Season 32017
This is one episode where the final payoff really makes all the difference. What starts as an amusing look at a town just trying to make it through the holidays without alcohol becomes something better in the climax as Randy and Santa become locked in a high speed chase. For whatever its faults, Season 23 has been pretty great about reminding viewers the show still retains its edge and knows how to keep pushing the boundaries of good taste. It manages that feat once again, as the whole season culminates in a scene with Randy, Santa and Jesus snorting cocaine and deciding to give the entire town the gift of Christmas Snow. That final shot of the Santa Coke billboard may well be the funniest moment of the entire episode.
Season 32017
Still, \u201cChristmas Snow\u201d proves the series still hasn\u2019t quite exhausted the Tegridy well. The series has a long history of great Christmas episodes dating back all the way to the very beginning. And while \u201cChristmas Snow\u201d is no \u201cWoodland Critter Christmas\u201d or \u201cRed Sleigh Down,\u201d it\u2019s an entertaining enough way to wrap up the season. This one sets itself apart mostly by downplaying the kids in favor of the adult characters and their struggle to recover their lost Christmas spirits. It\u2019s basically a chance for every adult character to become Randy Marsh for one week and live the life of a solipsistic degenerate who neglects their children in favor of chasing that elusive high.
"The drop in fires is related to an increased rainy season. Essentially, there was no dry season this year," said William Magnusson, a senior researcher with the biodiversity unit of the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state.
Based on the Archie Comics character, Sabrina Spellman (Melissa Joan Hart) was an average high school teenager who also just happened to be a witch. Juggling not only the pitfalls and disappointments of normal adolescence (which, if you remember, seemed certainly insurmountable), Sabrina also had to learn how to harness and control her witchcraft, a process that frequently backfires with comical results. Luckily, she has the wise counsel of her wacky aunts, Hilda (Caroline Rhea) and Zelda (Beth Broderick), with whom she lives, as well as sidekick/pain in the ass prankster Salem (voice of Nick Bakay), a warlock who has been transformed into a house cat as punishment for trying to take over the world. Sabrina's cute, good-natured but slightly dumb boyfriend Harvey Kinkle (Nate Richert) is frequently the butt of Sabrina's miscast spells. Sabrina's best friend (in this season) is the lovely underachiever Valerie Birckhead (Lindsay Sloane), while her nemeses at school are evil cheerleader Libby Chessler (Jenna Leigh Green) and dorky Vice Principal Willard Kraft (Martin Mull).
In the previous second season, the main story arc was Sabrina's quest to get her witches' license, as well as her indecision in whether or not to date Harvey exclusively. In this third season (1998-1999), Sabrina quickly picks Harvey as her steady (in the season opener), and begins a new central story arc where she must, as every witch must, solve her family secret before she can actually use her newly acquired license. Throughout the season, Sabrina is routinely visited by various far-out relatives who bring her clues to help her solve the puzzle, but it's a race against time, because if Sabrina fails to guess the secret by her appointed time, she loses her powers forever.
This third season of the popular Sabrina, The Teenage Witch seems like a retrench of the series after the divergent second season. I remember my eldest daughter being a huge fan of the show (we never missed it on Friday nights), but her interest began to wane towards the end of the second season, perhaps because the producers decided to turn the show more towards teen soap, rather than special effects fantasy fluff. A critical mistake was initially breaking up Sabrina and Harvey; Hart and Richert had particularly good chemistry, making for a sweet, fun couple that kids loved to see together. Season three largely abandons Sabrina's back-and-forth feelings for Harvey (they both declare their love for each other by season's end), as well as toning down the heavier angst moments that popped up in season two. Season three is much lighter, much crazier in spirit by comparison, with Sabrina's central trouble - finding out the Spellman family secret - not nearly as direly put-forth (the final revelation, quite honestly, wasn't worth the season-long build-up, and may have contributed to the series' falling ratings for its final fourth season on ABC).
But naturally, as with each season of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, the real star - or at least the one who consistently gets the biggest laughs - is Nick Bakay who voices Salem the cat. Laugh for laugh, few characters from any TV show - and I've seen thousands - have consistently cracked me up as much as Bakay's Salem. I don't know if it's the whining, or the evil cackle, or the crest-fallen sobbing when no one bothers to listen to his hilarious rejoinders (Bakay was also a writer and producer on the show), but Salem's shtick never fails to get a big laugh. It's hard to pick a single, representative example from this season (he knocks them out of the park in each and every episode), but a particular scene favorite is from the Pancake Madness episode, where Sabrina, jonesing out because she's addicted to pancakes, frantically tries to choke Salem, who barely manages a strangulated wheeze, "You're pressing on my Adam's apple!" Absolute heaven. Flat out, he's one of the top ten funniest TV characters ever - from any show and any decade. And that's saying something for a silly, funny little tween special effects comedy.
Final Thoughts: I was a little grumpy with my recommendation for the previous season of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. Editing in any form bugs me, particularly a relatively new TV series. But I also hate to downgrade a series that you may find a lot of enjoyment in, just because there's a possibility that editing has occurred. A little sillier this season, and delightfully so, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch: The Third Season gets Harvey and Sabrina back together where they belong, accompanied by plenty of hilarious catcalls by Salem. Bright, happy entertainment. I recommend Sabrina, The Teenage Witch: The Third Season.
The 2017-2018 influenza season was a high severity season with high levels of outpatient clinic and emergency department visits for influenza-like illness (ILI), high influenza-related hospitalization rates, and elevated and geographically widespread influenza activity for an extended period. In 2017, CDC began using new methodology to classify seasonal severity and applied the methodology to the 2003-2004 through 2016-2017 seasons. The 2017-18 season was the first season to be classified as a high severity across all age groups.
During the 2017-2018 season, influenza-like-illness (ILI) activity began to increase in November, reaching an extended period of high activity during January and February nationally, and remained elevated through the end of March. ILI peaked at 7.5%, the highest percentage since the 2009 flu pandemic, which peaked at 7.7%. Influenza-like illness (ILI) was at or above the national baseline for 19 weeks, making the 2017-2018 season one of the longest in recent years.
During the 2017-2018 season, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) was at or above the epidemic threshold for 16 consecutive weeks. During the past five seasons, the average number of weeks this indicator was above threshold was 11 (range of 7 to 15 weeks). Nationally, mortality attributed to P&I exceeded 10.0% for four consecutive weeks, peaking at 10.8% during the week ending January 20, 2018.
As of April 19, 2019, a total of 186 pediatric deaths had been reported to CDC during the 2017-2018 season. This number exceeds the previously highest number of flu-associated deaths in children reported during a regular flu season (171 during the 2012-2013 season). Approximately 80% of these deaths occurred in children who had not received a flu vaccination this season. For the most recent data and more information visit FluView: Influenza-Associated Pediatric Mortality.
Since flu-associated deaths in children became a nationally notifiable condition in 2004, the total number of flu-associated deaths among children during one season has ranged from 37 (during the 2011-2012 season) to 186 (during the 2017-18 season, as of April 19, 2019); this excludes the 2009 pandemic, when 358 pediatric deaths from April 15, 2009 through October 2, 2010 were reported to CDC.
Flu vaccine is produced by private manufacturers, so supply depends on manufacturers. For the 2017-2018 season, manufacturers originally projected they would provide between 151 million and 166 million doses of injectable vaccine for the U.S. market. As of February 23, 2018, manufacturers reported having shipped approximately 155.3 million doses of flu vaccine; a record number of flu vaccine doses distributed. More information about flu vaccine supply is available at Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Supply & Distribution. 041b061a72
