If I were going to give any Disney film its own television series, it would be Aladdin. After all, I myself come up with numerous games and fanfictions about Aladdin's Happily Ever After (the Whole New Life, as I like to call it), so in my own mind Aladdin's life pretty much already looks like a television series! So when I find out there's an actual official TV show about Aladdin's adventures after his movie ended... well, you'd think I'd drop everything and run to watch it.
And part of me wanted to. It might be surprising, for some people, that I was hesitant at all. The thing is, I've long been wary about sequel content in general. I know the motive behind sequels is usually about creating more of a popular product they know will sell, than about continuing the story with heart and caring (leaving me to believe, if there is any conflict between what the sequels say and what the fans believe, we fans have a lot more say in the matter than many of us think). I have heard there are sequels where the characters' canon personalities or elements of their happy endings are retconned in favour of something that will add more drama to the story or keep it more similar to what we've already seen. There are immediately pitfalls even if you do write the story from a genuine place of love and caring – such as, how do you continue making interesting plotlines for the characters without erasing the happy ending the first movie worked so hard to give them?
On the other hand... more Aladdin stories. If nothing else, more imagination fodder for my own Aladdin stories. And maybe a chance to connect with other Fans who have also seen this content.
Honestly, I might have given the Aladdin sequels a chance by now if they had not made certain decisions – cough making Aladdin and Jasmine wait for years to get married cough – which are too painful to overlook and too unbelievable for me to ever agree with. Although my other reasons hold too – it would not be the most comfortable thing to watch an Aladdin movie which is obviously not made with the same love, care, and quality as the one I first fell in love with, and I'd already had a taste of that new Genie personality from Nasira's Revenge. But the TV show is an easier matter. A TV show can have multiple stories about our characters without ever having to give them any life-changing problems that take away from the happy ending of our movie, more like the short Disney Princess stories and Aladdin video games I was already enjoying. And in most cases I can pretend not to see the no-marriage decision, apart from certain jarring moments where Aladdin and Jasmine refer to each other as “boyfriend” “girlfriend” or “fiancé(e)”.
As it happened, I never did watch the show until a friend on Instagram sent me a link to the full series, which I greatly appreciate because I really did want to watch it, if nothing else just so I would know what it's all about, but would probably have never actually gotten up the nerve to go looking for it on my own. And now, although I haven't yet watched the entire thing yet (39 episodes out of 90 at the time of writing), I already have a lot of thoughts and I think it's time for me to start my review.
This one is kind of a difficult review to write, since I don't really see other Aladdin fans critiquing the sequel content or debating how much of it was likely to happen given the characters' personalities and motivations. Most people I've seen talking about the sequel content either simply believe they were bad-quality cash grabs, or else remember it with nostalgia, and I don't want to ruin anyone's childhood here. But I also must point out what I see exactly as I see it, whether that's good or bad. My review is not going to be talking about the Aladdin series through the eyes of nostalgia. I couldn't possibly do that when I first watched the movie as an adult. But I'm not here to tear it apart either. I'm here to do what I always do, and give my honest opinion, based – as I hope will be clear – on my love of the characters, and wanting them to have the best and most accurate Happily Ever After life possible.
