Review: Embracing the End in CHILLING ADVENTURE OF SABRINA Part 4
With many famous teen dramas floating around, it’s hard to see any reason for sequels, reboots or new seasons of the shows to appear. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was a fresh take on the franchise when it first came out. The first and second seasons were pretty good and delved into some worlds and conflicts that aren’t usually portrayed. Season 3 missed the mark more than it hit it. The fourth and final season (Part 4), sees a return to the more relatable philosophical discussions of existence as a whole and the ability to choose one’s own path. As for the actual story, humor, drama and spectacle, it’s not terribly unique and becomes predictable, but the journey is still mostly entertaining.
This will be a spoiler free review, so I apologize in advance if this is terribly vague because a lot of stuff happens within the first half of the first episode, so not many details can be thrown around.
This season we follow a very episodic kind of “monster of the week” format. This works really well for the show, but it does feel kind of arbitrary and some of the other side plots have very little meaning or impact. The plot of looming doom coming to Greendale feels excessively coincidental because they keep happening right there in one tiny town. I understand because of budget, quarantine or other things that they couldn’t film all over the world. But the fact that they spend 99% of the time in one small town to fight off the grandest evils and deal with some of the most powerful magic in the universe just feels ridiculous (especially because they’ve been doing this exact type of plot every season in some form). The last few episodes get a little jumbled and feel oddly paced with a somewhat abrupt and poorly explained ending. I honestly think that one more episode dealing with the actual ending would’ve been better or cutting down some of the other episodes to make the ending more grand (because that is where it started to get interesting), but it’s fine enough for the finale of the series.
The acting and production value overall was much better than Season 3, it felt like they knew their budget and the limitations and did well inside those boundaries. Various guest appearances and returning characters made for well balanced talent but started to be a little cumbersome. Everything here was visually and audibly was fine (except the cringey musical numbers), it just never went above and beyond average.
Being the end of this dark take on Sabrina, I think it was a mostly fitting way to finish the series. Between some cool plot points and odd antics of Sabrina, the season was entertaining about 60% of the time. However, the rest was pretty predictable, thinly spread and felt terribly average. It is a good end to the series, but isn’t an excuse to binge watch the show all over again any time soon.
