Charmed is one of my all-time favorite shows. I started watching it some time in the middle of the summer out of pure boredom thinking that I wouldn't like it very much, but I absolutely loved it. Okay, it's a little bit cheesy, the girls are all boy-crazy and frankly a little bit stupid sometimes, but the show is very interesting, well-researched, in my opinion, cute and charming (haha, I know I'm very funny.) At any rate, I have watched all eight seasons of this show, and I absolutely love it.
Warning: There will be spoilers.
So basically, Charmed is a really fun show about three sisters who realize sometime in their early to late twenties (depending on which sister) that all of the women in their family since Melinda Warren during the Salem Witch Trials have been witches and that they are the Charmed Ones, the three most powerful witches meant to destroy evil. Phoebe finds it all to be fun and games at first, but Prue and Piper both reluctantly want normal lives, something that Piper never seems to give up. The series shifts after the death of Prue, the oldest sister, who was killed off due to conflicts between the three actresses, which allowed for the secret fourth sister Paige to enter the picture. Overall though, I thought that this show was absolutely awesome. I still love watching it even though I saw all eight seasons a relatively short time ago. I don't know why I find it so interesting, but I just found it awesome. I especially enjoyed it when the plot of the show changed a bit to allow for less Sailor-Moon-esque cheesy demons attacking the innocent and the three sisters vanquishing them in every single episode.
Pruedence "Prue" Halliwell (Shannen Doherty) is the oldest of the Halliwell sisters. Her character tended to be too bossy and headstrong, but she was also very loving of her sisters and funny. Unfortunately though, I didn't like Prue that much. She just wasn't very nice most of the time in my opinion. (I found the same to be true of Piper once she became the oldest sister as well.) Sometimes she was very annoying, but she did a good job playing the older sister role. She was always the strongest of the sisters--until she died, that is--and she had the coolest power: telekinesis. Even though I found her annoying at times, I thought that Prue was a really good character. She played her part really well and I was sad to see her go when she was written out of the show. One thing that annoyed me the most was the way that her character died. The finale of Season 3 was phenomenal, but it didn't even seem like they planned out Prue's death at all. She was just dead in the next episode when she could have just as easily been alive. Killing her off was rushed and annoying. They should have made her die in a more creative way instead of making it look like they were just like, "hm, we should kill of Prue. Let's just not write her into the next episode." "Okay." It just seemed really stupid, like they escaped so many potential horrible deaths throughout the first three seasons and then she died so easily in a way that could easily have been avoided.
Piper Halliwell (Holly Marie Combs) was the second oldest sister of the original Charmed Ones. However, when Prue died and Paige was added to the mix, Piper became the oldest. So, I will go over both of Piper's personalities, the one she had prior to Prue's death and the one she had after Prue's death. Before Prue's death, Piper was a pushover. The other two sisters walked all over her. She was also the negotiator, the neutral one. Whenever Prue and Phoebe butted heads, which happened all the time, Piper was in the middle looking exasperated. She also let her bosses walk all over her from time to time, though eventually she learned to stand up to some people. She began to become stronger over the years, and when Prue died, her personality seemed to change completely. She became the older sister in every sense of the word, becoming the same things about Prue that I hated. She was bossy, acted like she could control the other two, and frequently did reckless things even though the other two had great arguments against what she was trying because she was the oldest and could lay down the law. Honestly, she was pretty much a bitch for the rest of the series, though she had her good moments. I really liked her in the final few episodes, and I loved her after the stress of all the demon hunting was finally over and she could relax. I'm surprised she didn't have heart problems from all the stress she put herself under trying to make sure her kids lived "normal" lives, which I thought was pretty stupid. I mean, you'd think that after eight years of being a witch she would get over it and realize that she wanted to be a freaking witch, especially when she would frequently decide she didn't want to be one anymore and then realize that she actually did. (That happened to all of the sisters, including Paige, at least four times throughout the series. I don't know about you, but if I found out that I could stop time, orb and use telekinesis-orbing, use telekinesis or see the future so I could stop it, I wouldn't be complaining. I can see the demon thing sucking, but they just kept having the same problem over and over and over again.) Anyway, overall I did like Piper, even though she annoyed the crap out of me at times. I also really love her kids. xD