The series takes place after the events of both the movie and the first sequel Return of Jafar, so it includes details like: Jafar is dead, Iago is Aladdin's parrot now, and Aladdin and Jasmine's very obviously intended marriage has been retconned. The main premise of the show is Aladdin going on adventures, usually saving the day and becoming even more of a hero every time. Sometimes he comes across his next adventure while he's flying off on a mission for the Sultan (or so we're told; we never see Aladdin doing anything remotely mission-like), and sometimes he finds them right there in Agrabah. He encounters new villains, and people dealing with strange threats and curses, and I actually really like this premise for Aladdin, even though in the movie his main dream was to be able to live a life of luxury at the palace and I really wish we got to see more of him doing that! I don't like that part of Aladdin's happy ending being taken away from him, at all, but I also think Aladdin has too much energy to just sit around a palace being waited on and attending to royal duties. I give him five minutes before he'll get so bored and restless he just has to get up and do something! So I can definitely see these adventures being a huge part of Aladdin's Happily Ever After, and it would be a great way for him to keep winning over the people of Agrabah if he's so much responsible for keeping their kingdom safe. I really do wish we got to see the other side of Aladdin's life, though. He spends so little time at the palace, in this series – we never get to see him using his special street skills to solve royal problems, or struggling to learn princely etiquette, or bonding with the Sultan over learning to rule Agrabah. All those things which should have been such a major part of Aladdin's Happily Ever After, and which would make for some really interesting moments that could easily have been incorporated into adventure plotlines, feel like they're not even happening!
I really love the extra worldbuilding we get, all the new areas of Agrabah and the kingdoms beyond. We get a sense of Agrabah as part of a whole world, as Aladdin often encounters people who seem to be from Africa, or Europe (including one really awesome Greek villain), visits one kingdom clearly modelled on China, and another with strong influence from Australia. That said, I am surprised to see how few of our new characters seem to be Middle Eastern, considering we are, well, in the Middle East! In Agrabah itself, one of my absolute favourite new locations has to be the tavern where all the lowlifes of the city hang out, which appears in several episodes and gives me a lot of imagination fodder for whether Aladdin might have gone there in his past life and how he would have been received if he did. Ever since watching Episode 3, a lowlife tavern in the rougher part of Agrabah has started making its way into my own fanfictions.
A lot of Aladdin's adventures, I was happy to find, feature actual danger and actual villains. No one as threatening as Jafar, at least not at the point I'm up to while writing this, but people with actual designs for power or control, who don't care who they hurt in the process. If I'm honest, I love me a good campy cartoon villain you can't take too seriously, so I'm not mad about those. I am mad about those villains and threats they suddenly decide to make completely understandable and forgivable whether they've done anything to deserve redemption or not... but I'll get into that more when I talk about specific episodes. I've heard the opinion before that, if Return of Jafar was supposed to be like a pilot for the television series, Jafar should not have been killed off so that he could come back as a recurring villain. I do agree, I missed seeing Jafar in this series and think it makes no sense to get rid of one of our most major characters if you know you're going to be doing an entire series later on. (At first I thought they did the sequel and killed off Jafar, and only then decided to do an entire TV show and realized they could have kept him on as a recurring villain.) But on the other hand, it might be hard to buy a villain as threatening if he keeps getting thwarted again and again, and most of the recurring villains I've met in the show so far (who do get thwarted again and again) aren't exactly what I'd call the scary kind. So maybe, in the name of keeping Jafar's character intact, it was just as well he wasn't in the TV show.
Agrabah is shown to have a very intricate underworld including, like I said, its own tavern, but other times, it kind of surprised me how often the show portrays Agrabah as this happy, friendly city where playing children run around on the streets without fear, and people exchange pleasant greetings as they pass each other! Doesn't really fit with the city of on-edge unfriendly merchants, zero help for street rats just trying to survive, and Aladdin's own statement to Jasmine: “You don't seem to know how dangerous Agrabah can be” we saw in the movie. And we don't get the sense this change was thanks to any effort of Aladdin's to better the lives of the people, either. Sometimes, the big angry apple merchant who in the movie tried to chop off Jasmine's hand (they call him Farouq, but to me he will always be the angry apple merchant) comes back as an antagonist or someone particularly aggressive and bad-tempered. And the reason I don't like this is – the movie never made it out like Jasmine was in a safe city but just happened to anger the wrong merchant. It's clear that Jasmine has just learned the hard way how things work in Agrabah: stealing is harshly punished, you are guilty until proven innocent, and there are no second chances. When the angry apple merchant keeps returning as a bad guy, it almost gives the sense that he's the standout aggressive one, like Jasmine could have stolen from any other merchant and they'd have had pity on her!
