Charmed 5.02 'A Witch's Tail: Part 2'

The second part of the two hour premiere is actually a lot better than it’s first. The clique romance of the first part is abandoned (and funnily enough not even mentioned) and we turn the focus back onto the sisters themselves, which leads to a far more intelligent hour of Charmed.

‘A Witch’s Tail’ continues with Phoebe, desperate to escape Cole, following the call of the sea and the life of a mermaid. Piper casts a spell to stop her fear from getting in the way, but instead suppresses it, putting herself and her unborn baby in danger. Paige makes a life changing decision.

I really didn’t like the high amount of screen-time that Mylie got during the first half of this episode. The girls save a lot of innocents over the years but the sisters should always remain the main focus of the episode, not the innocents themselves. The second part of ‘A Witch’s Tail is a lot better in that respect, in that it devotes a lot of time to exploring the sisters, particularly Phoebe and how different magical situations can help the girls deal with the emotional baggage that comes with being not only an all-powerful witch, but also a young woman.

Phoebe hardening her heart against love and becoming a mermaid is a great metaphor for her escape from Cole who had ruined her chances of freedom. She was finally getting her life back on track after an understandably hard and emotional year (she WAS made queen of all evil after all). They had fun with her new appearance, the Nancy O’ Dell scene was a little too forced but I guess Phoebe having a tail would inevitably lead to some fun predicaments.

She’s also a lot more relatable that in the first half and her goodbye to Cole was sad, but straight forward. I was always a fan of Phoebe and Cole, so this speech was always difficult to watch, but after Phoebe’s reaction to his return it was understandable and the way in which she approached him here felt more like the Phoebe who was so deeply in love with him, only a year previously, not the incomprehensible woman we saw during the first hour.

While the first half shows us Piper faltering out of fear for her baby, this half is devoted to her desire to overcome that fear to magically taking it away. Her maternal instinct shows its first signs here. I’m glad the seriousness of the spell she cast wasn’t made into to comical a situation-though I absolutely love the scene of Pipers ‘shocking’ treatment, it was great fun. I'm not sure where people stand on Patty being the one who rescues her from Necron, but I've always thought it a beautiful moment in her journey to taking over Patty's role as the household matriarch.

Paige starts her super witch kick this episode, leaving her job as a social worker. A strange move which really doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it, but after missing out on three years of experiences it’s not too surprising she would want to make it up faster. Even so, it’s the writers’ first big muck-up of her character that becomes a little wishy-washy as the show progresses and it displays their obvious shortage of ideas for the direction they wanted her to take after the fourth season.

While the first half was adequately entertaining, second part is far more successful and showed that the series could easily have used the new fun mantra to the shows benefit, instead of against it which was ultimately what ended up happening.

8.5/10