As you will undoubtedly know if you are my Facebook friend - as all my readers are - I've started rewatching
Charmed to fill my time off this week. (See
Snow Day for an explanation of why I'm off.) I love that show to death, and allow me to spend the next few paragraphs telling you why.
Charmed was my first TV encounter with strong female leads. They certainly had many faults, but it was still very cool to me to see a group of women kicking ass and taking names, frequently saving stereotypically heroic male characters in the process. It was one of my earliest introductions to feminism, though I didn't know it at the time. They even had an episode devoted to Lady Godiva in which Phoebe defended the right of women to breastfeed in public.
Fun fact, Alyssa Milano - who played Phoebe - is still fighting for this today as she publicly tweets and posts photos of herself breastfeeding her new kiddo.
Second fun fact, Star Lord's ship in GotG was named for Alyssa Milano as the character had a crush on her from her days on
Who's the Boss?. Since I also have a huge crush on Milano - though for her work on Charmed - that basically means I'm Star Lord.
It also showed a group of women who developed and spent great effort maintaining close relationships. As I'm sure we could all attest, just because you're blood doesn't mean you get along. But the Halliwells spent a lot more time fighting for each other than ever did fighting against demons. Growing up with two brothers and no sisters, I really craved that kind of closeness with other women, and craved it even more after watching the power it gave the sisters. Not the magical power - though, yes, that would be badass - but the emotional strength. To overcome even the most dire odds, to fight through the deepest heartache and come out the other side better and stronger and wiser. That was their real gift, their real weapon, and I wanted it. I still do.
Plus they , lived in gorgeous San Francisco, had a fabulous house, amazing careers, and killer tattoos. They were incredibly unique individuals and complex characters who changed and grew with each season. They were real women, in as much as fictional witches ever could be, and they weren't defined by their supernatural power. It was a part of who they were as people, but not the sum total. All told, I couldn't care less about being Charmed, but I would love to be a Halliwell!
Finally, one of the most wonderful things Charmed ever did for me, and I think many others, was kill off Prue. Not that I wanted Prue to die - although admittedly I didn't care much for the character - but I was so touched and proud of the way the show handled the sisters' grief. It felt raw and real and totally relate-able. So often that kind of pain is swept under the rug on television with a few tears and meaningless platitudes about the loved one "being in a better place." But the Halliwells? They suffered when Prue died, as anyone would, and we saw it. Having lost my own unfair share of loved ones pretty early on in life, and having been in a very dark place for a very long time as a result, it was a great relief to me to see my own struggles with grief played out in the show. It made me feel that what I went through, what I was still going through, was normal. I was allowed to feel broken because I had been broken. And I would survive it, just as they did.
There are two great lines from that story arc that always stuck with me. One was from Piper, and reminded me what it felt like to be in the grip of fresh, intense grief and when she was pressed to talk about it: "It hurts to talk, Leo. It hurts to breathe. So unless you have some idea of how to bring Prue back, I don't want to talk right now." Holy shit, can I relate to that.
The second line comes courtesy of the fourth sister, Paige, who appeared after Prue's death. Having lost her adoptive parents to a violent car crash years before, Paige can relate to what her new-found sisters are experiencing and offers Piper some guidance about what's to come: "It'll never be okay that she's gone, Piper. But I promise, it will get better." It seems like such a simple, obvious statement, but it was the first time I'd ever heard anyone really acknowledge that the pain of losing a loved one would last the rest of your life. Again, it made me realize that what I was feeling was normal.
Charmed, much like the other CW shows* I've posted about it,
meant so much more to me that just pretty people with cool powers. It meant strength and grace and goodness were available to me even if I was still sometimes flawed and selfish. Here's to amazing women doing amazing things.
Blessed Be.
*Charmed was actually a WB show, but the WB became CW after partnering with CBS, so as far as I'm concerned, it still counts!
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