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noethicalconsumptionunderdisney · 1 year

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Ranked: Wizards of Waverly Place — Premieres

Well hello again! It has been a hot minute since I did an Analysis, let alone a whole month of them! Let’s change that. Welcome to “Not What It Seems” November, something I completely made up so I could give myself a month to talk about my second-favorite Disney Channel show: Wizards of Waverly Place! We’ll do like The Sound of Music and start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) and talk about Premieres(… starting on the 8th of the month instead of the 1st, because I am very punctual).

My criteria for general quality hasn’t changed too much: good acting, good directing, tight editing, tight script, humor and/or drama that hits where it’s supposed to. Nor has my criteria for what makes a Premiere, specifically, stand out as a Premiere and what takes it to the next level, so once more, here’s that list:

Establish the tone, setting, and premise for the season

Introduce an important change, shift, or moment in the series that sets the season apart and/or make it clear to the audience why we’re starting where we are

Establish and/or re-establish the characters and characterization— the characters should still feel like themselves, and shouldn’t act too differently from how they act in other episodes, but they should still feel like they’re developing throughout the show, particularly if that development is directly related to the Important Change mentioned above

Stand out from the season in a way that doesn’t feel jarring or out of place— it should feel like a part of its own season, while also setting itself apart in a positive and memorable way

Now, resentfully, I thought of adding some criteria for clarity, such as not retconning, not undermining the drama of previous episodes (especially Finales), or perhaps emphasize the positive part of “setting itself apart in a positive and memorable way”… but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that mostly just applies to one episode in particular, and it’s not worth altering the entire list just because one specific episode pisses me off enough to warrant a low ranking despite technically qualifying for a lot of these on paper.

So since I tend to list from Worst->Best so I can save the best for last, why don’t we start with that episode so you can see what I mean?

#4: “Alex Tells the World” (Season Four)

(Pictured: Me during this entire shitshow)

No, I don’t hate Season 4, and yes, this episode does a decent job of setting up the general conflict and story arc for it, and yes, like I said, this episode technically qualifies for a lot of the criteria I just mentioned. There’s just one little problem: I. Don’t. Like. It. And it’s my list, so I can rank it wherever I want. *long-suffering sigh* Let’s get into it.

The first part of this episode starts off strong enough: as a continuation of the S3 Finale, the Russos have finally returned home, after hitching rides, taking buses, and a whole lot of walking (or in Alex’s case, riding their werewolf boyfriend’s back. Side note: why the hell didn’t he just wolf up instead of walking in human form? It seems like that would’ve been a lot easier on him, but whatever, that’s the least of my problems with this episode). The stakes are high: They’ve lost their powers, Justin exposed magic to the government, Professor Crumbs and several other wizards have been taken captive, and their Wizard Portal has shut down. So what’s next?

As it turns out, a whole lot of nothing. Literally. Their solution is “do nothing.” Business as usual. There is no war in Ba Sing Se, we have always been at peace with Eurasia. When Alex understandably goes, “Fuck that noise, there are people in danger, and something needs to be done,” they’re upset that the laziest girl on Earth wants to do something for once. Granted, what she wants to do is expose magic to get the people to recognize that wizards are just like everyone else and help them stand up to the unfair government. People have a right to be skeptical of this plan, as there’s no guarantee the people will react the way she hopes they will, there’s no real way to prove her powers at this point because they’ve been taken away, thus no guarantee that they’ll even believe her and a high chance they’ll lock her in some kind of asylum, and of course, it’s been drilled into them over and over that exposing magic is a big no-no.

But Alex insists it’s the only way. Sure, it’s a huge risk, and it’s breaking protocol in all kinds of ways, but some things are more important than rules, and when lives are on the line, you have to prioritize helping others over protecting yourself, and you can’t just sit around and stay silent. Right? Right?

Please, this is the backwards wizard world we’re talking about! The place where revolutionaries and new ideas literally go to die (yes, I’m still salty about Stevie). So of course, this ends up being an absolute disaster and it all turns out to be everyone’s favorite trope: All Just a Dream! Or, in this case, even more frustratingly, it’s all just a mirage manufactured by Professor Crumbs to test their commitment to secrecy. That’s the ethos here, folks. Snitches get stitches, no exceptions. That’s it. Hell, we don’t even get the excuse of the mortals reacting negatively and agreeing with the government that wizards need to be subjugated, we don’t get anything, because he generates that little swirl thing before we can see how they might have reacted.

(Also, there was literal thunder accompanying his reveal, are y’all trying to convince me this man is not a supervillain? Come on.)

While I did appreciate Justin getting called out for hypocritically criticizing Alex for something he did as well (and first!), and his little back-and-forth before he duplicates himself, the fact that he throws himself under the bus immediately in the name of “truth and justice” is bullshit. Truth, I’ll grant you. Justin is often honest to a fault, and lawful to a fault too, so him throwing himself under the bus makes sense, but let’s not call it what it isn’t. There was nothing “just” about any of this. Case in point, Alex tells the court that the government facility didn’t exist, because it didn’t, because CRUMBS invented it, BECAUSE HE TOLD HER SO HIMSELF, only to get “proven wrong” by the crystal ball of Totally Not Biased Framing because are you kidding me. How exactly would that conversation have gone if she’d answered yes? He probably would have done the same thing!

