Mel, Maggie and Kaela must try to navigate their tangled love lives while also dealing with the ever increasing threat of The Unseen.

Not easy being a Charmed One. A different cookie-cutter Threat To All Existence every week, and all a girl really wants to do is snuggle with her latest boo. Oh well, with great power, etc…

Mel has finally gotten past Ruby, and has now fallen into bed with Roxie, but Roxie isn’t really looking for anything serious, or at least that’s what she says. Actually this is the most interesting of the three storylines in this episode, as it delves into the background of Roxie and her relationship with lost love Camelia. As Roxie enters her mandatory stasis and the worlds turns without her in it, Camelia is left to carry on until she’s killed in a raid on the bar. Sending Harry and his new powers to find her lost love for some closure, Roxie ends up with answers she could never have anticipated.

Meanwhile, The Unseen launch a raid on the Command Centre, determined to get their hands on the Unity Bowl (our new Magical Doohickey of Ultimate Power and So On) that they may enact the ritual to resurrect the Lost One, who will bring equality to them all and end the tyranny of the Charmed Ones. Yeah, nothing a bit familiar about all this at all…

Not able to find it, they launch an ambush on the girls themselves, figuring they can force the issue. With the aid of a Blocker (helpfully expositioned by Dev) they are able to take away Mel and Maggie’s powers, leaving them apparently helpless and trapped with their pursuers including Sunny, she of the nine lives and vicious temper.

The problem here is that the show really wants to have its cake and eat it. In short order, we have one of the raiders being confronted and empathised with before being beaten unconscious, we have Sunny being all powerful and then… not. We have a Meaningful Death which feels like it’s come just a little too quickly and pointlessly, and we have Jordan and Maggie being all ‘I can’t quit you’ as Mel and Roxie declare mutually how terrible they are at relationships while clearly being smitten with one another. Nothing feels centred in any way, as if the show has been reduced to literally throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Maggie’s traumatic encounter with her dead biological father last time out? Nah. Mel’s final closure of the emotional wound caused by her breakup with Ruby? Forgotten.

And as if that wasn’t all enough, there’s a weird bit with Harry and another plane of existence somehow adjacent to the Veil. And it’s daft. Really daft.

Verdict: Losing me episode by episode. 5/10

Greg D. Smith