Maggie makes an impulsive decision which she hopes could bring an end to the war between Demons and Witches, but Mel and Macy fear she may be making a big mistake.

I’ve commented previously how one of the more prominent failings of the writing for this version of Charmed is that the characters seem to go round in circles making the exact same mistakes over and over again. Another is that the writers – for whatever reason – don’t really seem to like Macy all that much at all. Imagine then, how pleased I was when both these factors were on full display in this week’s instalment.

Following Parker’s proposal last week, Maggie gets it into her head that marrying him to end the war might be the perfect solution to everyone’s problems. Her sisters are understandably a bit more pessimistic, and tell her so, leading to one of Maggie’s perennial ‘I’m not a baby, I can make decisions for myself’ outbursts and I’ll leave anyone still paying attention to work out where that particular thread might eventually lead.

Macy, meanwhile, has this weird subplot going on with regards to her romantic interests. It essentially seems to boil down to her being attracted to someone who isn’t just bad for her but actively an aggressively bad person but she likes him because…he’s intriguing? Right. Per usual, the character is being stuck with narratives which give her little agency and mostly make her a passive receptor for trashy bits of plot nobody else wanted. Seriously, what has the writers room got against her?

Mel meanwhile gets her own little subplot based around some very bad ideas that neither she nor Macy or harry ever really seem to properly examine and another round of ‘Mel realises that her bossiness/hyper organisation etc isn’t the insurmountable problem she thinks it is if she can just get out of her own way and embrace love’ moments which might be more entertaining if the message ever actually seemed to stick. Oh well.

Abigael is up to her usual tricks as well, but the issue is that it’s difficult to make a character seem all-consumingly clever when the writing is so vague as to basically make it feel more like events happen and then the script just contrives to say Abigael Did It in big neon letters for no real reason. There’s a vaguely interesting subplot thread here revolving around her apparent interest in Harry and what that might mean, but even if you’ve managed to stay awake long enough to get to it, it won’t provoke anything akin to actual excitement.

Verdict: Another week, another romp through each character’s familiar tropes with no apparent growth in case the writers want to wheel them out again sometime. Dull. 3/10

Greg D. Smith