Disney Princesses Dressed as Pop Culture Characters for Halloween by Isaiah Stephens
Previously: Disney Princesses Dressed as Their Princes
Now I want them to form a super hero team and travel the multiverses.
Why people are not careful as Hell after something spooky (like a guy showing up, talking nonsense and then disappearing) is totally beyond me.
“See? I am a street rat.”
Jasmine. Jasmine. You live in a place that thrives on bizarre sometimes too-literal-to-be-safe magic WHY ARE YOU–
Nevermind.
Anyway, Iago quips that if she’s a street rat, then he’s a frilled lizard and you won’t believe what happens next.
AND THEN THE CENOBITES STEPPED THROUGH INTO OUR REALITY AND – nah, they become a rat and a lizard.
I was wondering, since you said that “The Lost Ones” is your favorite Mirage episode (mine too, to be honest)… Are you planning on analyzing that episode in the near future?
It’ll come along eventually. I don’t tend to plan very further ahead than maybe one or two episodes at a time. I might want to do another of her episodes before I get to that one since it’s so late in her timeline.
Thanks! Also am looking forward to “Night of the Living Mud” and “Power to the Parrot.” Those episodes were funny. Anyway, I love how you snark on the Aladdin/Jasmine relationship in the series. That’s what I liked about them: even though it was obvious they were crazy about each other (just look at Jasmine’s reaction to his “death” in “Prophet Motive” and the end of “Eye of Beholder” — Al’s finest moment ever, in my opinion), they could still be immature and petty.
Flawed main characters are fabulous main characters, and as much as I harp on Aladdin I still adore him.
I love your Aladdin liveblogs! Your commentary on the fakeout death in “Prophet Motive” was pretty true, although I don’t remember if Abis Mal landed on his head with his fall or not. I’ll still admit that it was a touching scene. Anyway, can you do “Mission Imp-Impossible”?
I have to do the first Nefir episode before I can get to it, but I’ll put those on my list!
Stealing and OH HI FASIR.
Iago tries to give Jasmine a quick lesson on the finer points but she pretty much just grabs the first item she sees that’s not nailed down.
And then there’s this face when she says she’ll come back and pay for it later:
Jasmine, you have missed the point.
And then Fasir pops up. Airing-wise, this is his first appearance, which we already discussed in “The Prophet Motive.”
“A word of warning to the young and inexperienced: Those who do wrong may find themselves punished by mysterious forces.”
And then he’s just fucking gone. And we like to think that maybe he planned this lesson from the beginning, much in the same way that he pulled all the strings in “The Prophet Motive,” but no. There was a better way for Jasmine to learn Aladdin’s perspective, and she just said she would bring it back and/or pay for it.
Magical karmic whammies are probably better saved for people who deserve them, guy.
Counterproductivity!
Okay, so after that last exchange, Jasmine gives a really good reason for being out there other than just to make Aladdin eat it (though this is invariably part of it).
She and Aladdin will be married, soon, and she needs to better understand this part of his life. Maybe she’s given some thought to how quick she was to wrinkle her nose at the rat, and if Aladdin sees some kinship with it, then maybe she does need to change how she thinks.
Here’s why being in the thieves’ quarter is not going to help her:
Aladdin was not a member of the guild, to my knowledge. He didn’t steal for kicks; he stole because he was grossly impoverished, had no home, no income, no means of feeding or clothing himself otherwise.
He was a slightly more proactive beggar. If she wanted to better understand his life, she would have been better suited taking a vow of poverty and trying to make it on her own on the streets for a few days, all while only taking what she needs to survive because the people selling goods in the marketplace or carrying money are sometimes only one day of bad luck from being in that position, too, a lesson Aladdin learned the hard way in “Seems Like Old Crimes.”
This exchange tickles me a little because I think that while Jasmine has a legitimate grievance, she’s hanging on the wrong thing, here, and I think Iago kind of helps her to see that, because she finally comes down on a really solid reason why she should still be out here.
The Thieves’ Quarter
So Jasmine decided that to prove she can be a street rat, she needs to go to the thieves’ quarter. Of course Iago knows where that is. I kind of love the thieves’ quarter in this show because it is packed wall to wall with scoundrels and apparently Aladdin never associated with these people. I’ll get to why this is counterproductive for Jasmine in a sec. You hear about thieves guilds in things like D&D and Pathfinder, but this show does a good job of illustrating that a concept that looks awesome on paper can look rather silly when held up to the light.
Jasmine’s determination to be a streetrat even if it kills her sounds way too much like a self-fulfilling prophecy to Iago.
And then this guy shows up:
He recognizes Jasmine as a beggar (because he saw the movie obviously) and says they don’t like beggars in the thieves’ quarter. She swears she’s really a thief, and he wants her to prove it. Go steal something then.
JASMINE YOUR FACES IN THIS EPISODE.
The thing is, when she does steal something (rather than run away like Iago suggested), this happens:
The guy welcomes her to the club, says she has a certain amount of time to get a permit and that there’s a small entry fee – but they can waive and/or set up a payment plan if she doesn’t have enough up front.
And then he just leaves.
I like to think that he wouldn’t have hurt her for being a beggar. It’s just not a safe place for beggars to be if they don’t want to get into stealing for a living. If he recognizes her as a beggar, then he probably remembers that one time Farouk almost cut her hand off. Because she took an apple to feed a hungry child.
No, young lady. You are way too soft, and you need to leave before you get hurt.
And then this. I am so deeply amused.
One of my major problems with the Aladdin series is that it seems like Jasmine and Aladdin fight more than they actually show they love each other. In the movie, it seemed that they really liked each other’s point of view but in the TV show it seems like they’re always fighting and then make up for end-of-the-episode moment. :/
I’m not necessarily certain I agree, but I guess I can see why it looks like that. I’ve covered a few episodes recently where they start off fighting, but that’s the thing: they’re not perfect. They are going to have conflicting ideas. Even when they disagree and make each other mad they still love each other. Sometimes an episode will briefly focus on that, as well. In “Elemental My Dear Jasmine” Aladdin entertains the notion that because Jasmine is angry at him, she might decide to stop loving him, which can’t be further from the truth. “We may have our disagreements, but nothing can come between us,” she says to Saleen.
The DVD Fairy 