Please excuse the Melinda Clarke compliment trip I'm about to embark on, but I love the girl. Whether she's playing a sensual dominatrix on CSI, or hardass Julie Cooper on The O.C., or a mysterious torture-junkie on Nikita, she's always insanely memorable, her delivery always sexy and ambiguous and she's always been able to lift whatever material she's been given. Luckily for her, the Siren is an interesting character already; a demon with an actual back-story and an interesting concept. There was also something kind of tragic about her, being forever cursed because of an affair conducted in puritan times; the woman automatically getting the blame.The Phoebe/Cole saga spins into some interesting directions here. Away from the self-serving silliness of Cole rescuing ladies from burning buildings, he's only trying to prove his morals to Phoebe and hopefully win her back again. But their relationship is doomed, the insane amount of baggage the two of them lug around all the time permanently crippling any chance they could ever have. Phoebe bugged a lot during this arc, but you can understand her character a lot better here than anywhere else in the first half of season five.
Piper and Leo's power swap has a couple of funny moments (Holly's performances always save these asinine subplots), but generally it's way too reminiscent of the time Phoebe and Prue swapped powers, or Paige and Phoebe swapped bodies. Swaps of any kind are used too sparingly on this show to work out emotional issues, it's become a cheap contrivance already.
Away from some of the predictable subplots, Siren Song works really well, and it features a couple of really memorable performances, Holly and Julian in particular are great and the aforementioned Melinda Clarke is the best guest star in a long while. Fun episode. B
Credits
Guest stars Melinda Clarke (The Siren); Amy Laughlin (Melissa); Rebecca Balding (Elise Rothman); Hawthorne James (Demonic Healer)
Writer Krista Vernoff Director Joel J. Feigenbaum
Great review. I liked what you said about Phoebe actually coming across well here, which I wrote about myself too. She spends most of the first half of the season whining, but moments like this is when I actually feel for her a bit.
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