Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Charmed gets Meta-tastic!


 Episodes Watched
"How to Make a Quilt out of Americans" (groan)
"Chick Flick"
"Ex Libris"
"Astral Monkey"

Into It
I really dig the pomo episode "Chick Flick." College co-ed Phoebe comes across an Illusion Demon who can jump into movies and make the audience watching them feel more violent. Now that I type that, it seems pretty conservative, which I don't love. But what I DO love is that in the process of trying to vanquish him, they pull Phoebe's girlhood movie star crush Billy out of her favorite horror movie, and they have some quality make-out time. It would be like if I cast a spell to get this guy out of his movie:

We would go get a Slushee. Then we would make out.

In addition to Billy, the Illusion demon, who looks like the lead singer of Nickelback,

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How'd the hell did he end up like this?

releases some of the villains from slasher movies. In order to defeat the "lobotomized Paul Bunyan" and "Bloody Mary" (I would adore actually seeing these films), the Charmed Ones have to kill them the way they die in their respective films. The implicit argument is that knowledge of movies, specifically genre pictures (the title is no accident), can actually save your life. It's a version of what J.K. does in Deathly Hallows---when the genre itself (supernatural fantasy/YA literature) conceptually and structurally illustrates that said genre is artistically, and metaphysically, serious. Well done, Charmed

Over It
Leo was MARRIED??? In "Ex Libris," Piper discovers that before he got whitelit, Leo had a wife. Apparently he appeared to her after and told her to move on, and he assures Piper that it was literally another life and she means nothing to him, but, ugh. I wish Piper had been his first and only love. If Heathcliff became a whitelighter, he would NEVER have forgotten Catherine.

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At least we got a "Leo in the shower" scene to make up for it.


Waiting for It
In "Astral Monkey," the girls have to kill a human "innocent": the doctor who still hasn't gotten over Piper's miraculous recovery from bizarro fever way back in "Awakened." Dr. Williamson injects some monkey's with the Halliwell blood, giving the animals the sisters' powers (hence the title), and accidentally injects and magicizes himself as well. (Which is another Over It: the powers are blood-borne? It smacks of midichlorians.) The magic drives his mortal body mad, and after an urban legend-esque murder spree (he steals organs), the girls kill him. Piper takes it especially hard. Will this rebound on the girls, Buffy-style?

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And if there's just more gentle weeping in Leo's arms, I'm fine with that, too.

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