As I’ve mentioned in other reviews of premieres, I try to go into the shows relatively blind. I don’t read other reviews, I don’t watch a bunch of trailers, I basically try to read the short descriptions ahead of time aka the logline for the shows and make my “sight unseen” prediction before settling in to be entertained. For The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, I thought it was basically a reboot of the old light-hearted semi-comedy that Sabrina was before…no, not the movie with Harrison Ford in a bowtie, the TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, with Melissa Joan Hart, Caroline Rhea, Soleil Moon Frye, etc.

But for this one, I had three small “breaks” in my info blanket. First, I knew it was a spin-off of some sort from Riverdale. Second, I saw a video online that was being shared around of the cast of the previous series wishing the new Sabrina series regulars well, character to character. Which confirmed it as a semi-reboot. And third, I saw a friend discussing the show on FB with another friend. But they said it was scary / horror, somewhat like Buffy. I had thought “The chilling adventures of” was meant ironically, not literally.

So I had a better than normal idea of what to expect when I started watching. And yet I’m not sure all of the writers on the show got the memo. Sabrina’s mortal friends act as if they are on the old series, light-hearted, over-eager, innocent; Sabrina’s family in the non-muggle world seem more like bad Buffy, with over-acting and portends of doom. And Sabrina is somewhere in the middle. Way more “innocent” sounding than Buffy ever did.

I have to confess, when I heard it was like Buffy, I was excited. Now that I’ve seen the premiere, I feel more like I’m watching a hybrid of the old series and Sleepy Hollow. It certainly wasn’t scary in any way…sure, one woman died, but Sabrina never seemed like SHE was in any actual danger, unlike Buffy where she had to fight back.

Yet, I liked it enough that I’ll watch to the end. Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina may be drawing on her Mad Men experience, but since I never saw her before the premiere, she’s fun to see for the first time. Miranda Otta is a little too serious as Aunt Zelda — almost Narcissa Malfoy serious — and almost impossible to believe was once Eowyn from Lord of the Rings or even the neighbour’s wife in What Lies Beneath. People are frequently enamoured by Lucy Davis who plays the perhaps slightly ditzy Aunt Hilda, and while I liked her in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, I’m not entirely sold on her here. Honestly, the sole bright spot for me after Shipka is Michelle Gomez as the teacher Mary Wardwell. I’ve seen her in occasional Dr. Who episodes but didn’t recognize her, and I was sure I’d seen her in other stuff. She’s delicious in this role, some real sense of happy malevolence about her. The rest of the cast? Meh.

Nevertheless, as long as the demon that is rising isn’t Moloch from Sleepy Hollow or DC Legends of Tomorrow, I’ll enjoy watching. It just won’t be very Buffy-like. Based almost solely on the fact that it’s a spin-off from Riverdale, I was willing to predict renewal. Now that I’ve seen Ep1, I’ll stick with renewal to season 2.

I would have thought somewhere in the DC Universe there was a super hero janitor that didn’t yet have a series, and I confess that not being well-versed in the origin source material, I thought Titans was going to be about X-Men-like mutants. I was definitely NOT expecting Dick Grayson, aka Robin, as the main guy.

The first episode is a bit hard to follow, as there are several storylines happening simultaneously and at the beginning, they don’t look like they’re very well connected. First up, we meet Detective Grayson working as a cop in Detroit, having transferred in from Gotham. He is tracking a thug who got away with hurting his young daughter, and Grayson wants some vigilante justice. He shows up, kicks some butt with serious bloodshed (definitely NOT the normal beat them up and arrest everyone motif of most super hero shows) and maiming, and then basically kicks the crap out of the guy and beats him severely long after he is down. He is DEFINITELY closer to Nightwing in this incarnation than the old lovable Robin. Brenton Thwaites plays Grayson, and while I have not seen him in anything previously, he’s pretty dang good. Kind of like a darker version of Grant Gustin’s Flash. Does a great job of seeming young but old too soon.

Next up is Rachel Roth aka some sort of demon-within-a-girl who is having trouble coming to grips with whatever is happening to her, and the only solace she can find, is that she keeps seeing Dick Grayson in a nightmare, the night his parents died. But she finds her way to Detroit after her mother is killed and meets Grayson, which she feels cannot be a coincidence. She asks for his help but he’s reluctant to get too involved. Teagan Croft plays Rachel, and she’s good despite her limited experience.

