PopSyndicate.com

Before Melissa Joan Hart, Sabrina was already a star on television.

This is a review I’ve kind of dreaded writing because, frankly, I still don’t fully understand the chronology and workings of Filmation’s long-running Archie series. Every year or so, the studio changed the format and name of the show a little to keep it fresh, and introduced popular character Sabrina the Teenage Witch into the fold, spinning her off into her own adventures. The last set in the run I reviewed was heavily dependent on information I gleaned from the internet, and much to my dismay, a good bit of it turned out to be wrong.

To avoid that, I’m going to avoid as much of the details of the series as I can. This set contains 31 episodes, but is it from the actual Sabrina the Teenage Witch show from 1971 or the New Archie/Sabrina Super Hour from 1977 or segments from one of the other shows entirely? Hell if I know. Given the fact that the Groovie Ghoulies are around in the episodes, I’m guessing here that they’re from the brief union with that show.

The concept of the show took the goofball teen comedy from the previous Archie runs and added a little magic to it. Sabrina, as fans of the later live-action sitcom starring Melissa Joan Hart will know, is a fun-loving teenager who happens to be a witch, living with her two aunts, also witches. And they (the aunts) dress up in typical witch attire and don’t look anything like Caroline Rhea, who I will admit right here and now that I would drink the bathwater of.

Shut up.

It’s pretty goofy stuff, with lots of lame punchlines throughout, but I’ll say this – the voice casting is better here than on the other Archie runs. I didn’t have the urge to rip out my ear drums as often. Oh, it’s still a thought, as the shrill-voiced Archie gang are still around as well, just not as often.

This is yet another in the line of the series released on DVD by Genius/Classic Media. This one’s a three-disc set. Special features are kept to a minimum, with an art gallery and a special episode entitled “The Archie and Sabrina Surprise Package.” It’s fairly typical, with Reggie trying to prove Sabrina’s a witch while Archie gets an honorary gig with the local fuzz.

The prints look pretty nice, and if there were any elements that were subpar as a couple of musical interludes in the previous sets were, I didn’t notice them.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch is definitely directed more at the nostalgic viewer, who grew up on these shows back when we didn’t know better. It’s not horrible, it’s not great. It’s just kind of…there.

3