Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch review

As a reminder, I won't cover the live-action Sabrina shows. I won't cover Sabrina the Teenaged Witch because I really don't have that much to say about it, other than that I grew up with it, but until I can find an episode, I don't know how to view it from a modern scope. As for the others, I haven't seen them, nor do I have the interest, plus if they are serialized, I'm not the kind of person who'd binge watch stuff, my current line of work forbids me from doing that kind of thing.

Also, I won't cover the Filmation series. As far as I know, it isn't as interesting as what came after, but if there's more to it, I may give it a look. For now, I just want to cover what I consider to be the more interesting adaptations.

With that said, have a nice read.

Before I get into the main course, I'd like to give you a recap on the shows I covered so far.

First off, I covered Sabrina: The Animated Series. Going into it I thought it was considered a classic show by many, but going into it now, I realize that a lot of people didn't really like it that much. Even before Mr. Enter claimed it, a lot of people chided this show for its lack of connection to Sabrina the Teenaged Witch.

It could've been a misconception, but apparently, promotions established a connection, and two, Sabrina had always been a teenager in the comics. They just de-aged her for the sake of making a kids show seem more relatable than it actually was. Hey, not every kid show needs a kid protagonist, much like how not every adult show needs an adult protagonist. If you could make it work then you'd have something more interesting on your hands.

STAS was essentially a cash-in, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch aired on ABC while STAS aired on a block ABC had a stake in, which coincidentally extended beyond their own network (STAS also aired on UPN, and a key reason why anyone would bother with that network is that they didn't have the same strict standards as other networks and they tend to book bigger season deals. For example, UPN promised Clerks: The Animated Series 22 episodes on the air while ABC promised them six, and only aired two. This was meant to exploit a big coincidence.)

Sabrina's Secret Life just barely made it before Sabrina could be considered obsolete in the public's conscious. It was more of the same as STAS, but this time they had to follow E/I regulations, meaning that morality tales which were a thing in STAS became more point blank. But beyond that, it was almost close to what STAS was. I will say that Sabrina's voice in this is better than the one she had in STAS.

The Sabrinaverse died out around 2004 when Secret Life ended, we ended on an otherwise acceptable note, DiC Entertainment got acquired by DHX Media (then Cookie Jar) four years later, I doubt reruns of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch were as common at that point, so it was over... right?

Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch

I don't know how this came about, I don't know what encouraged anyone to make a Sabrina series. You might think the comics were still going on which would warrant another show, but the comics ended in 2009, roughly four years before this show first aired. As a reminder, Secret Life might've not been that good, but at least it came out while the comics were still released, as well as within the same year Sabrina the Teenaged Witch ended.

If the bad timing didn't get to you, the production trivia will.

The show was primarily produced by Splash Entertainment. The name may sound familiar, because it is. Splash is the current incarnation of the animation production division of the now defunct MoonScoop Group. MoonScoop, back when they produced shows under the Mike Young Productions banner, were behind a number of cheap CGI shows. They produced Pet Alien, as well as Butt Ugly Martians.

Around the same time this came out, MoonScoop went through a restructure and became Splash Entertainment, with this show being their first production under that name. Oh yeah, and they happened to produce Norm of the North, which I consider to be the worst mainstream animated film of all time, and you can't tell me otherwise.

As this is a Splash/MoonScoop/Mike Young show, their funding would come from international units. Among those who helped fund this are Telegael, who had been in business with Splash since 2005 and you'd see their logo on almost all of their productions, as well as through DSK Entertainment, the production arm of a conglomerate based in India. The animation was done by Laughing Lion Ltd, I'm not certain where they're from.

The show aired on The Hub, remember that network? Well I don't remember seeing this show, then again I wasn't able to get this network until later on. The show lasted for 26 episodes, all within a single season. Going into the ratings this show got, they jumped a whole lot, the highest they got was a 0.274 on the fifth episode. Toward the last four episodes the ratings aren't shown. I blame embarrassment.

Premise

On the surface, this seems like STAs had they kept Sabrina a teenager. However, at least by the summary alone, this time she goes between worlds, living a normal life in high school and training to do magic in another. Plus she's a princess of sorts, yeah, because those are still in style.

Also apparently Salem is evil in this, and I don't mean the past context of him being an evil wizard turned into a cat, I mean he is a spy sent by Enchantra, the big bad to spy on Sabrina and screw her over. Okay, I'm starting to miss Salem being the voice of reason in Secret Life, at least he still had more than an iota of his character in the other adaptations. I'm stressing over this, but that's only because their depiction of Salem seems hollow and incredibly one-note. You can incorporate new aspects, just don't take the easy routes.

Then again, that's just an impression, I could be wrong here.

Like past Sabrina animated shows, their scope of talent comes from Vancouver, aside from the star. Sabrina is voiced by Ashley Tisdale, Sharpay from High School Musical and Candace Flynn from Phineas and Ferb. I have nothing to say on this aside from, hey, she turned out better than Hillary Duff (Haunting of Sharon Tate vibes inensifying.) For the others, we have Ian James Corlett as Salem and a teacher at Sabrina's school in the magic world, I'm gonna save performance quality for when I go into the episode, I have a gut feeling I won't like Corlett's performance.

There's also Kathleen Barr and Tabitha St. Germain, incredibly common actors in Vancouver productions, as well as Maryke Hendrikse, aka Sonata Dusk from Equestria Girls. The rest require some extra drudging, I just wanted to keep it brief.

As far as finding an episode to cover, I wanted to focus on the first, a werewolf episode, both because of my interest in the prospect as well as how other shows portrayed it. I got curious, but it turns out the show's blocked in my country, and I'm too cheap, and lazy, and outright apathetic to invest in a VPN. So, I went for the earliest episode available. Here goes nothing.

The episode

I'm going to focus on the third episode, Shock Rock, where Sabrina acquires a band for a benefit concert and Enchantra's son tries to steal her thunder with his own band.

Before I get into what I find, I'd like to give you an idea on the visual aspects.

Courage...

I get a little taste of Sabrina's attitude in the first few moments. I.e., every teenaged main character ever. Have you ever seen a typical teen cartoon character not knock classical music while promoting the mainstream radio crap? In this, the teacher likes it, so I guess that's new for me. For the record she starts out in the magic world, and apparently they have the same mentality as England through the eyes of Butch Hartman, as in... hardly on the up and up.

Before I go on, here's a question nobody asked. Do I hate Sabrina's voice in this? Well, I'm mixed. On one side it's a stereotypical teen accent that doesn't make her stand out too well. On the other, it still sounds a hell of a lot better than Emily Hart.