The show's portrayal of Aladdin himself is excellent. The show gives us all the traits we remember from the movie: his bravery, heroism, and generosity, his strength and protectiveness, and his obsession with looking good and being whatever he thinks others want him to be to the point it gets him into very big trouble. They really play up on his heroism, I think to make him a better role model, but it does have the added side effect of making him just as attractive as he was in the movie. Usually, Aladdin feels just like Aladdin, and the best part is with so many new scenarios, the show is able to explore sides of him we've never seen before, like what happens if he loses his temper with a dear friend or if he finds his masculinity challenged. The only things I noticed them doing which did not feel like Aladdin are that they really didn't show us his silver tongue much, which in the movie is so important that we see it no less than three different times in 90 minutes (maybe they didn't want to teach little boys to become liars??), and the way he handles his relationship with Jasmine – but I'll be getting into that one later.
Abu was given this really interesting storyline in the early episodes, where he's having trouble adjusting to his new life where he doesn't have to be a thief anymore, and Aladdin gets upset with him when he slips up. So it's almost like they're threatening to grow apart, only they don't: the ninth episode seems to be the last time they bring this up and after that Aladdin and Abu go on being as close as ever. I really appreciate that they resolved the issue, because if they hadn't it would have stopped being an interesting aspect of Aladdin's Whole New Life and would have just become heartbreaking. I sometimes wish the show had found something else interesting to do with Abu afterwards, though – now he's often just “there”, when he's not helping Iago with his own scheme of the day, and sometimes then he almost acts as Iago's conscience rather than just as mischievous.
Yes, I did say Abu was helping Iago – Abu and Iago are the best-friend duo I never knew I needed. I would never have put those two together as anything but enemies, but when you think about it, take away the aspect of their two humans hating each other and it makes so much sense. They both like the same things (fruit and luxuries), they have this wonderful dynamic of teasing each other and never letting on how much they really care, and they can get up to the most delightful trouble together. Seeing how the show portrayed Iago was what fully convinced me of what I was already almost sure of due to the Disney Princess comics: yes, having Iago defect to Aladdin's side was a good idea. When I first heard about that, I was completely against it, unable to see how Iago would even work if he wasn't a bad guy playing off Jafar. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's not so far off from what the movie shows us: Iago seems to get too harsh a punishment dragged into the lamp by a Jafar who will not let his own parrot escape eternal torment if he has to endure it, and when we last see them they're fighting and don't seem to be getting along at all anymore. The Disney Princess comics showed me how Iago could fit into Aladdin's life without losing that disagreeable charm that made him such a great character, as well as giving me some really great storylines that wouldn't work if Iago wasn't part of Aladdin's group, and by the time I saw this – well, I was completely sold. (And no, there is nothing similar to tempt me into accepting Aladdin and Jasmine not getting married right away. So don't even ask.)
While it's unclear in the Princess comics, here Iago is clearly Aladdin's parrot, not Aladdin and Jasmine's. This makes perfect sense to me because, well, Aladdin never watched Iago gleefully torturing his father while he stood helplessly by chained to the arm of an enemy. (Honestly it was a little hard for me to buy, in early episodes, when Jasmine or the Sultan was able to be in the same room with Iago without the slightest bit of wariness!) Of course, Aladdin and Jasmine should have joint custody of all their animals by now.... There is one recurring Iago plotline, though, which not only do I not like at all, it makes no sense given Aladdin's nature and sends a very damaging (though unfortunately common) message. So in this series, for some inexplicable reason, Aladdin is still living out on the streets in his old hovel, not even getting his own private quarters in the palace while he waits for a wedding which should have already happened. And not only is Aladdin not living at the palace, but his financial situation is pretty confusing. He's still poor, just not poor enough that he has to steal food anymore, so basically he just lives in his hovel with a restricted income, honestly worse off than he was before when you think about it. He can't just take what he wants anymore because he can't exactly be a thief if he's joining the royal family, so now he's restricted to only what his limited funds can afford, which isn't much. So... how has Aladdin's life improved in any way?? And where is this limited money of his even coming from? If it's from the Sultan, why isn't he giving a sum worthy of his future son-in-law, and if Aladdin just got some low-paying job or something, how did he manage to do that when he'd never been able to before? And why would he do that when he has the option to go live at the palace? How is this a satisfying end for what was always meant, ever since it was first told, to be a rags-to-riches story??
