find her way, and have the real world and supernatural slowly intersect I think the answer to about half of your complaints turns out to be that 'Witch society is fuuuucked and Sabrina is having absolutely none of both that and teen romance cliches'. Like, Sabrina's just taking zero bullshit from mortals OR witches and takes problems head-on with everything availaible to her, it's pretty great. Also, look like they do have smart phones. (they must be easy to film, really)
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Oct 29, 2018 04:20
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Ghost Leviathan posted:
I think it just highlights how she gets away with it for purely plot bunny reasons. Kinda destroys all credibility of the character. I binged watched the rest of the series (actually just kept it on the background while doing other stuff today) and I think you can best describe the ridiculousness of the whole series by this point in the middle of episode nine when Sabrina is talking back to Zelda trying to justify her actions and she says she stands for doing whats right, when they're literally discussing an incident under which she killed someone and resurrected a flesh eating zombie.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:35
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nessin posted:I think it just highlights how she gets away with it for purely plot bunny reasons. Kinda destroys all credibility of the character. I binged watched the rest of the series (actually just kept it on the background while doing other stuff today) and I think you can best describe the ridiculousness of the whole series by this point in the middle of episode nine when Sabrina is talking back to Zelda trying to justify her actions and she says she stands for doing whats right, when they're literally discussing an incident under which she killed someone and resurrected a flesh eating zombie. 'I learned it from watching you, Aunt Zelda! I learned it from watching you!' Incidentally, 1x10 shows that Zelda can actually be a pretty good parent when she needs to. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 04:38
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Sabrina is 16, like most 16 year olds she thinks she knows more than anyone else. Also she doesn’t get away with anything. Harvey solves the problem by killing his brother, but Sabrina is clearly aware that she screwed up badly.
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Oct 29, 2018 05:15
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I just finished binging this over the weekend and whoa, this show came out of no where and was pretty good. I didn't hear anything about it before until I saw it on Netflix, and I had to do a double take at the preview video because I thought "wait, Sabrina… a witch… is this a remake of that one show?" Watching the first episode spoilers I thought this was going to be a ugh groany tv show about a kid growing up and just realizing she had special powers and the entire season(s+) would be devoted to her learning to control them so the last scene where she goes home and uses her powers to turn on the radio was really really good. In retrospect I'm so glad that they established Sabrina as a full-on witch who's aware she's a witch and aware of the powers she has cause the alternative would have been awful I think. Rest of this post is general spoilers for the entire show: I've also never watched the original(s?) Sabrina the Teenage Witch shows though I "know" of them. I know that there was a talking cat, and Mellissa Joan Hart was in it but that's kinda it. I was definitely not aware of how devil-y the plot was. Like, I didn't know that witches in this universe were literal devil worshipers or hell/the devil were an actual legit real thing. And that episode where Sabrina slits that girls throat was just because holy poo poo the show got dark.That last part was just really surprising because god drat, it said a lot about Sabrina's character. I feel like most of the time she's written like a person in her 20s who has seen poo poo and knows how the world works, but then you see that she's in fact just a 16 year old girl who thinks that her first boyfriend is going to be the person she marries and that her high school best friends will be in her life forever and all these other silly things teenagers believe cause they don't know better. And then they show that she learns the lesson her aunts tried to protect her from, that actions have consequences. If they make a season 2 it'll be a really nice jumping point, though I wouldn't be surprised either if they maybe skipped a few years to establish her as a more learned witch offscreen. To the person who mentioned the feast thing being unsustainable they flat out said as much in the show. I think it was Sabrina who said it even, that they don't have the people to keep sacrificing. The story they told was that Sabrina's father stopped that practice allegedly because the Devil told him, but then the current High Priest reinstated it, also allegedly because the Devil told him. So either one of them is lying or both of them were lying. Anyway, I'm always really hesitant about watching shows with a cast full of kids/teenagers because it seems like its either a train wreck or it's surprisingly good, and I'm glad that this show was the latter. I mentioned the show to a few friends and they haven't watched it, but the genera consensus from them (n=2) was that they don't want to watch it cause it looks really cheesy, mainly because they also incorrectly thought that the show would basically follow Sabrina learning that she's a witch and the CrAzY things she will go through learning about her background. I told them both that this show was "basically like Stranger Things but about witches and an older cast" cause that's how it felt to me the entire time. Anyway, is there going to be a season 2? And is there anything about this show's world that people who watched the old tv shows or apparently read the comic books (I had no idea this was a comic book, and I have no idea who Archie is) that would know that I don't? I mean I don't want to know about the spoilery stuff that might come up in the next seasons but any basic worldbuilding info would be neat.
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Oct 29, 2018 09:13
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They are already filming season two.
