It’s that time again! I hope you all have a drink ready. I am not drinking today, but that’s okay because I’m currently high on cold meds and not sure what’s happening around me anyway. This may explain why I have absolutely no clue what happens in this episode. Maybe it would make more sense to me if my brain wasn’t marinating in a bath of mucus. Or maybe if I was functioning this would be even worse. The choice is yours!

We begin with a flashback to Before. Before their mom died, Before their powers awakened, Before Angela Wu fell into a Mysterious Coma and emerged possessed by a demon that feeds on the blood of virgins. Angela has come to Woke Feminist Mom with a report that Professor Rapey McRaperton has done something naughty to her, and she would like to consequently destroy him. Woke Feminist Mom offers her some “medicinal” herbs in a mug and tells Angela that she has her full support. She warns Angela that Professor McRaperton will undoubtedly frame this as a witch hunt, because, quote, “That’s what scared men do.”

Drink up, Angela! I promise that whatever is in this mug is 100% legal and won’t send you into a mysterious coma!

Angela is concerned about reporting anything because apparently Professor McRaperton is a world-famous geneticist whose discoveries have saved lives, which makes her feel as though she’s accusing Santa Claus of sexual harassment. (An odd comparison to make, since as I said before, McRaperton definitely resembled Jack Frost as portrayed by Martin Short, not Santa Claus. He was bony and angular, not jolly and round.) This left me with a lot of questions: McRaperton was shown to be a demon, not be possessed by one the way Maggie’s ex-boyfriend had been. So why would he be interested in doing Science that saves human lives rather than secretly unleashing plagues on the human population?

The flashback ends with Mel and Woke Feminist Mom assuring Angela that if she decides to take on McRaperton, they will be there for her and she won’t ever be alone. Now, in the present day, Angela has evolved into Samara Form and is screeching like a banshee while chained in the sisters’ attic. Mel ruminates that having her under guard 24/7 isn’t what she had in mind when she promised Angela she wouldn’t be alone. But, hey, at least you technically didn’t lie!

The sisters convene in the kitchen (excuse me, you’re not supposed to leave Demon Girl unsupervised? So unless Harry is up there, one of you should not be in this room) about how this babysitting assignment is seriously cramping their style. Mel says, completely straight-faced, “I blame the President.” [Side note: I am so used to this nonsense by now that I didn’t even register her saying this until the second time I watched it.] Maggie reveals that she’s failing her classes, to which Macy responds, “You’re taking classes?” Correct response, Macy. Maggie is offended by this flippancy, however — after all, if she fails she gets placed on academic probation, and if she’s on academic probation, she won’t be allowed to be in Kappa!

My sister, whose trademarked catch phrase is, “This is Trump’s America now, bitches,” screeched, “WHAT DID SHE SAY ABOUT MY PRESIDENT?!” when she saw this part.

Macy decides she’s had enough, so she calls Harry. Oh, okay. So no one’s watching the demon, then. All right. Macy wants to know where the actual hell the Elders (Silence!) are. Harry tells her that they’re busy analyzing a 5000-year-old prophecy, as if this is something they can’t do; 1. After they’ve collected the demon and brought it to Witch Jail, or 2. In the attic while babysitting her themselves.

I don’t believe in the Elders at this point. I don’t believe they’re real. I think Harry made them up and hired Orson Welles to portray them as a red herring.

The doorbell rings, but it’s not the Elders — it’s Niko and her detective partner. They’re here as part of their ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Angela Wu following her emergence from her Mysterious Coma. The sisters scramble to get rid of them before they decide to investigate the attic and find Samangela waiting for them. Unfortunately, they are the worst liars in the goddamn universe, so all they manage to do is make the cops more suspicious. Luckily for the sisters, they are rescued in the nick of time by the absolute most insufferable blonde woman, who is pretending to be an interior designer there to help the sisters renovate their attic. The obvious lie here would be to say that they wanted to convert it to an apartment to take in renters for extra income since, you know, who’s paying their mortgage now that Mom and her tenured faculty position are gone? But of course they pretend that they just want to redecorate it in Minimalist Scandinavian Farmhouse style to use as a chic winter den, and Niko apparently buys this.

Once the cops are gone, the woman reveals that she’s one of the Elders, because of fucking course she is. Of course the Elders are a group of quirky middle-aged women in white sequined pantsuits who watch HGTV on the treadmill and don’t appreciate being called Elders because that implies they’re old. Also, in her spare time, when she’s not being queen of the witches, this woman (Charity — seriously, her name is Charity) isn’t actually an interior designer, but rather the CEO of an investment company that uses micro-loans to help women in developing nations start their own businesses, thus tackling poverty and inequality through ethical, female-focused capitalism.

Real dialogue alert: That was the real dialogue.

