Post by cyma on Aug 23, 2013 13:16:24 GMT -5
This was posted on the IMDB boards. It's to help make sense of Phoebe's transition during the later seasons:
Phoebe's mechanical search for her future baby daddy actually makes sense, for the most part, and I think it is consistent with her character development. I guess audiences are so used to seeing characters change "for the better" that they see characters changing for the worst as bad writing, when in actuality it can be a realistic depiction of the evolution of a person. Evolution being "the change in the inherited characteristics" and not the growth into a highly moral individual.
In season one, Phoebe is a fun spirited young woman who is more in love with witchcraft and her sisters than attempting to find a long-term romantic partner. She's the epitome of the early twenty-something who desires to find themselves. By season two, Phoebe moves beyond accepting her destiny as just a witch, like in season one, but grows to embrace her role as a Charmed One and protector of the innocent. While magic is still fun for her, she begins to take it more seriously this season. This maturity leads to her wanting to be like her sisters and have a career alongside being a witch, and so she goes back to college to earn her B.A. degree in psychology. Unlike her sisters, who also attempt to find men to settle down with, the cupid from "Heartbreak City" helps us learn that Phoebe doesn't really believe true love can exist for herself. So, while she learns to consider the possibility of finding true love, her main focus is on her craft and her education.
In season three, Phoebe sees that love can conqueror all with Leo and Piper as [an] example, and decides to truly take a chance on love for the first time with Cole. She opens up her closed heart. Some fans think this relationship is the beginning of Phoebe becoming more selfish, but isn't that what naturally happens to someone who falls in love, really falls in love for the first time? Their new partner becomes their everything. In the past, Phoebe has merely had romantic flings, nothing serious. With Cole being her first serious relationship, and it being a literal forbidden love, it is only natural for Phoebe to give her all to make it work. Especially since this is the first time she opened up her heart to really let a man into it.
I think by season four, after losing Prue while attempting to save Cole, Phoebe is at the point in her relationship where she thinks Cole has to be the ONE. Otherwise, were the events of "All Hell Breaks Loose" really worth it? While she wanted things to work with Cole, I think Piper was right that losing Prue, finding Paige, and thinking she needs to stop being the baby sister and become the middle sister was a big toil on Phoebe. Phoebe told Piper that after a death, you aren't supposed to make any big changes. Deciding to marry Cole was a big change, but it seems as though almost losing him when he was mortal made her decide to take a leap of faith. I think Phoebe and Cole needed a break after Prue's death, but there's no way she could justify breaking up with him since her fighting to save him played a part in Prue's death.
During seasons five through six, I think Phoebe's heart was beginning to close itself off again after everything that happened with Cole. She was so afraid of what she had become in late season four, that she attempted to cut herself off from anything that reminded her of that time in her life. This included Cole and her witchcraft, as she placed a majority of her focus on her job. Then in late season five, she meets Jason and dates him for a year, but she never really opens her heart to him fully. How could she when he was the rebound? When he finds out about her being a witch, and then breaks up with her for it, I think that's when Phoebe's heart fully closed itself off again. I think Jason breaking up with Phoebe was the point when Phoebe went back to believing that true love wouldn't exist for her. Not the way she saw it happen for Piper and Leo. The look on Phoebe's face when Jason walks away her from says it all. She knew he loved her, because of her empathy, but at the end of the day, that love wasn't enough to make him stay.
For someone like Phoebe, who always feared that love would never be enough to make a relationship work, her fears from "Heartbreak City" were officially validated. In her mind, Cole couldn't love her if she was good, and she believed evil couldn't love. Jason (and later Dex) couldn't love her as a witch. I don't think Phoebe believed a man would be able to love her unconditionally anymore. Given her examples of relationships, Prue and Andy, Patty and Victor, Penny and her multiple husbands, Phoebe probably thought Piper and Leo were the exception and not the rule when it came to a Halliwell finding love.
So, when Phoebe gets the vision of her future daughter, Phoebe probably doesn't even think that she has a relationship with her daughter's father in the future. She probably thinks she married a guy, had her daughter, and probably ended up in divorce like her parents. That's probably way she didn't care about falling in love with the father of her child. I remember, Phoebe says, "Who has time for love?" during her quest to find the father of her child and for me, it validates my theory that Phoebe didn't believe a romantic love was in the cards for her. She just wanted to find the father of her child, have her daughter, and deal with the inevitable "break up" that she knows was destined to happen because she no longer believed she would have true love. I think Phoebe was forcing her premonitions to protect herself from another heartbreak. I think that for Phoebe, if she avoided "falling for her daughter's father" that, when she found him, it would hurt less when he left her after her daughter was born. I think Phoebe truly believed no man could love her unconditionally by that point in her life.
When Phoebe started knocking off her responsibilities as a Charmed One in favor of finding her baby daddy, I think it stemmed from her realization that being a witch would always play a part in her being someone undeserving of unconditional love. I think Phoebe's failed turns in her only serious relationships, with Cole and Jason, not only closed her heart off to love, but also stilted her earlier love for magic. In her experience, it seemed that Phoebe might think being a witch was part of the reason why she wouldn't have true love. Her destiny as a Halliwell, much like Penny, Patty and Prue, wouldn't allow it. That's why I think Phoebe's mechanical future baby daddy search was not a purely PhoeME kick, but a self-preservation from heartache kick that was a consistent fallout from her taking a chance on love after already not believing in it for so many years.
