Kaela struggles to find her place in her new family as Maggie, Mel and Harry all find various, unhealthy ways to avoid dealing with their problems. Meanwhile, a new nemesis is emerging to test the Charmed Ones.

I can’t help but feel for Kaela. Here she is, having decided to uproot her entire life and leave her best friend behind to start a new life with her new found ‘sisters’ and save the world, and they are not making it easy. After she makes a family meal for them all, she accidentally manages to hit every sore spot in the group (even Jordan’s) and ends up eating alone.

In Mel’s case, she’s still very sensitive about how things ended between her and Ruby. And here we finally get the answer to the mystery of why that was. On the face of it, it sounds pretty baffling given what the two had shared, but when it gets actually broken down, it makes perfect sense. Before she can get to the healthy part of closure though, Mel takes a little wander down memory lane aided by the worst possible props, and things get a little wild.

For Maggie’s part, she’s still not ready to confront her own feelings of loss over Macy’s death, and still taking it out on anything daft enough to get in her way. Jordan is understandably less than happy about this, having been trying to ‘meet Maggie where she is’ per Harry’s advice. What’s interesting here is how the show writes this – Maggie the Empath, the one who always feels what others do and can see the other side of anything, is so filled with rage t her loss that her empathy is diminished if not outright gone. That almost leads to her making a horrifying decision, and though she’s stopped, she doesn’t really get past it, as we find later on.

As for Harry, he’s trying to train Kaela as a witch but very set on doing it his own particular way – a way that doesn’t work for someone who isn’t Macy. When book learning gets dull for her, he lashes out, insisting on physical training in a fit of pique and further undermining any chance he has to build a decent relationship with his new charge.

It takes a threat to Kaela and the further emergence of the mysterious Tallyman and his fiendish schemes to even vaguely start bringing things together. Even then, the show resists the urge to have a simple conflict against an enemy which unites the group be the panacea that magically cures all the problems they have. These people are all still hurting in their own ways, and that pain may have dangerous consequences for all of them, especially in the face of this new threat.

Verdict: Continues to bundle along nicely. 8/10

Greg D. Smith