This all ties into Iago because he has this whole running plotline of trying to get himself some more money. Sometimes it's in unscrupulous ways like robbing the Sultan's treasury, but more often it's by winning a prize from someone else's treasury, taking a treasure just lying there that no one else is using, or even making products to sell. But no matter what form they take, Iago's attempts to get money are presented as wrong and greedy, and we're supposed to laugh when every single attempt goes wrong. But Iago is right! Why shouldn't he live with more than just the bare minimum needed for survival?? We see him, in one episode, shaking and shivering in Aladdin's hovel one chilly night, and yet we're supposed to consider it bad that he misses his three-speed massage chairs. Honestly I can't help but think Aladdin is the selfish one here, putting off not only his commitment to Jasmine but also forcing his innocent animals to suffer for years when they don't have to. Living with just enough income for the necessities is a real thing, and no one should be presenting that like it's funny, or like it's somehow wrong to want more out of life and be creative in how you go about pursuing that.
I think they only created this whole plotline to tie into that “money is inherently bad” message so prevalent in the media, which doesn't really fit in at all with an empowering tale where the whole point was the poor boy rising to a life of riches against impossible odds. It doesn't fit in with Aladdin's generous nature – I figure he'd be happy to give Iago a three-speed massage chair, because he knows better than anyone what it's like to have nothing! It's also at odds with Jasmine and the Sultan, two positive characters who the show can't really get away with denying are rich, nor can they imply they ought to lose their fortunes or go without basic luxuries. I notice the show never seems to make a definite statement about how it views them as wealthy characters.
Instead of feeding into the idea that wanting enough money to live your ideal lifestyle is somehow bad, it would have been better to show how much good money can do, by having the newly rich Aladdin using his money and connections to improve the lives of the people in Agrabah. I'm honestly shocked that no one, in either the Disney Princess franchise or in Aladdin's own sequel stories, ever thinks of this. In Episode 4, Jasmine realizes there are people out there who are very badly off and we see her begin to speak to her father about this, but the plotline is never followed through or brought back; in Episode 35, Iago provides an abundance of free food and jewels for all the people, but that is shown to have such negative consequences it hardly counts. I've come across at least one Disney Princess story where Jasmine realizes the people are hungry and decides to help them, and have yet to find a single story about Aladdin making this decision. Whether he is married to Jasmine or not, whether he is living in the palace or not, you would think Aladdin, that same generous Aladdin who gave up the only food he had to a pair of starving street children, who the first thing he did when he got some gold was to shower it onto the people, Aladdin who knows what it's like to be poor and hungry and knows there are many more just like him – Aladdin should be doing everything he can to better the lives of the people. And he should have been doing it right from the start, before Jasmine ends up finding out all on her own what Aladdin could easily have just told her.
It's kind of odd, sometimes, how the other people in the city are shown to view Aladdin. Actually, in a way it all makes sense. I do love his new dynamic with Razoul, who seems to enjoy mocking Aladdin and belittling his abilities, now that he is no longer allowed to arrest him. There would totally still be resentment and bitterness between those two! And I can also see some of the merchants being less-than-willing to accept this boy who used to steal their goods as a member of the royal family, and continuing to view him as a thief. But that's just it – everyone in Agrabah, including all the merchants and guards who don't like him, will have to accept Aladdin as a member of the royal family! Even if you do insist he's not married to Jasmine yet, everyone in Agrabah must know by now that he's going to be (although if they're already putting off the wedding like this, I do have to wonder... maybe they're all hoping he won't go through with it, and at this point I have to say they have good reason to think he might not.) Would the angry apple merchant really feel safe threatening his future Sultan's monkey with a sword, even if said monkey did steal from him? Could Razoul really get away with subtly pulling out his scimitar to threaten Aladdin when Jasmine was right there? I have to say, it would still have made for interesting dynamics if the merchants and guards were angry about Aladdin's coming into power, but at the same time knew they had to treat him with respect and so they made sure when they bullied him to always be subtle about it.
