Charmed: All Hell Breaks Loose (3.22)

All Hell Breaks Loose is the finest episode this show ever did. It's an effectively chilling hour chronicling a real end-of-the-world scenario, at least in regards to the sisters. It perfectly captures what could likely happen if the sisters were exposed, and how the media would react if the secret got out. We at first witness the unfolding of the 'hero' narrative, the media casting the Halliwells as protectors of the innocent as they save the world every week. But inevitably, in their quest for ratings, the media turns on the sisters, treating them like villains and otherworldly menaces. As the hour unfolds, it becomes more clear that it's not just the media who target the women, but also the police and potentially the CIA. It's a sinister depiction of what could happen, and it's wonderfully played all round.

Charmed: Look Who's Barking (3.21)

This episode doesn't have a whole lot of emotional resonance, but it's another fun detour involving the sisters morphing into something supernatural. Where it falters is in the execution of the banshee story. The idea of the demon is that each banshee is a former witch, and that banshees seek out those in great emotional pain. Phoebe unsurprisingly is taken over by the banshee, and it should have been an interesting idea to build an episode around. However, the emotional ramifications of the story aren't exploited enough, and it's disappointing that all Phoebe can learn from the episode is that Cole is, deep down, a good guy. Meh.

Charmed: Exit Strategy (3.20)

Way more successful than its preceding part, if only because all the annoying corporate-takeover shenanigans hilariously vanish. Seriously, that whole element of the plot is entirely removed. Obviously everybody involved thought it was a bunch of ass. Exit Strategy is pretty fine, but it's again frustrating that the sisters (notably Prue) are background players to Cole and his demon drama. Cole is a great character, but the flat villains he's usually paired with are all so 'blah'.

Charmed: The Demon Who Came in from the Cold (3.19)

Zzzzzz. This episode always bored me to tears. It's an incredibly misjudged idea, made even worse by a script that really doesn't appear to know what its doing or how to make a bad idea palatable. At the center of the story is Cole's moral ambiguity, a tried-and-tested idea that has been explored to far greater effect in any of the various Cole-centric stories earlier this season. But so much of that element is drowned out by the hugely flatlining story of corporate greed, corporate mergers and body swaps. Gah.

Charmed: Sin Francisco (3.18)

This is one of the series' funniest episodes. Prue's interaction with the TV crews; Piper getting electrocuted; Phoebe's account of seducing her professor; Phoebe checking out the old delivery man; Piper's various ugly purchases (the swan!); Phoebe about to fall out the window; Piper and the boxing gloves; the sisters getting thrown into boxes and Piper getting buried under an enormous crate. It's all just so, so silly, but hugely fun at the same time.

Charmed: Prewitched (3.17)

Connie Burge always stated that Charmed was a series about three sisters who happen to be witches, and not the other way around. Prewitched, to me, is the series' finest depiction of Prue, Piper and Phoebe as not merely demon-hunters, but as real, honest women. It's a fascinating hour, one that explores the history of the sisters before they discovered their abilities, as well as depicting the power structure within the three of them. In the flashbacks, Prue is the sister eager to move away and start a life with her new fiancée, Phoebe is the troubled soul who thinks low of herself, and Piper is the one struggling to keep everything together. It's Piper who is the emotional heart of the flashbacks, stuck in a dead-end job that isn't her passion, lonely and single, and forced to seize control of the house and family when Grams dies.

Charmed: Death Takes a Halliwell (3.16)

Once again, I'm really enjoying Prue. In general, she's such a sad character. She's always been so isolated from her sisters in a way, forced to be a mother figure from an early age and forced to be the responsible one when both her guardians die and the other flees the family. Even now, she's the odd one out in terms of relationships, and has put all of her focus this season onto demons and tracking down evil. Death Takes a Halliwell iss another excellent episode that focuses in on her isolation, made even more apparent via her interaction with the Angel of Death. Here's a woman who has the weight of the world on her shoulders, and here she learns that she can't always do what she thinks is the right thing.

