Episode Report Card Demian: C | 11 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Charmed Again, Part The First
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on 2001.10.04
First off, because I've yet to have a chance to thank him for it here, big props to Big Gay Al. This lovely gentleman procured -- for free -- the laptop upon which I now type. I owe you big time, pal.
As a sign of how drastically altered the times in which we find ourselves have become, the fourth-season opener of this show begins with three words I never thought I'd hear: "Previously, on Charmed." For those of you emerging from a three-year-long coma, here's the scoop: The Dolt wooed, did, healed, did, married, and did Piper. The Colethazor met, then attempted to kill, then became intimately acquainted with Phoebe's tongue. Alyssa Milano told Shannen Doherty she was a drunk piece of white trash, and added that the biggest, bestest fans of the show hated Prue and loved Phoebe. Shannen told Alyssa she was a brainless, no-talent slut, and added she didn't give a good goddamn what a bunch of twelve-year-olds thought. Alyssa told her mother to tell her agent to tell Aaron Spelling that Shannen was being mean, and that she'd quit the show if Aaron didn't fire Shannen. Aaron, still on his game despite the fact he's getting on in years and ill, cannily waited until Shannen finished directing last season's final episode, then rather unceremoniously sacked her ass. The alarmingly pale Rose McGowan found herself joining the cast as a heretofore unheard of fourth sister, and Brad Kern busied himself digitally blurring and otherwise editing Shannen out of all earlier footage recycled for this season's premiere. You got all of that? Good.
Halliwell Manor. Attic. The camera slowly pans through the darkened room to settle upon Piper. Struggling to speak through tears, she recites, "In this night and in this hour, I call upon the ancient power -- bring back my sister. Bring back the Power of Three." Nothing happens, because Shannen was fired. Just in case you forgot that little detail. Piper rolls her eyes heavenward in frustration and flips through the Book of Shadows. She lands on a page entitled "To Call a Lost Witch." There are some instructions about grinding up rosemary, cypress, and taro root in a "Silver Mortar" while chanting, which Piper proceeds to follow. "Power of the witches rise," she intones. "Course unseen across the skies. Come to us who call you near. Come to us and settle here." She then lifts a frighteningly sharp dagger to her left hand and draws the point across a fingertip. "Blood to blood, I summon thee," she continues, squeezing a few drops out into the "mortar," which actually looks more like a Beaux-Arts ashtray. "Blood to blood, return to me." A nearby candle gutters, but nothing else happens. Yet. So tricky with the writing are the ladies and gentlemen of Spelling Productions. Not.