S04.E04: Chapter Thirty-Two: The Imp of the Perverse

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Panic turns political as Sabrina and Roz run for Baxter High co-presidents. Harvey struggles with Roz's reveal. Blackwood takes control of the terror.

Dropping Thursday, December 31, 2020.

[AnimeMania]

Hilda saves the day with a bone. When the dog first come walking down the school's hallways, I was hoping it would have 3 heads, but that wouldn't fit with the "No Witch" stance of Blackwood.

I wouldn't mind having Agatha back.

[SourK]

For a second, when she killed her dad, I was like, "Yay, Prudence finally got something she wants!" And then the next scene reminded us that he can't die and she had to settle for cutting off his head. Unluck.

I kind of laughed when Blackwood was like, "Make it so I've always been the Emperor!" because that's such a weird wish. Emperor of what? Emperor of Greendale? His wish is to make it so the town randomly has an Emperor and it's him?

I also laughed when he described this as his perfect world, because he set the bar so low. His fantasy of a perfect world is to stomp around the high school arresting students he doesn't like.

Meanwhile, I can buy the story line where Roz is super committed to proving that Harvey doesn't have it in him to be a Nazi, but not over the course of a single episode where it gets shoehorned in with everything else. In this episode, you just make him drink the soup and move on with your life.

Edited January 1, 2021 by SourK

[Cursus]

In my books, father Blackwood is greatly stupid in this episode. He could've made the whole world worship him. Instead of that he just made the statue be a dog and him be an emperor of a small town with few people living there. And even if he had been dreaming for it the whole his life, he would've kill all the previous witches and warlocks or at least just hide the statue better. But the most disappointing thing was his army. It was just a couple of kids from the high school. 

[tennisgurl]

Blackwood is such a petty loser, he gets a wish that can apparently give him all of the wealth and power he could imagine, and he just wants to jackboot around this random little town. If he was stuck in Greendale he didn't even make it so that everyone would worship him or anything cool, just that he is the ruler of his little army. I guess this is as close as Prudence can get to killing her worthless father, but I wish they could have found some kind of way to just get rid of him once and for all. 

It was nice to see Agatha getting to play some part in the plot and was back to normal in the alternate universe, too bad that her brain is mush again. 

[bettername2come]

I didn't predict stone soup as the method of reality dispersal.

Lots of good character moments. Harvey choosing not to be evil, Nick's "more weight," Robin being useful (or at least trying to be) in opening the safe, Ambrose getting through to Prudence, Prudence getting to stab her dad.

And yes, Blackwood's an idiot.

Edited January 19, 2021 by bettername2come

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Sabrina and Zelda/Ambrose debating whether or not running for student council would distract her from protecting the world from the Eldritch terrors reminded me of Buffy constantly telling Giles that she still needed to do normal high school things. You can save the world AND go to the prom!

Harvey was on my shit list during his conversation with Roz. He said, "You told me point blank you weren't a witch." I don't know how much detail she went into with him, but even if she gave him the broad overview instead of the detailed version, he should know that she didn't know she was a witch until about two days ago. When she told him that she wasn't a witch, that's because SHE DIDN'T KNOW SHE WAS A WITCH. He was acting like she deliberately lied to him when in fact she had no idea that she was a witch. This is all brand new to her too, Harvey, so calm the fuck down and stop acting like she betrayed you.

And then Harvey's passive aggressive "how are you going to be co-president AND a sentinel?" Ugh, just STFU, Harvey. If you can't be supportive of her then dump her and be on your way. Besides, it's not like being co-president involves a lot of actual duties (and very few that would overlap with her sentinel duties).

I'm generally not a fan of alternate timeline episodes so only ten minutes in, I was kind of dreading having to sit through the rest of this one. But at least Sabrina and Roz remembered the other timeline so it wasn't just a complete nightmare.

Seeing what a fanatic Harvey was in this timeline was disturbing. Interesting that he was no longer the nice boy of the original timeline but Nick's personality was basically the same (I cracked up when he later requested more stone weight). I understood Roz wanting to try to reach Harvey, but I knew that she was doomed to fail. And that was before she gave him that Sound of Music scenario.

Ha, the always convenient "the spell doesn't work once you cross the town border" as seen approximately one zillion times on Once Upon a Time.

It was so frustrating listening to everyone in the resistance stand around trying to figure out what to do with the stone instead of having Robin run Ambrose back to the town border to restore his memory and then give him another 30 seconds to finish explaining.

Listening to all of Blackwood's blatant lies was a bit too familiar to all the ridiculous Qanon conspiracy theories and other lies that have been spread around recently.

A few things totally cracked me up in this episode:
(1) even when Sabrina was confronting Blackwood, she still was polite enough to refer to him as Father Blackwood
(2) when Nick was being stoned, OF COURSE he had to be shirtless!
(3) the witches came prepared to deal with Blackwood's dog so when he started growling, Hilda just handed him a bone
(4) it took a pretty long time for Sabrina to remember that Nick was bring crushed beneath stones
(5) now they're treating Robin like the Flash whenever they need someone to get somewhere really quickly

One thing that was confusing to me was what happened when Sabrina hit Blackwood in the head with the stone. We saw a sonic whoosh thing happen in the room so I assumed that meant everyone got their memories back, but then Nick still didn't know who Sabrina was?

On 1/1/2021 at 11:17 AM, Cursus said:

In my books, father Blackwood is greatly stupid in this episode. He could've made the whole world worship him. Instead of that he just made the statue be a dog and him be an emperor of a small town with few people living there. And even if he had been dreaming for it the whole his life, he would've kill all the previous witches and warlocks or at least just hide the statue better. But the most disappointing thing was his army. It was just a couple of kids from the high school. 

And he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids!

[Mabinogia]

9 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

It was so frustrating listening to everyone in the resistance stand around trying to figure out what to do with the stone instead of having Robin run Ambrose back to the town border to restore his memory and then give him another 30 seconds to finish explaining.

This was making me stabby. First, Ambrose, darling, you have 30 seconds, cut the chit chat. Second, you could have written it down and handed it to her in the 30 seconds. Third, if the 30 seconds wasn't enough, have Robin run you back to restart the 30 seconds. But it should have been enough if you had planned what you were going to say, whooshed in, said it and left. But....plot contrivance. *sighs heavily*