While I went on that tangent, did any of you piece together the start of the conflict? If you said jealous asshole disagrees with the music and claims he can do better... uh... if you see me on the streets I'll give you fifty bucks. The jealous asshole is Shinji, the son of Enchantra. Admittedly, they could've easily pulled the forbidden love aspect, where the two like each other, but they didn't. Then again, this is yet another easy route to take. I guess they would've lost no matter what they did, so I won't hold it against them.

Another thing I won't hold against them is the dialog. They try to incorporate the wit STAS and Secret Life had into the show, and well, it has something. The dialog here is automatically better than MP4ORCE, and I will keep bringing that show up until more people cover it.

The dialog's listenable, but it's essentially like anchovy pizza. It's eatable, but there're issues you can't avoid. Shinji took the band thing too far and treated it as if it were a challenge, but Sabrina tried to tell him it wasn't a challenge. It would've been fine stated twice, but they stretch it a little longer than necessary. Did it accomplish anything? Does me thinking Shinji is an idiot count as an accomplishment?

But to be fair, right after that stretched exchange, we get into a real big plus for this series. The opening sequence. Apparently, the show won an Emmy for Main Title and Graphic Design, and I can see why. The intro made use of paper cut-out type animation, it's incredibly fluid and pleasant to look at, it firmly establishes the vibe the show goes for and the song it plays to isn't bad either. It's a pop song indicative of the time, but it's still very easy on the ears, I'd consider it better than Secret Life's intro.

Also apparently Ashley Tisdale won an Emmy for her performance as Sabrina. All I have to say to that is the first Emmy was deserved, it was a damn good intro, and since Tisdale's better than Hart at voicing Sabrina, I'd give her an award just for giving a shit.

Anyway, back to Sinjerkass, obviously he's egomaniacal, and he goes for the ever-typical put name of self in name of band, and have it like blank and the blank-ets. He takes a rebuff against that better than I expected him to. A problem they face is a lack of instruments, so they need to get them from the human world. Given that Shinji heard music from the normal world, I guess it was by instinct that he would get instruments from there to compete with the band Sabrina showed off.

I wanted to wait until the next seen to discuss Salem, just to know for sure how he's portrayed, and now I have an idea. I wanted to see a scene with Salem with Sabrina only, and one where she's in the company of others. Salem doesn't speak, well, not in Sabrina's company anyway. He takes the role of a seemingly innocent cat who relays information to Enchantra. Points for trying something different but this is yet another safe route.

We then get to Enchantra's first scene, where in this she takes on the role of a shipper, well, she tries to make a love potion to get Sabrina and Shinji to fall in love with one another, and maybe lower Sabrina's morale in doing this, I dunno. We go the downtrodden path of someone has a valuable item and they get disrupted by something, causing the item to get destroyed. The destruction comes in the form of a loud and over-compensatory spell cast by Shinji, but to be fair, the item Enchantra has in question gets saved from going to waste. This either plays a part in the plot, or they just wanted to try their hand at subversion.

At this point I learn Sabrina has a female friend, wouldn't you know it, another one, who's on the up and up for Sabrina's witchery. At this point Shinji conjures up the instruments left by the band in the gymnasium and I'm just gonna guess Shinji can't sing. I would say this would be funny, but I kinda saw the shrill voice schtick from a mile away. I can get by most repetitive jokes, but again, they're repetitive and you gotta single out those kinds of aspects.

After that, I finally hear Salem talk, and I've gotta say... it's the worst Salem voice I ever heard. I normally don't want to compare it to better actors, but Nick Bakay practically made the character. Why else would Maurice LaMarche incorporate Bakay's portrayal into Salem for Secret Life? Because it's good? People knock changes like these because more often than not, they're badly executed. Salem's essentially an idiot in this.

Oh hey, that valuable item gag? Turns out I was wrong on both fronts, it's played out the same, just as Shinji's about to do something incredibly noisy. Shinji then attempts to lampoon egomanical singers, touching hallmarks such as a solo career before settling on a genre far off from what he started in. I'm already getting sick of pointing out when they go for the obvious, so I'm gonna try and muster up some compliments to break the monotony. I guess the tone of voice Shinji has makes the joke hit harder than I expected it to, something about sounding so serious makes the joke fly over well, especially when he leaves for real, only for us to go back to the Enchantra important item gag.

But I guess there is a payoff to that. She gets rid of the source of the noise, I.E., Shinji's band to concentrate on her work. At least there was a point to all that. As for what happens to the rest of the band, they get trapped in a bubble, but they decide to make the most of it by practicing due to the bubble having a killer echo.

Anyhow, aside from set-up for a subplot in Sabrina's token friend trying to keep the situation under wraps and a pre-occuring subplot where Salem tries to elude a school guard who heard him talk, Sabrina returns to witch world and finds Shinji, and I expected him to be rude to her. Was he? Actually, no, he turned out to be surprisingly helpful. I mean he basically killed the need for establishing a search for the instruments, but I found it surprising that he was willing to help, albeit indirectly. There's some layers to Shinji it seems.

Anyhow, as the members of Shinji's makeshift band got trapped, they resorted to practicing, and I'm willing to bet, know, I know it's gonna happen, they're going to save the plot. After some more sub-nonsense, Sabrina finds them and the band she hired bailed. As for that Enchantra gag, the failure to secure the important item didn't serve as her downfall, just the usage of the wrong ingredient. Also of that Salem subplot, take every magical creature against someone proving their existence and pinpoint the ending to that kind of plot.

As for the band, well since the bubble they were put in couldn't be destroyed by any means in the witch world, apparently that means a technicality would get them out. That being that it is vulnerable in the real world. This is within the last minute or so for the record. So the performance goes well, although the vocals aren't very good.

Before I close this off, I'd like to point out that Trevor Wall directed this episode. The director of Norm of the North.

Animation

Splash's animation has been mostly stagnant since the beginning, with the only improvements going toward better technology. It's at an all time high with this show, but it's not saying much. The movement can be a little rough at times, characters look plasticky and some of the backgrounds clash with the animation at times. If I had to be nice, at least this was for a TV show, where it's a bit more acceptable. As the episode went on I got better used to it.

While I was able to find stills that amplified how ugly the models looked in Game Over, not even the one I got in the screencap above had the same effect.

Overall

I went into this thinking I'd absolutely hate this. I think part of me just wanted to hate this because Splash was involved, but I actually kinda liked it. Now don't get me wrong, there are some inexcusable flaws, they play it safe more times than they need to. The acting could also use a little spit-shine, but the latter could be said about the other Sabrina cartoons as well. Then there's what they did different. I'm no fan of what they did to Salem, even the few times where he was altered in other cartoons, he was consistent. This was too radical of a change here. For the record, I'm just going by what I saw, I'm taking the premise with a grain of salt, it could've been from an earlier pitch which got abandoned before production began.

While this rates lower than the previous show, the only negative review on the show was someone who got pissy over a lack of morals. A more positive review came out a year after the former review, so I guess it depends on what you're into.

