Fate:
The Winx Saga
Season 1
My Review/Rant:
Determined to master their enchanting powers, a group of teens navigate rivalry, romance and supernatural studies at Alfea, a magical boarding school.
My Review/Rant:
The cartoon series for The Winx represents quite a bit of my childhood and early teenagehood. This was one of maybe 3 shows that I liked that I had available to me after moving to Brazil since channels like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon were only included in absurdly priced cable packages. With that being said this show holds a special place in my heart. After watching it I have a lot of wishes. AKA things I wish they had done better.
If you went into it with no expectations, it ended up being a pretty interesting show. The writing was average and there were actions taken by the characters for the sake of moving the story along which I disliked very much. What I will say is that the place they filmed this at was incredible!
Now onto what could have been better:
The main character's fashion styles. Heck, I'll lump the rest of the student body with this one. Everyone was dressed so drab. They're fairies going to school in this spectacular castle, could we maybe get unrealistically dressed up for the occasion with *magic* perhaps? The original cartoons had the character's dress so interestingly in their own styles. It's what stands out from the show along with their transformations. That reminds me: where are their transformations!? What Bloom made happen in the end doesn't count.
This is where my spotty memory could lead me astray. I don't remember Stella being so standoffish and downright mean in some cases for no other reason than she feels like it in the cartoons. So live-action Stella caught me off-guard in a very bad way. We later find out why she feels she needs to be like that but it still doesn't justify her actions nor does it redeem her in my eyes. I also found it weird when Terra says that she finds Stella's rude remarks about her to be almost endearing.
It's disheartening how the characters have quite a range of accents and supposedly come from all around the world but the majority of the students at the school are white.
Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was all the fat-shaming "jokes" and the gay "jokes" (more like bullying in both cases) aimed at 2 specific people respectively. That's another example of shoddy writing. These types of "jokes" aren't funny because they aren't jokes. They just make things awkward and made me feel icky. They need to get left in the past.
I also disliked how Bloom's mother called her and I quote "a weird loner" to her face two times. Since when is being an introvert a problem? Bloom isn't hurting anyone by going to flea markets and antique shops by herself. So what's the problem? It's only made worse by the end when Bloom shows up at her parent's house with her new friends. It's almost like her introversion was a problem and it was *solved*. I'm sorry but that's not how it works.
My most asked question while I was watching the show and taking notes was why in the heck didn’t they take more from the cartoons?! They had a gold mine of things to adapt and yet they basically remade a shorter season of Legacies. Don't get me wrong! I love Legacies (even though I despise the ending the Originals had but that's a different rant for a different time). I just didn't want to watch a knockoff with a different title.
The worst part about the shoddy writing for this show was the adults keeping secrets from everyone to *protect* them. Oh please. Just come up with an actual believable plot point to justify this. Make it so they swore a vow of silence on the matter with unbreakable magic or something. It'd be better than what we got which were adults who proved time and again to be super incompetent and putting the students in danger because they wouldn't tell them anything. The ending was a product of this so-called *plot point*. It's annoying and frustrating. I know this show and the writers can do better.
Something I found funny was how old some of the students looked versus the characters they were playing in close up shots. Some of them legitimately looked to be in their late 20's while playing 16-17-year-olds. I also laughed so hard at the indecision the hair people had in styling Sky’s hair from episode to episode and even worse from scene to scene in the same episode. One last legitimate question: Why do the burned ones sound like growling dogs?!
The ending was interesting and does give me hope for a season 2. I won't be making the same mistake with season 2 that I made with season 1. I'll be keeping my expectations low and not expecting the producers to pull much from the cartoons. I'll just enjoy the series as is and just consider it a Legacies 2.0.
My Rating:
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