I’ve been watching a lot of old Charmed episodes lately. It’s not Buffy, it’s not Xena, it’s not even the L Word – but I like it. It has (usually) strong female characters, decent writing, and fair production values. But something about Charmed always bothered me, and it’s not that they had a penchant for making the occasional ‘Very Special Episode’ – (or that they killed Prue, though I wish they hadn’t!)
I think I’m bothered by the mechanics behind the magic.
Let me explain: I’m not usually given to fanboy tendencies (You know the type. “Spiderman is way cooler than the Incredible hulk, and here’s why!”, or “The Enterprise could totally beat the Battlestar Galactica,” or “Here are all of the different types of Pokeman, organized by color, personality and intelligence.”) I do care about realism, though. Not of the ‘that couldn’t really happen’ type, but of the ’suspension of disbelief’ type. So despite all of Xena’s crazy physics, random messing with the show’s mythology, and out-of-character comedy moments, it still suspends disbelief, because at the end of the day, Xena and Gabrielle are still soulmates – and that makes sense.
The plots of Charmed revolve around various magical events. Those events usually involve some random new demon with some random new ‘power’ who is stopped by the sisters’ reciting a silly rhyme! The extant of the sister’s power are never really explained. The way by which the spells work are confusing, and seemingly made up for each given plot. What saves the show is that whatever demonic threat they face,it makes sense to them, and helps them grow as people/overcome some personal problem/generally serve some emotional point. So, you just have to go along with the cheesy magic, and enjoy the characters! Or so I thought…
I noticed something, oddly enough, while watching Bound the other day. Several people get shot in Bound – but curiously, the victor in the fight is not the strongest, the smartest, or even the best prepared. When Caesar kills the mafia bosses, he wins, simply because he got his gun out first. It was three against one (I think), and he was rather whimpy – but he shot the others without much difficulty because he made the first move. This, of course, is a feature of most movies that contain violence, but which are not action movies., In an action piece, it takes forever to kill someone – giving lots of time for explosions, taunting, and cool poses. Buffy, for example, alternates punches with quips, faces reoccurring trouble without any sense of closure, and generally seems to be in one continual fight. Xena comes back from the dead whenever she pleases. Even your random cop show has extended gun fights for coolness’ sake. But that’s not how real violence usually works. It only takes one moderate wound to incapacitate a person for days. Most serious fights – gun fights in particular – are over before they begin. And the person who was goes first usually wins.
It’s gunfights vs. stickfights. In an action piece, the character’s might as well be fighting with sticks, for all the damage they do – but we like it, because it looks cool and doesn’t remind us of real violence.
Real violence isn’t pretty, it’s sudden and horrible.
And that was my problem with Charmed. I expected another Buffy-type show. It’s magical, it’s semi action oriented, and the character’s generally kill (demons, of course!) without compunction.
But Charmed is really more realistic than I thought. Sure, the rhymes are still cheesy, but the suddenness, the thin line between being killing and being killed, the fear of the moment that the sisters exhibit, is perhaps more realistic that the vast majority of shows. The real fight of the show, is to be ready for the actual fight.
Either that, or they cut fights short because their effects budget really sucked…