“So you just… made all of that up. Who does that?”

“The boss-man does.”

The trial, much like the “test,” was not about flaws in their character, it was exposing a flawed system, and a flawed man. Justin and Alex didn’t just expose magic for no reason, Justin was tricked by a fake recording into believing aliens were attacking Earth, and Alex was tricked by a fake everything into believing this show had actual stakes and integrity that wizards were being held captive. How is this anything but a show of force and a display of power, a reminder that they have no real control over their own destinies or anyone else’s? They never had a chance, this wasn’t about giving them a shot to prove their innocence or their commitment to the wizard world. This was about telling them that Crumbs can do whatever the fuck he wants to fuck with them, for any reason, make it look like it’s their fault, somehow actually convince them that it is, and there is fuck-all they can do about it. The wizarding world is a goddamn dystopia, that’s the lesson here, fight me.

I will amend that having Max come out in front and putting Alex and Justin back to Level 1 is certainly an interesting plotline and they set up the rest of the season pretty decently. I’ll also admit that Harper is iconic from start to finish and Mason is haplessly adorable, if not exactly very helpful. This episode isn’t all bad, but it took something that was so much cooler and more interesting, the idea of having to save wizards from the government and possibly live in a world that knew the truth about magic, and made it into something frighteningly authoritarian instead.

While the other episodes on this list are far lower stakes and may tick less “Premiere” boxes, none of them are guilty of being this utterly disrespectful of its audience, or of flagrantly prioritizing plot over logic to this insane of a degree, so right before I launch into those, I would like to say a hearty FUCK YOU to this episode and to so many things about it.

(I promise the rest of this list will be a lot less ranty, I just had to get that out of the way.)

#3: “Franken Girl” (Season Three)

This episode is a lot like how I imagine Max’s room: messy, but in a fun way. This episode’s fun! And considering a lot of it revolves around a girl laughing and clapping her hands in a deep voice bumbling around, it’s actually a bit more clever than even I initially gave it credit for before rewatching it recently.

It starts off with one of the most underrated and underutilized dynamics on the show: Alex and Max teaming up for typical sibling mischief, watching a 3-D movie they stole out of Justin’s room together. (*nostalgic sigh* I remember when 3-D glasses were blue and red…) Then, of course, we get into the real plot focus: Justin scheming to punish Alex and keep her from stealing his stuff, and Alex scheming to ruin his plans for her own amusement. While they’re against each other for pretty much the whole episode, it’s in a fun, sibling-fighting, “I family-hate you” sort of way, rather than out of any real malice (which… unfortunately does become more of a Thing this season, but not here, so I won’t dwell on it just yet).

What strikes me about this episode is not that Justin comes out on top, but how he does it, and he does it in two key ways. The first is a sort of “ironic punishment”: You want to steal things out of my room? Fine. Here’s my Franken-Girl. She’s all yours. But when that backfires and Alex starts to enjoy her newfound friendship, he comes up with a backup plan to force them to be cheerleaders together. And just as a side note, I love the reveal of Harper being a cheerleader, how she was able to keep it secret from Alex, and that she threw the “wizard” secret back in her face when Alex got mad at her for not telling her. Being a cheerleader makes perfect sense for Harper’s character, yet is something Alex wouldn’t (and didn’t) expect from her (at least, not when it comes to school spirit… Alex is perfectly content to let Harper be her cheerleader, but that’s an analysis for another time).

But while the cheerleading thing seemingly appeared out of random when I watched it as a child, rewatching it I realized it’s actually set up pretty well. Jerry and Theresa put Harper up to encouraging Alex to do extracurriculars so she can get into college, which gives Alex a reason to sneak into Justin’s room to lie and get past his “Alex-proofing,” and then the thing he used to “Alex-proof” his room is also what he uses to force her into the very extracurriculars the rest of the family wanted her to do in the first place.

It works out so well for everyone that I almost wonder if, consciously or not, Justin was also using his revenge to look out for her in a way. Even as he gleefully sits back and watches Alex’s humiliation, he’s also given his parents exactly what they wanted, brought her and Harper closer together, and even benefitted Alex’s resume for the future, though she’s too busy feeling all embarrassed to notice at the moment. I would say this episode is Justin at his best: a little mischievous, a little uptight, hella intelligent, and ultimately doing good by his family. I like him enough in this episode that I don’t even mind too much Theresa heaping the “perfect son” label on him… even if it’s pretty harsh that she does this with Max sitting right there at the time.