At least for this episode, for something as damaging as the morals STAS try to teach (at the very least in Anywhere but Here), and as preachy as Secret Life, I'm glad this one abandoned the moral schtick and just tried to tell a more straightforward story. Although the Salem subplot could've been left out and it wouldn't damage the plot shown here.

As for me bringing up how it coming out so late was a bad thing, I'm aware that the aspect could be overlooked if the end product was good. I mean how long ago did the third generation of My Little Pony end? And what came after needs no introduction. Maybe the people behind this genuinely wanted to bring Sabrina back and go for what Friendship is Magic did, bring it to a new audience.

I do respect the fact that they decided to keep Sabrina as a teenager in this. It felt less like they were pandering to kids when they made Sabrina a 12 year old in STAS, which actually wound up fucking over the comics. We haven't had a Sabrina cartoon where she was a teenager since the Filmation series, and to be fair, this wouldn't be the last Sabrina series ever, aside from hopes of appearing in Riverdale, there's an ongoing as of late live action series on Netflix, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Also again, Ashley Tisdale is better than Emily Hart, Hart's older now so I'm not necessarily attacking a kid at this point.

So to sum up, I guess I'd consider this something of a guilty pleasure. I'm aware this isn't necessarily up to par with The Hub's other shows, but there's a hell of a lot worse. This may very well be Splash's best production by default, from this era, I will consider this the best Mike Young/MoonScoop/Splash CG cartoon. Bear in mind this is up against the various Bratz specials, Pet Alien, Butt Ugly Martians, so yeah, this is the best of their CG efforts.

All that's left to say... why was it so hard to make a Sabrina cartoon where she's still a teenager, if this could do it, so could the previous ones.

Sabrina's Secret Life review

So bad news, I wasn't fond of Sabrina: The Animated Series and it reflected on a review not up to my so-called good standards. Good news, I'm now obligated to watch an episode of today's topic, and it's another episodic affair, and maybe I'll have more to say about it.

History

This was a follow-up to Sabrina: TAS, and its movie Friends Forever. Along with being a late entry for DiC entertainment, this was the final production of their French subsidiary Les Studios Tex. To give you a quick sum-up of that latter company, only two shows of theirs are considered objectively good, and I hate one of the objectively good shows.

Secret Life came out in 2003, roughly a year after Friends Forever and less than two months after Sabrina the Teenage Witch ended. Admittedly, bad timing wasn't this show's downfall, and those with Sabrina fever were able to hold on for a little longer. Would this be considered a cash-in if this had the same production company as Sabrina: The Animated Series? How could you cash in on yourself?

Interestingly enough, but perhaps not surprisingly, this doesn't have any involvement from the Harts (or Savage Steve Holland for that matter.) Then again, as this and Sabrina the Teenaged Witch both borrowed from Archie Comics, and since DiC did business through them, er... no harm no foul I guess.

Like most of Les Studios Tex's shows, this aired in syndication (at least two others aired on Fox Kids and Foxbox respectively.) I have a bit of a hangup with shows produced for first-run syndication, in that they don't have the same budget as shows that appear on network television. These tend to be produced for educational and informative purposes, which is code for throwing anything at the wall as long as you learn something at the end.

Another thing to note on Les Studios Tex's network front, their shows had also aired in France. Most times they aired on M6, others had aired on TF1, which is where this show wound up (TF1 had also aired Sonic Underground, though M6 got The Wacky World of Tex Avery, Les' first and worst production.) It did air on Toon Disney in reruns at some point and on CBS, where it got its start on DiC's old syndication block (all you need to know is that aside from DiC's own bile, they brought most of America On-Line's kid stuff onto network television.) I hate CBS for some reason...

For better or worse, Sabrina's actor changed. Now she's voiced by Britt McKillip. You may recognize her as Hannah from the Scary Godmother films, though she also appeared on most horror anthology shows, I know she appeared in an episode of Night Visions, though she also appeared on the 1995 version of The Outer Limits and more recently in R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour.

Bill Switzer returned to voice Harvey, basically the only mainstay on an acting basis. Maurice LaMarche also appeared in this, for some reason, and replaced Nick Bakay, for some reason.

Why it Makes my Skin Crawl.

There's nothing much that could be said about the premise. Aside from taking place after Friends Forever, it's more or less the same as Sabrina: TAS in terms of structure. But there is one aspect that sets it apart from that show.

They ramped up the moral schtick.

You know how I talked about E/I compliancy in the previous section? This aired in syndication on a morning block, which is home to shows like this. But we'll get into that shortly. I'm gonna have to cheat on this because I typically go by one episode to make my judgement, so I'm gonna go over a list of reasons why this show got slammed, hold the nitpicking.

Apparently, this occurring after Friends Forever holds no water. Sabrina's friend from that is never heard from again, but she could've easily been worked into this show, I'm sure. This show is also home to recolors, where Sabrina's friend from the original show is present with a new skin color. The antagonist in this show is a redesign of a character from Friends Forever as well (but that used a background character from STAS as a reference.), and they also brought in background characters to be part of the antagonist's posse. That wouldn't fly if it were The Loud House, background characters in that show are heralded to the same extent as the main ones, I should know.

Sounds like I'm in for a hell of a ride.

And the only reason I resorted to cheating was because when a blue moon shines on a leap-year, and a county in both Massachusetts and Vermont turn red, someone will comment and tell me that I missed out on talking about these flaws.

So how did the characters suffer?

Uncle Quigley from STAS doesn't appear at all, and his position as the voice of reason is given to Salem, who for the record was a former wizard who tried to destroy the world and was turned into a cat, and maintained some of his evil ways which he exhumes through dark sarcasm. Is this meant to show the dark side to moral figures? If they incorporated that into any show I'd probably watch it.

Now to be fair, Salem does maintain some sarcastic wit, but it's just weird how someone of his upbringing would be the voice of reason. I've noticed in most cartoons that the worst possible people are used to promote messages. Mr. Krabs well withstanding. Admittedly, Maurice LaMarche did a decent job, Nick Bakay has a more recognizable voice, but LaMarche has bigger chops than many voice actors.

We lost more than Quigley though, gotta make room for new characters with as much meat as a leaf of lettuce. Also, aside from yet another retarded rip-off accusation (they called Sabrina a Harry Potter rip-off mainly because she uses a wand), the stories are cliched and the characters are flandarized in order to push more morals.

I don't go into flandarization, but I'm aware that it happens, especially in E/I shows. Characters are stripped down to one key personality in order to make it easier to teach lessons, not like they'd absorb what they learned from previous episodes, which is why I hate moral-driven shows. Why preach morals when nobody learns from them?

From what I know, Sabrina, in spite of being two years older than she was in STAS, doesn't necessarily have the mature behavior to match. Harvey apparently lost some braincells over the years and is portrayed in a more idiotic fashion (something tells me his adult self in Anywhere but Here holds a big kernel of truth.), also we have the stereotypical popular girl Cassandra.

