An Honest Review of the Aladdin TV Series, part 2: Episodes 1-10

Haven't read Part 1 yet? Find it here

1 – Air Feathered Friends *****

There's a lot riding on the first episode of a television series. It's probably the one that determines whether you're going to keep watching, so it's particularly important to make sure the introduction to your show is good.

The first episode of Aladdin delivered. It was engaging, and thrilling, and funny – all the things. It also gave us, right from the start, that really great portrayal of Aladdin I was talking about.

The story begins with Aladdin helping Abu out of a tough spot with the guards. Abu has been stealing some fruit from the marketplace – he seems to be having some trouble learning not to steal anymore, which makes perfect sense, since stealing food used to be what he and Aladdin did to survive and he probably used to get praise for that! Aladdin tries to protect and defend Abu, which leads to a confrontation between Aladdin and two of the guards: Razoul the big scary main guard, and another guard whom they call Fazoul. He's the one who's just as big as Razoul but seems to be more fat that muscle (though I don't think he'd be any less strong or formidable!) and he's characterized in the series as being particularly fond of food. I actually really like how they're starting to give the guards individual names and personalities. That wouldn't have worked at all during the movie, where the whole point of the guards was being a single unit of threat to Aladdin, but now Aladdin's living at the palace (or at least should be) it only makes sense that he'll start running into them more, without needing to run away from them, and will start getting to know their names and who they are as people. And it doesn't seem like they're getting on so well – the guards weren't kidding when they responded to Aladdin's line “Otherwise we'd get along” with a resounding “Wrong!” The way Razoul treats Aladdin in this episode – I really loved the idea, and I only wish they would have used the dynamic more often. It was almost like, Razoul knows he can't arrest Aladdin anymore. The Sultan wouldn't allow it. But he can bully Aladdin far more subtly, wear down his confidence, make him sorry he ever decided to join the Royal Family of Agrabah. I can't tell if they meant to write him like that, or if he was just supposed to be regular mean and I was just reading things in. I hope it was intentional.  That would be such an amazing obstacle in Aladdin's After life!

So now Razoul pressures Aladdin into making a bet with Fazoul: if Aladdin can prove these mysterious whirlwinds that have been invading Agrabah and stealing everyone's treasures are human-caused, and not demons as the guards believe, Fazoul will have to become Abu's personal date-picker. But if Aladdin cannot prove it, he will give up Abu to Fazoul. I know. Talk about high stakes. And yes, you might say Aladdin would never agree to that – I'd say the same thing if I was just reading this review and hadn't seen the episode. But the way they do it is actually very believable, playing to Aladdin's greatest weaknesses, as Razoul makes it out like this completely unreasonable bet is all about Aladdin's pride and manliness and not about his desire to keep his animal friend and erstwhile only companion in his own custody. This is what I mean when I say Razoul was bullying Aladdin here, the way he basically manipulates him into agreeing to this!

So Aladdin goes off to investigate, and soon enough Genie shows up. He comes out of Aladdin's lamp, which seemed very odd to me but, until the fourth episode, this was always done in a way I could overlook where he came from and imagine he just showed up out of nowhere as Genie ought to. Genie wasn't written too badly here. Nothing like Robin Williams, of course, but most of his lines were good for what they were, and I think a few might have made me chuckle.

Aladdin, Genie, Abu, Carpet, and Iago (yes, you'll notice someone very important is missing here) investigate the mysterious whirlwinds, and soon discover the culprit behind the thievery is their old enemy Abis Mal. He isn't given a formal introduction because he was already introduced in the first Aladdin sequel, but Genie does give us a brief recap as to who he is, which I appreciated; as someone who hasn't seen the sequels, it meant I wasn't completely lost.  I like Abis Mal. He's hardly the most threatening villain, and Aladdin really should have no trouble with this guy after defeating Jafar, but he's funny. He has this tendency to think he's much smarter and more competent than he actually is, but really would never get anywhere without the advice of his long-suffering second-in-command, Haroud. (I think that's how you'd spell it.) Abis Mal's whole thing is wanting to take over Agrabah, like Jafar's was, although in his case I don't think he'd even know what to do with Agrabah if he did get it! (He has this running thing about wanting to wear a big Sultan hat.) Oh, and I just love his name. The series will make a habit of this, giving us these clever and funny pun names, and I am here for every single one.

One of the highlights of this episode, for me, was the presence of Rocs. A Roc is a giant bird of Arabian myth, which appears in a few of the Arabian Nights tales – including the original Aladdin. Well, it doesn't actually appear in Aladdin, but there's this whole plotline, which wasn't adapted into the Disney movie, in which the evil sorcerer's brother comes to the palace in disguise to get revenge on Aladdin, and convinces Aladdin's wife (Princess Bedrulbudour, or Bidder al-Budur, I think I see why Disney changed it to Jasmine) to decorate her palace with a Roc's egg. For reasons unspecified by the story, this was supposed to be a really bad idea, and the genie was furious with Aladdin when he suggested it. Maybe Rocs are super dangerous, or else they're endangered and Genies consider them a protected species? The Rocs in this episode weren't remotely dangerous – or should I say, they weren't unduly aggressive, because they could defend themselves if needed – so I love the way they showed Genie forming a particular bond with this baby Roc and its mother. That plot thread also gave us a reason for Genie to not be around later on, so they didn't have to make him incompetent in order to explain why he couldn't bail Aladdin out of trouble.  Anyway, I was thrilled to find Rocs in the first instalment of Aladdin's next adventures, the same way I was thrilled with the Aladdin video game Nasira's Revenge giving Jafar an evil sorceress sister to parallel the original tale's sorcerer's brother.  Whoever wrote this episode did their research!

The only problem was that the entire episode went by without a single mention of Jasmine. Not even a glimpse of her, not one mention of her name, nothing. Genie pops out of Aladdin's lamp just as they're starting the adventure, so the story makes sure he gets to come along, but no one thinks to fly over to the palace and quickly get Jasmine so that she can come too. The whole thing was making me kind of nervous. If Jasmine, almost the secondary protagonist of the movie, wasn't even considered important enough to make her first appearance in the first Aladdin episode along with every other major character, how would she be handled when she finally did appear?

2 – Bad Moon Rising *

It was lucky the first episode of the series was so good. If Episode 1 had been so-so or even just okay, and then I had seen this one – well, I'm not sure I'd have kept watching.  I've had quibbles with various episodes throughout the series, but with this one I found almost no redeeming qualities. It just made me so... angry.

The story opens with Aladdin and Jasmine, along with Genie, Carpet, Abu, and Iago, flying off to the kingdom of Corkistan for what we are initially told is a diplomatic mission. I was really excited to see that, because I was already starting to suspect the TV series would focus quite a lot on Aladdin the adventurer, and not a lot on Aladdin the Prince of Agrabah. I was also more than ready to see our first appearance of Jasmine. There is no excuse for waiting until the second episode to introduce one of the movie's most major characters, when every single other major character apart from the Sultan and Rajah, including the guards, showed up in Episode 1!!!

Right from the start, I wasn't entirely satisfied with how they were portraying her. Aladdin is being very romantic and acting really pleased to be beside Jasmine, but she's too annoyed with Iago being along to show any sign of being happy to be with Aladdin. I don't know, maybe they were trying to go for Jasmine being mad that Iago's there and so she can't be alone with Aladdin? It sounded more like she was just mad Aladdin brought Iago along on a diplomatic mission when he isn't very diplomatic. (Which is actually a good point; why does he bring his “funny guy friends” everywhere even when it's not appropriate??)  Whatever the case, this was the first introduction the show gave us of Aladdin and Jasmine, the first glimpse we get into their usual dynamic as an established couple - and it was not working for me.

Soon enough, any mention of a diplomatic mission was entirely dropped from the storyline.  Instead we are told that the climate of Corkistan is dependant on the mood of their sullen and rather bratty child king, Mammoud. When he is happy the land is lush and green; when he is listless or moody or bored the land becomes dry and barren and no one can grow crops on it – and as might be clear from what I just described, Mammoud is almost never happy. (I feel like I've heard this type of plotline somewhere before – just can't say where.) Now the mission of Aladdin and friends is suddenly not to do anything diplomatic, but to make the King smile or laugh. And this isn't because they want to help their allies' kingdom, but because whoever manages this will be given a large reward from the Corkistan treasury – and apparently a Princess, her fiancé who should totally be her husband by now, his sidekicks, and an all-powerful Genie have some great need of treasure. Iago in particular seemed obsessed with winning that treasure, which I know now was our first instance of that running Iago-shouldn't-want-money thing, but at the time just baffled me.

