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CHARMED |
Piper Halliwell – Holly Marie Combs Phoebe Halliwell – Alyssa Milano Paige Matthews – Rose McGowan Leo Wyatt – Brian Krause Billie – Kaley Cuoco 
OTHER CHARMED SEASONS Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 Season 6 Season 7 OTHER WITCH SHOWS Buffy The Vampire Slayer Eastwick Hex Switch 
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Still Charmed And KickingThe sisters are laying low, trying to take on new lives under their new identities as their own cousins. A smart demon, however, isn't so sure that the Charmed Ones are dead. There's also a new witch in town fighting the good fight. When trying to create a new life under new identities, it probably isn't best to live in the same house doing the same things and hoping that nobody will guess it's you because you have a new face. That it takes a smarter than average demon to work it out is less than believable.. This is the first episode of the new season, possibly a season that might not have been, and the fallout has to be dealt with, but that fallout is so close to what has gone before that it's barely noticeable. Only the addition of Kaley Cuoco as a witch who wants to play superhero is anything original. TopMalice In WonderlandDemons are messing up young people by sending them through a series of Alice In Wonderland inspired hallucinations. Billie, the superhero witch is on their tail and Paige is not far behind. The sisters are struggling with the consequences of giving up their lives of saving the world. Now people are getting hurt and they are doing nothing. Paige, at least, has a new charge as a whitelighter and so has to get involved, but the others are struggling with trying to lead new lives. This episode plays with a SEX AND THE CITY style voice over from Phoebe and just to make sure that the hard of thinking get the reference the cast show us the video cover. The home life stuff is dull and the demon plot isn't exactly riveting. The actual hallucination scene doesn't live up to the effect it is supposed to be having on the youngsters. It seems that Kaley Cuoco's Billie is going to be a regular, which might freshen things up because they really need freshening.. TopRun, Piper, RunPiper's new face turns out to belong to a woman wanted for murder, so the family have to find the real woman before Piper pays the price. Apparently you can be locked up for just looking like someone. Then again, Piper picking the face of a murder suspect is so stupid as to deserve a spell in prison. Then again the coincidences that pile up through this nonsense plot make the whole thing ludicrous, so it doesn't matter. TopDesperate HousewitchesPiper finds coping with Wyatt's school situation stressful in the face of the other mothers and unable to use magic. The main cause of stress, however, is a demon who plans to use Wyatt to raise the Source. The show concentrates on the trivialities of life (pushy parents, boyfriends seen with other women etc), but builds up to a plot that is really quite epic, which makes the takedown at the end all the more anticlimatic and disappointing despite making perfect sense. TopRewitchedBillie goes after a demon with the ability to summon imps, but the Homeland security man left behind spots her using her power. She also casts a spell to make Phoebe happy which misfires catastrophically. You are who you are and pretending to be someone else will never make you happy. That's the story here and it's a particularly dull one. Phoebe is possessed and acts wildly in a plot twist that has been used before and too often. The demon plotline is boring and the imps are poorly realised. The only upside to all of this is that the sisters get their old identities back. TopKill Billie: Vol 1Billie finds herself assailed with suppressed memory flashbacks of a demon attack from her childhood that she will have to face if she is to defeat the latest demon. OK, so Billie's sister was kidnapped by a demon and she forgot all about it until now? Shock induced trauma amnesia or just sloppy scripting? Hard to decide really. The subplots regarding overinquisitive reporters and Phoebe's pregnancy (or is she?) are tedious and almost makes you want the sisters to go back into hiding. TopThe Lost Picture ShowPhoebe's estranged father returns asking for her help to find a charge who has come back from nowhere after fifty years and Piper and Leo get body swapped to deal with their marriage issues. Relationship issues are the order of the day in this dull episode. The bodyswap of Piper and Leo has a strong sense of deja vu and fails to go anywhere anyway. It's just sort of there. Phoebe's issues with her father are also pretty tedious. Only the part about the man out of his own time has any interest or life in it, even if it has been done before, since and better. TopBattle Of The HexesA mystical belt gives Billie huge powers to right wrongs committed against women. Unfortunately, it's also going to send her mad and kill all the men. Though it pretends to have something to say at its heart about sexism and the treatment of women, the plotting is so shallow that it fails miserably to have anything to say about anything very much, except perhaps that if you dress as Kaley Cuoco is forced to then you're going to get laughed at. TopHulkus PocusDemons are turning into some