Hope

They try too hard to make everything make sense. It's like they had 3 different stories/plots and tried really really hard to find ways to connect them to a single story. It honestly would've been better if they cut some parts out completely to make room for character development, especially when we meet more characters later on. The troll mask could've been completely cut out and they still would've been able to find a way for that girl character (I forgot her name) to start getting along with the rest of the cast. It became apparent they were just trying to make things make sense when they were trapped in the sketchbook at the Biddle house. The sketchbook is Harold's mind, sure, but all that empty space behind closed doors is like the void they are trying to fill throughout the show. The dialogue sucks, once again a bunch of old people pretending they know how young people talk. The dialogue & their personal issues make them seem one-dimensional. It's really bad when James is greeting people at the Halloween party. And once Isaiah breaks up with Allison she just disappears and is never seen or heard from again even though she had so much potential. Throughout the second half of the season I kept wondering why nobody ever mentions her except James saying she has no personality which just sounds like the writers just writing off a character to focus on something more exciting to them. And of course the bad guy is a super old ghost/demon who knows spells from an ancient language. How convenient that there's a spell to reverse everything, too. And the reasons they all have for using the ancient spells are incredibly selfish. Margot's character should know to not use the spellbook the way she used it at the end. Everyone is just dumber than they should be in this show, to put it simply. Yes, I know they're teenagers, but teenagers can make smart decisions. And it's nice that they don't want any of the cast to die, but if that's the case, they shouldn't have even included that cringe "back to hell" scene with the soldiers. That soldier guy is weirdly invested in what a group of teenagers think. We get they're main characters but it's dumb for the villain to seek validation from anyone, including his "friend" that he wasn't even friends with?? The guy literally just made puppets and he favored him because of it?? I don't know how easy it is to follow along with this review. I just binged the whole series and even though I was consistently disappointed/annoyed I kept watching anyways. It really does feel like the whole show was written by Mr. Bratt. I'm giving it 3 stars because it's a kid's show. I wish they didn't try so hard to explain things that didn't make sense anyways and just left it to the mystery/imagination, like the original book series. Nowadays they just sell us a show with the franchise's name & Slappy's likeness plastered onto it & hope we don't notice that it's not living up to what it was before.