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

5 comments:

  1. It's weird really how much I love this episode. I find it to be one of the strongest hours of the season along with Witch Wars (another episode you and Max don't love as much). I wonder if my views will greatly change when I eventually re-watch the entire series (hopefully this summer or at some other point) because it's been many many years since I really sat down and watched Charmed apart from All Hell Breaks Loose and Charmed & Dangerous (my two favorites).
    Nevertheless, I just remember really loving the feel of this one and finding it much stronger than the stupid Chris arc.
    It will surely be interesting once I start reviewing the show from the beginning.
    Always entertaining and insightful Panda.

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  3. "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."

    This insight couldn't be more accurate, and actually epitomizes Charmed as a whole. The writers frequently milked the show in the worst ways possible (reusing storylines, horrible continuity) and then out of the blue, they'd come out with one of the above mentioned epic episodes or a really dark arc (a la season 4).
    Oh well. Such is the love-hate relationship every Charmed fan must endure.

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  4. You should consider reviewing the show when you do eventually re-watch it. It'd be interesting to see if looking back on it with fresh eyes changes it for you or not.

    Thanks for reading, Nadim.

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  5. Balls. I wrote a comment yesterday while responding to comments on my blog, and shut down the page completely forgetting that I had to put in some stupid squiggly code. Ugh. It wasn't that interesting, but crazy annoying that it didn't post.

    In a nutshell: "blah" episode, insightful review as always.

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