Episode 4: Happy Birthday Will.
The whole idea of Will telling Irma she doesn't want a birthday party and than Cornelia deciding to throw a surprise party for her anyways and hold it at Irma's house feels like a deliciously underhanded way for Cornelia to **** with Irma. You all probably thought I was exaggerating when I said Cornelia was a bitch, I really wasn't.
This is the first episode where Ulriah's little gang makes any real appearance so I feel like talking about them. They're basically Bulk and Skull except there are three of them, they are less likely to smash their faces in some kind of cake during every scene they're in, and they don't have Bulk and Skull's theme music. They have their role in this show, and they do a pretty good job with it. They are actually down a member though, in the comics Nigel, who is Taranee's love interest, was a part of their group as well but I guess the writers didn't want to have one of the main characters be in love with a delinquent or something.
Caleb is the leader of the Rebellion. While in the comics he was a pretty minor supporting character the show elevated him to main character status and I think it's one of the best decisions the show made. He just adds a lot to the show. By having actual combat experience and knowing his way around Meridian he is of great help to the girls, especially during the first season. Outside of combat however he tends to be incredibly socially inept during his scenes which leads to some amusing hijinks, especially when he's on Earth. He lacks magical powers to take advantage of during fight scenes but he is more than enough of a skilled fighter to get by without them.
During the episode we're also introduced to a few girls from the school, being Elyon and Alchemy. Since they don't turn into magical pixies they aren't really that important. They seem to be pretty into Caleb though and their reactions to his shenanigans throughout the episode are kind of adorable. I've always intuited that since Cornelia and Elyon are supposed to be BFFs or something that they are primarily Cornelia's friends but they seem to get along with the other girls just fine.
While something like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers likes to pretend that parents don't exist this show digs pretty deeply into the relationship it's main characters have with their families. In this episode alone we see Irma's parents and her little brother, Chris along with Will's mother, and Cornelia's little sister, Lilian. Irma’s family gets a lot of focus this episode, mainly in that once Irma finds out about the party one of her top priorities is to get them out of the picture so they don't embarrass her only to have to have them hold the fort while the girls go and
fight a giant snake man in city hall get pizza.
Yan Lin gives Hay Lin a map. What's interesting about this scene is that in the comics Yan Lin dies almost immediately after this leaving the girls to figure everything out on their own while in the show she's alive and able to give them sparodic advice about the whole Guardian thing. People like to attribute her hands off attitude with the girls to her comic counterpart's death but I think there's another reason that relates more to her own career as guardians, although I won't be able to get too much into that until season 2 for spoiler reasons. Anyways, the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I want to give a shout out to how the comic handled Hay Lin learning about her death. Take a look:
The comic has a ton of issues that make it difficult to recommend seeking out but the way it handles these more serious moments is absolutely sublime. Overall though, I feel that the show does more than enough with Yan Lin as a character to warrant keeping her around. Her quirky and aloof attitude about everything is kind of fun in general and I feel she adds a lot to the show.
Now let's talk about the villains in this episode. I like that it's established that Phobos basically just feeds off of Meridian's life force to get his magical powers. It's also established that that well is starting to run dry and the reason he wants to find his younger sister on earth is so he can steal her own powers because unlike him she apparently doesn't need to freeload off of the land's life force.
Cedric proposes that he could venture to earth to steal the earth city's birth records for girls her age so they can narrow the search to girls who weren't born in the city. Let me see how many problems I can find with this plan:
Whoever brought her to earth could have easily stolen the identity of someone who was born in Heatherfield for the princess to assume. It wouldn't be easy but the true heir to the throne seems important enough to take such lengths.
2. We are given no reason to assume that she is still in Heatherfield and that she isn't just hiding out in Faddon Hills or something. You can infer from stuff we learn later in the season that the fact that the portals between Earth and Meridian are opening in Heatherfield specifically means that the princess is hidden in Heatherfield because her power is what's opening all the portals but since they never say that at this point it just looks like they're jumping the gun a bit here.
3. Because practically everyone and their goldfish who has any kind of magic powers has the ability to use some kind of illusionary magic in this multiverse which includes changing the appearance of themselves or someone around them. There is no reason to even assume that the princess isn't disguised as someone with a different age or even gender to make her more difficult to locate.
4. Breaking into city hall risks drawing attention from earth's authorities which would potentially complicate any future attempts to locate her and bring her to Meridian when everyone is on high alert for snake man and his goon squad. This universe also has a government agency of some sort that focuses specifically on mystical and supernatural stuff, at least based on the comics.
5. Cedric doesn't know where such records are kept so there's a good chance he'll just end up drawing a bunch of attention to himself and end up leaving empty handed.
Overall, this is a really good plan.
I do like how this means today's fight with
Phobos and his Crazy Friends will take place on earth for a change. I just wish it was for something meaningful and not just some filler arc. There isn't much else to say about this though, they fight in city hall and Cedric manages to leave with the birth records he came for. There is a weird continuity thing where Taranee asks why they don't go to the police for this stuff even though the main reason they got involved with this is that Irma's father is a police officer so if he ends up getting called in to investigate the calls about a lizard man in City Hall he'll probably get himself killed.
When Will returns to the party she didn't want in the first place she meets a boy named Matt. Matt is Will's love interest and the relationship between Will and Matt is one of the two main love sideplots we get for this show (The other one being Caleb and Cornelia which will start to gain some steam later on).
The Caleb and Cornelia relationship is generally pretty well done, it feels like it grows organically, and while I don't want to get into details, in my opinion both Caleb and Cornelia benefit as characters from being in that relationship, both in terms of personal growth, and as far as how we see them as the audience. At the same time that relationship is never allowed to define either of them as characters.
Matt on the other hand is explicitly introduced as Will's love interest and while he does begin to become his own character later on I feel like the fact that he is introduced explicitly as a love interest hurt him a lot as a character. Caleb is introduced as a badass rebel leader who wrestles with a giant snake man every other week, Matt is introduced as some kid at Will's party with an incredibly stupid looking hat who shows up so they can make goo goo eyes at eachother and hold hands at the end of the episode even though they literally don't even introduce themselves to eachother.
The problem with Season one is that even though W.I.T.C.H generally tries to tell it's story as a serial, where events in one episode will effect the very next episode, it's overarching plot for the season is incredibly thin which makes it difficult for episodes like this one not to feel like they're just filler even though stuff does happen that ends up progressing the season's plot (specifically Will meeting Matt and team Phobos beginning to actively search for the princess on Earth). I suppose they're trying to keep things simple but they kind of went too far with that. When you throw in stuff like Matt's introduction we just have a poor episode. The setup of Cornelia basically trying to screw Irma over could have probably salvaged things a bit but I just don't feel like it really went anywhere.
5.5/10
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