I’m calling it right now: This Charity woman is going to turn out to be evil. Why? She’s a proud capitalist.

Mel wants to get right down to business and asks how they go about saving Angela. Charity replies that Angela can’t be saved — she needs to be killed, tonight, during the full moon, using a set of ritual killing sticks sacred daggers that she pulls from her Prada handbag.

Mel and Maggie try to protest this in hushed whispers while Charity inspects the demon in this weird perky way that kind of looks like she’s frolicking around it. I really can’t emphasize enough how much this show is filmed like a cartoon. Harry isn’t interested in their arguments, however, because he’s too busy trying to impress Charity. I don’t know if he’s angling for a slot in the Elders or if he’s just a brownnoser, but this is also just too over the top. He explains to the girls that the Elders are like royalty and must be deferred to. Mel tells him to take his monarchist bullshit and shove it, and for once I actually agree with her.

Charity informs the sisters that there’s no time to waste — another Elder has been killed, the third since the girls’ mother. The sisters protest that Harry didn’t tell them she was an Elder, and Harry says he did during his speech in the first episode. I’m with Harry on this one: I remember him saying that. They say he wasn’t clear enough, but he definitely said that was the second part of the prophecy, remember? Step one: Trump, step two: senior witches killed, step three: apocalypse. However, when Harry tries to remind them of that, Charity mutes him. Now his mouth can move forever, but no voice will come. LOL, isn’t she the best? She knows when those menfolk need to just shut their traps. Don’t all wish we had that power, ladies? Turn that mansplaining right off.

With Harry now duly silenced, Mel argues that if Charity was friends with their mom, she’d know that she would never give up on saving Angela. Why can’t they do an exorcism? Charity explains that in order for an exorcism to work, there has to be a soul still in the body, but the Harbinger is so powerful that surely Angela’s soul must already be dead or evicted from the body or whatever. Macy finds this reasonable and agrees they need to kill Angela. Mel wants to do everything they can to try to save her. And thus the series formula continues. Is it Mel’s turn to be right this week?

Meanwhile, Niko and her detective partner are discussing the girls’ shitty lying during their interview. The partner indicates he thinks they were up to something because they were so jumpy. Niko brushes him off as absurd: “Mel gets nervous around cops — as plenty of people of color do. Plus, she hates guns.”

Real dialogue alert: That was the real dialogue.

Niko appears to find her burger more suspicious than her girlfriend’s strange behavior.

Once Niko has finished educating her partner on his white privilege, we find Maggie in class, where the professor is lecturing the students on the very first line of Dante’s Inferno seconds before dismissing them, as you do. Regina George is also in the class, but she doesn’t sit with Maggie. She sits with her boyfriend, Conner or Parker or whatever his name was. Somehow Maggie managed to make it as far as midterms without ever noticing this guy or that he’s dating Regina George, the sorority president she’s been stalking for three months. She gazes longingly at him while the professor reminds them all that their midterm is on Friday and is worth 50% of their class grade. (Holy shit? Does that make the midterm worth more than the final, or is the grade in their class literally only the midterm and the final, in which case how is she flunking?)

After the class, Regina George skips over to Maggie and starts acting uncharacteristically nice. If she was like this all the time, I would see why Maggie is so invested in joining her sorority. She makes chit-chat with her about class and homecoming like a normal human being, and then when Maggie says she can’t help with the Kappa homecoming float due to her need to study for the midterm or risk academic probation, she calls her boyfriend over and asks if he could tutor her, since he’s one of Those Guys who like to sit around reading classic literature and sipping coffee while dressed in all black. Connerparkerdude is all too happy to oblige, IYKWIMAITYD.

Over at the Generic Science Lab, Macy is looking through a microscope at… something… that moves and changes while she looks at it. I have no clue what it is or where she got it or what its relevance to the episode is. When she exclaims, however, Friendzone (who appears to be back in the Friendzone after last week’s potential deflowering) asks her what’s wrong, and she attempts to distract him with a thought experiment: If you had to kill one person in order to prevent an entire town from potentially dying, which would you choose? Ah, the old Life is Strange dilemma. To Macy, the choice is obvious: kill the cunt! However, Friendzone disagrees — she said POTENTIALLY dying, which means there’s a chance they won’t die, in which case she should do everything possible to save both the one person and the town, and Kobayashi Maru this shit! Macy is flabbergasted by his lack of scientific objectivity, but also attracted to his James T. Kirk-as-portrayed-by-Idris Elba (the way it was always meant to be) style of “never say die.”

The face of a man who doesn’t believe in no-win situations. This must be why he keeps pursuing Macy.