Charmed: Just Harried (3.15)

Distractingly for an episode featuring Piper's wedding, this is once again all about Prue. Like Which Prue Is It, Anyway? and Ms. Hellfire before it, it's another exploration into the two distinctive 'sides' of Prue, this time made even more literal by having her astral self take on a mind of its own. While the story isn't new, I actually enjoyed Phoebe's psychological take on the situation, something surprisingly rational and character-driven for this show. It's so common to see magic employed to get the sisters out of a tricky bind, that seeing Phoebe use her own ingenuity to save the day was refreshing.

Charmed: The Good, the Bad and the Cursed (3.14)

Like this season's previous time travel episode, I'm not sure The Good, the Bad and the Cursed has enough actual story to last a whole hour, the writers seemingly creating the idea of setting an episode in the Spaghetti Western era of the 1870's and then forming the rest of the script. However, it's another fun episode, made even more interesting through pairing together Prue and Cole, two characters who have an interesting dynamic even before they've truly met each other. It was probably helped by the fact that Shannen and Julian were a real-life couple during filming, but the two of them have a ton of sexual chemistry. It'd be hard for Julian McMahon to not have chemistry with somebody, but the sparks he has with Shannen are particularly memorable.

Charmed: Bride and Gloom (3.13)

The show is now at that point where the writers are fully aware that making one or all of the sisters evil for an episode pretty much guarantees fun. And while Bride and Gloom makes literally no sense, in general it's ridiculously entertaining. Piper and Phoebe 'blinking', Piper attacking the wedding planners, Phoebe shattering Dantalian's hand. The transformations are handled in equal parts with humor and horror. And the moment where Phoebe repeatedly beats Cole and demands that he turn into Belthazor is one of the most interesting and weirdly psycho-sexual scenes this season. Maybe that was unintentional, though.

Charmed: Wrestling with Demons (3.12)

The run of above-average episodes hits a roadblock here, with a script that tries to do way too much at once. It also features an annoyingly long-winded wrestling sequence that ages the episode pretty badly. A bunch of early-2000's shows did 'the wrestling episode', and this one also features a couple of WWE wrestlers flinging the protagonists around. I guess some of the action is fine, but I don't get how Prue and Phoebe are suddenly experts at all kinds of kung-fu violence. It threw me out of the moment for a second.

Charmed: Blinded by the Whitelighter (3.11)

I always loved the idea that the only reason the Charmed Ones are so good at their jobs is because of their personalities and their relationships and their ordinary distractions, not in spite of all that. It's a subject explored pretty well here, with the sisters repeatedly criticized for their lack of preparation, their casual treatment of real threats, as well as their fashion sense (okay, the last one is justified). Whitelighter Natalie represents the by-the-book force of good who leaves nothing to chance. Obviously, she winds up dead within the hour, and the characters that try and live as full a life as possible end up saving the day.

Charmed: We All Scream for Ice Cream (3.10)

This episode is a much stronger introduction to Victor than that awkward season one version. While that episode spent so long setting up an "is Victor secretly evil?" idea, We All Scream for Ice Cream instead depicts Victor's relationship with his daughters as a pretty ordinary family rift, the Halliwells still justifiably bitter over the father that seemingly abandoned them all at a young age. It's something that's a lot more organic and relatable, the sisters experiencing what so many regular folk also experience after parents divorce or separate.

Charmed: Coyote Piper (3.9)

I can't really watch Rainn Wilson's guest spot in this episode without thinking of his later confession on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that his performance here was the worst piece of acting he'd ever done. It got me thinking what the hell the show was thinking with its various demon characters, the far majority of whom were played with a scenery-chewing, melodramatic menace, like something out of a bad Shannon Tweed movie. I blame Billy Drago, presumably the bench-mark for all similar evil characters on the show. Rainn is spectacularly awful here, especially in that early scene with Terra that he recreated on Jimmy Fallon years later. But regardless of the ham, this is a pretty awesome episode.

