Charmed: Something Wicca This Way Goes (7.22)

This feels a lot like a series finale, and knowing the twenty-two brain farts that form season eight, this damn well should have been the series finale. Something Wicca This Way Goes plays like a greatest hits hour, full of references to past episodes, old spells and former characters. Some of the dialogue could be interpreted as too self-conscious, but I feel it kind of worked here. I liked seeing the sisters revisiting the past to try and find new methods to destroy Zankou, as well as the Halliwell's mutual concern over their newest antagonist and his grand scheme to steal the Nexus and gain ultimate power.

Charmed: Death Becomes Them (7.21)

While this is pretty good, it would be foolish to not acknowledge that Death Becomes Them could have been a hell of a lot better. The central conceit for the hour revolves around innocents that were lost, and the guilt that manifests in the Charmed Ones when Zankou brings them back from the dead. The sucky thing being that two of the three zombies are introduced literally twenty minutes before they're zombified, while season three 'lost innocent' Inspector Davidson was more a victim of Prue's decision making, and not so much Phoebe's. It's just a little annoying that behind-the-scenes sniping prevented somebody like Shannen Doherty returning, since that would have made a ton more sense from a storytelling perspective. Then again, Andy or some illusion of Chris could have made interesting zombies, even Charisma Carpenter's Seer. Eh. The whole thing feels like a missed opportunity in that regard.

Angel: Home (4.22)

Reinvention is good. There's something about Home that screams of an attempt to curb cancellation, and it's not a new phenomena. When a show's ratings are flatlining, not horrible but certainly not strong enough for an immediate pick-up, it's seemingly traditional for the show to experiment with a game-changer. Sometimes the show flashes forward in time, sometimes a major new character is flown in, and sometimes an entirely new environment is introduced. The latter doesn't always work, think back to the jarring "Veronica Mars: FBI Agent" thing, but sometimes the game-changer is so absurd yet so inherently believable that it's no surprise the network was completely charmed by it.

Buffy: Chosen (7.22)

Back in the early years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the very first thing you heard at the top of every show was that gloomy proclamation: "In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer". Of all those words, spoken first by that velvety, nondescript narrator and then with Anthony Stewart Head's silky British tones, what stood out was the use of 'alone'. Buffy had her strong support group of friends, acquaintances and allies but, after all the blood and the pain, she still stood alone. Even when similar women with her sacred duty appeared, they were quickly marked by their respective differences. Buffy Summers was surrounded by others, but she was still alone when it really mattered.

Angel: Peace Out (4.21)

There's interesting moral complexity at the heart of Peace Out, something far removed from the pod-people sci-fi of the early Jasmine episodes and the exhausting melodrama of last week. Here we actually see the person within the illusion of Jasmine, as well as her generally good intentions. It's sometimes hard to rectify the Jasmine seen here with the Jasmine inhabiting Cordelia's body during the opening stretch of season four, but her plan raises some intriguing questions about freewill and Angel's arguably short-sighted decision to bring her down. Because, as she says, while she does a lot of damage and eats her own worshipers every once in a while -- is it really a worse situation than a world overrun with war, poverty and corruption?

Buffy: End of Days (7.21)

Caleb's arrival seemed like the first indication of the writers suddenly realizing that the First wasn't hugely effective as a big bad. Here, we once again see examples of the show struggling to give the First much definition as a villain, other than vague shading that doesn't really go anywhere. While the major antagonists of every other season had specific reasons for not instantly putting their plan into action (the hunt for the Key, the various trials before Ascension, etc.), it seems more than ever that the First and Caleb are merely hanging around trading barbs. It's something that hit me when Giles spoke about "running out of time", yet with there being little indication of what exactly is coming around the corner. The problem with this season's apocalypse is that, after everything, it's very much been a bunch of people talking about how bad everything is, without much depiction of it on-screen.

The X-Files: Providence (9.10)

Again, it feels like a bunch of hot air. Providence is another in a long, long line of myth-arc episodes that put across the illusion of saying something without actually saying anything at all. The William story has now become so shapeless that you're never surprised by any of the events that occur. There are a couple of pointers about William being either the savior of mankind or the ruler of the aliens, depending on Mulder's survival, but again it's benching the story in the hands of what's essentially a lump wrapped in a blanket... and a guy who's not actually on the show anymore. What it does is leave the cast members that are still hanging around, and who can actually talk, drifting along with little importance in the grand scheme of things.

The X-Files: Provenance (9.9)

It stopped being a fresh complaint around five seasons ago, but the total lack of direction in The X-Files' longer story arcs mortally wounded this show. In Provenance, we once again see the show pulling from long-dropped continuity, in this case the spaceship rubbings Scully made back at the start of season seven, and it entirely feels like the show randomly throwing darts at something from the past and deciding to run with it again. My memory is always hazy with The X-Files, but wasn't that story just dropped without question years ago? It's just too hacky, the work of people with absolutely zero forward thinking.