Mel worries about Miko’s safety as she refuses to let the circumstances of Tripp’s death go. Maggie finds herself in an awkward situation when she’s approached by Lucy for help, and Macy becomes convinced there’s more to Galvin’s new relationship than meets the eye.

So, as far as the ending of last week’s episode went, I had issues. The juxtaposition of the sacred duty to save Angela Wu’s life and the fact that Tripp just ended up caught in the crossfire and dying was bad enough. That the Elder then just decided to fake Tripp’s suicide and frame him for all the recent murders just struck a hugely bum note for me, and even the writers didn’t seem to know what to do with it, literally having Mel distraught at the thought of what Tripp’s death would do to Niko one second and then celebrating with the girls that they saved Angela the next. It all just felt tonally dissonant and frankly awful.

This week, it doesn’t get an awful lot better. First up, Niko is not taking Tripp’s death well, and she’s determined to get to the truth, unwilling to accept that her partner and friend hid such a sinister side to himself from her. Mel is concerned that Niko will get herself into more danger but mainly that she might find something which Mel can’t explain. So does the show have her approach this in an adult way, speaking to the woman she’s in love with honestly? No, this is Charmed, so it has her do something much more invasive, creepy and frankly oddly disturbing in terms of its implications with regard to consent.

Keeping up the creepy vibe, Galvin – a man who Macy has had a quick snog with once – has decided he’s fed up of waiting all of one missed date night for Macy and has hooked up with a beautiful, accomplished and successful woman with whom he seems very happy and with whom he is evidently partying hard. Conclusion? Macy is at fault for not having jumped his bones quicker, followed swiftly by ‘This successful beautiful woman is too perfect, she must be some sort of demon’. I wish I was joking, but dead seriously, this is the sequence of logic this supposedly brilliant young scientist who is rational to a fault is persuaded (extremely easily) by her younger teen sister to take.

And on the subject of Maggie, she’s in an awkward position when Lucy confides that she’s broken up with Parker and that she suspects him cheating on her, and asks Maggie to dig up the dirt on who with. Here at least, the show has an opportunity to redeem one of its characters for her actions slightly, but it feels wilfully obtuse that this is where it might choose to do so, given everything else that is going on.

Oh and there’s some new bad guy in town – the one that took the paint can with the essence of the Harbinger in it from the Elder last week. No idea exactly who he is or what his agenda might be beyond that he’s interested in Elder blood for some reason, and it seems he may be linked to the girls in a very specific way, but mostly he just sits in slightly darkened rooms staring at screens and occasionally having cryptic conversations with his subordinate.

Verdict: It all started so well, but this is getting oddly off message quick. For a show so eager to display its ‘woke’ credentials in its opening few episodes, it seems to have some at best naïve ideas with regards to themes like consent, integrity and basic consistency. Worrying. 5/10

Greg D. Smith