To be frank, the thought in my head as the credits brought the first episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Sixth Season to a close was, “Well, this did not age well.”
Perhaps it is because the episode features a fanged vampire in a cape who clearly can only fly with the help of suspension cables, not a hunky bloodsucker with sparkly skin, the current trend in vampire fantasy, but the shows initially felt like they hailed from a bygone era, more remote than the 2001-2002 television season from whence they actually came.
This thought surprised me, because I had watched Sabrina on and off for the better part of a decade; never a die-hard fan, but certainly someone who found the show to be a reliable source of mind-relaxing entertainment, in the best sense of the term. At first, I thought Sabrina simply might not make sense in the present age, an atavism in the world of teen television. I mean, there are no pregnancy scares, mean girl manipulations, or even much of a love triangle.
Yet, this initial hesitant disappointment did not stop me from watching a second episode. And then a third… and soon I found that, somewhat to my surprise, I was getting hooked. Its very abnormality when compared to dramas of the present day became endearing, and, although I mostly watched it as a dissipating diversion and for the comedic scenarios offered in each episode, such as Sabrina’s addiction to “Cloud 10” or possible smiting by Zeus, there were times that I actually popped in the next episode because I wanted to find out what would happen in the plot.
Soon I realize that Sabrina simply suffers and benefits from the same paradoxes that characterize any mainstream show of one’s youth that one revisits it as a 20- or 30-something. These shows don’t have a chance at standing up next to current mainstream culture—the allurement of rapid change is so ingrained in the American consciousness that old-fashioned has become an insult. However, they do have nostalgia, and humor, and sometimes watching an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Sixth Season is the perfect relief from the troubles of the present day.
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