Charmed 6.06 'My Three Witches'

As part of the writers' ongoing mission to forge out individual story lines for each of the sisters, the show has seen their paths separating a lot this season. Phoebe has her career, Piper has her new life as a single Mom, and Paige has her useless weekly jobs. While it takes a while to drive them apart, this episode plays on that new approach to their episodic writing, and uses it as a mechanism for some dual reality demon drama. Though the concept is pretty cool, some lame twists, and poorly conceived mythology stops ‘My Three Witches’ from heading anywhere meaningful.

Wanting to teach the girls a lesson, Chris asks a demon to trap them in alternate realities based on each of their desires in ‘My Three Witches’. When the demon mortally wounds him, Phoebe, Paige and Piper have to find their own way to escape these alternate worlds.

Given the circumstances of the past couple of years, this episode had fun with a new idea, something similar only cropping up remotely in season four’s Brain Drain. Each of these realities played on the sister’s individual proclivities nicely, with Piper’s desperation for a normal, magic free life taking centre stage for her again. Paige’s desire to rely on magic is something I’ve only really ever seen her concerned about in a remote way, since her struggle for independence has shown how fed up she’s become with magic interfering with her life.

Phoebe’s new power has been an oddity, story wise. Sometimes the writers abuse it, milking as many absurd situations from it as they possibly can, and sometimes they use it some fresh, clever ways. Phoebe’s empathy causing the demon to incorrectly read her inner desire was a surprisingly intelligent move, for Charmed anyway. Where this story falls short is the flimsy coming together of each of their sisters’ realities, which felt rushed and clumsy, and following it with that lame explosion didn’t help either.

The Chris/Leo hostility crap has already hit that level of intolerability that just forces me to cringe eat nearly every scene they share together. I like that Chris has been a symbol of some greater purpose for the show, a sign that there’s some end-game in sight, but there’s been no inkling as to what that is yet, and so far it’s been a little inconsistent with what we learn about his identity later on.

My Three Witches is a fun, escape from the chase down and vanquish routine the sisters have fallen into. With a little more consistency and straightforward plotting, it could have been a lot stronger than it actually was.

6/10