In season one, Phoebe is a fun spirited young woman who is more in love with witchcraft and her sisters than attempting to find a long-term romantic partner. She's the epitome of the early twenty-something who desires to find themselves. By season two, Phoebe moves beyond accepting her destiny as just a witch, like in season one, but grows to embrace her role as a Charmed One and protector of the innocent. While magic is still fun for her, she begins to take it more seriously this season. This maturity leads to her wanting to be like her sisters and have a career alongside being a witch, and so she goes back to college to earn her B.A. degree in psychology. Unlike her sisters, who also attempt to find men to settle down with, the cupid from "Heartbreak City" helps us learn that Phoebe doesn't really believe true love can exist for herself. So, while she learns to consider the possibility of finding true love, her main focus is on her craft and her education.
In season three, Phoebe sees that love can conqueror all with Leo and Piper as [an] example, and decides to truly take a chance on love for the first time with Cole. She opens up her closed heart. Some fans think this relationship is the beginning of Phoebe becoming more selfish, but isn't that what naturally happens to someone who falls in love, really falls in love for the first time? Their new partner becomes their everything. In the past, Phoebe has merely had romantic flings, nothing serious. With Cole being her first serious relationship, and it being a literal forbidden love, it is only natural for Phoebe to give her all to make it work. Especially since this is the first time she opened up her heart to really let a man into it.
I think by season four, after losing Prue while attempting to save Cole, Phoebe is at the point in her relationship where she thinks Cole has to be the ONE. Otherwise, were the events of "All Hell Breaks Loose" really worth it? While she wanted things to work with Cole, I think Piper was right that losing Prue, finding Paige, and thinking she needs to stop being the baby sister and become the middle sister was a big toil on Phoebe. Phoebe told Piper that after a death, you aren't supposed to make any big changes. Deciding to marry Cole was a big change, but it seems as though almost losing him when he was mortal made her decide to take a leap of faith. I think Phoebe and Cole needed a break after Prue's death, but there's no way she could justify breaking up with him since her fighting to save him played a part in Prue's death.
During seasons five through six, I think Phoebe's heart was beginning to close itself off again after everything that happened with Cole. She was so afraid of what she had become in late season four, that she attempted to cut herself off from anything that reminded her of that time in her life. This included Cole and her witchcraft, as she placed a majority of her focus on her job. Then in late season five, she meets Jason and dates him for a year, but she never really opens her heart to him fully. How could she when he was the rebound? When he finds out about her being a witch, and then breaks up with her for it, I think that's when Phoebe's heart fully closed itself off again. I think Jason breaking up with Phoebe was the point when Phoebe went back to believing that true love wouldn't exist for her. Not the way she saw it happen for Piper and Leo. The look on Phoebe's face when Jason walks away her from says it all. She knew he loved her, because of her empathy, but at the end of the day, that love wasn't enough to make him stay.
For someone like Phoebe, who always feared that love would never be enough to make a relationship work, her fears from "Heartbreak City" were officially validated. In her mind, Cole couldn't love her if she was good, and she believed evil couldn't love. Jason (and later Dex) couldn't love her as a witch. I don't think Phoebe believed a man would be able to love her unconditionally anymore. Given her examples of relationships, Prue and Andy, Patty and Victor, Penny and her multiple husbands, Phoebe probably thought Piper and Leo were the exception and not the rule when it came to a Halliwell finding love.
So, when Phoebe gets the vision of her future daughter, Phoebe probably doesn't even think that she has a relationship with her daughter's father in the future. She probably thinks she married a guy, had her daughter, and probably ended up in divorce like her parents. That's probably way she didn't care about falling in love with the father of her child. I remember, Phoebe says, "Who has time for love?" during her quest to find the father of her child and for me, it validates my theory that Phoebe didn't believe a romantic love was in the cards for her. She just wanted to find the father of her child, have her daughter, and deal with the inevitable "break up" that she knows was destined to happen because she no longer believed she would have true love. I think Phoebe was forcing her premonitions to protect herself from another heartbreak. I think that for Phoebe, if she avoided "falling for her daughter's father" that, when she found him, it would hurt less when he left her after her daughter was born. I think Phoebe truly believed no man could love her unconditionally by that point in her life.
When Phoebe started knocking off her responsibilities as a Charmed One in favor of finding her baby daddy, I think it stemmed from her realization that being a witch would always play a part in her being someone undeserving of unconditional love. I think Phoebe's failed turns in her only serious relationships, with Cole and Jason, not only closed her heart off to love, but also stilted her earlier love for magic. In her experience, it seemed that Phoebe might think being a witch was part of the reason why she wouldn't have true love. Her destiny as a Halliwell, much like Penny, Patty and Prue, wouldn't allow it. That's why I think Phoebe's mechanical future baby daddy search was not a purely PhoeME kick, but a self-preservation from heartache kick that was a consistent fallout from her taking a chance on love after already not believing in it for so many years.
