Macy finds herself trapped with the Darklighter with only herself to rely on. Maggie takes a fairly direct route towards trying to determine what it is about Jordan which seems to be triggering her new ability. Mel and Harry work together to try to solve the mystery of Macy’s whereabouts.

It stands to reason, I suppose that the moment I find an element of the show interesting, it vanishes. Abigael was far and away the best part of the last couple of weeks so now she’s no longer there and we have to rely on the Charmed Ones and their delightfully daft Whitelighter to provide entertainment.

For Macy, this means doing her best to survive trapped with a man who – while he doesn’t apparently want to kill her – doesn’t exactly seem to have her best interests at heart. Oh, and he’s a dark version of her Whitelighter. There’s hints that there is more to what he’s up to than the show has so far led us to believe, but unfortunately that mostly gets sidelines in favour of Macy trying to outwit him the only way she knows how – if you guessed her brains (the woman is a scientist, remember?) then you guessed wrong – instead she tries to use her womanly charms on him. Hooo boy…

Meanwhile, despite her sister being missing and in mortal danger, Maggie somehow manages to turn her need for information into another excuse to awkwardly touch Jordan. Only this time it’s done in an especially cringeworthy (to say nothing of public) fashion, before…well, to say more would be to start recounting the episode verbatim. Suffice to say the show transitions from super-awkward moment to intimate, relaxed moment with absolutely no actual gear change, making everything feel even less realistic than usual. And this is in a show about witches. Yeah.

That leaves Mel and Harry to team up and take on a demon in a bit of literal gambling in order to try to get Macy’s actual location. This gives us an extended sequence rendered utterly pointless by its eventual resolution, and leaves me wondering exactly what the point is again of most of what we are seeing. These actors are better than this. The writers’ room for this show used to be better than this. What on earth is actually going on that they are combing their talents to produce this?

It’s not like there isn’t potential there either – the whole concept of how Whitelighters are created, what that means, how the conflict between the light and dark halves of a soul could happen and what the consequences might be are all right there waiting, and god knows that Rupert Evans is doing his absolute best as the two halves of Harry with what the script gives him. But ultimately it fumbles it at every turn, never really willing to commit to the darkness of his doppelganger, nor the conflict within the Harry character himself.

Verdict: Another set of wasted opportunities for all concerned. Our heroes are situationally as dumb as the script requires them to be from scene to scene, and once again I am left to wonder what on earth the writers have against Macy as a character. 4/10

Greg D. Smith