In a very similar way, Aladdin also seems to be terrified of messing up in front of the Sultan. Again, completely in character, and I just love the idea of all the delightful trouble Aladdin could get into while trying to keep the Sultan from finding out he doesn't know some basic Prince etiquette or something. And I could equally see the Sultan getting exasperated with Aladdin when his son-in-law doesn't know all the basic Prince things he never doubted any son-in-law of his would know. But I also think as soon as the Sultan started to get annoyed, he'd remember this boy is the reason his kingdom is safe and his daughter isn't either dead or forcibly married to an evil megalomaniac. I think not wanting to displease the Sultan is a perfect motivator for Aladdin, but why do we never get any indication that his fears are unwarranted??
At first, I thought the Sultan didn't appear enough in the series, and that when he did he was a little too exaggerated and silly. But very quickly – I think from Episodes 8 and 10 onward – I started loving the way they were handling him.
Yes, the Sultan is still silly. But not actually more than he's meant to be. Actually, some of his playfulness is adapted into his character and makes him even more nuanced. You know how there are two moments in Aladdin where we see the Sultan playing with little toys and figurines? That's been expanded on, so it's not only clearly established that the Sultan has a figurine collection and playing with it is one of his favourite hobbies, but also he's quite knowledgeable about how to care for and fix those toys! Honestly, seeing another adult unashamedly playing with his figurine collection, my figurine-collecting heart was happy. Massive respect to the Sultan for enjoying what he enjoys and not caring if it's considered a typical adult hobby or not! And the Sultan is still shown much of the time to be in authority and to be strict about propriety and laws. Sometimes (Episode 8 in particular) he even showed a surprising ability to figure things out, given his personality in the movie. And you'd think that would feel wildly out of character, but it didn't. For one, this was all in context of rescuing Jasmine, so I think his parental love gave him an extra edge just like a mother stopping a train in order to save her baby. But mostly, it only makes sense that, now Jafar isn't boring into his brain all the time, the Sultan would start learning to use his own mind again. His character arc in the movie definitely implied that he would!
Unfortunately, Carpet and Rajah never got too much screen time. I do understand why poor Rajah always gets sidelined, much as it saddens me. He's not small and portable like Abu or Iago; he could hardly ride with Jasmine on her shoulder everywhere she goes! And it might make adventures a little too easy if Rajah could just come out and bite anyone who threatened the gang (although overpowering issues didn't seem to bother them in other cases... but we're coming to that). I was always glad when the show was able to give us a little more Rajah in major roles – Episode 4 for example. In Carpet's case, I think the main problem was animation budget, because I know I would not want to have to draw that complex pattern he has over and over again, and I'm pretty sure in the movie, he was animated with the help of a computer. I still wish they could have given him a bigger role – as it is, we mostly just see Carpet as transport, not so much as a character in his own right. In Episode 9 he shrugs in answer to a question of Aladdin's, and I suddenly realized how little we'd gotten to see him do stuff like that... I will say, even though I love the dynamic between Abu and Iago, I really wish we got to see more of Abu's dynamic with Rajah. That seems kind of important – I mean, tigers eat monkeys in the wild, and Aladdin and Jasmine are presumably still planning to get married! Why do I have yet to find anything that explains to me how the tiger-and-monkey-living-together issue was resolved??
I said I thought the reason Rajah is so rarely shown in Aladdin content is partly because of an overpower issue: if Rajah were around during adventures, he could stop the bad guys much too quickly for the plot to have any tension. Well, that's exactly the problem they run into with Genie.
