It’s 2003, Thursday afternoon, in a quiet little town called Eberndorf, in the deep south of Austria, surrounded by fields, trees, and medieval churches; 10-year-old me is in my parents’ living room, glued to the four-by-three tube TV screen. “Sabrina – Total Verhext!” [Totally Bewitched! in English] is on. In the US, the iconic show “Sabrina, The Teenage Witch” had already been broadcast and become a huge success in 1996, but I would’ve been way too young to enjoy the show with its iconic puns, relatable storylines, and inspiring characters at the age of three… It wasn’t until the German-dubbed reruns of the show that I became a super fan.
For most German-speaking kids in the ’90s, the original encounter with the star of the show, Melissa Joan Hart, was through her role as Clarissa Darling on the Nickelodeon sitcom “Clarissa Explains It All” – btw, the very first female main character in Nickelodeon’s teen show history! Clarissa was the definition of cool, smart, creative, expressive, and a ’90s fashion icon. It was natural that I would later be drawn into the magical world of Sabrina Spellman when Hart’s new character appeared on my screen. “Simsalabim Sabrina,” the animated series, was on every afternoon during the children’s program, followed by the live-action version, which had a slightly older target audience of tweens and teens.
This fall, “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” is celebrating its 30-year anniversary, and I am currently rewatching it with great delight. Decades later, the plots and themes have remained relevant, relatable, and entertaining to the now-mid-30s millennial living in Massachusetts herself. Sabrina’s character is everything I aspired to be as a young girl: Witty, independent, genuinely kind – different. She doesn’t much care about being one of the “cool girls” or wild partying. Instead, she’s ambitious, eager to do well at school and build an attractive career, while also being a good person, always there to help her friends and family. On top of that, she possesses magical powers! Pre-teen me clearly didn’t realize it, but the magic can be seen as a metaphor for all kinds of crazy emotions, urges, challenges, and new-found freedoms teenagers go through.
Sabrina grew up with her two middle-aged (which is 600 years in witch-age) aunts, who, as unmarried, independent, hardworking women, are just as cool female role models as Sabrina herself, with the only male in the house being a sarcastic black cat named Salem! That, to me, was the ultimate escape fantasy as an only child seemingly trapped in a small town with traditionally strict parents.
For someone whose version of the “American mall” was the local “Country Market,” which housed a grocery store, a flower shop, a small café for the retirees, and a seedy discotheque, the image of two cool aunts encouraging their teenage niece to have a “normal” life – dating boys, hanging out at the local pizza shack or coffee shop, or hosting Halloween parties, sounded like a magical parallel universe to me. (Until the early 2000s, “coffee-to-go” definitely wasn’t a thing in rural Austria. In fact, my parents still consider it unacceptable to carry your precious coffee drink out onto the street in a plastic cup, when it is supposed to be leisurely enjoyed in a cozy Viennese-style “Kaffeehaus.”)
Back then, the show had just the right balance of wholesomeness and witchy sarcasm, perfectly okay to watch around the parents, with the occasional “adult” joke sprinkled in. I’ve always loved the silly play on words, for instance, when Sabrina makes a wish for some ice cream and finds a screaming eyeball in the freezer, or when Aunt Hilda is recovering from a serious case of the “pun-itis” and a Monkee appears sitting on her back, Davy Jones, that is. Which brings me to another charming feature of the show: celebrity cameos. Timely guest appearances by icons such as Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne were just the cherry on top, and made the show feel more connected to reality, as these were the pop singers whose albums I played on repeat on our brand-new Sony carousel CD player.
Naively existing in my secluded Euro bubble, thousands of miles away from the US of A, “Salem” was nothing but the cat in Sabrina.
Adult-me chuckles about the fact that the fictional “Westbridge” could easily be a real neighborhood near Boston. As a new resident, it still kinda blows my mind that here, children really do dress up for Halloween and go “Trick or Treating” and, most of all, that the adults support the tradition and make an effort to have a bowl of candy ready for the costumed visitors. One of my favorite qualities of American life is some of the odd occasions being celebrated. Yet, aside from the seasonal traditions, it was the architecture, the specific American style with its colorful patterns and decorations, the home and classroom furniture, the typical sitcom family house layout with the staircase in back of every TV family’s living room, as well as the trendy fashion looks that have always fascinated me.
America, on German TV, was presented to this ’90s kid as a magical place of self-expression, family, community, entertainment, and comfort. Other hugely popular shows that made it across the Alps during my formative years included “Full House,” “Alf,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” “Dawson’s Creek,” and “Gilmore Girls,” which all contributed further to this charming, idealized concept of the States. While school, for Austrian kids, meant studying for academic purposes only, I would often dream about American-highschool-cafeteria drama, decorated lockers, prom dances, and sports clubs with their own mascots and cheerleaders, all things I had only known from US-import shows and movies. The grass sure seemed greener on the “Other Realm… ” I mean, on the other side.
It feels like a miraculous Millennial full-circle moment is happening, when, Sunday, November 1, Melissa Joan Hart and the cast of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” will be celebrating their reunion for a 30-Year-Anniversary Live Show at the legendary Uptown Theater, promising fans a “night of magic, mischief and ’90s nostalgia… with songs, behind-the-scenes stories and never-before-seen bloopers, lots of surprises, audience participation and plenty of talking-cat energy in honor of Salem.”
This beautifully renovated building on Broadway was one of the places that stood out to me immediately when I first moved here, with the classic marquee signs being something I’d only seen on TV. Now, picture me driving by the theater, holding my pumpkin-spice latte to-go, exclaiming in wonder: “Wow, that is so American!” and reminding my 10-year-old self that it’s quite magical to be able to see my TV idols only 20 minutes away from “home.” To use one of Salem’s many iconic quotes: “Someone’s gonna end up crying. Probably me.”