No not that one. I mean I would love to see more of that one, but not that one.

Er-e-go.

People are quick to write off the queen bee characters, but I'm a little different. The way I see it, the popular ones are the losers and the main characters are the obnoxiously popular ones who put themselves before others. I'm out of my mind.

Before I go into an actual episode, I'd like to bring up that I heard a testimony on this show from someone who watched this and STAS. To say they didn't like it is an understatement, and to put it into perspective, they actually admitted the morals in this show were preachy and weak and didn't encourage me to look beyond one episode.

Whether or not I get through the whole episode will hold no bearing here. I need to see at least one episode in full to know how the moral is executed. At least with something like MP4ORCE and The Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, they're mindless enough to the point you're not obligated to see it through.

And now I get to talk about an episode.

It was never said that the show got better as it went on, so really, a single episode would be enough. Going through the summaries, a lot of them are rather predictable, one involves not doing your work at the last minute, be the best you can be and not better than anyone, don't lie for attention, pay attention in class, don't shrink your jeans and fall asleep in class otherwise you'll wind up in detention... Also I found one that reminds me of an episode of Archie's Weird Mysteries.

I'm just gonna play it safe and stick with the first, since the premise is partially ambiguous.

First up, the theme song. According to a strike against it, it's just repeating the same phrase over and over, but there're more words to it. Though the song still sucks, in a mediocre fashion that is.

Right off the bat, I personally consider Britt McKillip's voice to be better than Emily Hart's, in that the former gives just enough emotion for a serviceable performance. But that performance in the first few minutes gets dulled by what the dialog centers on. A school dance. The easiest premise in any television show episode. The conflict of this episode revolves around who's taking Harvey to the dance and Sabrina wants revenge on her friend after she winds up becoming Harvey's date.

Sabrina expects Harvey to ask her out to the dance, which he does over the phone. Now, they say he has been made stupider in this show, and to levy skepticism... he has to use a written transcript just to ask her out. It's really how he goes about popping the question. Something tells me he'd be doing worse things deeper into the series.

Anyway, his stupidity plays into Sabrina's friend Maritza (who I will call Fake-Flan (Sabrina's friend in STAS was Chloe Flan, just thought it'd be funny to incorporate some Brady Bunch humor for no reason, and because Flan sounds like Jan, who became Fake Jan in The Brady Bunch Hour). Anyway, Fake-Flan, in an attempt to prevent the queen bee Cassandra from asking Harvey out (because apparently that'll be enough to destroy Sabrina's perception on life, implicatively.), asks Harvey out.

I'd just like to point out how Fake-Flan isn't necessarily the greatest friend ever. This all happened because Fake-Flan intruded on a phone call Harvey and Sabrina were in, causing Harvey to believe he was being spoken to when Sabrina told Fake-Flan to wait. Also, her acting is ass. Ass in that it's somehow worse than Emily Hart's. It's not that it's wooden, but it just sounds incredibly awkward. Then again, this was her actress' first ever acting role (not counting an interview appearance on a documentary about Hearst Castle.), and she had appeared in quite a bit since then, though it seems like she's taking a break from more major roles as she is slated to appear in two short films, with her latest role being in Watch Dogs 2 of all things.

Anyway, to prevent Cassandra from hooking Harvey (and ironically, she uses the same metaphor before she goes to try and pop the question), Fake-Flan asks Harvey out. I don't know where the hell Sabrina was before this. An explanation could've been made for why Sabrina wasn't around, but we got nothing. It's not like nerves got the better of her, before the phone scene concluded, Sabrina declared she would ask Harvey out the next time she saw him. You can't excuse a blatantly desperate reach for conflict, especially in a moral driven show.

You'd probably assume they'd gloss over Fake-Flan trying to explain herself, but to be fair, she does try, and while I expected Sabrina to leave before Fake-Flan could get a word in, it's firmly established how hurt Sabrina is by it and I knew she'd be too upset to hear Fake-Flan's word. Whatever the case, that scene wasn't as contrived as the previous one, and hey, Sabrina wasn't aware of went on beforehand, she was just in the right place at the wrong time.

Okay, now it's time to go over my impressions of the moral. I'm gonna say... never seek revenge. Toward the end of the episode, I'll know for sure if I hit the nail on the head.

Sabrina teams up with Cassandra to get back at Fake-Flan, and at this point, I'd like to bring up that Cassandra is also a witch, and that her and Sabrina's dynamic is similar to that of Sharon Spitz and Nina Harper from Braceface. To sum up, both pairs were friends at some point, but something led to them breaking it off and becoming enemies. Sabrina and Cassandra make amends later on, with the latter getting in some development as well, and hey, that's more I could say about development than Archie's Weird Mysteries, take what I said about character's never fully taking in anything they learn in these kinds of shows and put it into a general context.

So, after going against Salem's advice to hear Fake-Flan's side of things (and I'm still surprised that Salem of all people gave her that kind of advice), Sabrina and Cassandra conjure up a potion, well the latter does and Sabrina goes along with it. It's a longshot, but I imagine Sabrina will be labeled guilty by association. But then again, Sabrina gives into Cassandra's plan a bit too quickly, so maybe some form of punishment wouldn't be so bad. On the upside, Sabrina didn't sell her friend out for the sake of popularity, many many times, like one Dodie Bishop.

Anyway, the two get caught, and surprisingly, Sabrina admits the truth. The one who catches them seemingly helps, but I know for sure her desire for comeuppance is aimed at the two. It's a dragon-related thing, and for those of you who're gonna call this a rip-off of an episode of Danny Phantom because of it, I have a gut feeling that episode came out some time after this, either that or I don't feel like making a rip-off claim, plus, I want to use this as a statement.

Oh yeah, turns out that Cassandra is also after Sabrina. I'd be mad about this, but this is the first episode. If you wanna go after a character, save it for after their first appearance. Anyway to the dance, Sabrina starts to have second thoughts... only after the second spell, and I get the feeling Sabrina cares more about Fake-Flan's dress than Fake-Flan herself. Anyway, after an overly-expository breakdown, Sabrina learns of the intent behind Fake-Flan's indirect backstab. Also... I think I spoke too soon on Fake-Fran's impact on Sabrina, she basically admits everything that happened on the call, like, every key detail. I didn't see that coming.

Remember that dragon thing I mentioned? It was saved for the 19 minute mark, and it turned out to be a dud. It just turned Cassandra into a mouse. Sabrina would've gone through this alone, but after saving Fake-Flan from one of Cassandra's spells and winding up getting trapped in the rubble of a disco ball, well you can figure it out.