In the movie, the magic system ensured that Genie's phenomenal cosmic powers were not an issue, by having certain rules. Genie might have incredible powers, but he can only use them at the request of whoever owns his lamp and then only three times, so Aladdin is still ultimately responsible for solving his own problems. But, of course, once Genie is free, all that changes. Now you've got an all-powerful magical being who is also a close friend of the protagonist's and more than willing to help him – how do you stop Genie from just zapping away every possible trouble and denying Aladdin another chance to ever be the hero? I admit, the writers are kind of boxed into a corner there, no matter what they decide to do about it.
And one of their ideas was pretty good. I like that now Genie is free of the lamp, he lost some of his powers as well. It doesn't contradict the magic system, and it could make an interesting internal conflict for Genie, having to figure out who he is since everything that ever defined him is now different. But a Genie who can shapeshift, make objects appear out of thin air, and fly is still far too powerful for most of the villains in this series to stand up against. And then, of course, there's Genie's personality, which has a very specific humour difficult to achieve if you aren't Robin Williams, who did not voice Genie in the show.
So what did the show do to solve these problems?
Well – they kind of made Genie an idiot.
So now suddenly, he's got all these powers, but he keeps using them wrongly and messing things up for the gang, or sometimes getting caught himself (they put a rule in the magic system that Genies can be trapped in any bottle or similar object, which is actually pretty cool), and leaving Aladdin to save the day that way. (This notwithstanding, Aladdin's enemies still consider Genie to be a great threat or source of power they have to worry about.) And this was all definitely intentional, because the other characters will refer to Genie's low intelligence level, sometimes right to his face. Which is not only nothing to do with Genie from the movie, but if the Genie I remember heard anyone say such things about him he would be highly offended, not just accept it like he knows it's true! I don't call that a solution to the Overpowered Genie problem; I call that character assassination.
Now I admit this is a tricky problem, and I don't say there's only one right way to handle it. But what I would have done is – quite simply, not had Genie be there all the time. The show has him in every single episode, probably because of his popularity, and he often ends up making a big mess of things just so he can do something for the story. Would my solution be disappointing, since Genie's such a fun and beloved character? Of course, but on the other hand, it could help to enhance the Genie-like qualities we're not getting to see since Robin Williams wasn't there. If we never knew when Genie was coming, if he could just pop up at random times during Aladdin's adventures or else appear at the palace out of nowhere eager for details of what he's missed, it might help to give him that unpredictable side, and that on its own might make him feel more like Genie. (And it might help them come up with better Genie dialogue if they don't have to strain to do it every single episode.) Go for Genie quality over Genie quantity. Genie in the movie, after all, only appears after a good chunk of the action has already taken place; his character is meant to be a little surprising, and I feel that having him around so consistently is kind of untrue to his nature. Almost like he's not really free to come and go as he pleases. Genie's whole thing was wanting freedom and to not be bound to his lamp or to serving any master. At the end of the movie, he's so thrilled to fly away and see the world, go wherever he wants on a whim and not have to answer anyone's summons, and that's how we know Genie has gotten his happy ending. The show changes all of this. Now Genie is free, yes, they acknowledge that – but he's still living in his lamp, because he's somehow attached to that longtime prison as his home. Aladdin, understandably given his friend still lives in it, keeps the lamp on himself at all times. And whenever Aladdin rubs the lamp, Genie senses it and comes out – and then when he comes and Aladdin asks him a favour, of course our helpful Genie immediately promises to do what he can. So... basically, the same arrangement as during the movie, only now Aladdin's somehow got around that three-wishes-only rule...? How has Genie's life changed or improved in any way? The whole premise kind of takes away from that big, life-changing moment at the end of the movie where Aladdin sets Genie free, and we can just feel something major has changed. Every time I watch that scene, I can feel Genie's essence flowing out of the lamp, until it's just an ordinary, non-magical lamp that clatters empty to the ground. If I had to guess, I would say Genie's link with the lamp was completely broken, and he'd have no more connection to the place, certainly no way of knowing if someone was rubbing it or not.
