"TV Guide Couch Critic Article"
The following article appeared in TV Guide and on their website. at:
http://www.iguide.com/tv/magazine/961209/couch.sml
December 1996
It was also accompanied by a picture.
Couch Critic B Y J E F F J A R V I S
SABRINA, THE TEENAGE WITCH ABC, Fridays, 9 P.M./ET
BC has a new Friday-night kidcom. So what will it be this time: a home crowded with round-eyed, big-dimpled little people (as in Full House); a smart-mouthed brat (Boy Meets World); or a lovable geek (Family Matters)? No, this time they surprise us with a new role model for America's youth: a witch.
In this baby Bewitched, Melissa Joan Hart (of Clarissa Explains It All) plays a teenager who, on her 16th birthday, suddenly starts levitating in her sleep and then awakens to discover that she has new powers -- which she uses as only a teenage girl could. With a twitch of a finger, she brings the frog she's supposed to dissect in biology class back to life. She makes an obnoxious Evita of a cheerleader smear lipstick all over her face. She begs the witches' council (led by magicians Penn and Teller in comic cameos) to let her turn back time so she can erase the sorts of humiliating moments teens, especially, suffer. She is Sabrina, the Cute Witch of the Suburbs.
She is led through her blossoming witchhood by her eccentric aunts (Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick). They teach her to turn an apple into other fruit and to pull a rabbit from a hat. They give her special dust that makes people tell the truth. "Let me warn you, the truth can have painful side effects," they say. Such as? "Itching, peeling, hurt feelings." Oh, our teen witch says, "Sounds like gym class."
Before Hart can land in her aunts' care, however, the show has to go to great lengths to fracture her family. Not only are her parents divorced, but her dad lives in another dimension and speaks to her from a book of spells and her mom, a mere mortal, isn't allowed to see her for two years, or else she'll turn into a ball of wax. Why do most TVfamilies, even paranormal ones, have to be so abnormal?
Otherwise, Hart is an average teen. Yes, she'd be more average if she moped more -- but this is the land of Friday night, where kids are sad only when they're trying to get a studio audience to say "Awww." Just like any girl, she has a crush on a cute boy (Nate Richert) but doesn't know how to handle it. Geek boys have crushes on her and she doesn't know how to handle them, either. She has a best friend (Michelle Beaudoin) but lets jealousy get in the way of her friendship. Typical.
Because she's so typical, Hart really does emerge as a role model for kids. She heads to school on the first day of her witchly life whining, "I'm a witch and I still have to go to school?" She begs us to understand: "Y'ever feel like you don't fit in?" She complains that "I don't want to be special. I want to be normal." Yet thanks to her special powers, she faces sitcom traumas and emerges not only a little wiser, as sitcom kids must, but also victorious. She defeats that snotty cheerleader. She gets closer to that cute boy. She erases embarrassment. She will be the envy of teens everywhere.
©1996 News America Publications, Inc. TV Guide is a registered trademark of TV Guide Financial, Inc.
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eric@ezz.u-net.comEric Last, 25/5/97