Charmed 6.16 The Courtship of Wyatt's Father

I will preface this one by saying it’s a lot stronger than people give it credit for. In terms of the overall structure of season six, this is one of the few episodes that actually makes sense of the sloppiness of this year’s narrative. As a fan, it’s also an episode that’s remembered quite fondly, but I can’t help but feel angry that it all had to happen at all.

This being Charmed and therefore this being a show that doesn’t take the unexpected route, Chris’s existence being wiped out completely was never really a possibility. He’s a pivotal part of this season, and though you can have your hopes dashed a lot with Charmed’s later years, I seriously doubt this story would ever fizzle out so quietly. That being said, it’s nice to see the whole arc hit a turning point. From here on out the whole thing doesn’t seem so made-up-as-we-go, even if it takes a leap of faith to buy into this episode’s revelation.

I was never sold on Gideon and his annoying British bad guy vibe. We’ve already had the illusion of “all knowing and wise elders” destroyed when we popped “up there” last year, but Gideon is the first in a long string of Elders who do nothing but nag and cause unprecedented problems in the sisters’ lives. And as the orchestrator of this season’s big “who turns Wyatt” tagline, he doesn’t really fit the bill. Maybe if he’d come around a lot earlier, or not been a supposed paragon of good it might have worked better. Meh.

Drew Fuller sucks a whole bunch this week, no surprise there, but I enjoyed the hell out of his quick brush with the other side. Clarence the Angel of Death was a little too Spelling, and it sucks that scheduling stopped Simon Templeman from coming back, but there’s a really great idea in there somewhere. Chris, and subsequently Phoebe and Paige, have to come to terms with the idea that he may have been fated just to come back and warn them about Wyatt. Was his existence actually meant to happen on any other level other than saving his family’s lives? Does he get a life of his own?

Piper and Leo shippers around the world revelled at this one as the two of them finally put half a season’s worth of bogus separation behind them and get back together, sort of. That’s all well and good, and I can’t deny that I was delighted to see it happen myself, but in all honesty it shouldn’t have happened at all. That fact that this separation was all down to Chris being a clueless future bound nincompoop is even more frustrating. Plan ahead, guy! This is also when Piper is actually separated from Leo, too. For this whole arc to actually work, the writers should have embraced it and had this happen weeks ago.

The Courtship of Wyatt’s Father has more than a few inaccuracies, but there’s finally an endgame in sight and that makes this episode a lot better than it could have been otherwise.

7/10