They’ve put together a fake set, with apparently a fake dragon (I assume), so that Aladdin can kill something and rescue a Princess.
Apparently the only things that aren’t fake are the chains they use to bind Sadira. (Who realistically suspects this is a bad idea.)
Which tells me that this is going to go horribly wrong somehow.
And they’re facing up against this:
…There are a couple jokes about “spooning” that no kid would probably understand and are probably not intended the way I’m hearing them. But silly or not, Jasmine and Sadira have to come to the rescue.
Sadira tells Jasmine to get Abu (who’s being dragged off) while she save’s Aladdin and leaps into action.
Jasmine tries to object, because shouldn’t it be the other way around, but Sadira doesn’t give her time to argue.
When all is wrapped up, of course Sadira wastes no time trying to get close to Aladdin again. While he compliments her fighting skills, he cannot repay her the way she wants (with a kiss) because his heart belongs to another.
God he’s so silly in this.
But yeah. Apparently because she’s not dressed like a princess he doesn’t recognize her.
No. Aladdin.
Aladdin.
You’re the dragon slayer.
Try and keep up.
She deflects the blame for all of this by basically arguing that if they’d just LET her steal Aladdin away into her fantasy world, everything would be fine. It’s not the usual delivery for a Disney villain, either. She’s not saying that in a mocking tone, using blame as a tool of emotional manipulation (and you’d think she could, considering how she got Aladdin here in the first place). She is just being a childish little jerk who refuses to admit she was doing something she shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.
Okay, until this point:
Jasmine point blank states “You were stealing my fiance,” and she shoots back with a facetious “And your point is?” And that’s not a Disney villain delivery; that’s a Regina George delivery. I’m not hearing remorseless bad guy, here; I’m hearing “brat who just wants you to shut up and stop yelling at her.”
And again with the kiss. This is what will break the spell.
What gets me is that this is almost too horrid a notion for Jasmine to consider, and Sadira on the other hand sees it as the be all, end all of “getting” Aladdin. It’s always with the kissing. Didn’t you do enough of that in the last episode?
But of course Aladdin and Abu have pissed off, so whatever the case, they’ll have to fight about this later.
One more thing before I move on to the next part of the story: Sadira reasons Jasmine into accepting the kiss has to happen by saying “He’s no use to either of us when he’s like this.” And I think this sums up what’s wrong with how Sadira sees Aladdin.
The fact that he’s something to be “of use,” in her eyes.
And God this episode was poorly animated. Anyway, here’s my problem. Jasmine being angry? Understandable. Like Aladdin, she doesn’t remember Sandswitch, but what’s getting to me is that she was actually fairly nice and understanding, even forgiving toward Sadira at the end of her first appearance. In fact, I pointedly noted that this took place after Elemental, My Dear Jasmine, so she’s already learned about jealousy and doesn’t doubt Aladdin so much anymore.
Only she kind of did in coming here. Now, she’s obviously not wrong about Sadira in this case. She used magic to try and steal Aladdin again, and now he’s stuck not recognizing either of them.
What’s more, the only way to fix it is for Sadira to kiss him, so they have to work together.
My problem here is that Jasmine’s reaction is over-exaggerated and (like the rest of this episode) lacking severely in continuity and character development. All of the things she could be saying:
“I gave you the benefit of a doubt, you know.”
“I thought you would have learned your lesson about magic after the gollum tried to kill you.”
“You are treating Aladdin like an object and if you respected him at all you wouldn’t be trying to make him do something he doesn’t want to do.”
But instead, we get a lot of incoherent scoffing.
This really ticks me off. We know there’s more to her than that.
As Jasmine tries to wrangle Sadira, she tells Genie to close the portal.
And then this happens:
“But…you know how dangerous it is to mix magics!”
He’s right, Jasmine! You totally know this! We know this. It’s not like this has NEVER BEEN MENTIONED BEFORE EVER.
Oh wait, it’s totally like that.
This has never been mentioned before. You just invented that on the spot as an additional plot contrivance. We’re not going to spend an episode in a fantasy land Sadira’s mind created, perhaps even exploring her psyche in a new and interesting way while trying to find and bring Aladdin to his senses. Which would have been brilliant.
No, instead we’re going to say mixing magics = bad, so that when the spell is broken, it’s only mostly broken. Because now Abu’s a donkey, and Aladdin’s drunk.
And he still thinks he’s the dragon slayer.