Now for the moral. I hinged on revenge was wrong, and I was wrong on that. The moral of this episode was to always trust your friends. This isn't implied by the way, it's stated point-blank. They say STAS handled morals better than this show. I can't say if it's true since I never saw much of STAS, but I imagine they didn't resort to Secret Life's methods.

I'll give it this, Fake-Flan wasn't rotten enough for this moral to feel out of place, and she had gone through enough suffering to warrant forgiveness. However, I think the issue with this episode in particular is the kind of moral they went with. I think they should've done something like "revenge is never okay", where Sabrina would let her emotions get the better of her and she would wind up making the wrong decisions. I'm saying that because a bulk of this episode felt like it was building up to that.

Animation

The animation is said to have taken a nosedive, compared to STAS. When it comes to a company shift, it's expected. To be fair, LST's animation isn't horrible, at least here the art style looks to be in the same vein as STAS. However, for something made in 2004, it pales in comparison to other shows. Then again, as this was two-three years after flash became more common in TV shows, it's commendable to see traditional animation.

Right off the bat, I'm not into STAS' art style. It's unique, I'll give it that, but it just doesn't look good to me. If I had seen more of that, I would've probably been open to more nuances that Secret Life had.

Overall

Most fans of STAS have said they don't have much of an issue with Secret Life. Admittedly, while Secret Life is more heavy handed when it comes to morals, it still kept the same spirit STAS had in terms of humor. However, Secret Life is still fundamentally flawed, and compared to STAS, any misfires are hard to avoid.

As someone who never grew up with STAS, I can't even say I'm a fan of Secret Life, but that's probably because I'm not a fan of Archie's Weird Mysteries either. Both handled morality tales in a similar fashion, I get the same vibes from that show that I do here. I only had one episode to go by, but I can't help but feel it'll get more insane later down the line.

The best thing I can say about this is that Sabrina's voice actress in this is better than Emily Hart.

Apparently, Sabrina is more popular than I thought, because we had more shows since then. I'm aware that I haven't talked about Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, or the first animated show to involve Sabrina, and I'm aware I still have two movies on the chopping block and other adaptations, but there is one I want to focus on out of all of these.

Before I sign off, I want to end on this note. Apparently Secret Life scored a higher rating on IMDb than STAS.

Which is why I find it hard to trust IMDb these days, unless it involves MP4ORCE.

Sabrina the Animated Series review

This review won't be easy, depending on the current consensus of this show.

My first introduction to Sabrina came from Sabrina: The Teenaged Witch, better yet, for those that didn't read the comics, this was their first introduction to Sabrina. I saw Sabrina plenty back in the day, but it has faded from my conscious.

I was aware of Sabrina: The Animated Series, but I never saw it, at least on television. I saw most of a few episodes, but they didn't hold my interest. I had also seen Mr. Enter's review of an episode from the show, and as silly as it is for me to say, it doesn't fill me with confidence.

History

Sabrina originated from the Archie Comics series of the same name. Going by Enter's review, I came close to writing him off for chiding a series with no relation to the live action show, but apparently this was promoted as a spin-off, though obviously it was in-name only. The series aired on the Disney One Afternoon block, airing on both ABC and UPN for 65 episodes in a single season, between 1999 and 2000.

The show was produced by DiC, and this wouldn't be their first Archie related production, as they had also produced Archie's Weird Mysteries through a subsidiary. For better or worse, this had involvement from Melissa Joan Heart from the live action show, who appeared as both of Sabrina's aunts in this show, and produced through her mother's production company as well. Another familiar name involved with this is Savage Steve Holland, better known for directing Better off Dead and for his involvement in Eek! The cat.

On a voice acting basis, this show is interesting in that it features both American and Canadian voice actors. The show starred Melissa Joan Hart's younger sister Emily, more on that later, and among other familiar faces are Cree Summer and Nick Bakay, who reprised his role as Salem from the live action show. For Canadian talent, we have Chantal Strand who starred in Generation O! and played Cassie on Dragon Tales. Other names I know are Jay Brazeau and Bill Switzer, playing Uncle Quigley and Harvey Kinkle respectively.

Premise

It's basically more of the same compared to the live-action show, Sabrina uses magic to get by in her life, with consequences. As it's an animated show, it's either a bit more grounded or more out there. The schtick behind this is that Sabrina is unable to use her powers due to not being old enough (and as an aside, she is a kid in this, all for the sake of safe appeal.), so she gets them by whatever means, and everything that happens is for the sake of... morals. The cheapest schtick ever.

Also, as Sabrina's voiced by a kid, it's bound to lead to otherwise odd results. The few times I heard Sabrina, I get the impression that Emily Hart either couldn't be bothered or they didn't have much to pay her so they had to do with whatever they got dialog wise, or acting wasn't her dream job, in that she's out of the field now. Now don't get me wrong, but I don't like child actors doing voice acting. It hardly ever works, and you'd be wasting more and more money getting replacements when they get older.

Case in point, Tails went through three child actors before 4Kids put their foot down and used a woman.  Hell, look at how many voice actors The Loud House went through for Lincoln. You could say she got better as the show went on, but would you want to trudge through episodes where she was trying to find her footing? Well, maybe. I've seen decent child actors from Vancouver of all places, or better yet maybe they had more experience.

On the surface, the show seems to be episodic, so it's down to interest. I'm no fan of episodes revolving around morality tales, because I know they'll turn out the same way, no matter what, someone learns a lesson, and the conflict gets going the same way, Sabrina dips into a magic container to be able to do a spell, and it backfires. While I may never give up cartoons, I will give up on moral driven ones.

But maybe I have the feeling that a bulk of the show's morals are gone about the wrong way. This is one of many shows to feature that asinine appreciate childhood schtick. It does nothing new with the moral, at all. Let me tell you, I got by just fine into adulthood. I never had to give up all of my interests (I use them for escapism and to encourage some creativity for hobbyist writing.), college was actually easier than high school for me, I have a job and a stable income, and although I'm always encouraged, if I have to be a bachelor for my life, I don't consider that a death sentence. Also, I can safely say that the negative stereotypes around high school hold water.

Animation

If my lack of interest in the show didn't piss you off enough, maybe my stance on the animation will. Movement wise, it works for the era. DiC had the dubious nickname "do it cheaper" for a reason, but this one has better animation than previous DiC shows, probably because Disney was involved (and I only bring them up because Clerks: The Animated Series was able to draw in major celebrities.)

But I'm not feeling it on the design. It's subjective, but most of the characters look weird to me. Then again, I consider many things to be ugly, so don't take my word on this.

Overall

This show isn't for me, I have no shame admitting that. I don't consider it bad overall, but I don't consider it something I'd watch either. Like many shows, where it misses, it misses hard. I'm aware I didn't discuss the characters in full, but I wanted to be fair and give you my impressions based on what I remember for it.

Also, I kinda want to focus on other Sabrina animated shows (I won't discuss Friends Forever, sorry to say.) Consider this an appetizer, and no matter what impression I give you on this, I'd consider this show to be better than the ones coming up.

