CHARMED

By Frederick C. Szebin     March 27, 2000

With Youth a waving banner in our faces no matter where we turn (even though more Youth-oriented movies fail than succeedfor every American Pie there are four or five Idle Hands), TV regurgitates the party line in the hope of finding the next Friends or Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Network mogul Aaron Spelling, who was in charge of some horrible and very successful television in the 1970s and 1980s, offered the WB Charmed, a combo comedy/chiller program about three pretty sisters who are witches, and the frog network bit. Now nearing the end of its second season, Charmed is one of the network's anchor programs, along with other Youth shows as Buffy, Angel, and Roswelll, among others. This supernatural show illustrates the problem of the Youth banner: you may have the energy, the charm and desire, but your lack of experience, focus and knowledge of the basics shows like a toe through an old sock.
Charmed focuses on Prue, Phoebe and Piper (Shannen Doherty, Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs), San Francisco sisters living, loving and conjuring after they find out that they are witches, heiresses to The Book of Shadows, an ancient tome that has, apparently every spell they would ever need, ever. Their powers differ: Piper can stop time in the specific space around her; Phoebe has prophetic visions; and Prue, the eldest, can move objects, anything from a vase across a mantle to a bad guy across a room.
By season two they had picked up Leo, (Brian Krause) a former White Lighter, an angel-type who lost his powers after falling in love with Prue, but still pines for her even though she has tried to resist her feelings for the guy by starting a relationship with Dan (Greg Vaughn). This ongoing saga is of the least amount of interest in the series, although the producers seem to think it important. We, as viewers, know where Prue's heart belongs and wish she'd stop stringing the guys along and just grab Leo, if she must choose anyone.
What the show tries to do is recreate the energy and humor of Buffy with less talented writers. All the ingredients have been thrown into their caldron: pretty, charming young people; three particularly stunning featured players with the occasional short skirt and lots of lift and separation; neato special effects andneed I say itbarely anyone of note over the age of 35. But what the series lacks is Buffy's imagination. Plots show some possibilities, however: brain-eaters, resurrected evil witches, good spells done badly, a little time travel--that sort of thing. But unlike Buffy (sorry to keep bringing her up, but that particular WB series has set a standard that is lends itself to the inevitability of comparison, just like the earlier seasons of The X-Files, which also has been poorly copied), Charmed's continuing characters aren't particularly involving, which is not the fault of the very good cast. Doherty is fine as the elder sister, as is Alyssa Milano, whose prettiness and humor give Phoebe some nice moments. Combs, also, can be very good, but many times she plays Piper with so much restraint that you wonder if the actress gave the script more than a cursory glance. And Piper's Leo/Dan problem just doesn't match the passion of Buffy's tragic romance with Angel by any means. And that's a letdown the series as a whole has to face each week; it simply plays like watered-down Buffy with uninvolving writing and unfunny humor.
A particularly bad episode was unleashed when an evil witch (nicely played by Brigid Brannaugh) was loosed from her 200-year-old prison and began searching for her wand-- which had, thanks to the Gods of Coincidence, come into Prue's possession. The black witch needed to have human hearts to complete her de-powering spell that would take away the sister's powers, so she found three donors who areget thissearching with their video cameras for the Blair Witch! The unlucky trio were portrayed by dead ringers for the cast of that film, and we were treated to a little of the cinema-verite that made The Blair Witch Project so watchable, but here it was a lame joke at best, eliciting more groans than laughs. There was a moment when the evil witch's attacking snake was cut in half only for the pieces to become two whole snakes, but the episode was bogged down with Piper's uninteresting love life again, and really wasn't that good any way.
In a Valentine's Day episode, three of Phoebe's college study buddies use a love spell to create dates for the over-rated holiday using animals that they want to turn into hot guys. A snake, a rabbit and a pig are morphed into men, only to retain their animal characteristics (who saw that one coming a mile away, huh?). When these Dr. Moreau rejects discover that the spell lasts for only a day, they demand to be made human permanently. This causes the girls to get Phoebe directly involved, which brings her, her sisters and the animal guys to Piper's club during a Valentine's Day mixer. Under pressure, Phoebe sends out a spell to make the guys animals again, only to turn everyone in the club into a different beast of the wild. There quickly follows a silly scene as the well-meaning witches try to deal with it. And silly was all the whole thing was, again greeted with more groans than giggles.
The stars do their best, with even the public relations-strained Doherty looking good at times, but Charmed misses its mark with a wide margin. It will take more than The Book of Shadows to make the show live up to its title; it will take writers with more experience, knowledge and imagination. But then again, doesn't it always.