And so the plotline I was hoping to see was very quickly dropped, in favour of Aladdin, Genie, Carpet, Iago, and Abu all making fools of themselves doing silly performances in hopes that the child King will crack a smile. It was painful to watch – the secondhand embarrassment was very real – and I'm honestly not at all surprised their antics didn't work. Did they really think the Corkistan royal court hadn't already thought of this, or couldn't provide entertainers if that was what was needed? Mammoud's issue seemed very obvious to me. I mean, he's a child king. The only way a child would get on the throne is if his parents died. And the only adult – the only other person apart from guards – we see in the palace is Mammoud's Royal Vizier, who acts as a patient, long-suffering teacher but hardly seems to fill the role of parent. It's no wonder that when Jasmine decides to tell Mammoud a story, his mood improves immediately. I mean, I didn't like the character much, but all the poor kid needed was some love and attention! I do have some quibbles with it being Jasmine, the only female, who figures out what Mammoud actually needs. Being female does not automatically mean she's the patient, motherly type! Jasmine already fits nicely into the Femme Fatale, along with a dash of sweet innocent Ingenue like most Disney Princesses are, so having her be motherly as well really feels like they couldn't be bothered to understand Jasmine's character and just tried to fit her into every female archetype they could think of. And I never saw Jasmine as patient. In my mind, the character most likely to figure out what Mammoud needs would be Aladdin. His natural charm couldn't exist if he wasn't good at figuring out how other people are feeling and what they really want, plus he knows what it's like to be the little boy with no parents. It should have been Aladdin reading Mammoud a story and finally making him happy.

So then comes the main conflict of the episode: Jasmine's stories are the only thing anyone has found that will make Mammoud happy, and Mammoud needs to be happy if the kingdom is to survive, so no one in Corkistan objects when Mammoud decides Jasmine must stay with him forever and tell him a story every single day. (Shades of Scheherazade, but with the stakes significantly lowered.) Of course Aladdin is not willing to allow this and so begins a chase to escape from Mammoud's court. Aladdin is acting properly angry and fiery at such a ridiculous suggestion, but Jasmine is once again out of character, literally getting down on her knees in front of Mammoud to beg his permission to leave, and explaining it's “time for her to go” as sweet and gentle as you please. How do you expect me to buy this as the same character who stood up to Jafar and declared “We will never bow down to you!”??

I get that the people of Corkistan were desperate for their kingdom to be livable again, but I'm not sure why no one even tried to talk to Mammoud about how bad a decision this was. I mean, Jasmine is the Princess of Agrabah. What would it do to relations between Agrabah and Corkistan if Mammoud essentially takes Jasmine prisoner? The Royal Vizier should have realized this and tried to point it out to him – actually, I don't care who points it out, it should have come up somewhere in the episode! Come to that, it would have been nice if Mammoud's actual emotional issues had been brought up in the episode. Everyone was always busy either making fools of themselves with ridiculous performances, or battling each other in an attempt to capture Jasmine or escape with her, and the whole episode felt too slapstick to be able to give proper respect to the very serious problems they brought up. No one mentioned how toxic it was to tether the well-being of an entire kingdom to a child's emotional state – I'll bet the unspoken shame around Mammoud's moods only made things a hundred times worse. Can you just imagine, this poor kid crying when he was a baby or a toddler, and instead of seeing what's wrong or teaching him his emotions are normal and okay, everyone is so concerned with the kingdom being livable they just try and get him to hush up?? I cannot believe it occurred to absolutely no one that the reason Jasmine's storytelling worked so well was not because Jasmine specifically tells great stories, but because Mammoud the child was finally getting some much-needed affection. I would say the fact that Jasmine had Mammoud on her lap might have been more important than anything else she was doing! The show could have gone on to have Jasmine and Aladdin try and convince the people of Corkistan to get Mammoud some loving parent figures, and trying to break the spell tethering him to the kingdom so all the pressure would be taken off, and explored some very deep and important themes about healthy emotional expression and the human need for love and attention.

Instead, it turns out that when Mammoud is angry, Corkistan, instead of just being dry and barren like it is when he's bored, erupts in a series of deadly volcanoes, which is somehow a rare occurrence that their moody, fussy King doesn't set off every other day. You might have noticed I have a hard time buying that, just like I have a hard time buying that the Magic Carpet couldn't have easily flown Aladdin's party over the volcanoes and out of Corkistan in record time. Carpet is supposed to be able to fly right into the clouds with zero trouble, remember...? And I also couldn't believe that Jasmine was blaming herself for the destructive volcanoes causing the people of Corkistan to flee for their very lives. Okay, I get that she feels guilty, but does she really think that she is responsible to that extent for the feelings of another person?? Especially someone she doesn't know, who would have developed his issues long before she ever showed up? Does she really think the problem here is that Mammoud didn't get his way? If Mammoud gets this angry over his guest not agreeing to be held prisoner, he's got issues way beyond anything Jasmine was ever connected to. And for the episode to not have one single other character point out that Jasmine did nothing wrong in refusing to compromise her own needs, that if she hadn't set Mammoud off, something else would have, sends a bit of a skewed message to me. Like they're trying to say Jasmine (again, the only female) should be taking responsibility for Mammoud's emotional state.

But that's not even the worst of what Jasmine does. So, Aladdin has been trying so hard this entire time to shield her and protect her, and now the people of Corkistan are mad at Jasmine and want to turn her in to Mammoud so their crops will grow again. I was all set here for some great conflict, Aladdin and Jasmine versus the nasty, selfish people... but then Jasmine, although I can hardly call her Jasmine anymore at this point, she's so out of character – Jasmine decides she is entirely responsible for King Mammoud's feelings after all, and she's going to give up the rest of her life to go back to his palace and read him stories every day. Yes, you read that right. Princess Jasmine is going to willingly let herself get trapped in a palace again and devote the rest of her life to doing what someone else has planned for her. And to make matters worse, she tells Aladdin, as he's begging her not to go but she doesn't care, she says she was “raised as a princess” and that means she knows that “other people's needs are more important than hers”. What?!

Okay, first of all, who are you and what have you done with Princess Jasmine? We're talking about the same girl who refused to choose a suitor, ran away from Agrabah Palace, and planned to never go back despite her father's not having any other heir, because she refused to let anyone make her live her life in a way that was wrong for her. When her father brings up her role as a Princess, Jasmine's response is, “Then maybe I don't want to be a princess anymore!”, and not “Oh, you're right, Father, I'm a princess and my needs are less important than everyone else's.” This is like, Jasmine character 101, literally all you need to do is watch her introduction scene and you'll get this. If you can't understand this basic part of Jasmine's character, you have no business writing her. Oh, and considering Jasmine's always ready to stand up for others or give another person a helping hand, we know that tendency to take care of herself first was hardly making her selfish and was hardly something she needed to change.

What they did here is an incredibly damaging message to put out, that we should all be neglecting our own needs and filling other people's cups while our own are steadily draining away until we don't even remember who we are anymore. It's especially a damaging message coming from our story's only female, if women in particular have trouble with prioritizing our own needs and tend to use up all our energy caring for others. I first encountered Jasmine when I was an adult far beyond the impressionable-little-girl stage, and even then I was impressed with this strong, feminine character showing us females in the audience how to love and respect ourselves. I can only imagine how much more powerful she could be to a little girl who is still absorbing everything she sees as truth. And I shudder to think what it could do to a young girl's development if she first fell in love with Princess Jasmine from all the wonderful qualities she displays in the movie, and then sees what appears to be the same character advocating for her to give up her whole life for the sake of someone she doesn't even know.

Oh, and if we want to talk about duty – Jasmine doesn't actually have any duty to Mammoud. She does have a duty to the people of Agrabah. If she stays, Jasmine will be incapable of helping her own kingdom through any troubles they might have going forward, she'll never be of any help to any of Agrabah's other allies, and if she leaves now, especially in this timeline where for some inexplicable reason she hasn't married Aladdin and made him an official part of the royal family, she'll leave her kingdom without an heir, meaning that her father's throne is suddenly vulnerable to attack. What a noble sacrifice in the name of a higher good....

The episode is basically telling us – by not having any character ever call Jasmine out or act like her decision was wrong – that Jasmine's sacrifice was correct, or at least the best decision she could have made at the time. We're essentially told that the best solution was, in fact, to give in to Mammoud's temper tantrum and accept his unhealthy, short-sighted demands at the expense of Jasmine's whole life, just so he'll shut up. I'm willing to bet that, if Aladdin hadn't figured out a way to rescue her, all her “noble sacrifice” would have been in vain anyway. There's no way Jasmine could have kept Mammoud happy enough to keep his temper tantrums at bay, not if she isn't happy herself. We can see right in the episode, when a second Jasmine and Mammoud storytelling scene comes up, that Jasmine misses Aladdin so much the only story she can tell is Aladdin's and hers, and she looks so sad while she's doing it, she's not even holding Mammoud on her lap anymore, and Mammoud looks so bored and annoyed by the whole thing, I half-expected him to lose his temper again right there. Eventually he would have tired of Jasmine's stories, they would have stopped reaching that hole inside him which stories alone could never fill, and he'd find something else to be mad about and throw a tantrum that would destroy the kingdom all over again, and next thing Aladdin would hear is that his beloved died in a volcano accident. Or maybe he'd just hear this poor imitation died in a volcano accident and he'd be happily living with the real Jasmine again.