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Oct 29, 2018 09:34
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Boris Galerkin posted:And is there anything about this show's world that people who watched the old tv shows or apparently read the comic books (I had no idea this was a comic book, and I have no idea who Archie is) that would know that I don't? I mean I don't want to know about the spoilery stuff that might come up in the next seasons but any basic worldbuilding info would be neat. It's hard to say, between the comics, the TV show, the animated show and various alternate timelines and spinoffs there's been a lot of takes on it. I think I've mentioned that the casual amorality of witch society and Sabrina's thing of being stuck between two worlds (and that it's hard for witches to find love) have always been a key element, but usually played for comedy. Also, on 1x10: ahahaha oh my god I was right, Blackwood has twin brothers, twin Venture Brothers
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Oct 29, 2018 09:38
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It's hard to say, between the comics, the TV show, the animated show and various alternate timelines and spinoffs there's been a lot of takes on it. I think I've mentioned that the casual amorality of witch society and Sabrina's thing of being stuck between two worlds (and that it's hard for witches to find love) have always been a key element, but usually played for comedy. I thought he had a twin boy and a girl. Zelda took the girl because she was technically the first born and was worried she would be culled?
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Oct 29, 2018 09:41
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Boris Galerkin posted:I thought he had a twin boy and a girl. Zelda took the girl because she was technically the first born and was worried she would be culled? You're right.
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Oct 29, 2018 09:50
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Well, that's what I get for jumping the gun. And here I thought Hilda's nightmare was going to be prescient.
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Oct 29, 2018 09:51
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Yeah, it would be pretty futile to use any other media as a basis for comparison to any Archie property, to be honest. This is the one comic book company that doesn't even pretend to have continuity across its comics. The closest you'd come here is the recent comic of the same title (written by the showrunner of this show) but even then it's hardly anything like the new show at all. On the other hand, even though it would be terrible I'd eat this poo poo up if they did what they were doing in the 70s and 80s when the witching world was friends with aliens--regular aliens, not witch aliens--and Sabrina would go and get witch promotions by defeating mad scientists bent on world conquest. I will say that I'm very happy it's using the witching world as a metaphor for a male dominated world, because as a kid I was pissed that the old TV show replaced the head witch Della with a male head, Drell, for no good reason.
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Oct 29, 2018 09:54
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I kinda think of it more like Super Mario Bros of all things; the characters are basically a set of broad archetypes and characteristics with their own expected roles and stories that can be plugged into variety of genres and stories with some tweaking to fit, and they make no bones about putting them back in the box when it's done.
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Oct 29, 2018 11:16
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Ghost Leviathan posted:'I learned it from watching you, Aunt Zelda! I learned it from watching you!' Zelda would be my pick for most improved character. Her actress does a great job balancing zealotry, vulnerability, and genuine care for her family in those final episodes. Oasx posted:Sabrina is 16, like most 16 year olds she thinks she knows more than anyone else. Also she doesn’t get away with anything. Harvey solves the problem by killing his brother, but Sabrina is clearly aware that she screwed up badly. More on that, (E10) everyone in her family tells her how badly she hosed up and how they aren’t going to help her fulfill a fundamentally greedy wish. She then gets a mortal’s soul devoured, almost kills a witch, alienates her family from witch society, and traumatizes Harvey’s family so badly that he breaks up with her and his dad slips into alcoholism. It’s actually pretty remarkable how severe and direct the consequences are. Sabrina assumes she can play the system as she has done all season and then the collective weight of her mistakes fall on top of her in the final two episodes. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 12:05
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pixelbaron posted:They are already filming season two. My understanding was filming was finished for S01 and S02 before this one aired.
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Oct 29, 2018 12:40
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Boris Galerkin posted:To the person who mentioned the feast thing being unsustainable they flat out said as much in the show. I think it was Sabrina who said it even, that they don't have the people to keep sacrificing. The story they told was that Sabrina's father stopped that practice allegedly because the Devil told him, but then the current High Priest reinstated it, also allegedly because the Devil told him. So either one of them is lying or both of them were lying. The most telling moment for me was connecting that with Zelda's nightmare, where she cooks the chubby satanic Sunday schooler and gets chastened by the devil for doing so even with their numbers dwindling. It's an anxiety she has, and yet she'll still blanch when her niece mentions it. Though she's come around by the end of the episode when she and Sabrina leave horrified, despite her previously mentioned cravings for longpig
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Oct 29, 2018 13:03
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Paracaidas posted:The most telling moment for me was connecting that with Zelda's nightmare, where she cooks the chubby satanic Sunday schooler and gets chastened by the devil for doing so even with their numbers dwindling. I'm not usually a fan of dream episodes, but I did like they went right into the anxieties of each character with an unquestioning dream-logic. And it seems like a lot of it was foreshadowing of some kind... Zelda's nightmare was relatively low-key, but seems indicative that all the horrible and ridiculous things that witches do really are for nothing, especially since she's contrasted with Hilda's simple life skills. She's the more traditionalist of the two despite her pragmatism, and is seeing the contradictions; that witch society has become dangerously insular, exploitative and self-destructive, claiming to make these sacrifices in the name of the Dark Lord who may in fact not be impressed at all. And also ties in with how Hilda and Zelda immediately back up Sabrina with the Harrowings; even as much as cruelty is all fun and games for them, murder is something else entirely. In short, about everything we see of witch society seems to be in utter contradiction, and Sabrina, being a half-outsider who's already been dealing with the problems of mortal society, can see pretty plainly what's wrong with a society that has far more demands and threats for her than it has incentives. And Lillith is easily capable of taking advantage of all that.
