By the second season, Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a hit and the network bumped it up to the 8/7 PM slot to kick off their Friday evenings while Clueless slunk off to UPN. I had only seen roughly a third of these before my part-time job with the movie theater forced me drop cable and sell my TV. So this DVD set was a treat. I avoided any of the reruns on Nickelodeon/Family to keep these unspoiled.
Sabrina is now a year older, more comfortable with her witch status and has earned her learner’s permit. For the next year, she must diligently study magic and be prepared for random tests from her Quizmaster. The two-part season opener gets her sent to a boot camp for failing miserably on her initial test; the Other Realm doesn’t take this lightly. Back in the real world, she still has her big crush on Harvey; Libby continues to be her primary tormentor; and Aunts Hilda and Zelda remain the “unreasonable” parental surrogates. Her best friend Jenny is replaced with Valerie since the former disappears with no explanation and the latter is the new kid. (I’ve never found an explanation on the Internet why there was a change in casting.) The same goes for Science teacher Mr. Pool’s absence. In his place, two recurring teachers join the cast: Principal Kraft (comedian Martin Mull) and Mrs. Quick (SNL alum Mary Gross). Yes, I know it’s only a TV show yet it would be nice to keep the continuity by making passing references to the fictional beings the audience grew attached to.
The string of impressive cameos established in the first season continue: 10,000 Maniacs, Erik Estrada, Donna D’Erico, Davy Jones, Terri Garr, Richard Moll, Loni Anderson, Edie McClurg, Tom Poston, Alice Ghostly (Aunt Esmeralda from Bewitched), Drew Carey, Bobcat Goldthwait, Johnny Mathis, John Ratzenberger, Jane Carr, Shelly Long, Paul Dooley, Fred Willard and Buddy Hackett. Some of them take a while to recognize but I know I laughed my head off when I saw who Bobcat Goldthwait was supposed to be. Some characters from last season also return: Cupid, Roland and the mean, spoiled cousin, Amanda.
On the surface this looks like the show is milking what happened last season while it recycles the plots of every other sitcom before it. Sure, but the larger story arc of Sabrina maturing as a witch, as an adult and her relationship with Harvey carries it. In its second season, Sabrina continued to blossom into a great program that also featured confident women being good at math, science or music; personally, I think they’re decent role models for my nieces.
During this year, ABC also did two gimmicks with their newfound hit; one was rather lame and the other was excellent yet couldn’t be repeated due to the syndication rights. The lame one was an episode set in Disneyworld under the weakest of premises. The excellent one was a cheesy tactic to get people to watch the three shows airing after Sabrina: Salem the cat eats a time ball and whatever era he dreams or thinks about, manifests around him. It begins with the Sabrina episode when he recreates the Sixties in which Sabrina thought was cool until she realizes that opportunities for women were still pretty limited compared to 1997. So Sabrina, Hilda and Zelda try to cure Salem to restore the “present.” He escapes, ABC shifts to commercials and the ending credits appear after the break. Initially, everybody thought, “huh?” Then the following program Boy Meets World began but first, a black cat runs across the opening set with Melissa Joan Hart pursuing. Afterwards, the surroundings shifted to another time period, in this case, the Forties. This was repeated twice more with ABC’s weaker sitcoms which only lasted a season. I couldn’t find any record of this on the Internet, you’ll have to take it on faith it happened.
Lastly, there isn’t anything special on the DVDs, it’s just 26 uncut episodes of the show but under the same limitations as the syndicated versions: most of the original music you remembered from the original airings were removed since it would raise the price considerably. Not a deal breaker but I know I lost all interest in WKRP when I read up on this. The lack of those special features is a bummer yet my primary motivation for collecting Sabrina is to build a nice video library for my nieces, nephews and other kids I know.