Phoebe Halliwell (Alyssa Milano) was the youngest sister until Paige was discovered. She, too, had two different personalities, her pre-Paige personality and her post-Paige personality. Before Paige, she was very immature and kind of a brat. She and Prue always fought because Prue was really stubborn and bossy and thought about the consequences of everything and Phoebe thought about the consequences of nothing and was, again, a brat. However, she matured throughout the series even before Paige came along. When Paige did come along, Phoebe struggled with becoming the middle sister. Although Phoebe also had her stupid and stubborn moments and irritated me, I sincerely liked her character, especially after season five. (My favorite seasons are five through eight.) I don't remember anything about her that I really hated, except when she lost all her powers and then only got one of them back. I don't have much bad to say. As for relationships, I did think it was annoying that she only got to have kids in the epilogue. I wanted her to get a husband earlier, and I hated what the writers did to Cole. Instead of giving the two of them a happy ending and allowing Cole to become good like we all knew he DID, not just could have, they made the seer trick him into turning evil again and then the girls believed that he had really turned evil, then he died, then he came back all-powerful and went crazy and then he died again. By the time he finally died, I wanted him to. However, I really wanted him to be with Phoebe badly, though I can't say that I disliked when she ended up with the Cupid, but that was really rushed and not terrifically romantic compared to the other relationships. Anyway, I really liked Phoebe's character in the later seasons.
Paige Mathews (Rose McGowan) is the secret fourth sister. When I heard that Prue was killed off and another sister was discovered, I was really wary about it thinking that the way she entered the sisters would be really stupid, but they actually made up a really good back story for her. After the three sisters' mother and father split up, the mother fell in love with her whitelighter (which was established long before Paige was even an idea) and the two of them had an illegitimate child who they put up for adoption so that the Elders wouldn't find out. The story worked really well, and there were times when I really liked Paige. However, at the beginning I thought she was really immature and kind of spoiled. After realizing that she was Charmed, she was just like "eh, I don't feel like it anymore." She acted like a little kid. I'm not sure how old she was supposed to be, but she was probably out of college, meaning she was at least in her early twenties. She acted way too young for her age (I mean the character for all of these, by the way. I'm not bashing the actresses. They did a great job playing their parts. xD) I did like how Paige matured as the series went on though. She turned into another one of my favorite characters and although I didn't like her as much as Prue when I was watching season four, by season eight it was kind of like "Prue who?" I always thought it would be fun if Prue came back just for a visit like Patty and the Grandmother often did, but I was eventually all right with the fact that she never did.
As for my favorite character of all time, I really liked Chris Halliwell as an adult coming back from the future in both season six and season eight. I liked Wyatt as an adult and a child, since he was such a powerful child so it was really fun to see him. I liked Billie a lot until she became really stupid and started falling for all of her sisters tricks and I absolutely hated her sister. I also hated when the entire magical Kingdom turned against the Charmed Ones. It wasn't fair because the Charmed ones were under spells and it wasn't their fault. After everything they did for them, it was unfair for the magical creatures to turn against them. In fact, a lot of things that really weren't fair happened in the last season, but especially everything with Billie.
The last episode of Charmed was absolutely fantastic. I sometimes watch it again and again just because. I really thought it was well thought out and it was really fun to have characters from all different times together. I was glad that Billie figured out what was actually going on and that the sisters were able to live happily ever after, though I did think it was really sad that Billie's sister had to die. I didn't want her to stay alive as she was, but I did think it would be nice if she stayed alive but was no longer evil.
In conclusion, I loved Charmed and would (and probably will) watch it all over again. I recommend that everybody who likes fantasy and witchcraft or witches in general take a peek at it. It gets annoyingly stupid sometimes, but overall the series has a compelling story, lots of drama, and action-packed episodes of win.