The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer review

There're two shows that wound up under my radar. Both are one in the same in regards to what they are. Both are African American shows that got protested due to how they portrayed those in their race, both are comedies, both came out in the 90s, and both happened to air on UPN. At this rate, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to cover, so I left it to a vote.

Out of six votes, four voted in favor of this one. Maybe I'll cover the other if I ever feel the need to do a review and happen to be stuck.

Background

I, and possibly many people, first heard of this show through a fleeting reference on Clerks: The Animated Series. I thought it was just a joke, so when I decided to look it up to see if I could find a standalone video, lo and behold, it wasn't a joke. This was an actual show. And it sucked.

While the other show, Homeboys in Space, can be considered an incredibly lowbrow comedy show, this one was special, in that it was an incredibly lowbrow show set during the era of slavery. Promotions of the show led to protests from African American activism groups, but the show continued on, albeit with them airing a later episode (and you wouldn't be missing much from that, it's is about telegraph sex. Ever wanted to see a Family Guy joke extended to a half hour episode?)

The show was spearheaded by Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan, who also produced it. Fanaro worked as a producer on shows like The Golden Girls and wouldn't you know? After this show bombed he never produced anything else. Fanaro is better known for writing, having also written for The Golden Girls and Benson, but aside from the Witt/Thomas catalog, he was a writer on the film Kingpin and wrote the screenplay for Men in Black II and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Nathan had also worked on Kingpin and The Golden Girls and I imagine this is how the two met. Nathan isn't active on the producing front either, go figure, and the latest thing he has done was direct an episode of Big Time Rush, which for the record is a guilty pleasure.

But, you wanna know who directed every episode that aired? You won't believe it. Matthew Diamond. The exact same Matthew Diamond who directed the age all classic, Oogieloves and the Big Balloon Adventure. For a film so heinous, I can't help but bring it up.

With protests and ensuing negative reviews, this show didn't last long at all. As far as I know this is UPN's shortest-lived show that didn't get revived by another network. The others had lasted for at least six episodes. Of the ones that got summarized, it's your average sitcom bile, there's a good reason why sitcoms have a greater chance of getting lost than shows of any other genre.

The Sting

The show centers on the titular Pfeiffer (the P isn't silent, hold your laughter), a British nobleman turned butler who left the UK due to gambling debts, and now serves Abraham Lincoln. He's the smartest one on the show, but is it a commendable thing when everyone else is mindless? And drunk?

Among those assfucked in this show are Abe Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Guess this show was considered especially heinous since they poked fun at a figure that helped to end slavery.

The stars who appeared in this are Chi McBride, pre-Boston Legal, but I know him from Killer Instinct, a short-lived Fox show that I remember for some reason. Dann Florek stars as Abe Lincoln, and Florek is better known for appearing in Law and Order, with Special Victims Unit going into his last notable year along with a one episode stint in Under the Dome. Christine Estabrook played Mary Todd Lincoln, and she had and has an extensive filmography. Did you know that she once played J. Jonah Jameson's wife in Spider-Man 2?

There's no overarching story here by the way, this is presented as separate entries in the titular character's found diary pages. Code for generic sitcom. What can I do now? Well, let's see how they get the humor down.

The episode I saw began with an contextual crawl. The most comedy I got out of that was an acknowledgement of how anyone could make something humorous out of it. Personally, I liked the gambling node at the end. While they clearly show Desmond with playing cards in hand, at least they didn't spell out that he lost a hand to the queen of England. Now he just wants to make some cash to pay off his gambling debts.

The highpoint to this is some decent timing from McBride. He made this just a tad more bearable to sit through. But his servant, yeah forgot to bring up that McBride has a manservant who's a retard, and this isn't carried out in a clever way. He hits every stop, can't count, can't remember much, even the one-liners don't do so well. Hell, most jokes that work on a surface level are ruined through needless dragging.

Mary Todd Lincoln, while interesting in regards to what happened during her widowhood, is reduced to a pseudo-harpy in this. As for Abe Lincoln, I'm more annoyed over the fact that we have an idea on how Lincoln actually sounded, a very squeaky voice. This could've been easily exploited, but then again, this discovery probably wasn't made yet. Then there's Grant, oh gee, one of his biggest strikes is his supposed alcoholism, I wonder if they're gonna incorporate this into his character, I wonder I wonder I wonder- you tell me!

When the Simpsons did a Grant joke they handled it with class and subversion, when Family Guy did it, it occurred during a Civil War reenactment headlined by the deep south. The first thing I asked when I saw the first Grant scene was... did they have round card girls during the Civil War era?

This is that telegraph episode I brought up early on. What's meant to be a high point where Desmond recites what's sent through a telegraph and his manservant believes he's talking to him gets old when you realize it's the same framework. Right when Abe gets into some foot fetish discussion, that's when I decided to give up. I had enough.

Overall

The problem with this show isn't that it's offensive, at least for me, the problem with this show is that it isn't funny. While McBride is the high-point of this with whatever good delivery he has, that doesn't save an otherwise predictable mockery of the Civil War era. No nuance, no creativity, no statements, zip. I brought up how I sat through two episodes of Emeril, but then again I just wanted to see what gave with that. Perhaps that was better than this show, Emeril lasted for seven episodes, and people agreed the show got better as it went on.

With this show, I imagine we would've got more of the same had it continued. If you ask me, I'd rather watch Shasta McNasty. That was another UPN sitcom few people liked, but that one was more interesting by default. Here's a bit of irony, that show had Jake Busey and this one had Chi McBride. Both actors worked together on The Frighteners, interesting fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pIppBMaFik&t=384s

Queer Duck review

Just to make this perfectly clear, I have absolutely nothing against the gay community (singling that out due to all else covered in the LGBT.) I'm not closed-minded, though I don't promote every facet covered, I'm not gonna bite anyone's head off for it either. I got nothing against you people, just what you occasionally put out.

When it comes to films centered on LGBT related topics, they didn't have the best start. Perhaps due to a lack of mainstream support, we got varied results. They were on the same level as those crappy Christianity movies. But that's a whole other kettle of fish. I wanna talk about how they were portrayed in animation. I'm not gonna focus on implications or point black gay relationships in cartoons from back in the day, but I want to focus on one of the more familiar names in the gay animation sub-genre.

History

Queer Duck was spearheaded by Mike Reiss, a former writer on The Simpsons and one of two creators of The Critic. Initially starting on IceBox.com, this show was notable in that it was one of the earliest original animated shows to be produced for Showtime, though mainly for that network's website. I had talked about Our Cartoon President wayback when, and that was one of the worst shows I ever heard of.

This show wore the gay moniker with pride (pun intended.), its title character was portrayed by an actor who is an admitted homosexual (and that's true, I'm not trying to knock him at all.), not to mention, the theme song was performed by RuPaul.

