Princess in Waiting (The Princess Diaries 4)

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Lilly: Though based on comic-book characters, this show is surprisingly affable, and even occasionally amusing. Although, sadly, actual Wiccan practices are not described. The show could benefit from some research into the ages old religion that has, through the centuries, empowered millions, primarily females. The talking cat is a bit suspect: I have not read any believable documentation that would support the possibility of transfiguration.

Mia: Totally awesome dur

ing the high school/Harvey years. Good-bye Harvey = good-bye show.

Baywatch

Lilly: Puerile garbage.

Mia: Most excellent show of all time. Everyone is good-looking; you can fully follow every plotline even while instant messaging; and there are lots of pictures of the beach, which is great when you are in dark, gloomy Manhattan in February. Best episode: When Pamela Anderson got kidnapped by that half man/half beast, who after plastic surgery became a professor at UCLA. Worst episode: Anytime Mitch adopts a son.

Powerpuff Girls

Lilly: Best show on television.

Mia: Ditto. ’Nough said.

Roswell

Lilly: Now, sadly, canceled, this show offered an intriguing look at the possibility that aliens live among us. The fact that they might be teenagers, and extraordinarily attractive ones, at that, stretches the show’s credibility somewhat.

Mia: Hot guys with alien powers. What more can you ask? High point: Future Max; any time anybody made out in the eraser room. Low point: When that skanky Tess showed up. Oh, and when it got canceled.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Lilly: Feminist empowerment at its peak, entertainment at its best. The heroine is a lean, mean, vampire-killing machine, who worries as much about her immortal soul as she does about messing up her hair. A strong role model for young women—nay, people of both genders and all ages will benefit from the viewing of this show. All of television should be this good. The fact that this show has, for so long, been ignored by the Emmys is a travesty.

Mia: If only the Buffster could just find a boyfriend who doesn’t need to drink platelets to survive. High point: Any time there’s kissing. Low point: None.

Gilmore Girls

Lilly: Thoughtful portrayal of single mother struggling to raise teenage daughter in a small northeastern town.

Mia: Many, many, many, many, many, many cute boys. Plus it is nice to see single moms who sleep with their kid’s teacher getting props instead of lectures from the Moral Majority.

Charmed

Lilly: While this show at least accurately portrays SOME typical Wiccan practices, the spells these girls routinely do are completely unrealistic. You cannot, for instance, travel through time or between dimensions without creating rifts in the space-time continuum. Were these girls really to transport themselves to seventeenth-century Puritan America, they would arrive there with their esophagi ripped inside out, not neatly stuffed into a corset, as no one can travel through a wormhole and maintain their mass integrity. It is a simple matter of physics. Albert Einstein must be spinning in his grave.

Mia: Hello, witches in hot clothes. Like Sabrina, only better, because the boys are cuter, and sometimes they are in danger and the girls have to save them.

Thursday, January 22, G & T

Tina is so mad at Charlotte Brontë. She says Jane Eyre ruined her life.

She announced this at lunch. Right in front of Michael, who isn’t supposed to know about the whole Jane Eyre technique of not-chasing-boys thing, but whatever. He admitted to never having read the book, so I think it is a safe bet he didn’t know what Tina was talking about.

Still, it was way sad. Tina said she is giving up her romance novels. Giving them up because they led to the ruination of her relationship with Dave!

We were all very upset to hear about this. Tina loves reading romances. She reads about one a day.

But now she says that if it weren’t for romance novels, she, and not Jasmine, would be going to the Rangers game with Dave Farouq El-Abar this Saturday.

And my pointing out that she doesn’t even like hockey didn’t seem to help.

Lilly and I both realized that this was a pivotal moment in Tina’s adolescent growth. It needed to be pointed out to her that Dave, not Jane Eyre, was the one who’d pulled the plug on their relationship… and that, when looked at objectively, the whole thing was probably for the best. It was ludicrous for Tina to blame romance novels for her plight.