Seasons 1-3 deserve at least 8 stars, and sometimes as many as 9 or even 10 stars because of the superlative degree of wholesome comedy, innocent teen drama, wry imagination, and straight-up entertaining plotlines and adventures that often feel close-to-home and relatable despite the very colourful world of high fantasy and magic!! In many regards, the first 3 seasons were the perfect form of feel-good television, and represented everything that was great about the 1990s (the decade that so many Millenials grew up in).
Also, the CHARACTERS in the first 3 seasons that the Sabrina and the Spellman family interacted with were FAR AND AWAY THE BEST. Libby was perhaps the greatest and most complex teenage character here - an arch-rival to Sabrina who was a three-dimensional person with her own vulnerabilities, brought to life in a pitch perfect manner by the talented actress Jenna Leigh-Green. She was hilarious, but wasn't a generic, stereotypical cheerleader. Her friends Jill and CeCe were more stereotypical cheerleaders perhaps but they too were played with a great deal of humanity by those actresses, making Libby and her posse one of my favourite elements of the series!
Harvey was the quintessentially adorable boyfriend for Sabrina, thanks in no small part due to the earnest portrayal by Nate Richert, while Valerie proved to be the most adorable best friend in Seasons 2 and 3 (thanks to the very wholesome energy of Lindsay Sloane). Yes, it was very annoying that Jenny - her best friend from Season 1 - left without a trace, together with the highly memorable and much loved Mr. Poole from the 1st season, but as much as they were missed, Valerie and the other new characters introduced in Season 2 such as Mr. Kraft and even Ms. Quick were so in keeping with the spirit and tone of the show that most viewers were able to move on and keep going without feeling like the overall quality of the series had been compromised. The Quizmaster was another truly iconic and super cool supporting character. Tuning in to each episode was nothing short of a sheer delight right through the end of Season 3, due to this spectacular SUPPORTING CAST.
Unfortunately everything went COMPLETELY DOWNHILL from Season 4 onwards. Most of the supporting high school cast that audiences had grown to love disappeared completely, and the absence of Libby and Valerie in particular was *EXCRUCIATINGLY FELT*. I really didn't mind the addition of Dreama and Brad - in fact it was nice to see Harvey have a friend like Brad - but the introduction of Josh was one of the most HORRENDOUS "developments" I've come across on any series!!!! He was a terrible, mean, sadistic character who came between Sabrina and Harvey - completely devoid of the fun qualities that Harvey's former rival Dashiell the young warlock had - and the fact that Sabrina chose to lust after Josh and cheat on Harvey with him COMPLETELY RUINED THE TITLE CHARACTER from that point onwards. Had Libby been there, she would surely have called Sabrina out on her hypocrisy and fake moral superiority, while Valerie would never have endorsed such a betrayal either.
The only entertaining element in Season 4 for me was the AUNTS - whom I enjoyed even more than the ultra-popular Salem, especially AUNT HILDA who was played to perfection by Caroline Rhea, one of the *MOST HILARIOUS* AND MOST NATURAL COMEDIENNES ever to grace a screen. She convinced you that she WAS Aunt Hilda, and not merely 'playing' one of the Aunts.
However, by the time Season 5 rolled over, and Sabrina started college - which she should have started in Season 4, because Season 1 depicted her as a sophomore, rather than a freshman in high school - it felt like not even the Aunts or Salem could keep the show afloat. The college setting was so DRAB - perhaps a reflection of the show moving from ABC to the cheaper WB - and her new 'friends' like Morgan, Roxy and Miles took a long time to get used to. I also despised the fact that they felt the need to portray Sabrina as the sitcom equivalent of Carrie Bradshaw from 'Sex and the City' at this point, dating various different guys. Melissa Joan Hart seemed desperate to break away from the wholesome image Sabrina and Harvey had cultivated during the first few seasons, and this just made the character UNLIKEABLE and UNSYMPATHETIC to me - a WANTON WITCH, versus the WHOLESOME WITCH that we had been introduced to in Season 1!