I had only seen two episodes a while back, and recently I tried to binge the show, but I gave up only a few episodes in, because I had the feeling I'd be seeing more of the same.

Intent

I won't go over the plot because this show has a gag-a-day aesthetic. Just know it centers on the misadventures of the titular character and his animal friends with corny puns "Ali Openly-Gator", "Bi-Polar Bear", "Oscar Wild-cat", insert obvious gag here. There isn't even a set continuity to follow either. To demonstrate this, Queer Duck's mother kills herself in the first episode, but a few episodes after she appears alive and well.

I'm more interested in trying to figure out what crowd this show was really trying to appeal to. Is it meant to appeal to gay people full stop? Because stereotyping would be a big dealbreaker in the long run. Stereotyping is like talking down to people, they see you as one thing you want to break from but can't. It's also worsened by the fact that the character you follow the most often happens to be obnoxious as all hell.

Is it supposed to poke fun at stereotypes associated with gay people? This seems plausible, but why would you make fun of the other extreme as well? You portray persecution of gay people, but at the same time you portray over the top stereotypes. Which one is it? Are you saying we'd be better off not pining for anyone of the opposite sex? Okay that's fine with me, unless I get introduced to someone I'm not interested in seeking someone out, at least not yet.

Is this secretly anti-gay? Where gay characters are treated as overly-obnoxious individuals and we get the idea that it's incredibly common in the community? If so then why did RuPaul get involved?

Is this meant to promote empowerment? Well there're better ways to do it.

There was also a film at some point, but since not even the show itself could keep my interest, I'm not gonna bother watching it.

Animation

Just know it's a flash cartoon produced in 2000. By then the program wasn't, you know, where it's at now, so if you want a flashback to the early days of flash, go nuts.

Overall

To me, Queer Duck is the gay equivalent to a minstrel show. Before you accuse me of a poor generalization, minstrel shows play on stereotypes associated with African Americans, this show plays on stereotypes associated with gay people. It reinforces negative stereotypes and practically discourages against trying to be better.

This show gives me more mixed messages than I had ever weathered in any show or movie. I can normally pinpoint an intent no matter where it's at, but here, I'm lost. I hate the main character on all fronts, not because he's gay, but because of how he goes about it. It's just so annoying, you have to see it for yourself.

Without a clear direction, I can't even respect it for its intentions. The gay community deserves better through cartoons (and not through Steven Universe.) Out of the original animated shows Showtime aired, they were better off doing movies and live action. Networks have a certain atmosphere to them, and Showtime's is obnoxious. Very, very, obnoxious.

With that said, glad to wash my hands of Showtime's animated fare, because it's not like there was another show that aired sometime between Queer Duck and Our Cartoon President, right?

Stay tuned true believers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt_C7KxPhAc

Round the Twist review

Shoutout to DrawtoonzStudio of deviantArt for pointing this out to me.

Everyone has their limits. Scratch that, every show has their limits, especially ones aimed at kids. Some have a hangup on cussing, some would be against showing murder outright, but this apparently isn't the case with every country.

When it comes to most countries, what they'd consider age appropriate would always vary. Maybe for the time, or through to this day. Apparently, in Australia, anything would go, and it's best exemplified in this 1990 gem Round the Twist.

Background

Round the Twist first debuted in 1990, airing in Australia on the 7 Network and in the UK on BBC One. It initially ended in 1992, with reruns airing on ABC (Australia's ABC) in 1993. From there the show got more traction, supposedly, and two more seasons were produced in 2000 and ended in 2001.

The show was backed and primarily produced through the Australian Children's Television Foundation. As I mentioned in one of my old Spotlight Australia posts, Australian shows were primarily backed through state funding and through government tax credit programs. It's the way over in the US, but with Australia, you're bound to find more funding credits there than anywhere else.

As this is a series with kids, recasts were increasingly common with every season, the show never had any mainstays. The longest any actor was able to stay on the show was three seasons, and only two had this luxury. The first was Esben Storm who played the main character's teacher. He got replaced by Ernie Gray in season 4. The next was Mark Mitchell who took the place of Frankie J. Holden after the first season for a recurring character.

In spite of its funding, it wasn't enough to support more ambitious episode ideas, one of which would've involved having animals in ice blocks. This show made due with what they had, and that's respectable enough.

But perhaps this show was better known for another thing. Know why I brought up standards in children's programing? This show defied program standards, but managed to come to air anyhow. To give you an idea, here's what was singled out.

Well damn. Though apparently Australia houses the Tasmania island, where inbreeding is a bit more common there than anywhere else. If you expect me to lose my shit over incest, I hate it in general, the only time I don't lose my mind is with the Loud House, they are surprisingly aware of the damages (also they pull the Lisa experiment card.)

Oddly enough, unlike MP4ORCE where it's still a bit of a mystery whether or not it ever aired on US television, apparently this aired on Fox Kids back in 1997. The fact that this show aired at all shows that anyone could be ready for anything.

Premise

The show primarily centers on the Twists, a family who moves into a lighthouse with various haunting-related oddities. Each episode centers on the kids in the family trying to solve an issue, normally after getting afflicted with a curse due to their involvement. Also, business dude who occasionally gets involved and tries to fuck up the kids' lives and tries to take down a lighthouse they're living at due to the supernatural there happening the most often. Think of Preston Northwest meets the mayor from Jaws, who shares the same surname as Dale Gribble.

The one episode I've seen so far is Without My Pants, where the kids discover the ghost of a dog who wants to locate the bones of his late owner. A close encounter causes one of the siblings, Pete, to add "without my pants" to the end of every sentence he says. This could've easily been bungled up if it was added into every scene with him, but it comes into play at the right times.

But this isn't the only curse in the episode. When the bones are in sight, per an incomplete skeleton, those in contact would start crying. This would be important, in that Pete saves himself from getting a failing grade as the "without my pants quip nearly got him in trouble. A clear and believable stake is wrought here, and the business guy merely wants to prep the town for a ceremony, he doesn't do much to hamper the kids aside from holding onto a boot that belongs to the dead guy.

The dialog is corny, but it's a good kind of corny, with clever quips following most scenes. The jokes flow very well, at least for me. I had no trouble making it to the end of the episode. Another interesting aspect is that it has good effects. We have stop motion effects on the skeleton, and while it's a bit hokey by today's standards, for something produced nearly thirty years ago, it looks cool. Even the stunts are cool, with a kid falling and tumbling down a bluff.

But how many proverbial birds to network standards did this particular episode pull? Aside from the indirect implications in the "without my pants" lines, we see, point blank, a dog turd. Also, we see Pete, literally, without his pants. The pants were a missing piece to the skeletal puzzle the kids were trying to solve, and Pete through his own pants to get the slip on a bunch of bullies who wanted to find the skeleton. Not to mention, we see a dog pissing on a bully, we don't see the dog, but we see the piss stream clear as day.

