Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina visits its alternate universe self in a standout episode
TV Reviews Recap
If you’re going to get super self-referential and acknowledge in-world that your show is a reboot of another, pre-existing show, then you might as well bring back the talking stuffed cat while you’re at it.
There’s a narrow balancing act for an episode like this to manage, where the closer the show gets to breaking the fourth wall, the funnier the whole concept is, but there’s a danger of lowering the stakes too much in pursuit of the joke. But as Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina dips ever deeper into the well of jokes about its former incarnation as a ’90s multicamera sitcom, there’s a tipping point where it flips back to its existing mission: defeating the eldritch terrors. Sabrina Morningstar has a pretty daunting task ahead of her when she lands in sitcom land: She has to figure out how to defeat an eldritch terror, but she’s not the Sabrina that’s been battling them. She doesn’t even know which terrors are left. But she’s still Sabrina at heart, which means that she never gives into despair. If anything, she’s a slightly more confident version of Sabrina than Spellman, who’s struggled a lot with who she is this season along with fighting the end of the world. Sabrina Morningstar knows she’s got a hot husband and a mission left back in the main version of the cosmos, and she never falters in her quest to figure out what’s going on.
And of course, along the way, the show has a lot of fun with its former stars. The new old aunties are warm, friendly, and funny at first, just like they were in the earlier version of the show, and Salem the talking cat gets a couple of the requisite one liners. Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick prove more than game about reviving their versions of Hilda and Zelda, and then getting creepier and creepier while they’re at it. Meanwhile, everyone else Sabrina knows (minus Salem) has been imported over as is, thus thankfully sparing us from the extreme weirdness of Harvey being played by a 42 year old man. The show then has a great deal of fun putting a hat on a hat, by having Roz explain that she can’t be dating Harvey because the writers would never give her a boyfriend, and express complete acceptance of going blind because at least it’s an arc. Sure, Theo doesn’t have an arc in this universe either, but that’s not the point: Harvey will defend him by messing with Billy and Carl at “sports practice.”
The show even finds a way to work around its various new characters by having them work as stand-ins or on the crew (we’re all agreed that Nick threw Harvey in the green room so he could take over, right?). Faustus is of course the director, and whatever version of Lilith/Wardwell this is acts as the script supervisor. For the record, the closed captioning had her as Wardwell.
Things rapidly start to deteriorate once the Void starts infringing on the Endless, threatening to crush this entire mini universe in an effort to kill Sabrina. In one of the biggest departures from her counterpart, this Sabrina works with the eldritch terror she encounters and convinces him to make a run for it once he realizes he’s in danger. The two of them bolt for a mirror back to the main cosmos, abandoning a bloodbath behind them in one of the more fun and bizarre action sequences the show has ever done. How many shows would show all of its characters being gruesomely murdered while the protagonist sprints through a collapsing TV set as a talking stuffed cat shouts out orders to clear the way?
They make it through the mirror just in time, thus ending the episode on a cliffhanger and leaving us to wonder if the Endless will still be with Sabrina Morningstar back in the real world.
Does everything work perfectly smoothly in this sitcom version of Sabrina? Well, not exactly. The detour into revisiting earlier episodes felt unnecessary, and there’s a whiff of contempt for traditional multicamera sitcoms in the cheesy dialogue and stilted situations the actors are forced to act out. It’s possible to see this as the inability of the Endless to craft a compelling plot, but it’s hard not to read it as the show setting itself a little bit above this other art form.
But overall this is an extremely tight deconstruction of its own world. I don’t think even Sabrina Morningstar would have many notes for this one.
Stray observations
- At first I thought we were only going to get one smoldery glimpse of Nick to show that he was there, but his insistence that he’s Harvey now was very funny.
- One of the best parts of this episode was how dang creepy the whole thing was. Everything is just off. But for me the absolute creepiest part was the stand-ins sleeping under the beds of the main cast.
- Sabrina cannot get over the concept that a talking stuffed cat is the star, but no one has time to explain the ’90s to you, Sabrina!!
- It is extremely noticeable that everyone is drinking milk and eating tuna, but Sabrina does not question it even a little.
- This episode was obviously a ton of fan service from top to bottom, but it was also just effective storytelling, and the strongest episode of the season so far. I promise I’m not grading on a curve just because the talking cat appeared, but please know that I’m really glad the talking cat appeared.
34 Comments
Definitely the strongest episode of the season. Not in small part because it was one tight piece of storytelling with one protagonist and one dilemma, as opposed to an A-story, a B-story, a C-story and sometimes fragments of a D-story and E-story that we got in other episodes.A note on Caliban as Sabrina Morningstar’s counterpart to Harvey/Nick. It didn’t really work overall, because they keep switching semi-randomly from episode to episode (and sometimes from scene to scene!) between “Caliban is a villain who only fakes caring for Sabrina but would be okay murdering her and/or her friends for power” and “Caliban is legit in love with Sabrina (out of nowhere) and is kind of a good guy after all”.And yeah, Prudence and Agatha’s presence in the alternate universe was entirely justified by the chance of putting them into those cheerleader outfits. No offense to Kiernan Shipka, who’s mighty cute, but the original Weird Sisters weren’t just actresses — they were actresses “slash” models (and maybe even the other way around), and as such they clearly deserved a Slashie Award.
Yeah her thing for Caliban has always seemed super shallow since even after they’re married they show her having to tell him they’re not invading Earth. It was just his abs
I’m just generally unclear about Caliban. Like, he’s clay but he’s not? Is he still castrated? Idk.