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Oct 29, 2018 13:21
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Agreed! Though, Ambrose really got the laziest of all the dreams. Man who feels trapped in house nightmares about being trapped in his own body. Wild stuff! I also really hope the Hilda dream was cleared, respectfully, with Lucy Davis. Given her battles, it can read as pretty gross: Portraying a character who is anxious that, due to her size, only deeply flawed people can find her attractive and solely through fetishizing her weight--to say nothing of finally getting to silence the critics only to find out that you've literally internalized them. Or, you know, empowering if she was on board and shaped it in any way
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Oct 29, 2018 13:38
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Paracaidas posted:The most telling moment for me was connecting that with Zelda's nightmare, where she cooks the chubby satanic Sunday schooler and gets chastened by the devil for doing so even with their numbers dwindling. Huh, that’s the scene I was thinking of. I think I got it confused. Argue posted:Yeah, it would be pretty futile to use any other media as a basis for comparison to any Archie property, to be honest. This is the one comic book company that doesn't even pretend to have continuity across its comics. The closest you'd come here is the recent comic of the same title (written by the showrunner of this show) but even then it's hardly anything like the new show at all. Well once again I have no idea what Archie is. I feel like I vaguely remember there being plain black and white comic books (more book than comic book) in the checkout isles at grocery stores called Archie when I was younger but I would have never associated it with this show until I kept reading vague mentions to Archie in this thread. Anyway I’m fine with pretending there’s no backstory to this and just treating it like a new thing. Something I was wondering, that isn’t really related to the show, was wether or not people in younger generations (say born after 2000s?) would even know what Sabrina the Teenage Witch was. I vaguely remember when I was young that it was a show but it wasn’t a cartoon so I didn’t care for it. I’m 30. Honestly if the shows character was named something else I would have also never made that connection.
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Oct 29, 2018 14:01
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Why is the actress having a cat alergy an issue, wouldn’t a talking cat have to be a puppet or cgi anyway?
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Oct 29, 2018 14:14
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Boris Galerkin posted:I feel like most of the time she's written like a person in her 20s who has seen poo poo and knows how the world works, but then you see that she's in fact just a 16 year old girl who thinks that her first boyfriend is going to be the person she marries and that her high school best friends will be in her life forever and all these other silly things teenagers believe cause they don't know better. And then they show that she learns the lesson her aunts tried to protect her from, that actions have consequences. If they make a season 2 it'll be a really nice jumping point, though I wouldn't be surprised either if they maybe skipped a few years to establish her as a more learned witch offscreen. Yeah, I think they did a really good job striking a balance here. I expected she was going to be a bit of a Mary Sue because of how these shows work, so I didn't have any problem with her getting to change the rules at Hogwarts before she'd been there a week, or getting to be the only witch ever to get to keep her feet in the mortal world. I mean, she's the protagonist and she gets to do protagonisty things. That's kinda the setup for the series, that she's been brought up as essentially a modern human girl, and so she's immediately going to notice all the horrifying poo poo the witch world does that contrasts with the real world. I also thought it was interesting that, as the teenage protagonist, she actually didn't have any trouble going to her aunts for help when things got over her head -- usually Harry Potter or whoever just says "gently caress it we can handle it ourselves" based on all evidence to the contrary. She's a smart girl but aware of her limitations as a 16-year-old untrained witch. I just wish someone had sat her down and said "look, Harvey is not your soulmate. You're 16, you don't even know what you really want yet. He's going to be super unimportant in like 5 years and it doesn't make any sense to bend your life and the plot around him so much. That was actually my biggest criticism -- the plot of the last few episodes was just so bog-standard that I felt they really should have been smarter than that. Okay, hot Crabbe and Goyle causing the cave-in was neat, but c'mon, you're going to make the brother rise from the dead? That is so obviously going to go wrong that someone as cynical as Sabrina should have spotted it right away. If there was a good raise dead spell, why wouldn't people be using it all the time? It's a cliche story that's been used in tons of fiction and I thought they would have done something to subvert it given that they've constantly shown how competent she is.
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Oct 29, 2018 14:24
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Also holy poo poo I had no idea this was supposed to be part of the Archie universe wtf. I watched almost every episode of the old show back in the day too, I had such a crush on Melissa Joan Hart. And her hot friend. And the hot mean cheerleader.
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Oct 29, 2018 14:31
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