Spoilers CHARMED (2018) Season 1 Review Thread

[Christopher]

Anyone else watch this? It's promising -- a bit goofy, but not half as goofy as the original show was. And people who think Supergirl is too heavy-handed in its politics probably won't like this either. It's pretty unsubtle in its feminism, to the point of caricature, but then, these are unsubtle times. The idea that the election of our "current president" is the first sign of the Apocalypse is easily the most plausible thing in the episode.

Speaking of which, one thing that does bother me is that these three independent Latina sisters need to have a white Englishman show up and mansplain all the witchy, female, Power-of-Three stuff to them -- and it doesn't help that he's literally called a Whitelighter. But then, the ending hinted that he may not be trustworthy after all. (Didn't the original series delay the reveal of Leo's Whitelighter nature until later in the season?)

I really like Madeleine Mantock, and I like it that her character is a scientist. I cheered at her line that she wanted to "figure out this whole 'magic' thing on a molecular level and win a freaking Nobel Prize!" Too much fantasy fiction treats science as a rigid, self-deluding dogma that can't admit the reality of magic, but the whole job of science is to expand to encompass new ideas, and most of modern physics is based on stuff that would've seemed impossible or unnatural a century or two ago, like relativity and quantum physics. So I like stories that treat magic as just one more facet of the universe to be learned about and harnessed by science, like Ghostbusters. If this show sticks with that, it could be fun.

As for the other two sisters, they're okay, but the actors look too much alike. I mean, that's great for having them play sisters, but not so great for my ability to keep track of which one was which, since it takes me a while to learn new faces. It might've helped if one of them had shorter hair or wore it tied back or something. Still, I had them pretty much sorted out by the end of the episode.

 

[DigificWriter]

I watched it. Here's my (crossposted) review:

I was aware of the original Charmed but never watched it, and so the reboot is my first true foray into the world of the Charmed Ones, and my impressions of the Pilot are therefore shaped by that fact.

As an introduction to the basic mythology that Brad Kern, Constance M. Burge, and Aaron Spelling originally crafted and brought to life, the episode works quite well, although packing encounters with three different demons into a single episode means there's not much room for the audience to absorb everything that's being thrown at them.

Having said that, the portrayals of Macy, Mel, and Maggie ultimately make up for any feelings of things being rushed, particularly during the middle of the episode and in the denouement.

I mention the denouement here because, despite liking the character interactions between Macy, Mel, and Maggie, it's my one main complaint besides the amount of story that the episode covered: trying to entice the audience to return with a "oooh scary!" cliffhanger implication that M3 (my nickname for the trio) can't or shouldn't trust Harry felt a little bit cheap and undermining, but I like the mythos they're setting up and the interpersonal relationships between M3 enough that I'm going to tune in next week anyway.

Okay, rant over. Back to more positive things, like M3 as individuals. My favorite of the trio, especially as the episode progressed, was Macy, largely because of her telekinesis powers and sciencemindedness, although I honestly like all three. I do want to know more about Mel and Niko's relationship and am hoping it gets explored, and am hoping that Maggie is going to be less "flighty" going forward, though.

Despite my issues with the amount of ground that the episode covered and the premise of the denouement, there was enough about the episode and the general concept of the show to make me come back week-to-week.

 

[LJones41]

I have to admit that my viewing of the 1998-2006 series was at best . . . mixed. I had a difficult time sticking with the show during its first seven to eight episodes of Season 1. All of Season 2 was difficult for me, along with Seasons 5 to 8 (which I watched sporadically). Actually, I finally gave up on the show around early Season 7.

Despite its shaky premiere, I hope that this new show develop a lot better than the original series. But my instincts tell me that won't happen.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

I really enjoyed it. A lot more than I thought I would.

 

[Kelthaz]

My expectations were quite low after watching the terrible trailer, but I actually enjoyed that episode quite a bit. The sisters were fun and had great chemistry together. The plot itself was poor and the episode was extremely rushed, but that's standard fare for a pilot as the focus is on introducing the setting and characters. I'm excited to see more next week.

And I completely agree with Christopher. "figure out this whole 'magic' thing on a molecular level and win a freaking Nobel Prize!" is the best line in the whole episode. I'm not expecting Charmed to go all Brandon Sanderson and explain every aspect of their magic system, but a scientist on the team who wants to study magic rather than just accept it is a fantastic idea.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not expecting Charmed to go all Brandon Sanderson and explain every aspect of their magic system, but a scientist on the team who wants to study magic rather than just accept it is a fantastic idea.

