Now, I watched Charmed, and I love Charmed, but I never saw the beginning of Charmed! It was one of those shows that I caught by accident in syndication, and just instantly fell in love. I actually watched it twice a day in two different seasons on two different channels, so I have seen things all out of order and all crazy, but never season one! I have only seen Rose McGowan eps, never Shannen Doherty! This sorry state of affairs ends now, as I’m starting at the beginning, pre-white lighters.
We’re in San Francisco, it’s rainy, there is a very fancy building, and a pretty lady is doing witchcraft while someone lurks outside her window. She casts a spell for protection as lurky guy comes inside and kills her, so she may not have been a really terrific witch, beyond lighting candles.
Then we go to another house, and there are Prue and Piper, so we are with the actual cast of the show. Prue has found their old spirit board in the basement and Prue reads the inscription on the back about how it’s for the three girls from Mom, and the power of three will set them free. What a peculiar inscription, what on earth could Mom have meant? They talk about Phoebe, who is probably the third sister, who Prue says has no vision, no sense of the future. Which is perhaps the weensiest bit of foreshadowing. So it seems they aren’t that close to their third sister, and nobody knows they are witches, including them.
Opening credits has really nondescript music, not the awesome Smiths cover that they had later in the run.
Back to the dead witch’s house, cops are all over it, apparently there have been a series of young women being murdered, one detective knows it’s all about witches, the other thinks it’s a bunch of hooey. The believer, we later find out, is Piper’s boyfriend, so that’ll be handy.
Meanwhile, at the sisters’ house, Phoebe suddenly moves back in from New York, Prue is mad because she thinks Phoebe slept with her boyfriend. They start playing with the spirit board, and the pointer moves by itself, spelling out “attic.” Phoebe goes upstairs by herself, tried to open the door, it’s locked, then it opens by itself. So she goes downstairs, calls a cab, and instantly moves back to New York. No, she doesn’t, but anyone else would have. Instead, she goes into the attic and finds the Book of Shadow and reads the incantation about bringing powers to we sisters three. It’s a good thing that they are on this TV show and not in an Evil Dead movie, because reading random incantations doesn’t go nearly as well there.
As they look at the book, the lurker is outside their house. But then he leaves. Probably because he knows there is still 24 minutes left of the show.
The next day, Phoebe stayed up all night reading the Book of Shadows, which has a lot about how there would be these three sisters who would be the greatest witches the world has ever known, the protectors of the innocents, the charmed ones. Who could these sisters three be? It’s a mystery!
At Prue’s job, her jerk ex who lied that he slept with Phoebe, steals her job, and then his pen explodes all over him, and later he gets strangled by his tie. At Piper’s audition to work in a restaurant, (which she does wearing her hair all messy and down, so I hope the diners like hair in their food), the chef is about to take a bite of her food without the sauce on it, and suddenly time stops, she gets the sauce on, he tastes it, and pronounced it “maGnifeek” exactly as no French people do. Then Phoebe is cycling down the street and she gets a vision of some kids getting hit by a car and she saves them by cycling in front of the car herself. What could be happening? What are these powers that are manifesting? Could it have something to do with how Phoebe read in the book that the three powers that these sisters would have were moving objects, stopping time and seeing the future?
Visiting Phoebe at the hospital, Prue runs into an old guy friend who is much nicer than the creepy ex. Which means he is probably the lurker. Phoebe proves to Prue that Prue really can move things with her mind, and then she spends a lot of time explaining the overarching plot of the series to Prue and to us.
Piper and the detective boyfriend go to a random dark building because he wants to show her something, and that something turns out to be a big knife, because he is actually the lurker! I chose the wrong nice white guy! So the one that knows all about witchcraft is the warlock killing witches to steal their powers? Who could possibly have seen that coming? Not me, obviously! He says that ever since the grandmother died he knew they would get their powers, all that needed to happen was for Phoebe to come back. Luckily, Piper can stop time, which she does for enough time to get away and get home so that the charmed ones can be together and Get Shit Done.
They do a spell, but it doesn’t stop him, and he breaks in the door all covered with spikes, but they repeat “The power of three will set us free!” a bunch of times and he blows up. So that’s good! A very handy trick, good thing they are protectors of the innocents, or they could just be blowing people up all willy and also nilly.
The next day, the nice guy asks Prue for a date but she says no, and I’m not letting go of the idea that he might turn out to be evil. Also, the original dead witch’s cat now lives with the sisters. That cat was all snuggly with the evil warlock detective dude, so I’m suspicious of him, too. Trust no-one, everyone might be evil, is apparently my motto when it comes to Charmed!
