« A Small Plane Crashes into a New York City Condo High-Rise | Main | Wednesday's »
October 11, 2006
Ferdy at the Movies - Charmed: The Complete First Three Seasons from a Cat's Perspective
Charmed is a TV show about a trio of witches in modern-day San Francisco, and it ended a fairly successful run of eight seasons last May.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen countless episodes of this series, some of them multiple times, as the various women of the household work their way through the DVDs of the first three seasons.
Charmed was inspired by the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which proved you could do a successful supernatural drama with comedic overtones and a female lead. Bruce, of course, is appalled by the lame plots and the inconsistencies in the mythology, but the girls love it. The point of this show is not the witchcraft, it's that there are three girls talking about girly stuff while fighting bad guys in the background. In fact, it can be argued that it's more fun watching teenage girls watch the show than it is to watch the show itself.
Like all modern TV witches, the Charmed girls claim they're practicing a form of Wicca, but the mythology bears no relation to modern Wiccanism, which itself has only a tenuous connection to ancient magic cults. The real core of Charmed is the whole idea of women as protectors of civilization. It's a powerful image in a society where women are home with the children and the home is no longer entirely safe. Cats understand this on a very basic level, and that's why female cats are much more troublesome than the males.
There is a catch to the magic of the Charmed Ones, which is that they can't use their powers for personal gain. This is sort of like the Prime Directive in Star Trek, which is supposed to keep the Good Guys from becoming Bad Guys, but proves to have so many gray areas that you're never sure when it's being used correctly and when the writers completely forgot. Still, if it weren't for that rule, then people as powerful as the three Halliwell sisters are too dangerous to be allowed to run around loose.
But I still have a huge problem with this show. The Charmed Ones own a cat, and it shows up maybe two or three times a season. What were they thinking? If they'd used the cat correctly, it could have its own series by now. I mean, think about it: would Kiki's Delivery Service been even half as fun without her cat Jiji? Would there have been any reason to even watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch without Salem?
This is just more proof of why I should be in charge.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Wed 10:22 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (3) | More Ferdy at the Movies | Tags: Charmed humor supernatural television wicca
Trackback Pings
Comments
I stopped watching it after I noticed that there were never any sympathetic male characters. Leo, the middle sister's "White-Lighter" hubby was the closest they got, and the writers made him into one of those "obsessed with his career" types that neglects his wife and child because he's climing the corporate ladder.
The next closest was Phoebe's demonic boyfriend-- but they only used him to prove that he was irredeemably evil-- he couldn't be good even though he wanted to.
Most of the women villains were either posessed or dupes-- very rarely would a woman be evil in the same sense that pretty much all the men on the show were evil.
As much as I liked watching Alyssa Milano pouting spells and defeating evil with the power of her cleavage, the constant "men are evil, and they can't change if they want to" theme drove me away.
Posted by: Greg at October 12, 2006 11:39 AM
Posted by: Evelyn at June 12, 2007 4:24 PM
Posted by: Ferdy ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.conservativecat.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 12, 2007 8:20 PM
| HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it. |
