Who is your pick for all-time best all-around TV witch?
With all due respect for the Halliwell sisters and Willow Rosenberg, and acknowledging the great gulf between comedy and drama, I have to show my age and go old school: in my view, the all-time best TV witch is Samantha Stevens.
I agree totally. Endora was right, btw-Sam should have dumped Durwood.
I’m going to go out on a limb with a prediction…Jessica Lange is going to be a hell of a witch when American Horror Story: Coven begins.
But Serena was awful! It was like Montgomery had no idea what hip, young people were like, though she was young and living in LA in the late '60s, ferchrissake.
I think it’s a rule that in any dual-role good-evil combinations, the evil one has to be really badly acted. See also: the dark-haired evil Jeannie.
She wasn’t awful. She was just directed that way.
Young and living in L.A., yes, but married to a man twelve years her senior, and so perhaps not getting the full “young and in L.A.” experience.
An utter tragedy, it being the '60s.
The 70s incarnation of Sabrina The Teenaged Witch.
But I was so drawn to her.
To me, the best is the most powerful, and Samantha seems pretty high up there. Sure, her mother may have had more magical power due to being older, but Samantha was queen of the witches for a while, and she seemed to be able to do all the stuff Endora had done by the end of the series.
I really can’t think of any other witch series that comes close. I love the Halliwell sisters, but, for being the most powerful witches ever, they were awfully weak. And, as the drug-like nature of Willow’s powers mean she has to be too careful to be too powerful–though, granted, I haven’t seen the entire Buffy series yet, and am just going by what I’ve read.
I don’t believe either version of Sabrina was all that powerful, and Teen Witch gave up her powers at the end, and needed a huge boost just to become popular–plus water could wash away stuff she created. And both Wicked Witches were defeated by a little girl. The witches in W.I.T.C.H. are more like superheroines than having any real cosmic powers.
Jeannie is more powerful, but she’s not a witch. And those are all the candidates I can think of. Being a comedy, Samantha’s powers didn’t need to be limited so much for the sake of drama, especially since she was disinclined to use them, and I think that’s what makes her more powerful.
Gotta be Witchiepoo.
(That’s Billie Hayes as Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo on the Saturday morning show H.R. Pufnstuf.)
What a range! She could be exuberant and powerful or sad and impotent.
Samantha Stevens certainly had me bewitched and I was only eight years old.
Gotta go with Willow Rosenburg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
I’m an Endora fan.
I go with Nancy Grace.
No, just kidding. My vote is for Paige Matthews, the most bonerific witch of all time. Because, she’s like, Rose McFuckin’Gowan already!
80s Tabitha featuring Lisa Hartman.
Count me in as a member of Samantha’a Club.
You’re all wrong. The best television witch is clearly Witch Hazel, the witch from those Looney Tunes cartoons.
Not a bad choice, from an eye-candy point of view. In that vein, may I also nominate Joanna (Lindsay Price) from the short-lived Eastwick.