In terms of setting up the rest of the season, I would say the real setup doesn’t really come until “Monster Hunters,” but it’s not bad. Both Frankie and the cheerleading thing do come up again in later episodes, so I can’t argue it doesn’t have impact. It doesn’t have much impact, as both the other episode with Frankie and the other episode involving cheerleading pretty much do away with those things as soon as possible and are then never mentioned again, but I’m not really mad about that. It might be worth arguing that in both this and “Three Monsters,” Frankie’s “personhood” isn’t given a lot of thought, but I’m not invested enough in her character to be truly troubled by it, so I can live with the mild discomfort there. All in all, a half-decent Premiere and a pretty good episode.

#2: “Crazy 10-Minute Sale” (Season One)

Remember when we all thought Gigi was gonna be an important character? Me too! So they do that thing TV shows (especially Pilots) often do where they introduce a character by saying, “Remember? The character that did this thing in the past that we the audience are just learning about for the first time?” But it doesn’t stand out too much in my opinion, because she’s explaining this to Jerry, who isn’t interested in schoolgirl squabbles, and thus it makes sense that, as her parent who has different priorities, he might be a little oblivious to this.

Despite that, one of the things I love about this episode and about the early seasons in general is that Jerry’s actually pretty smart here, and competent when it comes to magic even though he doesn’t have it himself. As its Pilot, this episode not only introduced the characters, but introduced the formula that defined the show initially: they learn a spell in class from Jerry, crack a few jokes and don’t appear to absorb the lesson, then end up using the spell later and setting the plot in motion, and eventually get discovered by Jerry and resolve the situation. It’s a good formula, and while I don’t mind that they mixed it up in later seasons, it worked for a long time, and it works here.

There are other staples of Season 1 in particular that I enjoy revisiting in this: Justin being mischievous, laidback, and just as imperfect as the other siblings when it comes to learning magic; Gigi’s posse getting nose jobs to match hers; and of course, who could forget the Monotone Lady? While I enjoy later-seasons Harper more as a character in general, I do enjoy sweet, naïve Harper here too, and the fact that she’s still cunning enough as Alex’s bestie to lie to Theresa and help her hide. I don’t know how well it blends into the show as a whole, but that’s mostly because the show changes so much after Season 1 and becomes a lot of different things over time, and I still think it’s pretty seamless with the rest of the season it established. It might blend in a little too well — as in, I forgot that this is the episode where the show started, because so many of the early episodes blend together in my head and don’t really stand out from each other — but it’s solid as an episode, if only barely scratching the surface of everything the show would become.

#1: “Smarty Pants” (Season Two)

Ah, Dean. Speaking of “characters that were really important until they weren’t,” his introduction and presence very clearly marks this as a Season 2 Premiere in particular, and that’s exactly how it should be. As mentioned above, the mark of a good Premiere is that it both establishes and feels like a part of its season, and this episode goes a long way to do both. Dean’s introduction does a lot of things for Alex and the show: it gets her forgettable first-season Love Interest Riley out of the way, who barely cared about or noticed Alex, and replaces him with a G-rated “bad boy” who’s clearly into her, which later pays off in an arc about Alex experiencing her first real relationship, her first love, and her first breakup.

And Dean isn’t the only character introduced, we also have Zeke Beakerman helping Justin with the Quiz Bowl, and being hammily dorky alongside him as he gloats to Harper about his “victory.” Technically, Dan Benson, the actor who played him, showed up in Season 1 twice, once as a draft character called Zack Rosenblatt, and once as an unnamed “Friend #1,” but this is the first time we get a proper introduction to the lovable nerd that would become Justin’s friend for the rest of the show (and ironically Harper’s boyfriend, which you’d never guess from this episode, although given Justin’s behavior here you might not also guess that Harper was still head-over-heels for him at this point either— bottom line, neither of them are at their most attractive or appealing here, but they are fun).

But the real mark of change comes from the re-establishment of a character we already know and love: Harper. While she still wears her crazy fruit outfits, Harper wants to be known as more than the “food-for-clothes” girl around school, to rebrand herself, reboot herself if you will. There’s some meta-significance to Harper wanting to be known as smart in addition to… shall we say creative with fashion, and indeed, this is the season where Harper starts to grow into her own. It’s not the episode where Harper learns the wizard secret, but it does establish a Harper who’s willing to talk back to Alex and who’s willing to assert herself, all of which go a long way in her development over the course of the show.

The fact that Alex is willing to embarrass herself, step back, and give Harper the reins to get back in her good graces also establishes the beginning of the show’s evening out of this dynamic. While Harper is still ultimately the better and more selfless friend throughout the show, this marks the beginning of a sassy, savvy Harper who acts as Alex’s voice of reason, and soon enough won’t be kept in the dark, either. Goodbye, naïve everygirl, hello confident, competent, and proper Foil to Alex’s shenanigans.

And that, my dear readers, is more than enough to start you off with. I’ve certainly got more to say as we go further into this month, and further into analysis of this chaotic hot mess show that I love, but this will do for now. Stay tuned for more Ranked posts and more Wizards of Waverly Place content on this blog in general, happy “Not What It Seems” November!

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