Back at the house, Mel finds a spell in the Book of Shadows that lets her reveal the soul inside the Harbinger’s host. For a moment, the demon form peels away with a really bad CG effect. The inner Angela Banana inside the nasty old roten peel begs Mel to help her, before the Harbinger takes over again. Mel now knows that Angela’s soul is still trapped inside her body, and though the demon vows that she will never get her back, Mel is the brightest witch of her age, so…

Mel runs downstairs to where Charity is on the phone with one of her investors, admonishing them that her corporation isn’t just about the bottom line, it’s all about fostering a community of wamen supporting wamen. When she gets off the phone, Mel tells her about the spell she just performed which showed that Angela is still alive. Charity acquiesces that while she may have been wrong about the status of Angela’s soul, that doesn’t change the calculus: the ritual killing must proceed as planned.

Calculus…?

Mel tells her calculus (no, really, they said calculus) be damned, what happened to wamen supporting wamen? Charity tells her to fuck off and takes away her voice so that Mel can’t attempt an exorcism. She gives it back when Mel agrees to not perform the exorcism, though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This probably doesn’t look as bad in a still screenshot as it did in motion, but this was some Windows Movie Maker-tier FX.

Mel scrambles to rally her sisters to attempt the exorcism before the Elders can impose the ritual killing. She somehow manages to get Angela into the trunk of her car and goes to pick up Maggie, but before they can collect Macy, they notice Niko’s detective partner is tailing them. Mel decides to freeze time so they can escape, even though this will make it appear as though the car disappeared into thin air to the detective, because neither of them can think of a more suitable solution. Now detective partner is suspicious that Something Fishy is Going On.

Macy gets back to the house where she confers with Charity and Harry about the thing she saw at the lab, which I guess was the Harbinger’s murder spit or something. It apparently is similar in structure to smallpox, only much more dangerous because it kills instantly. Okay. She, Charity and Harry enter the attic with the ritual killing sticks, only to find Angela, Mel and Maggie gone. Maggie has brought them to a secret location, the place where the Kappa homecoming float is being constructed, and the two of them attempt to find an exorcism spell in the Book of Shadows. How they plan on making this work without Macy there to give them the Power of Three, I have no clue. Harry zips in, I guess having used his handy-dandy Witch Seeking powers, and Mel tells him about the revealing spell she performed which showed that Angela is still alive, trapped inside her own body. She also tells him that she blames herself for Angela’s situation because she talked Angela into reporting Professor McRaperton, the stress of which led to her OD’ing which is how she wound up in the Mysterious Coma.

Seriously? It wasn’t a mysterious coma, it was just a regular, drug-induced coma? That she fell into the night before testifying against Professor McRaperton? I thought we were going to get more plot intrigue than this, guys, come on.

Back at the house, Charity is telling Macy that her sisters are overly emotional, but that Macy, being a pure logical Vulcan, is a natural born leader — like her mother. Macy asks if her mother ever told Charity about her. Charity says no, but that many years ago her mother had asked Charity if she could perform a spell on her that would remove all of her pain and grief regarding a particular loss, and Charity believes that was the loss of Macy.

Up to this point, the discussion around Macy has been centered on, “Why would Mom give you up?” But literally no one has as of yet factored into the conversation the part where Macy had a dad — by all accounts her birth dad — who raised her and told her that her mother was dead. This screams “unamicable divorce” to me, but everyone keeps treating it as if Macy was put up for adoption. I don’t know why I’m still expecting this show to make any sense, but okay.

Speaking of not making sense, Macy excuses herself after this and somehow winds up over at the mystery location where Maggie and Mel are with Harry, Angela, and the Kappa homecoming float. She tells them she’s decided she wants to help, and she’s sorry she accused them of being overly emotional. She admits that she’s built up this logical Vulcan façade as a protection measure against… life or something, but I guess since it turns out that their mom had emotions, she can have emotions too. Or whatever.

As the sister join hands, the Book of Shadows opens to a previously hidden spell written specifically for the three of them in their mother’s handwriting. “It’s in Spanish,” Mel says.

Looks like Spanish to me!

“She wrote this spell for us,” Mel says. “But why?”

“So you three would find it,” says Harry.

Wat?

They get the items needed for the spell together, including an empty paint can to contain the Harbinger’s primordial form (it was either that or a crushed beer can). The only thing they need is antibacterial gloves from Macy’s lab in order to keep them from catching the supernatural smallpox. As Macy leaves to go get the gloves, Connerparkerdude shows up with a box of fireworks for the float. Maggie thought it would be a good idea to take Angela there to do the spell why? He tells her she’s smarter than she knows or some other such contrived bullshit designed to get into her pants. They start making out. What a great Kappa sister Maggie is going to make! What a great boyfriend Connerparkerdude is!

