Charmed: The Complete First Season (2005)

Review by: Brendon McCullin
Date: 3/1/05

What would you get if you combined Charlie’s Angels, Melrose Place, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then crossed it with Bewitched? If you answered the kind of show that Aaron Spelling would produce, give yourself a gold star.

Charmed, the most recent in a staggering string of successes for Spelling’s company, recently made it’s DVD debut with the release of Charmed: The Complete First Season. Centered around three San Francisco sisters – Piper, Prue and Phoebe Halliwell – who suddenly discover that they are not only witches but the “Charmed Ones” with more power than your average everyday Wicca devotee. In reality, the show right from the beginning was about cute girls running around being cute, wearing cute outfits, flirting with cute boys and fighting the weekly demon or warlock that was trying to kill them.

The first season clearly illustrates a show that knows that it has a hook and is trying to find a groove to exploit it. The show did not yet have the nightclub owned by the sisters that became an easy hip setting later on (as well as an excuse to feature the latest musical acts). Instead the sisters migrate from hanging around the house they’ve inherited from their grandmother to hanging around an auction house that Prue begins to work at – which naturally is owned by a warlock.

The show’s strength in the first season is directly related to its stars. Shannen Doherty, blackballed star of Spelling’s earlier success Beverly Hills 90210, returned to the producer’s fold to take on the role of oldest sibling Prue and gave the show a bump with that real life subplot. The show, and Doherty, trade readily on her true life Brenda Walsh-ness. It’s fitting that one of the ways that Doherty’s character can move things with her mind early on is to glare.

Similarly, Alyssa Milano utilizes her experience from both her sitcom childhood (on Who’s the Boss?) and her sexy adult roles in a string of B-movies. Her Phoebe is quirky, sexy and able to deliver a punch line.

The third sister Piper, played by Holly Marie Combs, largely plays off of one or the other as the show tries to find the right balance between the character’s mothering aspect and the need to keep her from seeming dowdy in comparison to her co-leads.

The stories from the first season largely follow the standard “learning about their powers” structure (besides Prue’s telekinesis, Piper can stop time and Phoebe can see the future). The sisters fight everything from shape shifters to their father – in the same episode as it happens. There’re also the goofy subplots, like Phoebe trying to work as a psychic and two the sisters trying their hands at a spell to attract guys. There’s even the inevitable time travel episode – right in the first season, no less – that takes the sisters back to the 1970’s to visit their mother and grandmother.

The DVD set features no extras, disappointing considering I’m sure that there’s plenty that both cast and crew might have to say about Doherty, especially now that she’s no longer involved with the show. At the very least, it would’ve been a nice touch to include the original pilot episode, filmed before Milano joined the cast.

It’s not high art, or even classic television for that matter, but there’s nothing wrong with spending a little time watching cute girls chasing away demons, while trying to keep an active social life. After all, someone coined that phrase “harmless fun” for a reason.

(Brendon McCullin is a staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine.)