Fiona continues her search for the secret she left in Harry’s head, with the ex-Whitelighter her prisoner. Parker’s treatment is almost done, but can he really make the transition to full human? Niko continues to follow Mel closely.

Charmed has struggled from the get go with some unevenness in its writing, and here we see another classic issue – that of overstuffing. Simply put, there is way too much happening in this episode, way too many intersecting agendas and that most cardinal of sins – a McGuffin everyone is after and a bunch of the most cliched of cliched plot points dressed in some award-winningly bad exposition dialogue.

Nowhere is this worse than with Fiona, who has apparently gone on her current murderous rampage because of anger at the Elders for what they did to her – fair enough, I suppose – but whose actual stated goal is just… nonsense. Seriously, the thing she is trying to do makes about as much sense as her abrupt switch from being rescued by and working with the Sarcana to murdering them all. I think that perhaps the show is shooting for her being unstable, possibly after so much time in Tartarus, but it never quite seems to know exactly where it wants her, with the character wobbling between intelligent, assured manipulation and simple vindictive craziness from one moment to the next. That might be forgivable if she at least had some sort of understandable motivation, but the show hasn’t really given us one, or if she had some relatable goal, but she doesn’t. It’s deeply frustrating.

Meanwhile, Parker is due to get his final dose of the treatment that will make him fully human so he can have sex with Maggie (and also live a full, normal life etc but mainly the goal for him and Maggie seems to be the sex). This particular plot strand leads to one of the worst examples of cringe-inducing dialogue in the show, and that’s before the whole thing takes an abrupt left turn and then does that thing which poor writing often does of suddenly having characters forget basic abilities, amenities and resources in order that particular contrivances on which the plot hangs can be waved over. There’s a lot of that in this episode.

There’s also Niko, following Mel around and determined to learn more about magic now she knows it exists. It’s odd how remarkably quickly people in this show accept magic as a thing after very little actual demonstration – nobody ever seems to say ‘Oh it’s just a trick of the light/drug/lack of sleep’ – no, it’s all ‘Oh a thing happened which isn’t instantly explicable, I guess all of reality is a lie and magic is real.’ At any rate, it’s fairly obvious where this particular plot strand is going and it becomes more obvious with each passing episode why we haven’t yet learned a single thing about Niko’s fiancée, nor seen her on screen for more than a few moments at any one time.

Oh, and Macy is still playing around with her Dark side, which has become her (and the show’s) convenient go-to plot device whenever the girls need an answer that they can’t immediately get through normal means. Honestly, it’s always felt to me like the show really picks on the oldest of the sisters quite a bit, and this latest thing of her ‘inner darkness’ (or ‘evil side’ as even her beloved sisters now casually refer to it) just feels like another brick in that wall. The whole Galvin saga also felt like part of that, and now that he’s decided he can’t love her anymore because she actually made a choice for herself about her own person, honestly I just want the writers to hurry up and get rid of him. Macy deserves better.

I haven’t even covered the return of some familiar faces, the nonsense with the girls’ new Whitelighter or any number of other things the show throws our way in this instalment, but suffice to say, they all add up to what feels like a confused, disorganised mess of an episode that really should have been passed by a script editor a few more times before being filmed. When it gets it right, Charmed has a certain – pardon the pun – charm all its own. When it gets it wrong, as here, it just feels like a waste.

Verdict: Disappointing on a level rarely reached by the show. Too many things going on, far too many instances of bad writing, hand-waving and general laziness. A shame. 4/10

Greg D. Smith