Initially my enjoyment of this episode was fairly limited, but on second look there’s quite a lot going on here. Cole’s going bonkers; Phoebe is desperate to avoid him; Piper is fighting her pregnancy and something very taboo gets faced head on.
In ‘Y Tu Mummy Tambien’ Phoebe is abducted by a mummifying demon that is desperate to find a new body for his lover. Seizing the opportunity to buy his time until he can find a way to win Phoebe over, Cole teams up with him. Piper has trouble getting used to being pregnant.
‘Y Tu Mummy Tambien’ is one of those hidden gems that deal with something very heavy, very quickly. The most important part of this episode is probably the big decision that Cole forces Piper to face. Cruelly forcing her to choose between Phoebe and Paige is sort of another look at how much Piper has grown to love Paige in such a short time. It seems that over the course of the past year and a half she’s developed a bond with her that is just as strong as the one she has with Phoebe. Despite the differences in all of their relationships among one another, there’s no denying the strong connection that they have; it is what this show is based on after all.
Cole going bonkers is fun to watch, even if it happened slightly prematurely. Unsurprisingly, Julian makes it an even better situation than it would have been otherwise proving he’s got the right attributes for comedy as well as all his other talents. If he had stuck around for much longer, his attempts to win Phoebe back may have become far more tiring and a bit ‘plot-of-the-week’ but since we’re faced with it on a less that regular basis, it’s very entertaining. His clashes with Piper are terrifically fun, and she’s still the biggest bad-ass in the family. One thing that still bothers me is their lack of compassion for Cole. At this point any sense of loyalty they had to him has gone, and he’s essentially a villain. The following ‘The Importance of Being Phoebe’ marks the end of his strange transition into a fully fledged enemy of our girls.
Concurrently with all of the dramatic goings-on we’ve got Piper’s sweet opposition to being a fluffy pregnant woman. She’s always been the pricklier, bad-ass sister so I enjoyed watching her struggles to accept where she is in her life. I've mentioned it before but her pregnancy is actually one of the serial plots that I think was handled beautifully by the writers.
I wasn’t all together impressed with a lot of the mummy hulabuloo, which bordered on the ridiculous, though that's certainly not new territory for 'Charmed', but this episode is still a remarkably great one which reinforces the all-important bond between the sisters in a new and entertaining way.
8/10
I completely agree with you about Cole. It's easy for the show to push him as this huge villain, but there was a time when he was considered part of the family, and just as integral as somebody like Leo. I liked that, especially at the beginning of season four.
ReplyDeleteAgain, contrivance on the writers' part to push a certain storyline. It was definitely kind of weak.
Not a fan of this episode, in general. But excellent review, Panda.