Though something tells me this is only the tip of the ice burg. For this episode at least, it isn't as gross as other shows and doesn't hold in on these aspects like the average John Kricfalusi cartoon. Based on framework, it reminds me a bit of an early version of the Goosebumps TV show, then again Freddy's Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street gave me some of the same vibes. It's really down to the effects.

Overall

At its core, this show feels like an experiment to see what the creators could get away with. It's commendable that they were able to carry out four seasons with this adage. However, given how people lose their shit when it comes to gross-out or anything similar... I'm glad this show wasn't animated.

MP4ORCE review

Have you ever wanted to see a cartoon with video game elements produced by one of two companies behind Da Boom Crew while sharing a similar spelling device to the 2015 Fantastic Four movie and the alternative title to The Illusionauts? Well it happened.

MP4ORCE (or MP four Orce if you want to be an idiot), came out in 2006, and that's as much as anyone could find on a surface level. The most info I could find directly about this show came from a TVTropes article, oh it has a Wikipedia article... but it's in German. Based on what I could interpret through that, I couldn't find any insight into what network this aired on. I know it appeared somewhere overseas as this has an English track, but I'm licked on that.

This show had garnered a 1.9 on IMDb, but it holds no reviews. Only three people gave it a ten while a grand majority gave it one star. Someone had to have covered this at some point. Due to YouTube turning off comments due to the YouTube Kids bullshit, I can't find any surface level reviews of this. The most I could find was an open comment section of the shows intro, where someone called it a Code Lyoko rip-off (I mean, that makes more sense than Da Boom Crew supposedly ripping off Samurai Jack just because of how someone defeated an enemy, and a hell of a lot more sense than Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island ripping off SpongeBob (and believe me, it's a big rabbit hole.))

I had hosted a poll on my deviantArt account, where I post a link to one episode of whatever show I want to cover, where people would decide if it was good, bad or mediocre. Out of eight votes, seven called the show mediocre.

So, if you wanna know what that "one of two company" quip meant, this show and Da Boom Crew was funded by Berliner Film Companie, and you may already know where the company is based. They produced this show through their animation production subsidiary Berlin Animation (heh, pretty bold to have your company represent your capital.) Berlin Animation is perhaps best known for co-producing Happily N'ever After. I haven't seen the film but I don't intend to.

Our star power consists of Jeff Burrell, an American actor who currently resides in Germany (joining the ranks of many American actors who moved to foreign countries, Teresa Gallagher (Nicole Watterson of The Amazing World of Gumball) who moved to the United Kingdom, David Gassman (various roles on Code Lyoko) who moved to France, Patrick Harlan (Resident Evil Survivor) who moved to Japan.) And I brought up that trivia because he has no other interesting roles, aside from what looks to be a direct-to-video animated dud.

Jonathan Malen has a more interesting resume, appearing in Mean Girls and Paw Patrol. Okay, he's more interesting in that he had more roles that I know about compared to the other one. Apparently, another actor that appeared in this was Tajja Issen, the voice of the main protagonist on Atomic Betty (which I hate.) and Superwhy, but she has also appeared on stuff I've covered and or saw before, Braceface, Bigfoot Presents: Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks, Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, Girlstuff/Boystuff and hey, she apparently appeared on Da Boom Crew too. She's listed as a participant, no key roles are identified for her in this show, which is why I singled out the above actors.

I have a gut feeling that I'm gonna be the first person to talk about this show.

The Sting

The first thing I encounter is a techno rap song. A rule of thumb is that any show with a rap song is going to be a corny dated mess by default. Say what you will about Rocket Power and maybe Girlstuff/Boystuff if you saw that review, the intro didn't resort to using a rap song.

By the way, the intro lasts for a full minute. I don't single out something like this unless it's warranted. I would say the song is listenable, but that's like having a termite dig into your toe while you're numb, you can't feel it but you know something is wrong.

Following the intro which may have a big case of overcompensation, we see our protagonists playing video games. But through what occurs on the screen, it looks as though they haven't put quarters into the machine and are pretending to play them. This takes movie characters pretending to play video games to a whole new level.

While they play, we get some riveting dialog that strongly suggests the writers are a bunch of robots, or perhaps they had never seen any human under the age of 50. None of this dialog is natural, though I get the feeling the English actors went by a rough translation of the script. This wouldn't even pass for gaming nerd lingo. Another plus for Girlstuff/Boystuff is that their dialog was surprisingly more natural.

I could never trust anyone who calls anything a ripoff, because they tend to embellish very minor aspects. This is a list in the making, but for another time. I will say this is an inferior version of an episode of South Park, Make Love, Not Warcraft, where four gamers are at war with another gamer, but he's a pushover to that one guy the South Park kids were after (well, going by the impressions I get at the start.) Not to mention, the real guy they're after in this show looks like a borderline knockoff of Kevin from Ben 10 (which I hate.) He's also a dumbass, falling for a cheat code that's obviously a trap, it being a timed manifestation (or excuse me, download) of the main bad guy.

FYI, this is the first episode I'm going by, they literally think we can fully understand everything right away.

As I continue to follow the main characters, I can't help but feel that they've spent 80% of their lives playing games, why else would one of them make an elevator crack associated with playing video games? So due to them being the best players EVAR, they're selected to... oh don't tell me, play within the actual video game world? Never heard that one before. This isn't anything like Code Lyoko, but this premise had been beaten to death.

At this point, I don't care about what happens in the rest of the episode. Not even the dialog could save it, it's so stiff and most of the time they state the blatantly obvious. So yeah, I quit.

Animation

The animation looks fine on a surface level, looking stiff at its worst, but I'm no fan of the overall design. You know of the bean smile style, right? Well how about the borderline anime style?

Or maybe it's just me?

Overall

I think the biggest issue I have with this show can be said about action shows in general. The genre is incredibly homogenized, you see one action trope you'll see it again in some form in another show, the drama, someone dying, the over the top villains, the visuals. I don't like action shows, like, at all. Straight up ones at the very least.

I stopped watching the first episode close to the six minute mark. To put this into perspective, I sat through the 1995 Clerks TV pilot which had been unanimously declared unwatchable, I've been harsh to Fatherhood and I saw whatever episode was available to the end. I saw two episodes of Days Like These and I saw That 80s Show to the end. While I didn't see the first episode of Game Over to the end I saw a later episode to the end. I saw the pilot and first episode of Emeril (which is considered one of the worst shows ever) to the end. I saw an episode of Baby Bob through to the end. I saw an episode of Father of the Pride to the end. You see what I'm saying?

I'm forgiving to crap, but I know when to draw the line. And I have a feeling this show kills brain cells because I can't come up with a witty closing line.