Yep. What a lot of fiction writers don't understand about science is that it's not a fixed set of facts and formulas, it's a process for figuring out new things and solving problems. Magic doesn't have to be rationalized in terms of known science to be approached scientifically, as in studying the rules and thinking rationally and creatively about how to apply them. There are elements of this in the fantasy fiction of Larry Niven and Diane Duane, Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, etc. If Macy brings a scientist's skills for rational observation, deduction, and problem-solving to the field of witchcraft, it could be a real asset to the Charmed Ones, helping them figure out ways to vanquish demons. (I didn't notice, are they still calling it "vanquishing" in this version? The original show was oddly devoted to using that word.)

 

[Aragorn]

Here's a review comparing the pilot from the original to the remake's pilot. Says the original had more agency and character identity and was actually more progressive than the remake without having to chest-thump about it.

 

[Christopher]

Here's a review comparing the pilot from the original to the remake's pilot. Says the original had more agency and character identity and was actually more progressive than the remake without having to chest-thump about it.

That's a really good point. I did have that problem with the Harry character, as I said, but the article spells it out much better, and the comparison to the original pilot really underlines it.

 

[Kelthaz]

The second episode was fairly meh. I was hoping that several of the weaknesses of the pilot was due to the fact that as the first episode it needed to rush through the plot and characterization to establish the setting. Unfortunately the second episode suffered from the same weak writing and a mediocre plot. The three sisters are fine, but they need some better material to work with. I'm not sure how much longer I'll stick with the show if it doesn't improve soon.

 

[Christopher]

I'm still disturbed that this supposedly feminist reboot is only paying lip service to one sister's militant feminism while still having the female leads dependent on a male authority figure to tell them how to use their own gifts. I also can't believe they went with a gag as cliched and obvious as mixing up two nearly identical thermoses. Macy's a scientist, so she should have had the basic powers of observation to let her avoid that mixup.

Also, "The only way out is together" isn't even a riddle, just an outright instruction, and yet the sisters still struggled to figure it out.

 

[Kelthaz]

You're taking the definition of mansplaining to ridiculous extremes in your criticisms of Harry. The three sisters are new to the world of magic and Harry, as their mentor and teacher, is explaining how things work to them. That's not mansplaining. I mean are you trying to argue that men should never explain things to women or be in a position of power over women? Yesterday at work I had a new female coworker who didn't know how to do a task. I instructed her on how to complete the task. Was that sexist? Should I have found a female colleague to explain the task instead?

Do you have the same criticism of Giles on Buffy?

 

[Christopher]

You're taking the definition of mansplaining to ridiculous extremes in your criticisms of Harry. The three sisters are new to the world of magic and Harry, as their mentor and teacher, is explaining how things work to them. That's not mansplaining.

I'm not criticizing Harry, because Harry is an imaginary construct. I'm criticizing the creators of the show, because they're the ones responsible for how the characters are portrayed. In the original Charmed, the sisters discovered their powers for themselves, made their own choice to accept the burden, and figured it all out on their own, with Leo only introduced 3 episodes in and only gradually revealed to be a Whitelighter. In that version, the sisters had agency and independence and were the guiding forces behind their own story. In this version, the sisters are far more passive and dependent on Harry to tell them what they are and what to do. It gives him too much power in the character dynamic and them too little. It was the creators of the reboot who decided to set it up that way, to redefine the Whitelighter role as a knockoff Rupert Giles rather than the passive guardian angels they were originally meant to be, and I disagree with that decision on the creators' part because it undermines the women who are supposed to be the main protagonists.

Do you have the same criticism of Giles on Buffy?

That's not an analogous situation, because Buffy wasn't a remake. It was also 20 years ago. One would expect that a remake would attempt to improve on the feminism of the original, to take it another step forward. But the Charmed remake takes a major step backward in its feminism compared to its original.

Besides, even Giles didn't micromanage Buffy to the extent that Harry does with the sisters. Buffy's original watcher Merrick kinda did, but (at least in the original script, and the comics adaptation that's considered semi-canonical to the TV series) he was killed off in the second act so that Buffy needed to step up and become independent. Not to mention that Buffy had an ongoing thread about the Watchers symbolizing the stuffy, masculine old guard that Buffy often resisted and defied in order to assert her own will and independence, which is a feminist statement in itself. So far, the new Charmed is doing nothing to suggest that it will approach Harry in a similar way. Now that the whole "Don't trust Harry" angle has been resolved as a trick, the sisters have accepted him as the guy who gets to tell them what to do. Maybe that will change, but there's no sign of it yet.

