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Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Third Season
Score: 80%
Rating: Not Rated
Publisher: Paramount
Region: 1
Media: DVD/4
Running Time: 9 Hrs. 2 Mins.
Genre: Comedy/TV Series
Audio: Dolby Digital: English Stereo
           Surround

Subtitles: English

Sabrina Spellman (Melissa Joan Hart) and her unusual family returns for the third of seven seasons, and this time it looks like she is going to get her Witch's License that makes her a full fledged witch. That's how Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Third Season kicks off. Since she is getting ready to get more control over her magic, she is trying to hold off deciding which of the two dashing men that are chasing after her she will choose to go with her to the dance. There is, of course, the ever present on-again off-again boyfriend of the past, Harvey, and then there is her fellow witch, Dashiell (Donald Faison, now best known for his role on Scrubs), but a kink gets thrown in the works when she finds out she must pass one final test before actually acquiring her Witch's License, she must figure out the Spellman family secret. So unable to bear deciding the non-magical way, Sabrina puts a spell on Dash and Harvey that will reveal who is right for her. It is only when her cousin Doris, who works for the License Bureau, gets mad at being ignored by Sabrina that she determines exactly who her heart belongs to, Harvey.

This is just the season opener. Throughout the rest of the season, various extended family members will appear on the show dropping off clues to the family secret. Some are easy to solve, but most of them aren't revealed until Sabrina puts a lot of effort into it. Besides the family secret episodes, there is a healthy mix of standard Teenage Witch-styled ones. Followers of the show know the formula: Sabrina wants to accomplish some task, but she wants to take a short cut so she finds a spell to help her (typically with some prodding by the family familiar, Salem). Indelibly, her aunts, Hilda and Zelda, tell her it is best not to use magic for that purpose and when Sabrina does, things go wrong. For example, in one episode, Sabrina visits her friend Valerie's house for dinner. She decides to help the family out some by letting a wishbone wish be granted. It seems the wish backfires on Sabrina though (as usual) when Valarie's parents wish for their daughter to be more like Sabrina... actually the wish is "to be just like Sabrina." As the episode progresses, Valarie starts to exhibit more and more of Sabrina's mannerisms and even starts to dress and look like her. The final straw for Sabrina is when Harvey can't even tell the difference between the two and he ends up giving Valarie a peck on the cheek instead of Sabrina.

As for the family secret episodes, they tend to start with an announcement that some cousin of the girls is coming into town to help Sabrina solve the puzzle. The visit usually causes some kind of mayhem and when it gets resolved, the clue is given to Sabrina. A typical example of this is in the episode "What Price Harvey" where Zsa Zsa visits and causes Hilda and Zelda to walk a mile in each other's shoes (literally) and switch personalities. Here, Hilda becomes the responsible one, while Zelda blows off her preparations that are suppose to get her a major grant. Meanwhile Sabrina is annoyed at Harvey's lack of ambition so she buys a product from Zsa Zsa that is supposed to increase his ambition. Unfortunately, when she uses way too much, he drops out of school, becomes a multi-millionaire industrialist and plans to tear down the school. Sabrina has to take immediate action and convince Harvey that while he has ambition, he doesn't have direction. She uses a spell that makes her appear to him as a ghost and show him the future consequences of his actions (a la A Christmas Carol). Just before the closing credits crawl, Zsa Zsa hands Sabrina her clue and she's off back to the Other Realm.

Another major event in the season is when Mr. Kraft and Zelda start dating. This starts pretty early in the season, and there are several episodes that focus on this relationship. In one episode, Kraft is coming over for dinner. Not wanting to say anything wrong, both Hilda and Sabrina put silence spells on them and accidentally changes the inside of their house into a silent movie. To make matters worse, Harvey has finally worked up the nerve to tell Sabrina that he loves her and feels he would be devastated if she doesn't say it back. So when she is silent when he confesses his love, he suspects the worse. Another Kraft/Zelda episode is earlier, when Hilda and Sabrina summon Kraft's ex-wife to try and get between the couple. What they didn't realize was that she was a witch as well, and she immediately puts Mr. Kraft under an obedience spell.

Needless to say, there is a lot that happens in Sabrina's junior year of high school, and in the end, she does figure out the family secret, but it's a doozy and it might force her to not be able to live in the Mortal Real ever again. What is it? How will it keep her from Harvey and her friends? Well, you will just have to watch the show to find out.

This DVD is really only for those people who remember watching the show when it was on. There isn't anything here that will capture any new audience members, but for those people who saw it back in the day, it is a good piece of nostalgic memorabilia.



-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

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