That was probably not the best executed plan in the history
of plans. Who could have predicted that the most powerful warlock in town would
see through Sabrina’s fake ghost plan? Fake ghost play never works. Take it
from Hamlet, kids. Well, it works on Sabrina herself pretty well, actually.
The whole debacle is a reminder that Sabrina is pretty
under-resourced in her fight against Father Blackwood, and more broadly,
against Wardwell. It doesn’t occur to her to question her own vision, and Zelda
doesn’t take seriously that Sabrina believes the vision is real. There’s a
fundamental miscommunication that has to happen here for Sabrina to go forward with
what is ultimately a very flawed plan. Either it’s going to work for you that
Zelda is so distracted by her wedding that she doesn’t listen to her niece, or
it’ll seem like a contrivance that Zelda wouldn’t be alarmed that her niece is
seeing visions of her dead father. At bare minimum, shouldn’t she be concerned
about who could be sending the vision? The reaction she and Hilda have to
Constance visiting them is so laissez-faire that it suggests they’re quite
acclimated to having to deal with potentially menacing visitors who are
themselves the instruments of sinister people.
Speaking of Hilda, did anyone guess she had it in her to
take the step Zelda wouldn’t and kill off Shirley Jackson, the Spellman
family’s nemesis? Those were really Chekhov’s cookies. As soon as she
encourages Shirley to eat one, you’re reminded of all the times you’ve seen
Hilda baking throughout the show. Why that specific food, in that specific
moment? Why, so the almonds will cover the taste of cyanide, of course. And
despite Zelda’s more or less constant mistreatment of her, there’s clearly a
bond that has kept these two together for as long as this. Whether that bond
can survive Zelda’s marriage is a bigger question, but Shirley Jackson is
clearly not a very worthy adversary for the Spellman sisters.
On the other hand, at the very moment that Zelda brings the
family its greatest power in ages, Ambrose and Sabrina also nearly ruin it.
Ambrose has in short order gone from being the show’s most light-hearted
character to its bleakest, now the type of person likely to attempt a very
public stabbing. Look, the guy’s upset, but there were probably other methods
he could have used on Father Blackwood with a higher chance of success than
“scream about murder in a very public place in front of people with magic
power.”
It has been a rough couple of weeks, to be fair. His
boyfriend died (though mysteriously off-camera—do we really believe Luke is
gone?) and he accidentally ingested his own familiar, which then
mind-controlled him into murdering the Anti-Pope. In the plus column, the
Anti-Pope seems to have been a real pervert, so it doesn’t seem like a total
loss. I took some quick notes during his introduction, and words he used to
describe teenagers included fine, supple, fresh, pure, and potent. It’s possible
Father Blackwood did the world a favor on that one. Plus, the in-joke casting
of Ray Wise, who played the Devil on the gone-too-soon Reaper, is just enough
to make you think the Anti-Pope will be sticking around for a few episodes.
Alas, he’s quickly killed off, and as the show speeds off
into the latter half of this second batch of Season 1 episodes, things are
looking increasingly dire for the Spellman family. Sabrina is out of the
Academy, Ambrose is in prison, and Zelda is trapped in marriage to a man whose
ideas about romantic partnership seem to have stopped evolving somewhere in one
of the more dire MRA-infected corners of the Internet. This show is not subtle
about its gender politics, but they’ve never been more extreme than in this
episode, which pairs Blackwood’s retrograde manifesto with Sabrina’s father’s
far more progressive one. Which is still two men debating the fate of women,
but at least in the case of Sabrina’s father, his goal is to share power rather
than consolidate his own.
Maybe Hilda has some really good plans she can share?
Someone needs to save the day here.
Stray observations
- Come on, has anyone ever shaved onscreen without cutting themselves?
Same for chopping vegetables. - Really enjoyed everyone’s attempts to pronounce the phrase “Anti-Pope”
naturally. - Someday I hope to be as viciously indifferent to social
niceties as Prudence, whose response to Sabrina saying “Hey, Prudence” is to
stare at her and then walk away. - “Marriage is a walk down the primrose path towards a woman’s
destruction. It’s nothing else than the complete obliteration of a woman’s
personhood.” Wardwell should really consider selling greeting cards. - Do we trust Nick now that he got himself expelled just to
help Sabrina? - I rewatched a scene where they said “Enoch” with closed
captions on just to make sure I was spelling it right in my notes, and then I
didn’t mention his name above, and now the character is dead. So, Enoch.