Yeah he didn’t seem thrilled about the idea of being castrated and seemed to think it would be a problem for them having kids, but then Sabrina Morningstar was like “whatever he’s clay”. What does that mean?! Can he even have kids?
His clay scrotum was reattached, as if infernal homunculi still need human anatomy to reproduce anyway.
I like this episode a lot more as a standalone rather than as part of the Eldritch Terrors hot mess. As part of the larger picture, it makes no sense (not that much in this show does) – Sabrina Morningstar is sent to this parallel universe to stop the Cosmic from advancing, but the parallel universe seems to consistent entirely of a bubble created by a different Eldritch Terror altogether. As a CAoS twist on Pleasantville, fun. Although bringing back the original aunties and animatronic Salem and not bringing back the original Salem voice actor (continuing CAoS’ track record of Inexplicable British Accents) was a missed opportunity.
I really wonder if Nick Bakay was contacted at all about being SalemDid the show imply that the ‘tuna’ was really people? Is Sabrina now a cannibal? I mean, she was Queen of Hell, so maybe that’s no big thing for her now.I semi-expected Sabrina to invite her stand in to share the bed, but then I remembered that Sabrina is semi-terrible.
Tuna is people!
Cat Food – also people!
i legitimately could not believe she didn’t invite her stand in to share the bed. But you’re right, it’s very on brand.
If only her aunts had forbade her to share the bed, in which case she would have immediately shared the bed and that poor stand-in would get a good nights sleep.
Bakay said he was not interested.
That’s too bad, but I’m glad it was his choice.
Oh no! Well that sucks.
How strange. I understand MJH doesn’t want to be involved in more Sabrina stuff because of her religion, but I can’t see Nick being too expensive or difficult. Especially since they just re-used an existing cast member who didnt even sound right.Did they just forget?
Dang. I haven’t started this show, and “cameo from the original Salem” was on my list of things that would have got me invested. Shame.
My advice: Watch the first two seasons and then stop. First two seasons are shockingly good. Seasons 3 and 4 are incoherent messes – though this particular episode was genuinely great.
Not according to this tweet thread. He seems a little miffed (but not outraged) that he was not reached out to. *edit: sorry for an appearance of a pile-on correction. The other responses to your comment were not appearing for me until now.
Never mind what I said.
I mean it’s pretty likely that they could get sent to the green room for sleeping on the bed so it’s not the worst things she’s done. I was actually surprised when they told her “memorize your lines” and she *memorized them* and then only got strikes for things that weren’t her fault like being surprised something was going to talk when no one explained this and not wanting to be French kissed by someone. Imagine if she’d been this focused and thoughtful in the rest of the show!
Salem is being voiced by the actor who plays Lucifer. I’m not fully caught up, but assumed that was going to be relevant.
I’m shocked and appalled that Harvey never once climbed in through Sabrina’s window, which is my abiding memory of the 90s sitcom.1/10, would not use the door again
Do you mean Sam climbing through Clarissa’s window on Clarissa Explains It All?
Holy shit you’re right! I’ve thought it was Sabrina for years! Although I must have been four or five when it was on, so in my defence…
Not only does he not get any witty lines, Luke “Lucifer” Cook voices Salem Saberhagen instead of the rightful Nick Bakay! While the original Salem puppet had charm, the Netflix equivalent is inferior. This meta-episode had the unfortunate timing of premiering after DuckTales & Legends of Tomorrow executed the same concept flawlessly.
It still might be the season’s best episode for homaging classic Salem
(representing The Endless even though TV shows get cancelled frequently,
like this one) & acknowledging he’s the true star of the show
worthy of unlimited canned “tuna.” Too bad they they were too pigheaded
to let him be the star of CAOS too! #JusticeForSalem
Seeing as I am not 8 anymore I am pretty glad a talking cat wasn’t the star of this series.
I like the joke that Wardwell had to sleep on the sofa because no one ever built her a bedroom because we’ve never seen it. Likewise, I assume that the genius of Sabrina’s line about going to the candle store to prepare for The Void was a major delay tactic because the candle store set would have had to be constructed.
I don’t want to nitpick this episode because I love it (I will nitpick the next one, though, because I absolutely hate it), but Sabrina Morningstar went into The Cosmic. I get that The Endless exists within The Cosmic or vice versa, but weren’t we told that The Cosmic contains an alternate Mortal Realm, Infernal Realm, and Celestial Realm? Why do we only see the Mortal Realm?
By far the best episode of the season.As at least one other person has mentioned, Nick Bakay would have been preferable as Salem (Hell , I would’ve preferred the prop from the Nickelodeon series, too), but that was the dimmest spot in the brightest point of a mediocre final season to a delightful series.
Not related to anything specifically in this episode, but every time one of the witches says, “By Hecate” it sound to me like they’re saying “By heckity!”, like they’re using some excessively folksy version of the word “heck”.
I always think of Any from Buffy turning people into rats.
The problem is that no one on TV knows how to pronounce Hecate in the right way!
Im glad that I’m not the only one who liked this episode a lot. I will say the review made me realize why this Sabrina didn’t have knowledge of the Eldritch Terrors that I knew Harvey had drawn and Ambrose had deciphered.Not acknowledging the recasting of characters was both wild and fair. It’s been forever since I watched the original ABC show, so I don’t remember who might have been recast, but I know they changed who Sabrina’s best friend was during the course of the show, so maybe it ties to characters after I stopped watching? Or it could have been. General comment on TV shows in general. Anyway, it was actually periodically chilling, there was an adventure, and a Sabrina. “A” for executing the title of the show you’re on as a premise.