 

[Snaploud]

I'm not really drawn to any of the characters yet. That's a problem two episodes into the season.

I'll keep watching for a while, though. I enjoyed parts of the original version of the show.

 

[Christopher]

We got a more solid episode this week, with the sisters and the show starting to hit their stride at last and deal with a real moral dilemma about whether they could or should try to save Angela. Best of all, most refreshing of all, the Charmed Ones finally, finally got to be right when they stood up to Harry and the Elders. That's something that needs to happen more often.

Although the sisters are still too dependent on their mother and the Book of Shadows to do all the work for them. IIRC, in the original show, the Book only occasionally found a spell for them or pointed them to a certain page, and I think that was really their grandmother's spirit making that happen. Here, the Book is far too straightforwardly a magical search engine, sparing the sisters from having to do any actual studying or figuring things out for themselves.

 

[LJones41]

In that version, the sisters had agency and independence and were the guiding forces behind their own story.

By the time the sisters had become aware of the whitelighters, they had more or less lost their agency - with the exception of late Season 7/early Season 8.

Although the sisters are still too dependent on their mother and the Book of Shadows to do all the work for them. IIRC, in the original show, the Book only occasionally found a spell for them or pointed them to a certain page, and I think that was really their grandmother's spirit making that happen. Here, the Book is far too straightforwardly a magical search engine, sparing the sisters from having to do any actual studying or figuring things out for themselves.

What show did you watch? Even in the original series, the Halliwells' Book of Shadows was more or less a search engine for them. They had rarely did any actual studying. Worse, the series got a lot of the mythology wrong.

 

[Christopher]

An unexpected convergence: The promo for Charmed that they've been showing on The CW for the past week or so is scored with a song I've heard somewhere recently, and I thought it might be from the Marvel Rising animated movie, but that seemed unlikely. But I looked it up, and I was right -- it's a song called "Watch Me Rise" from the Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors soundtrack. It's a bit surprising to hear a song associated with a Marvel production showing up on the DC-heavy CW, albeit not in connection with a DC show.

 

[Christopher]

This week's episode started to reintroduce an element I liked from the original series -- the community of benevolent/neutral magical beings living incognito and looking to the Charmed Ones as their protectors. I like the idea of the CO protecting magical creatures instead of just fighting them, and it helps add dimension to the show's world if there's a larger community/ecosystem of magical beings.

It was a pretty solid episode overall, and I particularly liked the way the sisters thought through the problem and made an advance plan for confronting the shadow demon when it came. Nice to see them being smart and proactive, less clueless than they were in the first few weeks.

It looks like Niko is definitely gone from Mel's life for good. I'd been expecting there to be some twist that brought her back, since she was a regular, but it seems she was dropped after all. I wonder what happened there. You could see them rethinking the pilot's version of Niko as early as episode 2, when the truth potion made her admit that her glasses were fake and decide to embrace her hotness. And then just a few episodes later they wrote her out in a way that literally erased her relationship with Mel from history. I dunno, maybe that was in service to the arc they're taking Mel on, where she loses everything and reassesses her life, but was that really what they've planned all along or is it the result of some things being rethought post-pilot?

Also, we now know that the show takes place in Michigan. I guess it makes sense, climate-wise, for a show filmed in Vancouver to be set in a northern state rather than in San Francisco like the original (although Michigan's much, much closer to Toronto than Vancouver).

 

[FreddyE]

I´ve seen the first two episodes so far, and I must say...its better then I expected. Altough the girls seem a bit bland to me for now. And I dislike that spells seem to be in (pig) latin now. I´ll miss the originals sometimes really poetic spells..(sometimes good and more often bad poetry....but still). I wonder if there´s now a latin version of the Power of Three Spell? Which probably would be something like "De potentia trium liberabit nos.".

 

[Christopher]

Some of the spells are in Spanish, which is cool.

 

[Christopher]

Wow, I'm surprised nobody's posted in this since November. The show's advanced quite a way since then, and gone to some interesting places. Tonight's episode had quite an interesting subplot. Ever since it was revealed that Maggie and Macy had the same biological father, I've been wondering if they'd address the fact that Maggie is therefore half-black, and what that change in the perception of her ethnic/cultural identity would mean for her. They've been kind of busy dealing with witchy and demonic stuff since then, but I'm glad they finally found a way to touch on the issue, and they dealt with it in what seemed like a pretty sensitive and thoughtful way. That kind of issue of biracial identity and the cultural complexities and expectations that have to be navigated is an interesting one to explore, and it helps make this a smarter, more substantial show than it seemed at first (and than the original Charmed ever was, frankly).