A wave of mysterious incidents sees the gang investigating a new mythical creature, which is nothing as compared to their various personal challenges as they try to adjust to life in the real world.

Thus far, Charmed has been impressing me this season. It’s tried some new angles on things and it’s felt much better written, so I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed by this week’s outing, mainly because elements of it feel repetitive, while others feel unnecessary.

Take Mel, who last week decided to say gosh darn it and teach the book to her class that the Dean had told her not to because she really cared about trans issues. That was great, an empowering moment that illustrated the fact the girls needed to take control of their own destinies. So it’s a little disappointing to see Mel’s subplot this week revolve around the fact her Dean pushes back, insists that her own book – years out of date – on the subject of trans people is used and Mel has to do the whole thing again.

Similarly, having gained her confidence to stand up and be counted by her sexist tutor and demand to be taken seriously, Maggie spends most of this episode with severe writer’s block, unable to start an important essay for her class because she can’t pick a topic. This sort of repetition of themes that were solved and then not solved again week in week out was exactly one of the major issues the show had in the past, and it’s irritating to see it creep back in again.

Macy gets slightly better – something actually new gets added to her pile of responsibilities as she finds herself the unexpected beneficiary of part of Julian’s estate. That’s great but it entails lots of responsibility and Macy is already quite busy trying to solve the issue plaguing the sisters and Harry as well as helping deal with whatever threat rears its head. So we get a fairly well-trodden ‘she can’t have it all, or can she’ subplot that kind of ends exactly where you’d expect it to and adds nothing of note.

As to the episode’s main plot of the week, it’s fairly weak once it gets going. A mysterious man is wandering the Earth compelling people to do nasty things. He may well be a mythical creature from ‘before recorded history’ (yawn) which means that there won’t be anything in the spell books to help except actually there may be this one thing and oh god, can you feel the clichés raining down on this one?

Worse that all of that is an odd little subplot in which Harry is suddenly feeling very sensitive about his age apropos of absolutely nothing at all, worrying that it will somehow come in-between his and Macy’s relationship. He does get to have some nice scenes with Jordan I guess, who feels like easily the most potentially interesting character this week by some way, but ultimately it all feels a little bit of a waste, which is in keeping with the episode as a whole.

Verdict: Well, I guess it couldn’t last. Finally the same old issues surface, with plotlines that feel circular mixed in with ones that feel irrelevant or just unnecessary. Poor. 4/10

Greg D. Smith