I know what they were going for with this whole plotline – they were trying to explore what would happen if Aladdin and Jasmine, who love each other so much, found themselves having to say goodbye. I can appreciate the intention, but the trouble is, if they're going to go for something that devastating they have to commit to it.  It's pretty hard to top the already devastating scene we get at the end of the movie, where Aladdin and Jasmine think they'll have to separate after everything they've been through because Aladdin is still not a prince! It feels very unbelievable to me that the same couple who faced and overcame a law that said they could never be together, Aladdin's own self-doubts, and multiple attempts on both their lives and freedom by Jafar, would then allow themselves to be separated by a bratty, love-starved child craving bedtime stories. I think the television show suffered for trying to explore this dark territory but also wanting to keep it child-friendly, because there must have been a very deliberate choice here to make it a child King who wanted to force Jasmine to stay with him forever due to her apparent motherly qualities, while completely ignoring the obvious option of having it be an adult King who wanted her to stay with him due to – other womanly qualities we know for a fact Jasmine has.  They kept bringing up all this potential for a really deep and meaningful storyline – or at least an exciting tale of capture-and-rescue – and then it just went nowhere so they could teach some kiddie moral that was probably meant to encourage viewers to share their beloved toys on the playground with children who would lose or break them or refuse to give them back.

In the end, Aladdin decides to rescue Jasmine by letting Mammoud see exactly how much pain he's causing both of them by forcing them to separate. This was after some moping around and telling Iago how pointless it would be to win enough money from the Corkistan treasury to buy a palace, if Jasmine wasn't there to share it. If sharing his home with Jasmine mattered to Aladdin that much, I don't know why he didn't just marry her and gotten to live with her in her own palace...  Honestly, Aladdin, quit moping around and just go back to Agrabah, and tell the Sultan that Jasmine's being held prisoner in Corkistan so he can raise a royal army to invade the place and rescue her! Child or not, Mammoud is still a king and still can't get away with doing whatever he wants to his allies. You know, in spite of the whole story starting with the promise of a diplomatic mission, for most of it it seemed like no one remembered Jasmine was royal.

The first part of Aladdin's plan was sort of touching, with him and Jasmine having a sweet goodbye moment in each other's arms, although the scene was already ruined for me by Jasmine insistence that if Aladdin is coming here to take her away from Mammoud she “won't go”. That was so aggravating I almost wanted Aladdin to kidnap Jasmine from the palace and rescue her that way.... But then the episode, once again, becomes far too silly for the serious, touching moment they needed to set up.  Genie turns Iago and Abu into humans posing as Jasmine's parents, then turns himself into a man posing as her grandfather, then he conjures up a bunch of poor orphans and a pet wallaby, and it's all presented like it's some big joke, even though we're fighting for Jasmine's personal freedom. The whole plan felt very disrespectful to Jasmine, who actually has a real father and a real beloved pet and may even have real poor people in Agrabah relying on her help, and instead Aladdin's conjuring up all these fake people as if to tell Jasmine that no real person cares enough about her to come and help rescue her from Corkistan. I'm trying to figure out why the use of humour during tense moments worked in the actual movie when it doesn't work here. I think it's because in the movie, the humorous interjections don't affect the plot in any way. Jafar's still figured out Prince Ali is Aladdin and has the Genie lamp, whether or not Iago has a photograph of himself and Jafar in which he's making a weird face. Jafar has still turned into a deadly giant cobra and is battling Aladdin to the death, whether or not Genie transforms into a cheerleader to encourage Aladdin. These moments become just little breaks in the tension – but in the climax of this episode, there's nothing except the humour. It's trying to explore something serious – how devastating it would be if Aladdin and Jasmine had to separate forever – but then they also want a light, funny mood that won't upset a child too badly, and so they end up pulling their punches, sending a mixed message about how seriously we're supposed to be taking this.

In any case, the plan works, and Mammoud feels guilty about trapping Jasmine and agrees to let her go. He then discovers that doing good things for other people makes him feel good, and Corkistan is saved. I'm a little dubious as to how long this change will last, since no one has addressed the very real emotional issues that made him act selfish in the first place... but of course, this solution fits perfectly with the whole message the episode's been putting out, that true happiness comes from self-neglect, at least if you're a woman or a child. It remains to be seen how long Mammoud's new resolution will last until his own cup runs out and her goes back to being moody and spoiled again. But luckily, I don't actually care, because there was no one likeable in Corkistan and they're terrible allies (almost all of them were willing to have Jasmine held prisoner and sacrifice her freedom so that their own problems would get better; I notice no one told them to ignore their own needs in favour of Jasmine's), so I didn't care in the slightest what happened to them.

3 – To Cure a Thief *****

So now we'd had one episode I loved and one I hated, which meant all of a sudden it wasn't at all clear which direction the show would take – an unnerving thought when I'm trying to get into a new part of Aladdin's world, to say the least. Luckily, the third episode was just as good as the first one.

This is another Aladdin and Abu centred one, which quickly turned out to be one of my favourite dynamics in the television series. Jasmine meanwhile only has a bit, supporting part, but after how her character was mishandled in the last episode I think that was for the best. I wasn't ready to see them butcher my girl Jasmine again so soon!

There's been an attempted robbery of the Sultan's treasury, which leads to Abu proving that he still hasn't broken the habit of wanting to snatch any tempting, shiny object that comes his way. Abu would totally do this; the palace would be too much of a temptation for his treasure-loving heart to resist! I figure he's probably confused as to why Aladdin is scolding him for snatching things when that used to be the only way the two of them could survive. After Abu sets off the treasure-room traps and embarrasses Aladdin in front of the Sultan, Aladdin loses his temper with Abu and threatens to keep him on a leash from now on, at which point Abu is so offended he runs away. I really like how we get to see more sides of Aladdin in this show – the movie makes it clear he has the potential to get super angry or say things he'd later regret, but we never actually see him lose his temper with a loved one. It was actually so much fun seeing Aladdin get pushed so far he said things to a dear friend that he'd later regret. And I can definitely see why he'd be so sensitive about how he appears to the Sultan – if it weren't for the Sultan he'd still be out on the streets and wouldn't be married to Jasmine! (Oh, wait....)

Iago, with some prompting from Jasmine, Aladdin – and Rajah, yay, more Rajah! – flies off to keep an eye on Abu, but ends up only encouraging him to keep on stealing. This is the first episode showing us that new Abu and Iago friendship dynamic, and I am so here for it. In the movie they only ever interact when Abu fights Iago to stop him alerting Jafar that Aladdin is trying to get the lamp back, but honestly, once they're not owned by two enemies they really work so well together! They have a lot more in common than you'd think, especially when they get into mischief together like here.

Abu and Iago meet a thief, the very thief who tried to break into the Sultan's treasury. This thief has another of those brilliant names: Amin Damoola, which of course, when you say it, sounds like “I'm in the moola”. But all the other thieves of Agrabah call him “Butterfingers”, which explains why the episode opens with only an attempted robbery. Now Butterfingers – though I prefer the name Damoola – wants Abu to help him steal the powerful, valuable treasure he failed to get the first time: a golden gauntlet that looks like the one from the Avengers: Endgame movie. This gauntlet acts as a magnet for any other valuables that happen to be around – and Iago has hyped up Abu as the best thief in Agrabah, a name Abu shows himself as more than living up to in a very funny and impressive sequence at the thieves' tavern.

But now there's an internal conflict inside Abu, what with Iago pressuring him to say yes to the mission, and Abu overhearing Aladdin saying he doesn't care Abu is gone (even though in context we can tell Aladdin is just angry with himself for chasing Abu away and doesn't mean a word of it). We get to see some more of Abu's clever thief skills as he evades the traps set out in the Agrabah treasury (which were a pretty cool addition to the world all by themselves!) We get lots of Aladdin and Abu's friendship dynamic, including a big hug when the two of them finally reunite, and Aladdin looking very fierce and dangerous in the doorway of the thieves' tavern as he tells them, “I want my monkey.” Eee! I am here for protective Aladdin... And the thieves listen to him, too, so we know they have some respect for Aladdin's authority, like maybe they've seen him like this before and know he's a force to be reckoned with when he's protecting someone! The Skull and Dagger tavern, if I remember the name correctly (please correct me if I don't), is one of my absolute favourite new locations, hangout of all the thieves and lowlifes of Agrabah, and I am delighted it became a recurring place as the show went on.

Oh, yes, there's also a scene where a huge boulder chases Aladdin and Jasmine down a palace corridor as they try to escape on Carpet. I spent the entire time wondering why they couldn't just fly a little higher or lower so the boulder would miss them, but somehow nobody ever thought of that. Is this a common thing in boulder chase scenes? I kind of feel like it is....

4 – Do the Rat Thing ***

After she was completely absent from the first episode, portrayed completely wrong in the second, and barely more than a background character in the third, Episode 4 gives us our very first Jasmine-centred story. I will admit I wasn't ready for this. Jasmine was actually portrayed quite well in this one, she never did anything that felt out of character and I really liked some of the developments to her personality, but my trust in the writers to portray Jasmine had already been broken. I think I spent the entire episode waiting for her to do something that would go entirely against her nature.

Our story begins with Jasmine being bothered by another annoying suitor, and my first thought was: that doesn't make any sense. Why would another suitor be here? Wouldn't that have stopped after Jasmine chose Aladdin? But then – I realized this is actually perfect. Probably when Jasmine chose Aladdin, some suitors would still have been en route to Agrabah, and it's not like they had clocks and wristwatches to tell them the deadline for her marriage had already passed. Or television, radio, or newspapers to let them know Jasmine had already chosen a husband. I do wonder why this prince was allowed to try for Jasmine's hand once he got there, but then maybe the Sultan wanted Jasmine to at least receive him, to keep Agrabah on good relations with the other kingdom (I sometimes wonder what Jasmine's refusal of all those princes did to Agrabah's alliances!) and then the inconsiderate prince was the one completely overstepping his boundaries, trying to get Jasmine to choose him over the man she had already committed to.

