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Post by MarAcev on Sept 20, 2007 17:40:44 GMT -5
By Long live the queen she admitted that she felt responsible for her younger sisters and by A witch's tail she told Leo that it was her job to take care of her family. She just felt like she owed it to her family to take care of them after Prue died, just like Prue felt it was her responsability to take care of them before she went through the wall.
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Post by vandergraafk on Sept 20, 2007 18:37:23 GMT -5
Maybe I'm just elaborating your point further, maracev. But I think Piper was speaking only of Phoebe in Long Live the Queen. As her full sister had become fully engulfed in all things evil, Piper felt that somehow she had failed in her obligation to look out for Phoebe. Your point stands, however. I should have mentioned this further before skipping ahead to Season 8.
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ljones
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Post by ljones on Sept 21, 2007 0:02:40 GMT -5
A. Phoebe's premonition ability was a lot more powerful than she, her sisters and many fans have failed to realize. Everyone seemed to believe that the only kind of power was the kind that can physically hurt someone. Phoebe could still kill with a knife, a shoe heel or a spell.
B. So what if she was dating a demon? He was definitely helping the Charmed Ones at the time. And both he and Phoebe were the ones who had to hold everyone together, while Piper was having an emotional breakdown over Prue's death. And yes, Paige was inexperienced. But you know what? Phoebe had proven in the past that she was better at taking charge of a situation than Piper during the series' first three years. Hell, Paige seemed more comfortable with being a leader than Piper - before the writers decided to turn her into a clumsy dingbat. Apparently, Kern and his doofus writers had decided to ignore personality traits of his characters and adhere to cliches about the nature of siblings, due to their age - namely the oldest has to be the leader, the middle one has to be peacemaker and the youngest had to be the screw-up. God, they were incredibly stupid!
C. Piper was not the most grounded at the time. She was having an emotional breakdown over Prue's death. And her method of taking over the leadership of the Charmed Ones was to act like a second-rate Prue. Then she spent the next several years whining about being a witch, whining over Leo's departure and God knows what else. By Seasons 5-8, I don't think that any of them were really suited to lead the group. Paige acted like she knew what she was doing . . . sometimes. And sometimes, she acted like a ditz.
How on earth did she come to such a ridiculous belief? It reminded me of Prue's belief that she had to help Grams raised Piper and Phoebe . . . even before the age of ten. STUPID!
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Post by vandergraafk on Sept 21, 2007 19:06:17 GMT -5
That's cause she was a half-breed: half leader, half ditz! And, ljones, I think it is important to place Piper's belief in context. In Long Live the Queen, she was forced to deal with the possibility that she had lost another sister (to evil). Forget about what she might have thought with respect to replacing Prue, etc. Like you, I don't find that particularly compelling, given Piper's own wariness towards the whole Power of Three thing. But, when faced with the loss of another sister, one to whom she was fully related in blood, she took it personally and took it upon herself to do something.
Was she ever a leader like Prue was? I don't think so. As you correctly noted, Paige, at times, was a better leader and occasionally challenged Piper for the role. But, sometimes Paige's lack of experience showed (Sympathy for the Demon). Phoebe might have been a better leader - and was one especially when she led the charge against the Avatars. But, too often, Phoebe was allowed to become PhoeME, a witch whose powers were left to go to waste because of her own personal issues.
Let's not confuse the concentration of Leo/Piper centric episodes in later seasons with Piper as leader. In many, many instances, Piper reacted to events and did little to figure things out in advance: Oh My Goddess and Valhalley of the Dolls. Sometimes she did when she figured out how to deal with the dragons unleashed by Wyatt. And, when she was pregnant and locked up in Magic School, she was hardly the leader of the pack.
Even if the episode was not centered around Prue, one knew that Prue was the leader. At best, Phoebe served as an antipode to Prue, especially when she fell for Cole. And, it would have been interesting to see Charmed Season 4 with Prue versus Phoebe, aligned with a Cole possessed by the Source. THAT would have been interesting!
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magickninja
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Post by magickninja on Sept 21, 2007 23:00:01 GMT -5
I'm sorry but I have to agree. Phoebe should have waited till Leo got back to do anything. She was always running off half cocked. They would have had the Power of Three to defeat Shax or at the very least they could have gone back in time like they had before. Also, and this is jumping ahead to the final episode, I was more than a little disappointed that there were no pictures of Prue on the staircase wall when elderly Piper and Leo were walking upstairs. Prue was the strongest of the three sisters for three years and I kinda felt like she was being discounted.  |
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Post by whitelightertony on Sept 22, 2007 2:42:34 GMT -5
I wasn't referring to Phoebe's clairvoyance (which was a passive power). I was referring to her one active power at the time, levitation. She didn't have complete mastery over the skill, the way Prue did with her telekinesis or the way Piper did with her temporal stasis.
