Were you just itching to watch this supernatural teen thriller turn into a procedural courtroom drama? Yeah, neither was I. Oh well, here’s episode three.

It’s episode two and we’ve got some character development, a heaping helping of religion, and, to top it off, a dollop of gay shaming blackmail. Let’s get started.

Welcome to the first installment in a series of posts about Chilling Adventures of Sabrina! I’ll be discussing every episode of Chilling Adventures one at a time with no spoilers beyond the episode I’m addressing in each installment. I’m calling the series Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered because honestly that covers the range of emotions I’ve experienced on my journey with the show so far. There’s also a secret second reason. Let me know if you figure it out. It’ll probably take a few installments before I get into a real groove so bear with me. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I think the series has great characters that have the potential for growth and development and I find many of the themes to be poignant and personally affecting. However, upon completing my viewing and thinking some about the world and characters that were created, I found that I was left with far more questions than answers. Some I hope will be answered in the future episodes of the series, some may even be answered over the course of this project, but some I think will never and can never be answered because the answers probably don’t exist. You see, once one begins to peel back the layers of this series it begins to crumble atop what is, to my eyes, a very unstable foundation. My intent is not to take the enjoyment out of watching the show. On the contrary I think this is the most fun I’ve had watching a series for quite some time. Perhaps we can decipher some of the mysteries together. At the very least we can all enjoy the ridiculously nonsensical Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

I watched 13 Reasons Why long after it first aired and because of that I already had some idea that there were some mistakes and missteps that had been made during the creation of the series. I was not expecting the mistakes to be so great, nor was I expecting to be as affected by it as I was. I actually had to stop watching it halfway through and completely reframe and reevaluate how I was watching it because I found myself falling down a dangerous line of thinking that I hadn’t encountered to the same extent for some time, as someone who struggles with suicide. When I first heard about the series I was excited, but skeptical because I know that we still do not know how to address suicide and, on a broader scale, mental health in a way that is more helpful than detrimental, if it is addressed at all. If created responsibly, this show could have been so helpful to people either struggling with suicide or attempting to talk about it and help those who are. Unfortunately, this show was not created responsibly.