The prince is named Prince Wazoo (yes, seriously, I'm not making this up!), and he's just very snooty and kind of a snob. He believes he's a much better suitor for Jasmine than Aladdin could ever be, and keeps referring to Aladdin as a street rat. Aladdin is having trouble being civil to him, which I absolutely do not think he should have had to be. Aladdin should have challenged Wazoo to a duel using street skills, but apparently the Sultan wants Aladdin to be nice to their guest, and so instead Aladdin ends up letting Wazoo step on his boundaries and disrespect him. And it feels in character for Aladdin to try too hard to impress someone else, and for the Sultan to want Aladdin to treat their guest civilly and not, I suppose, challenge him to street duels. But I still can't see why the Sultan never intervened. Wouldn't he want the heir to his throne and his future or current son-in-law treated with respect? Wouldn't he be able to explain to Prince Wazoo that Aladdin is the future Sultan of Agrabah and needs to be treated as such, and that Wazoo isn't allowed to ask Aladdin to perform menial servant tasks for him? Wouldn't Aladdin be able to tell Wazoo about his status? And why was Aladdin wearing his rags now, of all times?  Even this show admits Aladdin does have some fancy prince clothes even if they hardly ever let him wear them, so why wouldn't he wear those to meet a rival Prince, and face Wazoo on his own level? At the very least, someone should have told Wazoo that he isn't allowed to kiss Jasmine's hand or bury his face in her hair. That's beyond disrespectful considering she kept telling him “no”, and that's before we consider her relationship status or any cultural standards of men touching women.  Jasmine, it seems to me, would be well within her rights to slap Wazoo. Aladdin would have been well within his rights to punch him. The Sultan would have been in his rights to arrest Wazoo and banish him from the kingdom in disgrace. Why does Aladdin spend the whole episode acting like he has no leverage??

But the story isn't about that – although I would happily have watched an entire episode about Aladdin's struggles with one of Jasmine's suitors. So, Aladdin and Jasmine have a bit of a tiff, because Jasmine doesn't like rats and Aladdin has a soft spot for them (he relates to them; “street rat”, remember?). I found it kind of hard to imagine a Disney Princess like Jasmine being scared of and repulsed by any animal, but then I guess we all have that one thing. I myself love almost all animals but cannot stand creepy-crawlies. So Aladdin tells Jasmine she couldn't understand his feelings toward rats because she's a princess, without realizing just how much Jasmine would be hurt by a comment like that.  It's exactly the kind of lovers' quarrel I can picture them having, but I think it was a bit early for the show to have Aladdin and Jasmine fighting. We've barely seen Jasmine at all so far, and not a single scene showing her and Aladdin's relationship at its best. Of course, you would think four episodes would have been enough time to wait before Aladdin and Jasmine have a fight...!

So Jasmine determines to stay out on the streets for an entire day to prove she's just as good a street rat as Aladdin. I love this idea, and really wish it had become a recurring thing. This is just the kind of bold, headstrong decision I want to see from a character like Jasmine, both starved for adventure and too sheltered to realize just how much trouble she could get into out there! I felt that this episode could have done a lot more to explore both why Jasmine is so determined to do this, and how badly equipped she is to be out here, and then perhaps she could have used her princess skills to come out on top, and proven she does have what it takes after all.

Jasmine has taken Iago with her. We don't know why, in story context, and to me it felt a bit too soon for Jasmine to trust the bird who tortured her father quite that much. But then, Jasmine and Iago make for an excellent dynamic (we see this in the Disney Princess comics too), and, well, she does need some companion she can hold a conversation with, or it wouldn't be a very interesting episode! There's a moment when she's telling Iago why she wants to spend a day out here, so she can understand Aladdin's former lifestyle better... and she says she and Aladdin will be married “one day”, and it just about broke my heart. So she and Aladdin don't even care enough about their relationship to have a date set?! Jasmine has other men coming to ask for her hand and literally burying their faces in her hair, Aladdin is still being treated like he just crawled out of the gutter, and yet they're still not even planning a wedding?! What are they waiting for, some enemy to come and try to kill them again and actually succeed this time?! For the spark to completely fizzle out from lack of attention?!

Well, anyway, all this is actually before the main plot conflict – though they already had more than enough interesting material for a full episode just from the side plots! Jasmine, to prove she's as good a street rat as Aladdin, steals a mirror that ends up having magical powers, and she and Iago accidentally use this mirror to transform themselves – Jasmine into an actual, literal rat, and Iago into a frilled lizard. Now they must find food on the streets of Agrabah, avoid getting stepped on, and somehow find a way back to the palace, where apparently if they get to Aladdin's lamp, Genie can help them. This was the first time the show confirmed that Genie, in this version of events, is still living in Aladdin's lamp and comes out when you rub it to fulfill requests. Um... how does that change his living situation from what it was before, exactly? How was setting Genie free a huge, life-changing act and the biggest gift Aladdin could have given him, if almost nothing changes for him after that?? I am quite sure that's not what we were meant to infer from that scene in the movie where Aladdin sets Genie free and his essence flows out of the lamp until it clatters empty to the ground...  And while trying to get to the palace and find Genie provided a good goal and plenty of plot conflict, I can't help but wonder if it might have been cleverer to have to break the spell by reversing whatever caused them to curse themselves in the first place. They could have done both: Jasmine could get to the palace and find Genie, only to find his magic doesn't work on this spell and she'll have to come to terms with her own self-image to break it. Maybe Jasmine would have to stop thinking she has to be a street rat before she can be with Aladdin, or something like that. That could tie into her not resisting Wazoo's advances, because part of her is insecure about how different she and Aladdin are – I don't know. You could do something more to tie the different plot threads together. I thought the spell was very cleverly set up with it being a mirror – a symbol of “how you see yourself” – that made Jasmine transform, and the ending didn't really give us any payoff for that setup.

One of the great things about this episode is that we got to see way more Rajah than we normally do. There's a whole running Rajah plotline which has a beautiful payoff at the end, both thrilling and quite touching. I understand why we don't always see a lot of Rajah, but it makes me sad too, and I love seeing him get a large role whenever he can.

The last main plot thread (although I think they already had enough for one episode!) is that on her journey home, Jasmine discovers just how badly off some of the poor people of Agrabah are. She is strongly affected and is sure to mention it to her father as soon as she gets her proper human form back. This is after she refuses to speak to Aladdin because she is mad at him for not recognizing her when she was a rat, which – why?? Just why? Why did anyone think that was the reunion between the lovers we were waiting to see?? Aladdin and Jasmine start the episode with a fight and are separate the rest of the time, and now all we get at the end of it is Jasmine mad at Aladdin and ignoring him?! I had been hoping for a big hug, and I can tell you I felt very cheated. This reaction also felt completely unreasonable – I didn't even remember until later what Aladdin had done that Jasmine would have been mad about! – and also we have never yet seen them show any real, positive bond in the entire series. Did the people making the show really think we all hate romance that much???

Anyway, the Sultan's response to Jasmine's information is, “We have poor people?” which I guess was a way of both keeping the Sultan in character and excusing his never having done anything about the poor of Agrabah before. And I admit, it does make sense that he doesn't know as much as he thinks about the problems in his kingdom (perhaps certain evil advisors had been keeping him in the dark; there is a Five-Minute Disney Princess story called Aladdin: a Proper Princess which makes a very convincing case for this). But I personally don't think the Sultan needed excusing. Could any ruler in the world completely eradicate poverty just by being aware of it?? I mean, there's a lot to talk about with this subject; it's not nearly as simple as just knowing the poor people exist. The Sultan is very traditional too, and not exactly a deep clever thinker, so I think it would be far more likely that he knows there are poor people in his kingdom (he's not that dumb), but figures that's just a fact of life and much as he would love it if all his subjects were well-off and happy, there's nothing he can do about it. Having the Sultan and Jasmine unaware of poor people in Agrabah doesn't change my perceptions of them at all – but you know who it does reflect rather badly on? Aladdin. He certainly knew there were poor people in the city. Why would he have never bothered telling the royal family, or made any suggestions that might improve the people's lives?? What, are we supposed to infer that once Aladdin didn't have to worry about money anymore, he completely forgot about all those other people in the same situation?? I think, in an attempt to improve our perceptions of two wealthy characters who really didn't need it, the show quite accidentally lowered our perceptions of one of our most loveable poor characters.