Charmed: Sleuthing with the Enemy (3.8)

This episode, more than any other this season so far, truly reflects the themes that I'm assuming the writers were aiming to explore this year. Cole is the series' most successful example of a morally gray character, somebody who orchestrates evil, has no problem with killing anybody that gets in his way, yet is suddenly cursed with a sense of humanity and passion after falling in love with somebody he really shouldn't have fallen in love with. Phoebe, too, is almost possessed by their affair, lying to her sisters and covering up Cole's escape, all because she believes he can somehow change him. It's a story as old as time: the good girl who thinks if she can just try hard enough she'll be able to make her boyfriend somehow different. The story bleeds into the next couple of seasons, and you can see why it was so beloved by fans.

Charmed: Power Outage (3.7)

Can we talk about Jason Carter? Lord is he embarrassingly awful in this episode! Did the directors on Charmed actually tell its guest actors to be as hammy, theatrical and melodramatic as possible? Carter chews up, spits out, re-chews and then once again spits out the scenery throughout this episode, looking like he's in physical pain whenever he talks. Poor Julian McMahon, who always portrayed Cole with a hint of subtlety, sharing scenes with both this guy and the increasingly annoying Alyssa Milano. I guess Carter's performance is something to be laughed at. It's like he saw everybody in The Wedding from Hell and just thought "Hey! I'll do what they're doing!". Shudders.

Charmed: Primrose Empath (3.6)

Ordinarily I dislike it when an evil character seems to come up with a new evil plan every week. But, for some reason, I'm not actively disliking Cole's various one-episode schemes. I don't know if it's Julian McMahon's performance (which is as subtle as possible, making him stick out like a sore-thumb compared to the hideously melodramatic guest actors on this show), or if the writers are evolving Cole as a character at just the right speed, but it's working for me. I buy Cole's rash of feelings for Phoebe, and I also buy that he wouldn't be so eager right now to cause Phoebe so much pain. It's an interesting moral dilemma, and pretty funny that the most fascinating character on the show right now only appeared six episodes ago.

Charmed: Sight Unseen (3.5)

I've always been a huge fan of this episode, presumably because it features a truly human bad guy. Prue spends a lot of the episode insistent that a demon is stalking her, and the well-crafted script ends up producing two very different villains, one another melodramatic demon, the other somebody more familiar to the Halliwell's. Abbey is hilariously nuts, stalking Prue for months, writing about her every move in her journal, stealing her clothes and eventually expressing a desire to actually become her. There's also an entertainingly paranoid tone to the episode, with a fun pastiche of The Eyes of Laura Mars at the end, while the guessing-game of trying to work out who's the person responsible for the thefts providing a lot of amusement.

Charmed: All Halliwell's Eve (3.4)

Finally, we have a semi-decent episode. All Halliwell's Eve doesn't at all have the emotional resonance of past time-travel episodes, but it's a fascinating and mostly authentic-feeling depiction of old-time magicks. Most of the fun is derived from the various obscure magic that the 1600's witches use, from leaves in apples to brooms sweeping away evil. Equally fun is seeing the sisters rendered powerless and having to quickly learn how to use all this old-time magic, in order to save the day once again. I'm not sure they captured the time period all that well, but in terms of enriching the Charmed mythology, this episode completely works.

Charmed: Once Upon a Time (3.3)

If you look close enough, you can just about spot Shannen Doherty's soul dying as she crawls around on the floor acting like a six year-old. Once Upon a Time is bad. Like really bad. For some reason, Alyssa Milano believes she needs to put on a slurring, lisping voice and awkwardly stamp around like she's stuck in a perpetual tantrum when playing her younger self. Seriously, the scenes where Phoebe and Prue become children all over again are hideously embarrassing. The rest of the episode is just as heinous, with strangely awful special effects, painful acting from the guest stars, and a storyline that makes you want to ingest battery acid.