When she goes back inside, Angela has just finished breaking out of her chains and is preparing to eat Harry’s face. Maggie quickly summons Charity, who uses some kind of purple lightning whip to re-trap Angela. She attempts to hand the sisters their ritual killing sticks, admonishing them that as soon as the moon is completely risen, the Harbinger will be unstoppable. But the sisters, having plenty of time to waste on theatrics, solemnly shake their heads and refuse to take the daggers. Mel gives her a ham-fisted speech about “You knew our mom, trust her,” and Charity tearfully nods, dropping the daggers to the ground.

Thus ensues the most cornily filmed scene of this entire show (so far). Hipster music begins playing, the girls say the spell, Angela begins thrashing, all complete with weird close-ups and jerky camera and slooooowwwww motiooooooon to try to distract from the fact that the effects on this show are effing TERRIBLE. Maggie lays her hands on Angela and begins psychically telling her to come out and it’s just so freaking corny, guys. “I’m not strong enough!” “No, Angela, that’s not your story!” *gag*

Everything here is perfectly normal! It’s just a sorority initiation!

In the midst of this, detective partner shows up, looks through the window, sees lightning and a tornado and a demon coming out of Angela Wu’s mouth and thinks that the correct solution is to burst in with his gun drawn. Charity uses her magic to make his gun disintegrate, and he watches the exorcism, jaw dropped. So I’m thinking, “Okay, the detective guy knows about magic now, this is an interesting twist! Will they wipe his memory? Will he continue to be a thorn in their side all season, gradually uncovering the existence of magic? Will he somehow have something to do with Niko eventually learning about Mel’s powers?”

LMAO no. Because the camera pans to Angela puking out the demon, and when that’s done, they pan back and SUDDENLY THE DETECTIVE IS DEAD. WHAT? There’s a lead pipe across his chest. When did this happen? How did this happen? What killed him? Did the pipe hit him in the head or something? Like in the wind? But when the shitty special effects were going, the wind literally looked like it was just blowing confetti around. There did not appear to be anything dangerous flying around!

Charity says she’ll handle it, and the girls flee. Later Charity meets Mel in the attic and informs her that she disposed of his body in a way that will remove suspicion from the girls. Mel blames herself, but not enough to be sad about it for more than 15 seconds. Charity sends her downstairs, where she bonds with Angela, who has no memory of anything that happened over the last week, but is confident that whatever happened to her (she thinks she just had random blackouts from the time she woke up from her coma until now), she got through it because of these awesome sisters. Also, she seems to have no trouble adjusting to the existence of Macy, who was not there the last time she was conscious.

Episode wrap-up: More hipster music wails, Harry complains about tea because BRITISH, Maggie waggles her eyebrows and insinuates that Harry and Charity have a Thang going on, Charity takes the paint can to the mysterious other Elders (Silence!) and warns that there will be consequences for violating their orders even though she told them it was okay, Connerparkerdude comes over for Maggie’s tutoring session and she sends him away because Their Love Is A Mistake That Must Not Be Repeated Even If It Means She Fails World Lit, the girls all congratulate themselves on being the Best Witches Ever and that Mom Would Be So Proud, Niko comes over weeping that her partner hanged himself after evidence linking him to the Halloween murders emerged and she’s so upset because she thought he was her friend and Mel just stands there like a statue not reacting at all while her poor girlfriend is sobbing her eyeballs out, fuck this stupid show.

What a great girlfriend, so loving and sympathetic!

The episode ends with Charity in some?? Building?? With fluorescent pink and blue lighting?? I have no clue what this building is supposed to be or why she’s there??? She’s on a cell phone prattling to some other witch about how amazing the Charmed Ones are, they’re basically the best witches ever, while cradling the paint can with the Harbinger in it. Why? WHY NOT?!?!?!?! Some dude gets on the elevator with her and is like, “Would you mind” — glowing eyeballs — “switching paint cans with me?” And her eyeballs glow too and she just hands him the paint can with the Harbinger in it and off he goes.

Fin.

WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING ON THIS SHOW? WHO WROTE THIS? THIS READS LIKE THE SORT OF SHIT I WROTE IN MY COMPOSITION BOOK IN SEVENTH GRADE! NOTHING MAKES SENSE! THE WAY PEOPLE REACT IS NOT REALISTIC AT ALL!

Seriously, where even is she supposed to be here?! Just strolling around with her demon paint can!

If I was more lucid, I would have a better wrap-up for you that more thoroughly dissects the fact that, just as with all SJW media, the characters on this show don’t seem to really make mistakes or face consequences for their actions, and this whole program seems to be a vehicle for feminist wish fulfillment where everyone thinks you’re awesome and even if some things go a little wrong, at the end of the day, you’re basically the best. But I don’t feel well enough for that. So, see you next week, guys!