Besides, probably since the show buys into that mentality of refusing to ever portray money as a good thing, this plotline goes nowhere. Jasmine only mentions it to her father at the very end of the episode, and in subsequent episodes there is not a single mention of anyone working to help the poor people of Agrabah. What was the point in even bringing it up?? The episode could have done something with this plot thread to tie it into all the others, for instance Jasmine could have suggested they invite some poor people to share in their palace banquet. (Instead the banquet gets entirely ruined and then Jasmine gives it all to a single rat who probably couldn't eat that much in its entire lifetime, which would create a lot of food waste and is an... interesting choice in an episode where they were bringing up the problem of people who don't have enough food, to say the least.) Or perhaps when Jasmine sees the poor people, she could realize it doesn't matter that she's rich and Aladdin was poor, because they both have equal empathy for those who are suffering. Then when she turns back into herself, instead of refusing to speak to Aladdin for no reason she could embrace him and tell him she's sorry she didn't understand what being a street rat is really like, and never realized just how hard it is to live out there (tying into the plotline of Jasmine wanting to become a street rat). Then Aladdin and Jasmine could find a common goal in trying to help the poor of Agrabah, a goal which Prince Wazoo would be unable to relate to. (Which would make a far better point than having Aladdin tell Wazoo Jasmine is better suited to him because when Genie broke the spell Jasmine retained her rat tail!)

There you go; all the multitude of plot threads they gave us could have been neatly tied together in the final scene, and all helped to make the episode deep and meaningful as well as exciting, but instead they just – weren't. In that case, it seems to me the TV show writers really came up with four very good plot ideas: “Aladdin is having problems with Jasmine's suitors”, “Jasmine wants to prove she's as good a street rat as Aladdin”, “Jasmine gets turned into a rat”, and “Jasmine discovers how badly off the poor people of Agrabah are”. Then each of these plotlines could have been given its own episode, where they could each be explored in full.

5 – Never Say Nefir ****

I absolutely love the idea that Iago knows a city full of great gambling dens (I wish I could remember the name of it; the TV show always comes up with the best names!), and takes Aladdin and friends there for a fun day of gambling. I mean, is that not exactly the kind of thing Iago would find fun? I can just see him in a den full of tough-talking 40's mobster types... and I have to say, I really wish we had seen it, although I also quite enjoyed the episode just as it was. The premise is that Aladdin and the gang (meaning him, Iago, Genie, Abu, and Carpet, because of course there's no way adventurous, spunky Jasmine would actually want to come with them...) get there only to find the city has been destroyed. A team of imps, led by the rather unsavoury-seeming Nefir, rebuild the city for a hefty fee, and they get to do this every single day because a giant pink rhinoceros named Samir the Destroyer comes every day and dances the city to pieces. If you've already figured out what's going on here just from that description, well, so did I, and I spent most of the episode waiting for Aladdin and Genie, who I thought were both pretty sharp characters, to catch up with me.

But don't think the episode was boring in the meantime, because it really wasn't. This is one of the Genie-focused episodes, and those can be some of the best because then Genie doesn't feel like he's being forced into the storyline and then made to act out of character so that he'll fit. I mean, he is still entirely too incompetent here, don't get me wrong, and that part wasn't fun. But this time there's emotional weight to it, as Genie is already feeling insecure comparing his own powers to the imps' (this is the first episode where they confirm Genie's powers have been reduced since being set free), and is starting to think he's letting Aladdin down as a friend. That alone kept me invested while I was waiting for Aladdin and Genie to finally come to the same conclusion I had reached the minute the problem was set up. What they did with Samir the Destroyer was also really interesting, and I would absolutely love to see more of him and Genie in future episodes!

Oh, and part of the ending involves Aladdin and his friends forming a rock band (able to play the same tune in sync with zero rehearsing due to cartoon logic, I suppose). And Aladdin looks good as a rock star! As if he could get any hotter... ahem. Yes. I am ready to be professional again now.

6 – Getting the Bugs Out ****

This episode had several particularly great things going for it. For one, we're introduced to a new recurring villain named Mechanicles, who is one of my favourite characters in the TV show. Yes, I know he's silly, not particularly frightening, and we really can't take any of his villainy seriously, but I can't help it – I just really love these campy cartoon-type villains, and what's more, Mechanicles' plotlines are often some of my very favourites. The other great thing about this episode is that finally, Jasmine is here, she's along for the adventure, she plays an important role, she actually feels like – Jasmine!

The story opens with Jasmine out in the marketplace, where she shows herself to be intelligent and difficult to trick, refusing to let a merchant overcharge her for a small mechanical dragonfly she wants to buy for her father. This episode has our first mention of the Sultan's toy collection, and I am so here for it! One thing I really don't understand is why, now that she's freely leaving the palace whenever she chooses, Jasmine still wears her brown marketplace disguise when she's out in the city. I mean, it made sense in the movie, where Jasmine was running away from home and didn't want to be recognized by anyone from the palace who might send her straight back. It made sense in Episode 4, where the whole point was for Jasmine to be out there as a street rat, not a princess. But every other time, now that Jasmine can go outside without fear, it makes as little sense as Aladdin still wearing his rags when he doesn't have to. Why would she choose to wear something so untrue to her personality and style? Jasmine, the same girl who happily goes around in bright blue crop tops and heavy flashy jewellery, is not going to feel like her best self completely covered up in a simple brown dress!

So anyway, Jasmine brings the dragonfly back to the palace, where the Sultan shows he truly has knowledge and expertise as he skilfully fixes the problem causing the dragonfly's mechanisms to have stopped working. This was my first indicator that the show was going to flesh out the Sultan's character, and they do it in a way that still feels like the loveable Sultan from the movie; I love what they did with him. Iago is in the room and even talks to the Sultan, making me wonder what could have happened to make the Sultan comfortable with Iago anywhere near him after the whole torture-by-crackers incident. (I'm sure all that was explained in the sequel, but it must have been something major.) Anyway, the mechanical dragonfly takes on a life of its own and starts attacking everyone, and even though it's Genie and Carpet who catch it and save the day, Aladdin takes credit, because he wants to make points with the Sultan. Jasmine is quick to call Aladdin out on taking credit for what his friends did, though honestly, since Aladdin in the show kind of “leads” everything his friends do and they often act like just his funny team of sidekicks, I thought he deserved credit anyway. My one criticism of Jasmine in this episode would be that she still hasn't shown any sign of support towards Aladdin yet. Sure, in this one isolated incident I get why she's annoyed and calling him out, even though I think she's making a much bigger deal out of this than was really needed. But we're already on the sixth episode and Jasmine has yet to show Aladdin any real love or support at all, except maybe for a very brief moment in Episode 3 where she can tell he misses Abu before he admits it. Meanwhile she's already been absent on two adventures, tried to get herself captured in another kingdom and leave him forever, and refused to make up with him for not recognizing her when she'd been turned into a rat. Really, Jasmine, how about you actually hold up your end of the relationship and give your man some comfort and reassurance here?!

So the group – Aladdin, Genie, Carpet, Abu, Iago, and thankfully Jasmine, who is thankfully wearing her usual outfit again – end up fighting and defeating another, bigger, mechanical insect that was terrorizing a village a distance away, and once again Aladdin takes credit for the defeat and enjoys all the praise, while Jasmine is annoyed with him. I was really getting tired of Jasmine being nothing but angry with Aladdin throughout this episode, and not even considering how insecure he must be feeling and trying to talk to him about that. I also maintain that the point the episode is trying to make does not work if Aladdin's friends (cough Genie cough) are never presented as having their own lives outside of helping Aladdin. But then, it turns out the problem of the mechanical insects has actually not been dealt with, and the trail eventually leads the six adventurers to Mechanicles, a self-proclaimed “genius Greek inventor” who – as you might have guessed by his clever name – specializes in making machines. He's also obsessed with cleanliness and to-do lists, making him more funny than frightening as he harbours ambitions to take over the world (and usually to clean it, in some way that would prove destructive). I think he actually had “take over the world” on his to-do list, if I recall! I do think there was a missed opportunity here for Iago to make some remark about Mechanicles' ambitions to take over the world and how popular a villain goal that is, since Iago actually does fly over to Mechanicles' to-do list right about then and remarks on it, and Iago did once work for another villain who had the same goals! But soon Aladdin's companions form a very clever plan of messing up Mechanicles' work, and Jasmine redeemed herself in my eyes a little, both by being the one to notice how obsessed with cleanliness Mechanicles is and working that into their plan, and by helping to distract Mechanicles by spilling oil all over his floor. But it should not have taken this long for Jasmine to play an active role in an Aladdin adventure!

In the end, Aladdin risks himself to defeat Mechanicles' giant mechanic bug in a thrilling climax, and the Sultan's knowledge of how these mechanical creatures works comes back again to great effect. Jasmine does finally praise Aladdin once the drama is over, and he's learned that lesson about working together and sharing credit we all knew was coming. Mechanicles gets away, a device I've seen used in Batman comics to make sure the problem is dealt with but the main villain is still free to come back another time. Well, by that point, I was very happy to think Mechanicles would appear again!

7 – The Vapour Chase ***

Abis Mal and his long-suffering assistant Haroud are back, and this time they have a new plan to take all the treasures of Agrabah: using a soot monster called Sootineye (not sure if that's how you spell it, but that was definitely how you pronounce it, Soot-In-Eye!) This monster emerges when you pour a special powder into fire, and then it steals whatever valuables it finds on hand. Abis Mal tricks Jasmine into distributing the powder all over Agrabah, by dressing himself and Haroud as (female) merchants and selling it to her claiming it's a special fuel enhancer that makes fire warmer at night. Jasmine, ever concerned for her subjects, falls right into his trap!