I don't dispute that Cole was an ally to the Halliwells in early-Season 4...but Phoebe, given the way her character was, most likely would have allowed her May/December romance with Cole to distract her from her job of being a witch.
And seriously, do you really expect Paige to make a credible leader for the Power of Three when she hadn't even possessed her magical abilities for a full year at that point?
In regard to "Charmed Again" and "Hell Hatch No Fury," I would agree with you. But by "Enter The Demon," Piper was (mostly) back in control of her emotions, while Phoebe was too busy canoodling with Cole.
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ljones
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Post by ljones on Sept 23, 2007 0:35:01 GMT -5
Perhaps Prue would have used her brains to wonder how Cole became the Source. God knows that the writers didn't allow Piper, Phoebe and Paige to use theirs.
Half-breed? How racist that sounds.
As much as I dislike Phoebe, I refuse to accept the prevailing attitude that she was mainly responsible for Prue's death. Pheobe didn't start the whole mess in motion. Prue did. Mind you, the others may have contributed to the tragedy, but Prue - as she had done in "Sin Francisco" - proved to be her own worst enemy.
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Post by vandergraafk on Sept 24, 2007 17:30:54 GMT -5
I do hope you are not accusing me of being racist? Most of us who use this phrase are simply paraphrasing Piper from Charmed Again Part 2. Clearly, she is using it to mean that Paige is both whitelighter and witch. By extension, I'll take it also to mean both ditz and cleverly and socially engaged.
Now, if we were to use that phrase with respect to its original connotation: an offspring of (usually) a Native American woman and a Caucasian male, prompted perhaps by the capture - and possible rape - of said woman by settlers, then we would certainly be using inappropriate language.
True, Piper's use of the phrase does suggest the ever so malicious sense of put-down, as the original phrase certainly conveys. However, with Piper the tongue is obviously more offensive than the heart. She's just a snarky, blunt-speaking person at times.
Now, does that mean that it's okay for former Senator George Allen to use "macaca" and feign ignorance of its meaning or origin? Certainly not. In the real world, the phrase was obviously meant as a nativist put-down and served to reveal Mr. Allen's own ignorance and possible duplicity. He claimed ignorance and was probably duplicitous with respect to the word's meaning, when, in fact, it seems as if he really did know what the word meant, at least as a nativist put-down. Second, it surely blew up in his face when his "foreign friend" turned out to be a native Virginian or Marylander (I can't recall which). Insular Americans should basically either just shut up or learn to appreciate other cultures. (Any French or Spanish speaker would have known what macaca referred to immediately: les macques, for example.)
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Post by vandergraafk on Sept 24, 2007 18:34:05 GMT -5
Ljones, let me go way out on a limb and suggest a possible explanation as to why you keep harping on Prue as carrying the blame for her own death. I know we've had this discussion ad nauseum. My purpose is not to repeat it here. Rather, it seems to me that we are so used to Prue being the leader of the Charmed Ones that we expect her to act like a leader at all times. The same cannot be said of Piper. I don't believe she ever attains the aura that Prue had.
That said, and I am glad you referenced Sin Francisco, for it points out the one very fatal flaw in Prue's leadership, the sin of pride. Prue knew that whatever she wanted to do, she could accomplish. The hubris, therein, contains no palliative that could possibly undo risky behavior, for it's an arrogance that literally feeds on risk.
That Prue did not exercise her leadership skills in All Hell Breaks Loose and allows Phoebe to pursue a non-urgent desire (to free Cole from Raymer's machinations) and allows Piper to pursue Shax into the open, not once but twice, is beyond credulity. That's what shocks us most about this episode. Why does Prue allow this to happen?
Of course, I will never go so far as to actually agree that Prue bears the greatest responsibility for her own death. Phoebe's myopic focus on saving Cole at the expense of all else at a time of utmost danger seems extremely reckless in nature and thus points the fickle finger of blame in her direction. Still, the events of this episode and Prue's "strange" behavior in it seem to suggest that once again (Hyde School Reunion is another example) the writing stable have failed us again. What we expect to happen, doesn't. However, to the extent that the character whose very actions betray her general disposition ultimately bears the cost of that deviance perhaps should alert us to the possibility that the writers have really played with us. Whereas in Hyde School Reunion the cheat does not work (since, as you've pointed out repeatedly, Rick gets murdered by the Scather demons, when, in point of fact, Paige could have put paid to all of this by simply orbing the gun away), here it does seem to.
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Post by MarAcev on Sept 24, 2007 18:48:23 GMT -5
Because she thought she was invincible. It's that pride again. She thought she could handle it without Phoebe and she thought nothing would happen if Piper used magic in public.