I really can't give the 4th and 5th seasons more than 3 stars out of 10, for the reasons listed above, even though Season 4 may have felt a little bit more like the classic, golden years because the show was still on ABC with the high school set and everything. The attempt to write Harvey out of the show at the end of Season 4 resulted in a backlash, and so they were compelled to bring him back later in Season 5, although Season 5 ended with Sabrina officially dating the AWFUL JOSH. Season 5 had also lost MOST of the magic and charm of the first few seasons, and while Season 6 admittedly did a lot to bring back quite a bit of that old-timey charm and magic (after all, hello, the show has the word "witch" in the title, which the WB network seemed to forget at first) - the fact that Sabrina and Josh were now presented as some kind of super-couple was EXCEEDINGLY NERVE-GRATING and ruined this season as well for me. I would maybe give it 4 stars out of 10, and the best thing that happened that season was Josh LEAVING the series forever at the end (not because Melissa Joan Hart and her mother wanted him to, but because the actor David Lascher chose to pursue something else).
By the time Season 7 rolled around, it was clear that Paula Hart, Melissa's mother and executive producer, ERRONEOUSLY believed that MELISSA was the reason everyone kept tuning into the show, and that the success/popularity of the series hinged only on HER. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She was just the title character in an ENSEMBLE CAST. The Aunts were now gone, and although it made sense on the one hand to depict Sabrina trying to live as an adult on her own two feet at long last, without the constant comfort and guidance of her aunts, the fact that 2 iconic characters who had been around for 6 seasons were now gone left yet another hole (an ever-increasing void, that began with iconic characters like Libby and Valerie being let go after Season 3). Still, I was very relieved to see Josh gone, and would take his replacement character - Aaron - over Josh any day of the week, and so I'm inclined to rate the final season at least 5 stars out of 10. Unfortunately Sabrina herself had become an almost INSUFFERABLY OBNOXIOUS character by now - no doubt because Melissa Joan Hart believed she was the undisputed star by now, when she actually wasn't - and the character's treatment of Salem was abominable (she treated him like he was less than a person, and merely the butt end of a joke who could even be tormented/tortured for the sake of a laugh).
I found the Scorch magazine setup quite refreshing after the horrendously dreary college set we had been subjected to throughout Seasons 4 and 5, and I thought those characters were much more in keeping with the spirit of the show from Seasons 1-3 (including Annie the boss). Roxie had become another insufferable and unbearable character to me by now, however, although I had acquired rather a SOFT SPOT for Morgan, by and large, and as annoying as she could occasionally be, I looked forward to seeing her more often than not. She was the only character who could fill the gaping hole left after the elimination of old-time icons like Libby and the Aunts - although, like I said, Aaron himself was quite a viable rival for Harvey!
It made zero sense that Sabrina would try to marry Aaron while hiding the fact that she was a witch (even worse than Josh never finding out that she was a witch), of course, and there were other huge problems that plagued the show during the latter seasons such as Sabrina's mother still not being allowed to have a relationship with her by the Witch's Council (which was originally only supposed to last 2 years). It would have been far better to show Sabrina at least having her MOTHER drop by every once in a while, after the Aunts were gone. Anyhow, all things considered, I can't rate the series more than 6 stars out of 10 in the final analysis, due to the WIDELY VARYING qualities of entertainment and credibility the show embodied across the different seasons.
In some ways, Seasons 4-7 should not even be considered canon, because as mentioned earlier, Sabrina was supposed to FINISH high school at the end of season 3. Instead, we were given an extra year of high school - presumably to drag out the "teenage witch" factor for as long as possible - but then she, Roxie and Morgan ONLY SPENT 2 years in college before "magically" graduating (and I use the word sarcastically here, obviously), so the last few seasons really make ZERO COMMON SENSE when you combine these factors with the other issues I pointed out previously.
I hope Melissa Joan Hart realizes at least now that this wasn't just some ego trip for her, but rather, other actresses like Jenna Leigh-Green/Libby, Lindsay Sloane/Valerie, Caroline Rhea/Hilda and Beth Broderick/Aunt Zelda were JUST AS RESPONSIBLE for making the show so iconic as she herself was!!!! I don't think Melissa and her mother Paula got THAT MEMO while the show was still on air, which is why the series declined horrendously from Season 4 onwards.....
But at least we all have the TERRIFIC MEMORIES from Seasons 1-3, and although the latter seasons DO always tarnish the full enjoyment of the early seasons upon rewatching, because you KNOW the horrors and writing gaffes that are down the road, the fact that Sabrina and Harvey end up together in the end does compensate for SOME of the atrocities committed by the producers and writers. Far from a perfect ending, but it was something!
