|
Post by SimplyAretha on May 13, 2011 19:19:03 GMT -5
Discuss Season 3.
What did you think of the episodes Shannon directed?
Could you see the tension building between Alyssa and Shannon?
Have your opinions changed in over the years?
|
|
Astral Alex
Familiar
#1 Prue Halliwell Fan
Not all those who wander are lost.
Posts: 710
|
Post by Astral Alex on May 14, 2011 8:19:10 GMT -5
My second favourite season after Season 4. I think the producers had taken what worked from Seasons 1 & 2 and then picked out what hadn't worked so well, and tailored it into Season 3. The plots were clever, and I think the only episodes I didn't enjoy were: Magic Hour, We All Scream For Ice Cream and Look Who's Barking.
I think the plots such as demon-hunting Prue, Piper and Leo's eventual wedding and the Phoebe/Cole relationship were all what carried the season. The development of Phoebe and Piper's powers in the season also added a nice new touch, as if the producers were preparing for the re-boot of Charmed with Season 4. The one thing that annoyed me about Season 3 was the dreadful episode 'Look Who's Barking'. Being the penultimate Prue episode, I would've expected something a litte more dramatic, or at least to set up the finale, with the progress they had made with the plot arcs in this season, I would have preferred All Hell Breaks Loose to be a two parter, to get rid of that dreadful episode.
The only thing that I found enjoyable was Piper struggling with her explosion power. Which I don't find as ridiculous as everybody else on here seems to think. I liked how Piper used her powers in Season 4, where she used her freezing power as much as her explosion power, but after that she relied on her combustion power solely.
A great season overall, and I think Prue's death was a very dramatic episode.
|
|
|
Post by CharmedFaith on Aug 7, 2011 22:24:16 GMT -5
My favorite season of Charmed! It had a little touch of everything. They finally ventured more into the magical community with faeries and gremlins. Had a good nemesis in Cole. Exciting new powers (sure in the long run you look at it differenly but I was so hyped when I saw Phoebe gain levitation and Piper Molecular Combustion). Ill have to add more later.
|
|
Esmeralda
Charmed
S2 "What If...?" Fan Fic Winner
Twenty Years Gone....But Never Forgotten.
Posts: 21,903
|
Post by Esmeralda on Aug 8, 2011 12:29:48 GMT -5
Here's my review of Season Three, which I wrote during S8. I've added a few things in order to answer SP's questions.
Although this wasn't my favorite season, it came close. The characters were more developped--the Halliwells were both witches and sisters, and especially up to the wedding--the closeness between the sisters was there.
The idea of Phoebe falling in love with a demon, especially after us finding out that a demon, Anton, is her soulmate, made for a ton of suspense. No doubt Cole was the best male character on the show, he truly had so many different sides, and Julian played them all so very well!
About the only thing that I didn't like about it was the change in Phoebe, as the closeness we saw between her and Prue during S2 and the beginning of S3 seemed to go away, leading up to Phoebe lying to Prue when she told her that she hadn't vanquished Cole. This undoubtedly was thanks to the growing tension between the two actresses as the writers worked to find more and more ways not to have the two actresses in the same scene. But I hate the idea of the two sisters (not actresses, but *sisters*) on such rotten terms at the time of Prue's death still hurts. Prue's death also meant the death of Phoebs, my favorite of the sisters.
There was constant foreboding about Prue, ending up with her dying saving an innocent; to my knowledge the only one who has--saving a family member doesn't count.
I wonder if Doherty knew she was directing her own swan song if she had done it differently. No way she could've done it better. Although I can't watch the episode because it hurts so much, the directions and the acting were easily amongst Doherty's best. If Prue had to die, I wish they could've found a way to keep Doherty as main director.
Then there was Piper & Leo and their marriage and her getting her new power (undoubtedly setting them up so that the girls still had a way to take care of demons once Prue died) was perfect, even though I wish they could've found a different one. Once a single Charmed Ones could destroy demons just by using her own power, she no longer needed her sisters, the way Prue still needed hers, since her TK didn't kill. Originally Piper could only push people away with it, not actually kill them. That would've been much better, because personally I think that changing Piper's power from time manipulation to molecular manipulation is the worst mistake made on the series--it set up Piper to be much too powerful and allowed her to take over the show, so the show was about her and her husband and her sons, and, oh, yes, didn't she have a couple of sisters, too, and didn't they also have powers?
