The girls struggle to find a way of rescuing Harry from his internment in Tartarus, with the Elders not showing much interest in helping out. Mel finds herself still struggling to decide who to believe between the Sarcana and the Elders. Macy isn’t quite prepared for Galvin’s response to the revelation of her true nature and Maggie takes drastic steps to avoid the pain of finding out Parker’s real lineage.

Charmed is, in many ways, the little show that tries, but just comes up short. This week, it’s in the realm of VFX, as it tries its best on an obviously limited budget to give us an idea of what it’s like for poor old Harry to be stuck in the prison where all the bad demons get sent. Why there is a prison for demons that seems to be run by demons isn’t a question with which the show ever concerns itself, but so laughably poor was the CGI ‘lizard thing’ (Harry’s actual words, not mine) and all the other visuals that I found myself coming back to it time and again, with no satisfactory answer.

Then again, consistency and logic aren’t the show’s strong points. Galvin saw the girls banish a demon (and poor Harry, accidentally) into a hell-portal last week. When the love of Mel’s life, who she had been in a relationship with for some time, was close to finding out what was going on, Mel had to send her away so they never met in some complicated spell that erased a bit of time and devastated her. However, Macy really fancies Galvin so he’s left to just deal with what he saw somehow, and the response is not what Macy expects.

Maggie is still beside herself at the revelation that Parker is a demon, and decides that the best way to deal with this pain (in spite of her sister giving her actual qualified and relatable advice) is to cast a spell that takes pain away. The trouble is, I wonder how many times the show is going to try to sell us this ‘Maggie’s the youngest so she casts a spell without thinking it through and then inevitable consequences happen and she learns a lesson’ schtick, because this is at least the second or third time, and the repetition alone suggests that the lesson-learning bit is something she’s skipping each time. It’s a dull subplot with utterly predictable results and even the resolution comes out of nowhere and is plain silly.

As to the Sarcana, Mel finds out a little more of the specifics of what they’re up to, and still can’t really decide whether they’re an enemy or not. She certainly is having doubts about how involved they were in her mother’s death, but other than that she seems determined to keep an open mind and ignore the Elders’ guidance, mostly apparently ‘because’.

We also get to see a little more of Alistair who turns out to be honest to be a bit of a let down when the show is trying to sell him as a big bad. Perhaps it’s just the silliness of the whole concept underpinning him, I don’t know, but somehow he’s just a bit flat.

And that’s a pretty good summation of the episode generally. The narratives it’s trying to tell are all let down by cliché, predictability and silliness – sometimes a combination of all three. The hints at deeper details about Harry’s past and his relationship to Charity might be a bit more interesting if they weren’t all executed with such obviousness, and it all just adds up to a fairly forgettable experience all round, full of problems that could easily be solved if people just talked to one another.

Verdict: Showing no sign that it’s in on the joke, this is poor by any standards. Lazily written, with FX ambitions way beyond the budget of the show, definitely the poorest outing for the Charmed Ones yet. 3/10

Greg D. Smith