So, yes, to make Genie more in character, he should be travelling the world, and while he's living his new life we should see his path cross Aladdin's. (Often – they have to see each other again often!!!) But you know who should be coming with Aladdin on every single adventure he has from now on? Someone who waited her whole life to even be allowed out of the house, someone Aladdin made a commitment to share his life with?
That's right. Jasmine.
You might have noticed I've barely discussed Jasmine at all here, and honestly, that's pretty accurate to the TV series, which seems to treat Jasmine as one of the most optional, secondary characters. Ignoring the fact that in the movie, Jasmine was almost a second protagonist, Aladdin will ride off on his adventures and invariably take Genie, Abu, Carpet, and Iago along, with almost no exceptions. But as near as I can tell, on at least half of the adventures Jasmine is nowhere to be found, and there are other episodes where she appears but does nothing but stand in the background. What is she supposed to be doing, waiting for Aladdin back at the palace while she cooks him a pot roast and folds his socks just right?? The show doesn't even establish some new exciting thing Jasmine's doing with her time that would make her want to stay behind and not go adventuring with her boyfriend-who-should-totally-be-her-husband – she just isn't there. And rather than addressing this and turning it into an actual problem Jasmine is facing that must be addressed, in the other half of the episodes she's just along for the adventure as though everything's fine. Like Aladdin is playing hot-and-cold with Jasmine and neither she nor we are supposed to even notice.
In the movie, Jasmine's whole arc was about freedom. She wants to get outside the palace, and finally get to decide for herself how to live her own life. She ventures outside but gets into trouble, and worse she thinks an innocent man died because of her. She might have been too spooked by her first attempt to ever try again if Aladdin hadn't come along and shown her the world, shown her it was safe, and taken her on a ride which so amazed her that, in her own words: “I can't go back to where I used to be”. Jasmine was also very clear about not wanting to accept any suitor who wouldn't treat her as an equal. If Jasmine ever wound up in a relationship with someone who treated her as his last priority, didn't treat her like his important adventure partner, didn't make sure he took just as much care to spend one-on-one time with her as he did with his friends– she would have dumped him. Every time Jasmine was missing from one of Aladdin's adventures, it didn't matter that she wasn't onscreen and I didn't know what she might have been doing just then – I felt like the show was being untrue to her character, just by the very fact of her so consistently not being there.
Is Jasmine handled any better when she is on screen? Sometimes. She has some really good clever or fiery moments, and there's a particular Jasmine moment in Episode 7 that had me thrilled at how feisty they were willing to make her. There are a few times she acts like your ideal super-supportive wife (I refuse to say girlfriend), and gives Aladdin unwavering emotional support even when he's lost faith in himself. But other times, she just acts like your stereotypical “I'll give you a kiss if you get this right, I'll get mad at you if you get it wrong” girlfriend, which I can see Jasmine doing but not as her and Aladdin's whole relationship. If that's all they have to indicate this is a romance and she's not just one of Aladdin's least important friends, it kind of feels like there's nothing between them. Like she's his “love interest” but we don't know what the two of them built their romance on, what cements them together and makes them truly inseparable. It felt very much like the writers didn't want to put too much thought into the romance aspect of the show, didn't think their little-boy audience would care about Aladdin's romance as much as his funny male friends, so instead of really delving into Aladdin and Jasmine they just wrote a generic television couple. Oh, and either the writers really, really didn't want to make freedom Jasmine's driving force, or they honestly didn't notice how important it was to her. Not only is there the whole “she's somehow okay with never coming on the adventures” thing, but I count no less than four times in the first fifteen episodes where she's taken prisoner/kidnapped and lets her captor do it/acts like it was no big deal and her captor was entirely justified. I wish I was kidding about that.