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Post by vandergraafk on Sept 26, 2007 18:06:17 GMT -5
Well, if that's correct - and a case certainly can be made that it is - I worry about the evolution of Prue then in Charmed. For clearly, she was the undisputed leader during season 2 and for most of season 3. Did the string of successes and the hardening of her responses to each and every challenge and vanquish cause Prue to become more arrogant and allow the hubris of unchecked pride disregard all caution? To a certain extent each of the Charmed Ones grew more "cynical" with respect to the vanquish of demons and the loss of innocents. Maybe it just came to be business as usual.
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ljones
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Post by ljones on Sept 27, 2007 22:56:56 GMT -5
Job as a witch? Since when was being a witch a job? I don't think it should have been a job or a duty that the sisters had to adhere to, in the first place, because they had magical abilities.
Since when did Phoebe or any of the sisters were supposed to concentrate more on being a witch than dealing with romance? What the hell has this show done to the portrayal of witches in that it has viewers believing that Phoebe was to be more concerned with killing demons than becoming romantically involved with a half-demon or any other man?
I don't like Phoebe. I think she is immature and self-involved. But . . . I see nothing wrong with her being more concerned with her love life than with being a "Charmed One". This idea that the Halliwells had to adhere to the duty of being a witch seems ludicrous to me.
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Post by vandergraafk on Sept 28, 2007 16:37:10 GMT -5
I think we all know that you have issues with Phoebe. Some of us have issues with her as well. But, I guess I'm puzzled by use of the word "adhered to". How does one adhere to one's duties as a witch? Does that mean all witch all of the time? How does one find balance between the obligations that emanate from having supernatural powers and the desire to experience life to the fullest as any mortal might aspire towards?
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Post by beckycharmed on Sept 30, 2007 6:41:05 GMT -5
prues death could of easily be avoided. When shax went to kill the doctor why did she jump in front of him and just stand there? why didnt she use her power?
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ljones
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Post by ljones on Sept 30, 2007 15:37:00 GMT -5
I think we all know that you have issues with Phoebe. Some of us have issues with her as well. But, I guess I'm puzzled by use of the word "adhered to". How does one adhere to one's duties as a witch? Does that mean all witch all of the time? How does one find balance between the obligations that emanate from having supernatural powers and the desire to experience life to the fullest as any mortal might aspire towards? The obligations? What obligations? What the hell are the sisters supposed to be obligated to for having supernatural powers? |
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Post by vandergraafk on Oct 1, 2007 11:07:53 GMT -5
I thought that was the entire premise of the show. The Charmed Ones were protectors of the innocent. Either use this powers to protect innocents (accept the obligations) or risk venturing down the path to warlockdom (use power for personal gain). With the advent of baby Wyatt, the Charmed Ones begin to straddle a difficult path, as many of their actions are solely related to protecting baby Wyatt. As a baby, he was surely innocent, but he wasn't exactly vulnerable either. Protecting Wyatt may have given the appearance of protecting an innocent (perhaps future innocents), but it really jaded the sisters' original raison d'etre.
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ljones
Whitelighter
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Post by ljones on Oct 1, 2007 13:48:30 GMT -5
Then the entire premise of the show was WRONG. Why on earth would Burge allow such a premise, let alone such a description of witches in the first place?
It doesn't even give the sisters free will in regard to whether they want to pursue the life of a witch or not. How can anyone see nothing wrong with this?
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Post by whitelightertony on Oct 1, 2007 14:45:53 GMT -5
The sisters have free will; but they know they also have a moral obligation to protect Innocents and not let Evil run rampant on Earth.
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Post by vandergraafk on Oct 2, 2007 18:58:43 GMT -5
You really don't like Charmed, do you? I mean let's see. You reject the major premise of the show and don't see why Burge would allow such a description of witches in the first place. Well, let's see: Ms. Burge had no real prior knowledge about witches (see the DVD extras accompanying the DVD package in Season 8) and apparently wanted to write a series about three sisters (Keith Topping, Triquetra). Since the WB expected something Buffy like, well why not try three sisters who happen to be witches. Of course, that entailed some research on witches, i.e., to get some of the language right. (But, apparently, scry was never used properly!) Unfortunately, it seems as if you wish Charmed had been written by a practicing witch who was writing about three witches who happen to be sisters. Oh well! Such is the life of Hollywood!
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Hansemand
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Post by Hansemand on Oct 3, 2007 16:17:20 GMT -5
You know, there are a lot of open questions out there regarding this particular Charmed episode, its even questions that are several years old that still seeks the right answers, but i guess this one goes on top of the list when it comes to Prue's death:
If the Cleaners had been assigned to watch the Charmed Ones since they became witches, where were they to clean up this 'little' magical mess?
The Cleaners began watching the girls right after Phoebe reads the famous lines in Something Wicca This Way Comes, that made them: The Charmed Ones.
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