No, I’m sure this will be way more satisfying than what I previously described. I’m sure I won’t die of secondhand embarrassment while I watch Aladdin bounce around the desert thinking he’s a knight from a fairytale that won’t be written for another 500-600 years.
Apparently either Aladdin has been dense this whole time or Sadira managed to not be a creep for the entirety of his visit (and my money’s not on that), because he doesn’t feel compelled to tell her, again, point blank, that he’s engaged until the very moment she decides to put him under a spell.
Before this moment, she shows him a magical portal to a land made up of her fantasies. Her fantasy involves him as a dragon slayer who will rescue her, a princess, from an evil dragon.
Once again, Sadira’s entire conception of a relationship with Aladdin is based around a fake version of him – this one somehow more clueless and ignorant than the last. This doesn’t surprise me, because it’s not like Sadira actually learned why her last enchantment was so fucked up and wrong. She just knew it failed.
So she makes him think he’s the dragon slayer.
And man…he thinks he’s the dragon slayer.
No screencap can accurately capture just how silly he looks and sounds, but it’s going to get worse.
She adorns him with armor, arms him with a sword and a helmet, turns Abu into a horse, herself into a princess, and just before Jasmine shows up to beat her ass, she makes ready to escape into her world to play out her fantasy for real.
I’m distracted by the fact that her fantasies include very European styles of … everything. European styles of everything that won’t exist for another several centuries.
Maybe one or two of the spells she found gave her glimpses into future places. I don’t know.
While Jasmine and Genie are apparently making a huge mess, Iago comes flying in mumbling about how ignorant Aladdin is being and how obvious it is that Sadira’s after more than pomegranate juice.
And he mentions her so pointedly. Like he knows this would piss Jasmine off and he kind of wants it to. Because an angry Jasmine should get there in time to drag Aladdin’s ass home.
Jasmine responds accordingly.
Talk, bird.
Sadira uses some sleight of hand to show her hands are empty and even though Aladdin should know that trick, he barks at Farouk until he gets frustrated and leaves.
Of course Sadira’s grateful for the help, and she tries to “thank” Aladdin by pouncing on him and trying to kiss him.
He’s not for it but is very… I don’t know. Less direct than he ever has been. “I don’t think Princess Jasmine would be very happy if I accepted another girl’s…um…thanks.”
Well, he’s being clear. Besides that, he was clear when they first met. But I kind of don’t like that his way of dodging this is to make it almost like it’s because Jasmine would kill him and not because he’s not interested in seeing other women.
It’s out of his hands! Jasmine would say no! Why is this bad?
Because of course this gives Sadira an opening to bait him for being whipped, which he falls for, hook line and sinker.
Sadira remarks that Jasmine must keep him on a short leash and that she probably wouldn’t like it if he came by her place for a glass of juice and just a little talking.
And of course Aladdin becomes indignant and insists Jasmine doesn’t tell him what to do.
He also makes this face.
Even Iago knows exactly what she’s doing. Of course he doesn’t seem to be going out of his way to tell Aladdin that this could be a trap, even though he and Abu both know what she did in her previous episode.
Okay no. Phew. He actually does try to tell Aladdin. But Sadira’s got him so messed, he doesn’t know which way is up. Because Aladdin is – not bright sometimes. “I’m not being manipulated. I’m doing what I don’t want to not do, not what Jasmine wants me to not want to do!”
And off he goes to let her take his arm and lead him back to her place. “I so admire a man who knows his own mind.” And damn Sadira. I want to know where she picked this tactic up because that’s some Mean Girls level shit right there that she certainly wouldn’t have thought to use in her first episode. Was that covered in the scrolls, too?
To quote Iago just now, “That Sadira is as shifty as a two-legged table.”
She apparently took a ladle from Farouk. Because…on top of fruits he apparently also sells kitchen utensils. (Or he was selling…I dunno, cider to customers?)
Now, what I think is that Sadira is trying to learn some slightly more domestic things now that she actually has a home. Like cook. (We will see the results of this in her next and final appearance.) I imagine she got the idea to go and pick up some food in the marketplace, saw the ladle and thought “I could need one of those!” and just picked it up without even really thinking about it or whether it was a big deal.
Force of habit.
I can even imagine she just picked it up to look at it and Farouk, knowing her face by now, thought she was taking it, so she panicked and did take it. She appears to be trying to stop stealing, or at least is pretending. “I am heir to the ancient secrets of the sand. I don’t steal anymore.”
The DVD Fairy 