Jasmine may be ever concerned for her subjects on cold nights, but apparently that concern does not extend to her beloved boyfriend-who-should-totally-be-her-husband, and neither does the Sultan's. There is a scene, in this episode, where Aladdin, Abu, and Iago are lying down for the night in Aladdin's old apartment/hovel, shivering, without even proper beds or four proper walls to make their chilly night more comfortable, and that is when Iago decides to use the fuel enhancer and discovers its malicious secret. But why is Aladdin not living in the palace yet? Even if the sequels gave us some explanation I could actually agree with, which I doubt, why wouldn't they make an exception for a bitter cold night and let the guy they expect to be part of their family one day spend the night in the palace which has more than enough room for him?!?!

So of course, once the monster becomes stronger from all that fire, it proves too powerful for Abis Mal to control and Aladdin and his friends have to figure out a way to defeat it. But for me, the most interesting part was not the monster, but how Abis Mal got Jasmine involved in the whole thing. I have always liked plotlines where Jasmine gets tricked by the villain into doing something she wouldn't normally, ever since I read the original Aladdin story where both the Evil Sorcerer and his evil sorcerer brother make plans in which they disguise themselves and trick the princess into helping them with their schemes. Neither of those plotlines ever made it into the Disney movie, so I love to see them come to life wherever they can. I thought the part where Abis Mal tricks her was way too short, actually! BUT – when Jasmine does discover she's been tricked, we're treated to one of my favourite Jasmine moments in the entire series: she attacks Abis Mal. I mean, physically, she goes right at him with the fists and the fingernails. And seems to be winning, too – well, I'm not surprised, fierce Jasmine against weak-willed, short, out-of-shape Abis? You go, Jasmine, you show us the fiery character you really are! Aladdin does suggest someone should stop the fight before Jasmine ends up killing Abis Mal – which I get, Aladdin's a good guy and all, but it just seems an odd (and oddly unsupportive) reaction from him. Abis Mal is his enemy too, and Aladdin can be quite as fiery and impulsive as Jasmine. I almost see him joining in on Jasmine's plan by telling Abis Mal he'd better call off his soot monster if he wants her to stop! I definitely see him being more impressed by Jasmine's nerve than that.

The other part of the story that stood out to me is Aladdin and Jasmine's second fight. Aladdin is suspicious of the fuel's origins, and wants to test it before distributing it to anyone, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. But Jasmine gets angry and accuses Aladdin of being jealous because he didn't discover something as impressive as she did (Aladdin had just been on an adventure with Genie, where they'd discovered an underground water source). And, in context of that one episode, Jasmine's reaction seems unreasonable and comes completely out of nowhere. I mean – her main goal was to help the people, wasn't it, not to discover an amazing idea and get credit for it! That sounds more like a conflict Aladdin would run into, not wanting to admit maybe his idea wasn't a good one because then he'd look bad. I think this was another instance of the show writing Jasmine as your “stereotypical woman” and not as herself: “Hey, women get mad at their lovers for no reason, right?”, which seems to be their thought process every time they have Jasmine get angry. Or maybe they just wanted to add some conflict to the story via a fight and giving Jasmine believable motives was secondary.

But then again – in context of the entire television series, perhaps Jasmine's reaction does make sense. This is the third time, counting this adventure with Genie to discover water, when Aladdin left Jasmine behind to go exploring somewhere without her. This is the third time he's had an opportunity to give her that lifetime of “new horizons to pursue” he promised her during the Magic Carpet Ride, and didn't follow through. Unless all their adventures have been happening offscreen – and it would be terrible writing to not give us any indication of that and just expect us to assume it's there – Jasmine is still waiting for Aladdin to give her the life he promised her on that fateful Carpet Ride. Which once again begs the question: in an isolated context, having Jasmine and Aladdin have one fight each in episodes 4 and 7 is fine. But when you realize we've still had more instances of them fighting or her being mad at him than of the two of them sharing any sort of happy life together...!

8 – Garden of Evil **

This was the first episode I'd heard about before watching it, and my main concerns were 1) it would feel too much like a Beauty and the Beast ripoff, from a studio who already had an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast no less, and 2) it would send a skewed moral message. If only it wouldn't fall into either of those traps, the story had potential to be great. After seeing it, I can't get over how this could have been one of my absolute favourite episodes, how much I love the premise and the setup – but the direction they chose to take it in absolutely ruined it.

The story begins with a backstory sequence for the Sultan, which did not end up feeling as “Beauty and the Beast ripoff” as I had feared. The Sultan ends up in this mysterious flower garden and picks a flower to take to his new bride (giving us some nice context for how long he'd been with Jasmine's mother before Jasmine was born, although I think there was a missed opportunity here to make the flower a jasmine) after which he is attacked by the garden's vicious owner, Arbitus the plant monster. Unlike in the original Beauty and the Beast tale where the same thing happens, the garden was not part of any castle or other building and there was no indication that it was privately owned by anyone, so unlike Beast, Arbitus had no grounds for thinking the Sultan deliberately trespassed and his attack has far less chance of justification. The Sultan, unable to fight Arbitus, promises that if the plant monster frees him he will be richly rewarded, at which point Arbitus agrees to let him go and promises to return to the Sultan in twenty years' time to collect the Sultan's most precious treasure. Yes, I know, so far it does sound awfully Beauty and the Beast, and if you've figured out what the Sultan's “most precious treasure” is, then you know it gets even more so. But at this point, I felt like the story was unique enough to be its own thing – after all, you can just change out the characters and the same plot will unfold completely differently. I was invested, and quite eager to see what direction they would take this in.

I also have to say, I love the character design for the young Sultan. I've tried to draw him younger before, but all I can figure out to change is to make his beard darker, so it's really not that clever or creative at all. This design was excellent – he seemed a little more firm and toned, while still being that adorable round ball of Sultan we know so well, and he carried a scimitar, which you would think would look ridiculous on him but didn't. Now, in the present day, the twenty years have passed and Aladdin volunteers to protect the treasury from Arbitus, with help from all his friends. That part really confused me, because didn't the Sultan have a deal with Arbitus? What does it matter if he comes to the palace and takes one thing from the treasure rooms? The Sultan has no reason to break his end of the deal, not at the moment.... Maybe if Aladdin had offered to meet Arbitus and make sure he didn't do anything but take one treasure, that would have made a lot more sense. Aladdin summons Genie from the lamp (of course), and Genie doesn't have any role in the episode apart from screwing everything up (of course). And Iago was at it again, trying to sneak into the treasury and rob it himself when he should totally just be a prince's parrot by now. The whole thing makes me wonder why Aladdin bothers summoning his friends if they're just going to be more of a hindrance than a help. Given the direction the episode went, I think a smaller core group of just Aladdin and the Sultan, plus Carpet for transportation, would have given more focus and heart to the story, and not cluttered up the running time and emotional impact with needless schemes and screw-ups.

Because soon enough, we discover that the most precious thing to the Sultan isn't anything in his treasure rooms.

It's Jasmine.

They actually have the Sultan be the one to figure this out, which I thought was really nice and not as out-of-character as you'd think it would be. After all, now that the Sultan doesn't have Jafar boring into his mind all the time, and now that he's started questioning things a little bit more, it makes perfect sense that he'd become a bit sharper than he used to be! Not to mention it's just a great portrayal of fatherly love. The scene where he looks in Jasmine's room after she's gone to sleep, and says, “Sleep well, dearest” – it's just the sweetest thing ever, plus I'm happy the show remembered that the Sultan always calls Jasmine “dearest”, and that they tied it into this plotline about how precious she is to him. In the last episode he called her “my dear” and it kind of threw me a little bit! But after that he always called her “dearest”, so I figure “my dear” was just a variant.

The way Arbitus kidnaps Jasmine is at first perfectly thrilling, snaking vines into the palace and through Jasmine's bedroom door where they start to wrap around her, wrapping around her mouth the second she wakes up, before she can scream, while more vines grown all over her door to delay anyone who might try to open it. When the Sultan and Aladdin finally do get into Jasmine's room, though, all that's changed, so now she's in the middle of this weird vine cage/cocoon. I don't know why Arbitus would have taken the extra time to do that, or why he would have untied her at all, when he already had her. I really think tying her up with vines would be a lot quicker and simpler – not to mention a lot more thrilling to watch! It would really say kidnapping more than “evil plant monster”, and the fact that Jasmine's getting kidnapped should be a lot more important right now than what kind of strange creature we're meeting here. She also seems a little too free if she can move around her prison with her limbs and mouth at liberty – there's a whole scene where Aladdin, the Sultan, and the rest are right outside her door, and we hear nothing going on from the inside! Why wasn't she screaming for help at the top of her voice???

Jasmine, by the way, spends the episode dressed in a variant of her normal turquoise outfit – almost exactly the same thing, but in pink. I loved it as an extra outfit for Jasmine – but why was she wearing full daywear, including hairstyle and heavy jewellery, to bed?? Why doesn't she have nightclothes? Why doesn't she at least put her hair down and take her jewellery off???