As far as I'm concerned, the wedding was the last episode of "Charmed". After that, it became its first (and thank God, only) spin-off, "The Perils of Poor, Poor, Pitiful Piper", even if Milano did want it to turn it into "All About Freebie" - it wasn't.
For me, despite the episodes after the wedding, the first three seasons make the perfect trilogy. It has nothing to do with Prue vs Paige, who became my favorite sister of the second set of Charmed Ones, but just the way it's set up, with S1 being Prue's love story, with her guy a mortal, S2 being Piper's with her guy an angel and S3 being Phoebe's. with her guy a demon. Finding out about their destiny in S1, living it in S2, losing part of it in S3.
When Shax turns and says, "The End", I truly thought it was and a lot of times think it should be. It's why I stopped buying DVDs after I got S3, and didn't plan on buying any others until I read dstar;s post about watching S7 directly after S4, while also skipping certain episodes in S7. I've been doing that on youtube and so far I do like his idea, so I might end up getting some more DVDs...
But for now, this is my Charmed trilogy and I love it.
A-/8 out of 10/Very Good!
|
|
ljones
Whitelighter
Posts: 4,123
|
Post by ljones on Aug 8, 2011 14:23:51 GMT -5
Although "Just Harried" was so-so in my book, do you mean to say that you didn't care for some of the other episodes between that particular episode and "All Hell Breaks Loose"?
Athough Prue was the only sister who didn't have a romance this season, I was surprised by the number of episodes that featured her obsession in demonic hunting and acknowledgment of her complex nature - especially in episodes like "Sight Unseen", "Primrose Empath", ironically "Just Harried", "Sin Francisco" and especially "Death Takes a Halliwell".
If I must be blunt, Season 3 is my favorite. Without it, I would have stopped watching "CHARMED" after the disappointing Season 2.
|
|
Jad
Familiar
I was going to go with Liberty Jad, aren't you glad I didn't?
Posts: 256
|
Post by Jad on Aug 8, 2011 15:00:04 GMT -5
Season 3 was the beginning of the end of Phoebe. When she lied about vanquishing Cole, it started, and it was completed in season 5 when she failed to take responsibility for her decisions in season 4. By putting all the blame on Cole in season 5, the character growth of Phoebe was stunted. From there on out, she was just a shell of a character and a hallow one at that.
Seasons 1 and 2 are the seasons of innocence, 3 and 4 are the transition, and 5+ are about something lost that can't be found again. Do some of early season 5, skip most of the second half and all the 6th. The 7th season is the best of the lost seasons. By lost, I mean wandering the wasteland lost. Wandering the wasteland isn't bad in and of itself, it's just that the Charmed Ones never found there way home, and the comics are making it worse, not helping.
Julian MacMahon saved the show as I'm sure that the third season would have been the last if it wasn't for Cole. The character of Cole brought the Charmed Ones from innocence to being lost in the wasteland.
Sorry, but the show could not continue in the innocence of the first two seasons. But, you need them to show the lost seasons. They give the later seasons context in a negative way. Only by knowing what we had can we know the loss.
|
|
Esmeralda
Charmed
S2 "What If...?" Fan Fic Winner
Twenty Years Gone....But Never Forgotten.
Posts: 21,903
|
Post by Esmeralda on Aug 8, 2011 21:25:01 GMT -5
Although "Just Harried" was so-so in my book, do you mean to say that you didn't care for some of the other episodes between that particular episode and "All Hell Breaks Loose"? No, I didn't mean that at all. There's a number of episodes I like beyond Just Harried (and although there's a lot of that episode that I do like, there's also a lot I don't - Piper's wedding being all about Prue being a main part of it), both in S3 and beyond. What I meant is that after that episode was when everyone started to change for the worst. Prue became more prideful, culminating in her death. Piper started thinking that everything that happened was just to torture her, culminating with her trying to destroy San Francisco in her self-pity a couple years later. Phoebe started lying and started turning into PhoeME/Freebie, culminating in her horrible baby's daddy search. Seasons 1 and 2 are the seasons of innocence, 3 and 4 are the transition, and 5+ are about something lost that can't be found again. Do some of early season 5, skip most of the second half and all the 6th. The 7th season is the best of the lost seasons. By lost, I mean wandering the wasteland lost. Wandering the wasteland isn't bad in and of itself, it's just that the Charmed Ones never found there way home, and the comics are making it worse, not helping. Julian MacMahon saved the show as I'm sure that the third season would have been the last if it wasn't for Cole. The character of Cole brought the Charmed Ones from innocence to being lost in the wasteland. Sorry, but the show could not continue in the innocence of the first two seasons. But, you need them to show the lost seasons. They give the later seasons context in a negative way. Only by knowing what we had can we know the loss. Perhaps Jad is right in everything he says, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I'll stick to those years of innocence (Charmed) over the years of being lost in the wasteland (The Perils of Poor, Poor, Pitiful Piper) any day. Had they came out of the wasteland, I might have felt differently. But for them to dig themselves so deeply and then, at least according to Forever Crap, I mean Forever Piper, I mean Forever Charmed, they were actually rewarded for it -- *shudder*
|
|
ljones
Whitelighter
Posts: 4,123
|
Post by ljones on Aug 9, 2011 0:12:34 GMT -5
Prue was always too proud. It was a flaw that she had failed to overcome before her death.