much more powerful before burning up. Now Billie has contracted the same sickness and the only way to save her is for the sisters to willingly infect themselves. Having set up an almost interesting turn of events with the human government creating a deadly threat by experimenting on demons, this episode doesn't know what to do with it, rushing through the plot and coming up with a finale that is the very definition of anticlimactic. Even seeing the trio in 'hulked out' costume isn't enough to make this more than moderately diverting. TopVaya Con LeosThe Angel of Death warns Piper that it is time for Leo to die. She is not about to let that happen, but can she possibly avoid it? The sisters have faced many, many threats throughout the show, but the one that they have never been able to conquer is the one of death. Though Piper is using all of her wits and contacts and powers to prevent Leo from meeting his fate, the episode is shot through with a sense of foreboding and inevitability that makes it an impressive departure from the norm. Though it starts off with the light touch of Piper making every man look like Leo, the sense that he is going to have to die lies over everything and as time passes the idea that there is a way out of this for the married couple grows ever more unlikely. If more of the show had been like this then CHARMED would have been formidable indeed. TopMr & Mrs WitchBillie's parents come to town and are suddenly transformed into heartless assassins who are then caught up in a demon's plan to take over a major corporation. This is an untidy mish mash of ideas that sees Billie suddenly able to transform things simply by saying so, just because the plot needs her to in order to transform her parents. Once transformed, these should have been fun characters to be around, but since we have never met them before this episode (they have, in fact, barely been mentioned before) the change that has come over them means nothing. The same can also be said of the demon brother and the demon nanny who has been grooming him. Ultimately disappointing, this had some nice ideas, but failed to marshal them into a coherent storyline. TopPayback's A WitchPaige and Billie get caught up in a bank seige that develops dangerously supernatural overtones whilst Piper and Phoebe deal with Wyatt's third birthday party and some suprise guests. Criminal seiges have a built-in tension factor, but this one seems to have missed out on this fact utterly. The fairly blunt and obvious Wyatt subplot only detracts from the grown-up storyline and leeches away any sense of reality and danger. Making the bank robber an veteran of the Iraq war is a surprisingly political move for a show as fluffy as this one, making some points about the way that returning soldiers are treated. These, though, are submerged under the usual CHARMED shenanigans. TopRepo ManorA demon tries to save his race from slavery by turning three female demons into alternate Charmed Ones who can harness the Power of Three, imprisoning the sisters inside a doll's house. Recycling old ideas is what this season has been all about, but this episode goes overboard with the whole shrinking business, the whole doll's house business and the whole doppelganger thing all happening in the one episode. If rehashing and reheating (though only to lukewarm temperature) old storylines is the best that can be managed then perhaps it is time for the sisters to put away the magic book for good. Top12 Angry ZenBuddha's staff comes under the protection of the sisters with consequences arising from its ability to influence those around whoever is holding it. Meanwhile, Billie moves closer to finding her sister. Finally there is some movement in the season plot arc involving Billie and her sister as Billie learns to channel her power and visit the past. This is your actual time travel into Christy's past as Billie comes back to the present with an artefact despite being told at every turn that she is simply 'seeing' past events. Still, plot confusions like that never stopped the show before. The story of the staff introduces an eastern influence that is pleasing, but the story then does nothing with it other than some KARATE KID 'look inside yourself' and 'control comes from within' mumbo jumbo platitudes, which is a shame. TopThe Last Temptation Of ChristyBillie has her sister back. The big bad demons who kidnapped her are revealed to be the Triad, whom Cole was supposed to have destroyed. An exiled member of the clan attempts to get the sisters to destroy the Triad for him. With an episode title like that, the big twist in the season's plot arc comes as a surprise to nobody. The fact that nobody in the show even suspects it is something of a surprise and serves only to make the characters look even more stupid. All the politicking by the various demons doesn't add very much to what is really a straightforward story. TopEngaged and ConfusedThe Charmed Ones have to face off against the Triad and may well not come back alive. This causes Paige to take an important decision. The final piece of the puzzle surrounding the season plot arc is revealed and really ought to come as a shock to nobody. Considering that the sisters have been up against virtually unwinnable situations before there is a sesne that this is being rushed into, ignoring the potential sense of foreboding