The show also takes until Episode 35 until Aladdin and Jasmine spend any one-on-one time together, and until Episode 39 before we actually see anything of them on a date. And no, we can't just imagine all their dates took place offscreen, because in Episode 22 Jasmine actually calls Aladdin out for never spending any one-on-one time with her (which then leads nowhere and he treats her really horribly in that episode). Even if she hadn't, you can't just show us zero evidence of something in your story and expect us to assume that it's there. It's the show's responsibility to show us their vision for what Aladdin's life is now, it's not for us to fill in the details they skipped. If the show is suddenly playing down Aladdin and Jasmine's romance like it's suddenly the least important thing, that's the takeaway I'm going to get. You can't show me Aladdin always running off on adventures with his friends, and never doing the same with his wife, and tell me he hasn't regressed from when all he wanted to do was spend time with her. You can't show me Aladdin and Jasmine deciding not to get married, not to even have a date set, after all they went through in the movie, and then expect me to assume they still love each other as much as before. You cannot play down Aladdin and Jasmine's relationship and then expect me to happily watch this assuming everything between them is just fine.
I'm pretty sure all these changes were made for the sake of recognizability or target audience. Aladdin's still living on the streets in his rags so that he's still recognizable as Aladdin. He doesn't have much money, and Iago is presented as wrong for trying to get some, so that they could send that same old message to the kiddies about money bad. Aladdin isn't a prince yet because he's more recognizable in his old position as “street rat”, because they don't think little boys would be interested in palace life the way little girls would, and maybe because they're afraid of showing a positive character gaining and enjoying a life of luxury. Genie is still living in Aladdin's lamp and basically still granting him wishes because that was his role in the movie. He's still connected to the lamp because an empty, non-magical lamp isn't the iconic movie object we recognize. Jasmine is written as the “requisite female character”, and not treated as the single most important thing to Aladdin, because they assumed in a show aimed at small boys, she wouldn't be the main draw. Jasmine forgives everyone who kidnaps her because they have to teach that lesson to the kiddies about getting along with absolutely everyone no matter what (because of course it's more important to teach a child to get along with that classmate they had a fight with yesterday and not to argue with their teachers, than it is to teach them how to tell when someone really doesn't have their best interests at heart). Those are my theories, anyway.
Looking at it like this, it seems to me that the main places the show went wrong was when the creators had some agenda other than a pure desire to expand on the world of Aladdin, because apart from all those things it really is enjoyable. Which just goes to show what I was saying about sequels in the first place. But that's all I can say talking about the show in general; it's time to get into the individual episodes. Because there are a lot of them, what I'm going to do is: this post will be my general TV series review, and after this I'm going to review ten episodes per post, until I've gotten through all ninety, for a series of ten posts total.
I've given each episode a rating out of five stars, and my system is basically:
5 stars – among my all-time favourite episodes
4 stars – really good, exciting, engaging
3 stars – a good episode, maybe not among the most standout or memorable, or I liked the premise but the execution had serious flaws
2 stars – frustrating; could have been so good if only...!!
1 star – I hated it
I have tried to avoid too many spoilers in the reviews, but sometimes it was just unavoidable (i.e. I hated the ending so much I had to rant about it). Most of the time, if I talk too much about the ending, it means I didn't think that episode was worth watching anyway, and you'll be forewarned about that by the one-star rating. But don't worry, the rest of the time I don't reveal the big twists or how the day was won or anything like that. I might say “so-and-so saves the day” or some such. If you don't want to hear anything about the ends of the episodes at all, then maybe just stick with my general review.
All names have been spelled according to my best guess, except for a select few where I happen to have seen them spelled out somewhere (for example Saleen in Episode 30, whom I probably would have called Selene or Celine otherwise). Please do not take any of my spellings as fact (but feel free to use them if you don't know how the names are spelled either but particularly like my versions).
Click here for Part 2 - Episodes 1 through 10 .
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