However, Prue was the only sister who learned to face the possibility of her complex nature. She was the only one who really began to appreciate that the world (or universe) was gray and not black-and-white.
I agree. In fact, I almost gave up on the show, because I thought it had remained stagnated by the end of S2.
|
|
Jad
Familiar
I was going to go with Liberty Jad, aren't you glad I didn't?
Posts: 256
|
Post by Jad on Aug 9, 2011 2:38:10 GMT -5
Sorry Es, I have to go along with miss jones, the first two seasons were a little to sugary sweet for my tastes.
Charmed for me never ended; they never found their way home. The show endd having the sisters more lost than they ever were. There was no redemption for Piper or Phoebe. They never acknowledged any bad decisions they made; they just scapegoated. Piper always put the needs of her family before anything else. She needed more balance and find her source of complaining and deal with it. Getting a normal life would not have done it. In my experience people who complain do so no matter what, and the complaining didn't just start in later seasons, it was there from the first episode.
Phoebe needed to admit that at least half the fault for the Cole debacle was hers.
Paige needed to stop cleaning up her sister's messes. She became the classic enabler.
Cristy and Billie calling into question the sisters behavior should have been taken seriously. That is the road they needed to go down to resolve the final season.
The third season brings both sides of Charmed on to the table. This why I talk about the whole series when I talk about the third season. It had the innocence of the past and echoes of future de-evolution in the future all rolled into one tightly bond third season. It is my first or second favorite season. The only bad was how they did Prue's swan song.
|
|
|
Post by Chrisaholic on Aug 12, 2011 14:14:09 GMT -5
The best addition to the show was Julian McMahon. The way he played Cole Turner aka Balthazor was formidable and gave Charmed an interesting new development, concerning the three sisters. Phoebe instantly liking him, Prue being suspicious of him and Piper, well, she was going to marry Leo finally. A good thing was also that Victor was back in the picture, though with a new actor (and one I knew before) but Dad was back. Clearly that he didn't like Leo but at least he's accepted him. And what future seasons told us, we know the rest. It was not good that Prue died at the end of the season but that Shannen directed her own death? Weird, in my eyes. With the knowledge of later seasons: Where were the Cleaners in that case? With Prue dead, did her younger sisters really mourn her? Piper yes, Phoebe, I don't know. I'll leave with it. It might get started ... hot!!
|
|
|
Post by hawkbrother on Aug 15, 2011 9:03:43 GMT -5
The issue of rumors about why Shannen left the show, whether it was tension with Alyssa or with others has been dealt with in another thread so I will not comment further. I agree that the Cole storyline is the central theme of the season. When Phoebe lied to her sisters and Leo about vanquishing Cole, because she still loved his human half, it set in motion many future events. I disagree that Prue and Phoebe were always at odds with each other. They were honest with esach other(except in the case of Phoebe and Cole). I say that as in my voyage once again through the season I have just watched We All Scream For Ice Cream, where it is Prue and Phoebe that are together most of the time. That is one of my favorite eps.I knowe some might disagree. Demons disguised as munchkins , really. But my favorite scene is the end where Prue and her father are finally reconciled. This is one time where Phoebe's growing tendency to hide things from her sisters, in this case that she has been in contact with Victor through IM, ends happily.
|
|
Esmeralda
Charmed
S2 "What If...?" Fan Fic Winner
Twenty Years Gone....But Never Forgotten.
Posts: 21,903
|
Post by Esmeralda on Sept 4, 2011 20:09:36 GMT -5
It's September! Is it time to start discussing Season Four??
*sigh* Although I'm certain that most of the discussion will center around AHBL and Charmed Again. It's what usually happens when either S3 or S4 is under discussion.
|
|
|
Post by West on Mar 18, 2016 23:20:07 GMT -5
Figured since we had 1 and 2. 3 im most curious about with everyone here.