And finally there is a third storyline around a woman who wakes up in a car wreck in Europe, only to be hunted by mobsters who killed the driver of the car she was in. She has lost her memory and is a bit surprised to learn she has superpowers. She is super strong and a skilled fighter, and when she goes up against someone trying to shoot her, she turns into a Firestorm-like human torch and incinerates them with a giant wall of flames. Interestingly, she torches them, but leaves a file sitting on the deck untouched (umm, sure). Anyway, she finds out that before losing her memory she was apparently looking for Rachel. The amnesiac is played by Anna Diop, and I have no more understanding of her character or role than she does.

The amnesiac torch is looking for Rachel, Rachel is looking for Grayson after someone kills her fake-woman-who-claimed-to-be-her-mother, and Grayson is looking for a new life away from Batman. Oh, and just for fun, the episode ends with a boy who turns into a tiger and robs stores at night to get new video games. Umm, okay. Wait, what is this show about?

I confess, I really have no idea. But it is WAY darker and more bloody than I was expecting. I also really love the fact that Robin is a full-fledged Robin, not an origin story. He has cool toys, nice car, fully formed fighting style, and kicks some serious butt in the episode. One of the downsides of going in blind is that I didn’t know much about the show or even the main character, not having seen ANY of the trailers or even the description apparently as it wasn’t even on my initial review or prediction list. I would have said RENEWAL and I’ll stick with that now. And it’s dark enough to hold my interest, so I’ll be one of the ones watching.

One of the challenges with reviewing a reboot is remembering that what you actually remember about the previous version is the characters that the actors and actresses created over time, the final product so to speak. If I look back at Season 1, for example, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the characters seem almost like caricatures in comparison with who the actors “became” as they learned to embody and develop the role. Similarly for shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer…season 1 is nowhere near as polished as the more mature versions of the characters a few seasons later.

So watching the pilot for the reboot of Charmed, I should try to compare it to Season 1 of the original Charmed, not the fully developed characters of the later seasons, right?

Well, in short, I can’t. There are three things that stand out for me in the episode as different from the original Charmed.

First and foremost, the sisters seem WAY younger than the originals. When Charmed appeared in 1998, Shannon Doherty had already done 111 episodes of Beverly Hills 90210, and at the age of 27, she was a seasoned TV veteran. Holly Marie Combs was only 25, but had 88 episodes of Picket Fences under her belt. Alyssa Milano was in the middle at age 26, with 40 episodes of Melrose Place and 196 episodes of Who’s The Boss.

For the new show, Melonie Diaz looks like she’s 12 even though she’s actually 34, yet she has only a handful of TV shows for multiple episode arcs plus guest-of-the-week gigs. Madeleine Mantock is 28, and has been on a few shows for full seasons. I liked her on The Tomorrow People and Into the Badlands, although I find it interesting that she seems older than Diaz in the episode. Sarah Jeffery is the relative baby of the group at age 22, but she has a couple of shows that have gone for a season or two. Overall then, on the age front, the new Charmed ones are actually spread out more, but they look way younger in the roles, and have far less experience of creating roles over multiple seasons. I actually felt like I was watching the high-school version, rather than a freshman university level trio.

Second, they have upped the ante on spookiness. There are several scenes where people popped out or birds erupt from doorways, and it was enough to make me jump more than once. I don’t remember a tense/fright factor in the old show, but it was also often a bit too light-in-tone, almost a PG version of hunting demons.

Third, maybe it’s the change from old series premise (grandmother dies) to new series premise (mother dies), or the fact that the third sister shows up and while a complete surprise to the other two, one of them is like “Cool”. No angst about “mom never told us”, no “WTF?” moments over time. Sure, one is suspicious of the person claiming to be a third sister, but there is NO recrimination against mom by the other two, and only a mild complaint by the sister who was abandoned.

Or maybe the issue is that I just didn’t buy the whole “oh, look, I have witch powers” being such a quick change for the three of them. By the end of the episode, I feel like it was just “Okay, we’re superheroes now, all good.” Even the final battle is WAY too easy. And don’t get me started on the previous battle that we DON’T EVEN GET TO SEE (?) that happens off-screen.

Bottom line…I wanted to like the show, as I liked the old one, and I hoped it would be good enough to keep watching. Sight unseen, I did however predicted it would be CANCELLED, and after watching the first episode, now I’m sure of it. I just don’t see any of the three of them being strong enough to anchor the show.

Sorry, Charmed ones, I’m out.