and doom that really could have been made something of. The reason for that, though, is because this episode is about something else altogether. This is about love and relationships and commitment. In short, it's about getting married. And if anyone can't see the significance of the arrival of a cupid into Phoebe's life then they're really not watching the show. TopGeneration HexBillie manages to get Christy to meet their parents, with fairly disastrous consequences. Piper, meanwhile, overcompensates when some of Leo's students come to her for help. The outcome of this episode is predictable from an early stage and manages to be less than overwhelming as a result. The fallout is likely to be more significant, but the emotional punch ought to have been greater. The subplot about students and supposedly unvanquishable demons is a set up for a single scene and that also proves to be underwhelming. TopThe Torn IdentityPiper prevents Christy from avenging her parents because she needs information to get Leo back. Christy uses this as a wedge to drive between Billie and the sisters. It's good to talk, but the one thing that nobody does in this episode is just that. A single decent conversation and the mountain that Christy sculpts out of this particular molehill would have been kicked over and harmony would have reigned once more. Of course then we would have had no plot. In order for this to work, Piper has to change her personality almost completely just because the plot demands it. The Cyrano De Bergerac rip-off subplot is, quite frankly, intelligence insulting. TopThe Jung And The RestlessIn order to further convince Billie of how far from the righteous path the sisters have strayed, Christy places her into their dreams. How thick is Billie? According to this episode, she could give a pig farm's effluent supply a run for its money because she sees firsthand that the sisters dream of having a life outside of the constant round of demon-slaying, something that she has known since about episode three of the season. This, though, she apparently finds shocking and completely fails to see through her sister's obvious subterfuge and manipulation. On this evidence she might as well give up any hope of gaining a college degree and ought to hand back every qualification she ever got, including her 25m swimming certificate, because she must have got someone else to sit the exams for her. At least it means that we are one step closer to the end of the plot arc that has become quite tedious despite having only really picked up speed a few weeks ago. TopGone With The WitchesThe sisters enlist the aid of the wider magical community to find out who is manipulating Billie and Christy, which puts their friends in the firing line. Wow! If we thought that Billie was both stupid and disloyal in the last episodes then she could take lessons from the leprechauns and other magical dumbos that appear in this one. A single spell and demon attack is all that it takes to overcome the goodwill that eight years of saving the world ought to have built up for the Halliwell sisters. With friends like these... And to use such old ideas as using the sisters' secret desires against them shows just how devoid of invention the show has become. Tarting it up by making it Billie that does it doesn't make any difference. And hust how is it possible that the sisters can be so easily hit by malign spells from a safe distance whilst in the supposed safety of the Manor anyway? Have they learned nothing in eight years? This is sloppy and lazy plotting just when things should be getting tense and exciting. TopKill Billie Part 2The Halliwells are on the run in the Underworld with Billie and Christy in charge of the Manor. The only option left to the Charmed Ones is to harness and unstoppable power, but which side will get there first? Another old idea is dragged out of the back catalogue to bring about the big final confrontation. For once, thoguh, it serves as part of a lean and tight plot that holds together as both sides scheme to reach the same destination. The climactic battle is a bit on the short side, but does result in a spectacular bang with a very surprising outcome. This, though, is the penultimate episode and there is still time to put it all right. TopForever CharmedPhoebe and Paige are dead and so is Christy. Piper finds a way to go back in time and gather generations of Halliwells together to put things right. Billie, meanwhile finds her own way back to stop the death of her sister. The show presses its biggest reset button ever. There was never any doubt that this last ever episode of CHARMED would have a happy ending, but it comes up with a plot that brings together so many previously important characters that sentimentality can't help but overwhelm the whole thing. There is never any doubt as to what the final outcome will be, nor how it will come about, but there is a good deal of fun to be had from seeing characters past, present and future desperately trying not to mess up the timelines more than is absolutely necessary. So, after eight years and at least one season too many, CHARMED comes to an end with the biggest group hug that a show has ever put together (we mean literally) and everyone rides off into the sunset happy and contented. Was there ever any doubt? Top |
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