Season 3 has definitely changed over the years for me. I used to love the Phoebe/Cole arc, but there was a part of me that so missed my early Phoebe. That I wished she stayed single longer.
The show has a darker feel now which some loved and or hated. But its interesting to note every season began at night in the first four seasons and the last 4 started at day with such predictable and hardly exciting starts. Almost like a typical episode.
I did enjoy many episodes as my favourite writers were still here.
Its still better than the later seasons. I have issues here and there with episodes but i can still find enjoyment in many. Something i cant say in later years. I still would rank this my third favourite season of charmed behind season 2 and 1.
Im excited to hear what others feel about the season and how it has changed over the years.
|
|
|
Post by Melinda Halliwell on Mar 19, 2016 5:31:02 GMT -5
Myself personally I did like season 3 being it still in the era I loved Charmed the most featuring the original sisters and then there were certain times I didn't.
I still loved the sisterly dynamic and the moments we got with them but not Phoebe choosing Cole over Prue and Piper or lying to them about him being dead which she should've told and shared her responsibilities of him and them together which was when I started hating her slightly but not totally then.
The Triad were a good Idea developed wrongly I think. They were meant to be the big bad of the season but were vanquished early on so easily by Cole which never made sense there.
I did like Cole when he came out though all dark and mysterious like with complex issues and the fact Phoebe finally had a man to love although not him changing her slightly taking away previous year Phoebe though.
Hated Piper getting her exploding power which took away the drama and suspense of vanquishing things afterwards I think. Yes give her an active power by all means but not one that doesn't require the P03 much in the future again. Freezing things in ice or being invisible, phasing through walls and hyper speed even were good subtitutes to that. Or if not make it molecular combustion had limitations which couldn't vanquish every demon here and there then.
And finally I'm glad Prue died even though it meant Shannen left because it let us remember her best and not what might've happened had Kern pounced on her later on essentially which could be said the same for Phoebe if that'd happened to her instead.
|
|
|
Post by stratego on Aug 14, 2020 16:48:04 GMT -5
So overall, season 3 is darker than season 2, which I certainly don't mind, but when it goes goofy, it's even goofier than season 2. I said season 2 was hit-or-miss compared to the first season, but I feel this season has more misses. A lot of episodes started out with a great idea, but then got ruined with silliness or ripping off other movies and tv shows. I do feel it's more consistent and not so much all over the place as season, but at the same time the main story arcs are its biggest weakness.
The Cole storyline starts out great and Julian McMahon portrays a great character, but they play pretty much ALL of their cards way too soon. He gets introduced too soon, his true intentions are revealed too soon, he and Phoebe fall in love too soon and he gets (not) vanquished too soon. This had dire consequences. Apparently they realized during production they wanted to keep Cole on the show, but once back they didn't really know what to do with him and his presence became akward at times. Another result was the effect the badly developed storyline had on Phoebe. It's one thing for her to go ga-ga over a guy, but it's so unlike Phoebe to completely ignore her responsibilities and her sisters' feelings over a guy she only knew a weeks. It was hard to believe Phoebe was SO in love with this guy, that she wouldn't vanquish him when needed or wouldn't even tell her sisters the truth. Supposedly she felt guilty, but she had a huge chip on her shoulder whenever someone brought it up. I can't blame it all on the writing, because a lot of time Alyssa walked around really grumpy. Anyway, I feel the storyline would've been improved if Cole had left town after killing the Triad without the sisters knowing who he was. He could've returned later, pursued his relationship with Phoebe and the story could've continued from there.
Of course I wanted to see Piper and Leo get married, but not when it means more stories about whitelighters and Elders! It really started to take over the show. They even showed us what "upstairs" looked like! This would've been the right moment for Leo to become mortal again.
This season was all about SuperPrue. Not only were her magical powers stronger than anybody else's, she was a martial arts expert (even though it was Phoebe's thing), a pro-wrestler, a gunslinger, Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, a barfly and a dog. She was admired by everbody, by men AND women, by mortals AND warlocks. It was just too much. Some Prue-centric episodes, where she was normal and showed her weaknesses, I actually liked. But some I consider the worst of the show. Somewhere there was an interesting story arc about Prue's obsessive demon hunting getting the better of her, but it just wasn't utilized.
This season was also full of fashion crimes (handkerchiefs that function as tops, blouses that remind me of the one featured on Seinfeld) and bad hairstyles (especially Phoebe). The sets also looked more low budget.
|
|