Emotions and secrets
and life changes are the themes of this episode. So, each sister is having life
changes:
Macy has just been
promoted by her new boss, Julia, who is known as a hardarse. She thinks Macy
would be an awesome boss but there’s a hitch - she also needs to make some
major economies which means firing Galvin. Macy is all “nooooo he my friend”
and Julia hits back that men do this all the time then go play golf. Which is a
gendered way of saying “if you’re a supervisor hiring and firing goes with the
territory time to be professional.”
And are they friends? I mean the last half a dozen episodes have kind of shown them to be super super awkward lately
She decides to see
Galvin for a dinner firing only he babbles constantly, stops her getting a word
in edgeways and praises her lavishly for her promotion while positively
Mel is struggling
choosing her Thesis, with Harry gently prodding her to choose soon, even
suggesting she use her time bending powers to give herself more time to choose
because he cannot give her more extensions. She is dodging the subject and
currently working as a bar tender
And we have Maggie
who is still mooning after Parker. And using the magical training orb to have
fantasies about him. And part of me rolled my eyes at Maggie’s pathetic
fantasies but then I roll them twice as hard at the writers who think this is a
woman’s sexual fantasy. Because really? Really really?
She’s also having
trouble choosing her major and considering dropping out because she’s not sure
about academia in general. Something she explains to Parker when they finally
get together - Lucy has moved on and sends a group text saying they totally
have her blessing. That was super quick and easily resolved… hand wave that
storyline! Handwave it away! (And I generally approve of getting her blessing
because, sure, you don’t own your exes. But if you’ve hurt a friend by kissing
her boyfriend, respect demands not jumping on that boyfriend if you value that
friendship). They have a low key date with veganism and lots of hyper
empathetic insight which makes Parker feel all understood as they both discuss
the overwhelming expectations their family puts on them. Parker talking about
his rich family why Maggie dealing with a family of brilliant academics and the
pressure to go to college from all of them
It’s all going well,
but when she kisses Parker she hears his thoughts - that he has a secret he
hopes she never learns.
This puts her off -
but when she tells Macy, Macy wisely points out that lots of people have
occasional dark thoughts and that doesn’t make them bad people so Maggie should
explore more.
So Maggie goes to see
Parker and walks in on him injecting himself. Because she hasn’t seen the
9,678,976 shows which have done the “legitimately taking medicine mistaken for
drug use” storyline before now. She storms off in a huff before, inevitably, by
the end of the episode when Parker reveals he actually has an immune system
condition which will probably kill him before he’s 40 and this is why he
injects himself. He finds himself feeling weak because of this and his whole
family cruelly treats it as a dirty secret. Of course Maggie hugs him and tells
him she’s not abandoning him. He thinks how wonderful it is that he has told
her his secret
Because a guy can
only have 1 secret
I’d make comments
about disability but we have a you-should-have-seen-this-coming-twist. But more
on that later
So it’s time for the
plot line. We’re introduced to a wine selling satyr who is attacked by a shadow
demon. He staggers to the Charmed ones (because apparently they’re on the
supernatural radar as the place you go to for help - Harry mentions upgrading
the security system). To mention the demon took part of the Scythe of Tartarus,
which the satyr has been a guardian for for generations. He uses satyr power to
bring out the booze while explaining lot of Greek myths which basically comes
to: magic scythe opens evil hell prison.
Naturally being able
to open the hell prison is not a good thing.
Also drinking with a
satyr will get you badly hungover - and Harry manages to be pretty adorable
both hungover and feeding them. I have to say how Harry has added to the
household has really been one of the best pluses of this show.
The second piece of
the scythe belongs to a Tawet, an Egyptian royal fertility god which has Harry
poking the sisters to show proper decorum. She’s lost her scythe to the shadow
demon as well. There’s only one left now and they need to find it.
There follows some
weird magnetism science segue which attracts insects and I wonder how hard
these damn things are to hide when a compass can find them, revealing the last
scythe fragment in the Charmed One’s attic. And it’s unlocked by the key Macy
found last episode - and it’s finding the key that put the Scythe in play in
the first place
This causes a lot of
soul searching with them as they all admit that keeping secret - Macy because
she thought she was evil, Maggie and Mel hiding their vision of their mother to
not upset her - has been a disaster and they need to be more honest with each
other. Which is nice and all but as Harry points out they have a shadow demon
to face
So, lots of light
spells later, the shadow demon arrives and there’s lots of nifty conflict and
Maggie touches the shadow demon and FEELS ITS PAIN.
And then a woman who
was flirting with Mel in the bar shows up and throws lightning around -
literally, this isn’t a euphemism - and steals the scythe. Oops. Also because
she threw lightning that left similar scars on Mel as it did on their mother
they realise she has to be a suspect for their mother’s murder
On the plus side, big
evil demon Alistair McEvil-Naughtiness doesn’t get it either so the lightning
woman doesn’t work for him. Harry isn’t even sure she is a demon. Alistair
wanted the scythe because he can’t open the paint can full of evil harbinger (a
plot line which will only get sillier) because magic and hoped a demon in
tartarus would be an expert in paint can opening. I guess. So he sent his son,
the shadow demon to go get the scythe and he failed
Oh and his son is
only a HALF demon and judged by his full demon family
And this shadow demon
is Parker. Those who didn’t see this coming, yes both of you, can now gasp in
shock. Parker is a good demon and in love and we’re doing the Cole storyline
already it seems
Let the angst begins.
Maggie decides she
wants to major psychiatry since she’s feeling all these thoughts and emotions
she wants to understand them more
While Mel decides to
drop out - she realises that she’s pursuing academia because it was her
mother’s dream and not necessarily what she wants. She wants to find her own
motivation since she’s been in her mother’s shadow so long.
And Macy realises
that having darkness in her doesn’t make her evil - and further that she won’t
fire Galvin. She goes to her boss and presents other ways they can save money
so she doesn’t have to - though I think she also fires other people.as well.
She presents this as not having to play by “their” (male rules). Except it’s
not really?
“We don’t have to
play by those rules” which sounds nice and would be a great take down of overly
aggressive patriarchal corporate culture… but that’s not what we saw? I
mean she wasn’t against firing someone, she was against firing her FRIEND. Oh,
sure she backed that up with his justified competence after the fact but her
first reaction is “he’s my friend.” And she went on to fire someone else who is
apparently less competent - or we’re supposed to assume because he was goofing
a little in the 10 seconds we saw of him? That’s still disposing of someone.
Either way, this isn’t new rules. Refusing to sack someone because they’re your
friend? That’s not new rules, that’s nepotism. Sacking someone for being incompetent?
Isn’t a new way of working, it’s how the system is supposed to work - all it
shows is that Julia is a really shit office manager because she picked the
employee to sack based on their wages rather than assessing their competence.
Which also doesn’t speak well of her promotion of Macy.
Again it shows how Charmed
gets that there are issues and talking points around something - like
aggressive corporate culture - but doesn’t really understand them