This episode has a lot of Aladdin slicing through vines with his sword, which surprised me. Arbitus is supposed to be this huge plant lover with a real affinity for all plant life, and before I watched the episode I wondered if Aladdin slicing through vines would alert Arbitus to his presence at some point, possibly causing him to feel pain on the vines' behalf and infuriating him against his plants' assailant. But Arbitus seemed to have no problem sending up countless vines to use as weapons that will be cut down and killed immediately. What, in Arbitus's mind some plants are more worthy of preservation than others?? Doesn't really say much for his motives later on – but we're coming to that.

Aladdin spends the whole episode gripped in a furious desire to protect Jasmine, and doesn't do very much to accomplish this besides whack at vines. Normally I swoon at any protective act from Aladdin towards Jasmine, but this time, I couldn't help but feel – Aladdin is more interesting than this. He's resourceful, he's clever, and he fights just as much with his mind as his muscle, if not more so. If fighting Arbitus head-on didn't seem to be working, he'd figure out another strategy. He'd distract Arbitus long enough to get Jasmine away from him, I bet, or else talk him into destroying himself like he did with Jafar. Watching Aladdin attempt the same thing over and over again and fail, I just felt what makes him such an appealing hero was missing.

Meanwhile, Arbitus has taken Jasmine away to his dark mysterious garden, and Jasmine spends much of her time breaking free of the vines he uses to tie her up (much too loosely, apparently, if Jasmine can get away that easily) and trying to run away before Arbitus catches her again. So far, Arbitus has been an amazing villain. He's tall and imposing with an unsettling, creepy design. He's so calm and polite even as he's kidnapping Jasmine, and is coldly unmoved by her father's pleas to let her go. The way he tries to pretend he was being “courteous” by snatching Jasmine out of her bed in the middle of the night – such a twisted mentality, like, “it's fine so long as you didn't know I was kidnapping you” – it's chilling. He's always on top in any battle: no matter how far Jasmine runs or how many vines Aladdin chops down, he's always there to stop them in their tracks. And the way Arbitus admires Jasmine's beauty while completely ignoring her humanity (he basically wants to make her a living prop in his art project) – he reminded me a lot of Jafar. Even if he only appeared in this one episode, Arbitus could have been one of the scariest and most iconic villains the TV series had ever come up with.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the route they decided to go.

Things really started to bother me when Jasmine sees the “art piece” Arbitus has made in his garden, apparently inspired by her feistiness (it is very objectifying to admire a girl's feistiness while completely ignoring what she is fighting for; Jasmine should have found this very offensive) and suddenly stops being angry with him for holding her prisoner just because it's beautiful. (Or at least she thinks so; it really wasn't all that great.) She seems to think an artist, someone who creates beauty, cannot possibly be evil, and I wanted to yell at her, “Yes! Arbitus is evil! I don't care how good his art is; he's done more than enough to prove he's evil! Run!” But then Jasmine starts talking to Arbitus about his keeping her a prisoner here, and she says to him: “I'm not a thing! I need my f...” and I fully expected her to say freedom. Of course she would, that was Jasmine's whole driving force throughout the entire movie. That's what she was missing from her life when she first left the palace, that's what Aladdin finally showed her on their magical Carpet Ride. That was Jasmine's whole character arc, finally being able to be free and feel safe in her freedom, and once the movie is over, there is no way Princess Jasmine is ever going to let that freedom slip away from her again. But no. Instead Jasmine says, “I need my friends and family”, and sure, I'm obviously not saying those aren't important to her. But they weren't Jasmine's whole driving force! If they had been, Jasmine would not have been as driven to leave the palace at the beginning of the movie – she has her dad, she has Rajah, everything is perfect. Once again, they're giving Jasmine generic “sweet girl” lines when the opportunity to show us more of what makes her Jasmine is right in front of them.

Arbitus starts telling Jasmine he doesn't like the way humans treat plants – namely flowers, which, according to him, they pick and leave in vases to die a slow death. It occurs to me that Arbitus is taking revenge on the Sultan by doing the exact same thing to Jasmine, plucking her from the environment she can thrive in and leaving her to slowly waste away, if not from lack of proper food then simply from loneliness. To me this is despicable, even more so since Arbitus is attempting to justify it. But instead, Jasmine decides – and we're clearly supposed to agree with her – that Arbitus is a sympathetic character who only wanted to protect his flowers, the “same way” the Sultan and Aladdin want to protect her. Um – okay, I'm sure it was real helpful to the flower that Arbitus waited twenty years and then kidnapped a princess in retaliation. You'd think Arbitus could do a lot more for plants and the environment if that was really his concern, considering he's sort of able to grow plant life at will from his fingertips. Instead he keeps all his flowers shut away in his garden, implying he's more possessive of his own property than truly concerned about the plant world at large, and by the way, if he's that concerned about his garden, the entire plot could have been avoided with a fence and a simple “Private Property No Trespassing” sign. But no, I'm sure there's not the slightest bit of difference between the Sultan, who made an innocent mistake and whose only goal here is to rescue someone he loves, and Arbitus, whose entire goal is built on revenge for an accidental offence and is mostly being taken out on someone who wasn't even born at the time. Look, I'm all for a story that suggests maybe plant life is more important and intelligent than we give it credit for – but this story is basically trying to equate picking a flower with kidnapping.

Jasmine tries to talk Arbitus into believing humans do love plants, and even though Arbitus shows no sign of relenting we're supposed to assume she had the right idea and all she had to do was talk it out with the evil plant monster and he'd let her go and everything would be fine. I wonder how good that advice would prove to be if anyone watching the show ever did happen to be kidnapped.... So our rescue party arrives and Aladdin rushes in to save Jasmine, and Arbitus decides Jasmine was tricking him by stalling him until Aladdin showed up (how he thought she could have known he was coming is anyone's guess). And frustratingly, it's presented like Aladdin did mess everything up, like how dare he come to rescue his girlfriend-who-should-totally-be-his-wife when she's in danger, how dare he assume her kidnapper is dangerous. Doesn't he know all he has to do is let her befriend her kidnapper and everything will be just dandy?! This is where I think the episode truly suffered by not being able to let go of the Beauty and the Beast framework, even after the point where it naturally stops working. Beauty and the Beast was a love story, but Jasmine already has a love interest, so there's no longer any need to show our “beast” character as being sympathetic, and the audience won't have the same desire to see him reformed. Jasmine doesn't have the same patient nature as Belle that can wait and trust that a person's better side will emerge, and besides, look at the way she was tied up in a garden vs the way Belle was made comfortable in a castle – it's clear Jasmine was in very real danger and so that wouldn't be a reasonable response anyway. (I've heard it suggested that the original Beauty and the Beast tale was meant to be a metaphor for young women entering arranged marriages and leaving home for their husband's, and after reading the tale I believe it. That means any time you try to follow the Beauty and the Beast framework but make it a real kidnapping, it's going to go wrong somewhere....) Oh, and if Jasmine is Belle and Arbitus is the Beast, who's Aladdin in this episode? Gaston?? That could certainly explain why he's showing none of his usual heroism and cleverness.... I do notice that, once Aladdin comes to rescue Jasmine and is fighting Arbitus with his scimitar, Jasmine is begging for the two of them to stop and just talk things out, as if she honestly sees Aladdin's attempted rescue as just as unreasonable as Gaston's rallying a mob to invade the Beast's home and murder him when he's just sitting there not bothering anyone. Oh, she also heavily implies that she thinks her father was wrong for not realizing Arbitus was so fond of his flowers, and should somehow have known better than to pick one. If I weren't forced to conclude she'd been brainwashed, I'd say she was being completely insufferable.

And in the end, the show ends up contradicting the point it was trying so hard to make anyway, because Aladdin kills Arbitus in battle. Arbitus seemed unkillable, and it was the Sultan who figured out why what Aladdin did worked, which was another nice moment of intelligence they gave him. And to me, Arbitus's end is just more proof that he will never be redeemable, because not even the show makers who wanted him to be sympathetic so badly could think of any way to get Jasmine away from him other than by him dying. If he were truly redeemable, you could end with him having a change of heart and letting Jasmine go. He wouldn't have had to die in order for the story to end well.

The end of this episode, by the way, is where Jasmine says that one line which gets quoted around the Internet and attributed to her without anyone saying where it came from: “Sometimes we only see how different people are. But if you look enough inside, you can see how much we're really all alike”. Sounds like something Jasmine might say on the subject of marrying a street rat, right? Nope, turns out when she says “we're really all alike” she's talking about her family and Arbitus the kidnapper. Funny enough, long before I discovered the source of that quote it always left me with a bad taste in my mouth....

What bothered me most about the whole “he's just like us” angle is that, if you want to give a villain a redemption arc, the one who changes must be the villain. At no point does Arbitus feel sorry for kidnapping Jasmine. At no point does he realize Jasmine is innocent and doesn't deserve this treatment, much less that the Sultan is. At no point does he realize he can't treat humans this way, or do anything to make amends for what he'd done. No, the one who decides she's in the wrong is Jasmine. Arbitus's kidnap victim, who was snatched away from her home and loved ones and had all her autonomy and safety forcibly taken away from her, is telling us that we should ignore wrongdoings from anyone who does us harm. That her kidnapper was innocent and completely justified because he had a motive (of course he had a motive; people don't do things if they don't have any motive). That we should not only “forgive” those who hurt us as in healing our own pain and anger, but act like what they did was entirely reasonable. I personally am convinced Jasmine just had Stockholm Syndrome.

