This appeared on the Newsgroup rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc 27/9/96
The following is a review that appeared in today's (Thursday's) St. Paul Pioneer Press of "Sabrina The Teenage Witch, " the new show premiering tomorrow night on ABC that Frank Conniff is a writer for.
btw, the author, Brian Lambert, is a known MST-liker. However, as you'll see, he doesn't allow Frank's presence to cloud his judgement. He does mercificully not mention Frank's name....
"Sabrina tries hard to create hex appeal' by Brian Lambert - Staff Columnist
There are moments, more than a few to be honest, when a guy asks himself, "What am I doing here?" As a rule, I don't like to bore readers with tales of my pet's toilet habits or any of my innumerable personal problems, but occasionally you should be reminded that what you're reading was written by an unstable personality.
The long slod through the Fabulous and Exciting New Fall Television Season has prompted several existential crises.
There was a particularly nasty attack during "Homeboys in Outer Space," milder spells during "Lush Life," "Party Girl," and "Townies," and now another bad one halfway through "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," a series extracted from the Archie comics character of the same name.
This last one, a kind of low-grade "Bewitched," is a broken-family sitcom with a magical linen closet and a talking cat. It was very nearly a killer. Had I watched another episode, I might have done something truly irrational, like give up on TV and volunteer to cover a Tad Jude campaign.
Oddly, this was one of those shows that had "good buzz" among my fellow critics at our press tour/perpetual happy hour in California last July. "Yeah, 'Sabrina,' not bad," I remember them saying. (The preview tapes hadn't made it to Minnesota.)
After finally screening this thing, it occurs to me that those comments came mainly from lonely 50-year-old men who had been drinking heavily and ogling anything in a skirt that wandered through the hotel bar. So, duh, they probably were referring to Melissa Joan Hart, the teenage star of "Sabrina," and not the quality of the show.
Sabrina, you see, doesn't know she's a witch until she's 16. And by now, she's the new girl in town living with her two witchy aunts, Hilda and Zelda (Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick). Dad is also a witch, but he mainly floats in the ether and mentors Sabrina from the pages of a giant kid book of witchcraft. Mom, though, was a mortal, and she... well, if she watched much of tihs, she has to be in therapy.
We meet Sabrina on her first day in her new school where, by lunch, she's caught the eye of the football hero (Nate Richert of North St. Paul) and made friends with the inevitable less-cute but spunkier gal pal and enemies with the most popular girl in school.
Young Ms. Hart (best known for "Clarissa Explains It All") is tolerable, even though like every TV teenage girl, she plays 16 like a 27-year-old. The two weird aunts, Rhea in particular, might be amusing if one of them (or anyone) could pull off lines like, "[The Witches Council] is 10 million light years away, but there's a shortcut through our linen closet."
But when you factor in the talking cat, the linen closet/time machine and an interior color scheme straight out of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, any virtue the show might have is up against nearly insurmountable odds.
This, I repeat, is the opinion of a middle-aged man still in recovery from "Homeboys in Outer Space." Quite obviously, I am not "Sabrina's" target audience, which means I won't be surprised if millions of teenage girls tune in faithfully every Friday to watch their hero turn the snottiest girl in school into a pineapple.
Heck, if I could find a witch who could turn nine out of 10 of the new fall sitcomes into another Ken Burns series, I'd be a happier, healthier guy.
Eric Last, November 8th 1996