9 – Much Abu About Something ****

This was the final story in that string of great episodes about Aladdin and Abu's friendship, and the strain they've been having since the start of Aladdin's new life. While I missed this dynamic in later episodes, I also appreciate how they did wrap it up, instead of making out like the problem just went on forever, which would have been really sad.

At the beginning of the episode, Abu is getting into trouble with a merchant – the same big, angry apple merchant who tries to chop Jasmine's hand off in the movie – for stealing from his stall. I wonder how anyone can possibly still be allowed to threaten Aladdin's monkey, even if you must insist he and Jasmine aren't married yet and he isn't living at the palace. He's still going to be the Sultan's son-in-law presumably, and you'd think harming the pet of someone important to the Sultan would be an unpardonable offence anyone would think twice before attempting! (Especially when you're already on probation for nearly mutilating the Princess, although I'm not sure if the angry apple merchant ever realized that.) But this is never brought up in the episode; instead, Aladdin comes to rescue Abu just in the nick of time, telling him he has to behave himself because Aladdin may not always be around to save him.

That's our internal conflict, and right after this Aladdin's friend group assembles and we're introduced to our external conflict. Aladdin and co all receive a mysterious vision about a country in danger that needs them, and Genie recognizes the place and offers to take them there. I like how it was Genie who knew about the place, and how they're finally making use of the vast store of knowledge a millennia-old magical being would have. (It doesn't even make sense that someone who's been around as long as Genie could be unintelligent!) I wish I could remember the name of the country; this show always comes up with the best names! Off they fly to save the people, as usual no one thinking to stop for Jasmine along the way. I mean, at this point perhaps Aladdin is just afraid Jasmine will spend the entire trip getting mad at him for no reason, or else that she'll get taken prisoner and decide she wants to stay with her captor forever....

Once they get to the kingdom, which is high up on a mountain, they make a surprising discovery: the people here speak of a chosen one called the Liberator who will free them from a terrifying monster. This monster lives in the valley below the mountain and stops the people from safely leaving, so they're essentially trapped in this one piece of land. Of course Aladdin assumes the Liberator means him – he's already been a hero for a lot of different people, so it makes sense. But according to the people of the mountain, the Liberator is a monkey – Abu is the Chosen One who will free the people from this monster. That was a twist, but I kind of love the idea of Abu being a chosen hero for some group of people!

This is where the internal and external conflicts meet head-on. Aladdin doesn't think Abu will be able to defeat an entire monster by himself, and instead comes up with a plan of his own to defeat the creature (which resembles a Tyrannosaurus Rex), presenting it as Abu's. It's easy for Aladdin to do this since he's the one translating everything Abu says for the people. Aladdin figures it's the perfect solution: they get rid of the monster and free the people, Abu doesn't have to do a task too big and dangerous for him, and Abu gets all the credit. Makes perfect sense for Aladdin, who always does seem to be most interested in appearances and credit! I don't think Aladdin intended to hurt or put down Abu at all. But Abu is hurt. He isn't interested in credit for something he hasn't done. He feels like Aladdin has no faith in him.

So in the thrilling climax, Abu proves himself and saves the day, using his own talents he's always had, and to make it even better, the same sneaky talents Aladdin had just been scolding him about. His friendship with Aladdin is repaired. We get a beautiful Abu and Aladdin hug at the end of this, plus a scene of Iago trying way too hard to act like he didn't care if Abu would make it or not....

10 – My Fair Aladdin *****

This is the third episode I've rated five stars so far, but honestly, if I did a top ten list after finishing all 90 this one would probably still be up there. There were just so many great things going for it. For one, it's a Mechanicles episode, and those almost always end up being some of my all-time favourites. For another, it plays on those same insecurities Aladdin has in the movie, which have not quite faded away yet – you know, the ones where he thinks he has to become somebody else, somebody more impressive, in order to be accepted. We also get to see Aladdin acting very differently from how he normally would, which is turning out to be something I love seeing in stories, and the episode has some of the best Jasmine portrayal I've seen from the TV show yet.

At the beginning, Aladdin is at a royal banquet trying to impress some dignified visitors of the Sultan's, which on its own was a plus for me because it's so rare we get to see Aladdin do anything in his new princely life. But he's not exactly a dignified stately person, so Aladdin ends up making a mess and embarrassing himself. While the Sultan clearly disapproves of his antics, Jasmine thinks they're funny, and I absolutely love her for it, both for how supportive she's being here, and how she's not playing into that old “sensible female pitted against dumb males” trope.

But Aladdin, exactly as I would have expected, has been badly affected. So badly affected that he agrees to take Iago's advice (you know he was affected badly, since Iago always seems to be the bearer of bad advice in this show!) on how to become the most charming member of royal society you ever saw. According to Iago, there are only two main pillars Aladdin needs to focus on. Number one, his hair must always be neat, and I love how that, of all things, is the first pillar because we all know how adorably messy Aladdin's hair is. Throughout the series people are always talking about Aladdin's nice hair, including his enemies! And they are right, Aladdin's hair is gorgeous... ahem.... So according to Iago, Aladdin's hair is messy because he's always running around, so now Aladdin is supposed to send other people to do all his business for him – like an actual royal, perhaps, but again very different from his usual active self. And the second pillar, according to Iago, is that Aladdin can never again use his own words when he talks – he must always use other people's quotes, which will sound more knowledgeable and clever even if no one, including Aladdin himself, knows what these quotes actually mean. (Iago gives Aladdin a handy scroll to choose quotes from, and through cartoon logic, he always seems to be able to pull a fitting quote from the scroll without having to read through it and consider for several minutes.)

There's a really great scene, one of my favourites so far, where we see how badly Aladdin's new persona is affecting his relationship with Jasmine. The first thing Jasmine says when she sees Aladdin's new look is “What happened to your hair?”, and honestly, from the young woman's perspective, I think that was the most believable reaction she could have given. Aladdin's neatly combed hair was not doing it for me either! Jasmine knows Aladdin well enough to figure out what's upsetting him, and she's ready to support Aladdin through that embarrassing incident. This is the first episode where we get an instance of Supportive Jasmine – waaay too late to be seeing this for the first time, but this is obviously how we want Jasmine's end of the relationship to look going forward. She doesn't care how Aladdin behaved at the banquet, she doesn't think it was a big deal, and for the first time we get a sense of her feeling connected to and loving Aladdin. Aladdin is all ready to let himself be vulnerable and pour out his heart to Jasmine and let her support him – but then he can't, because he can't express his actual feelings anymore, he can only talk in weird random quotes. Eventually Jasmine gives up and walks away, saying “I'll come back when you're normal”, and we see just how badly Aladdin's new resolution affects his ability to connect with the person who loves and supports him the most.

But of course, eventually Aladdin has no choice but to start acting more like himself. The first time he gets wind of anything suspicious happening out in the desert, he takes Iago's advice and sends Genie to check it out. He is informed of this problem by that thin guard with the long face, who is characterized as low-key and always expecting the worst, and whom they named Hakim. I'm still wondering if the Genie I know wouldn't have been offended at being sent on some errand like a servant. I also thought Genie was tricked and captured by Mechanicles a little too easily – he really is supposed to be more intelligent than that...! Although I do really like this idea the TV series uses, that you can capture a Genie by getting them inside a bottle. It really fits in with the original Genies in the Arabian Nights, where they're actually a race of beings like people and aren't meant to be trapped in lamps and other objects.

Anyway, Aladdin is sitting at a banquet impressing everyone with Iago's advice, and there's a conversation going on between him and this merchant named Darou where they're basically just quoting lines at each other, and everyone is clapping and looking impressed even though no one can actually understand a word they're saying and the conversation is meaningless. It's absolutely ridiculous, and makes a very good point! The only one not impressed here is Jasmine, who seems to be the only one who can see how absurd this all is. Eventually Jasmine drags Aladdin away from the table to tell him Genie never came back from his errand and they should search for him, and when Aladdin tries to send Carpet to go instead, Jasmine pulls Aladdin onto the Carpet and insists they will all go, with a forcefulness I had missed seeing from her in this series. Finally, Jasmine is actually insisting on coming along for the adventure (she'll have to insist, the way things have been going)!

Aladdin and the gang are captured by Mechanicles, and Aladdin ends up tricking Mechanicles into letting Genie go, in a perfect parallel to how Mechanicles captured him in the first place (but it made a lot more sense from this end!). As Aladdin and co try to stop Mechanicles' plot of turning the entire desert into glass (in order to make it neater), the adventure awakens Aladdin and his real self starts to come back. You can watch his progress back to his real self as his hair starts to get messed up again. There's a beautiful moment near the end where Aladdin holds up his prince cape to shelter Jasmine from falling debris. This is how you bring all of Aladdin's friends along, while making sure his relationship with Jasmine stands out as something special. This is how you write Aladdin adjusting to palace life (well, except that one scene where they show him living in his hovel; that could have so easily been relocated to a palace room). And this is how you write Jasmine, her spunk and her adventurous side, and this is how she should always be treating Aladdin.

And so we end on a good note. Part 3 (Episodes 11-20) coming soon!