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iknowyouknow

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  1. How is this show not widely acclaimed as one of the best dramas of all time?! I love it so much, and rewatching it this past month has reminded me of why. Some of my disorganized thoughts: Like nearly everyone else, I hate everything involving Madison. The first and last seasons were my favorites partly because they were the most blessedly Madison free, but there's enough I love about nearly every episode to make them all worth watching repeatedly. Even season 3, known for the worst of the Madison ordeal and the cringey affair between Amanda and Andy, gifts us with Hannah. Hannah's friendship with Amy and her relationship with Bright turned out to be some of my very favorite things about the show. We also get to see Amy/Ephram happily together for a string of episodes, which makes my heart soar! I shipped Amy/Ephram and Hannah/Bright more than almost any other fictional couples, though this was years before people used the term "shipping" anyway :) I actually relate to Ephram's character a lot despite the fact that I can't even play "chopsticks" on the piano and can't relate to his soft spot for Madison, and I think the actor, like almost all of Everwood's actors, was perfect for that role. I didn't care much about Andy's romance with Nina even though I'm much closer to their age than to the teens' ages, but I was very invested in Andy's relationships with his children and Harold. And still am :) So I would say my favorite non-romantic relationship were Andy/Harold, Amy/Hannah, Ephram/Delia/Andy, Harold/Edna and the two romances I cared and still care way too much about are Amy/Ephram and Bright/Hannah. Whenever I read the episode synopses I'm reminded of how heavy and tearjerking so many of the show's themes and issues were, but I agree with the people who said that the show is ultimately uplifting and inspiring, and there was always just enough humor and moments of real happiness to balance out the angst. Mostly I just love hanging out with these characters in this town and daydreaming about the Everwood fanfiction that I will probably never write :)
  2. I'm a middle-aged woman who still ships the hell out of Pacey/Joey. I'm not proud of this, but at least admitting the problem is the first step to recovery :) My favorite season was definitely S3, though every season had just enough surprisingly engaging, smartly written episodes and clever dialogue to keep me hooked on this often frustrating but addictive show. Does anyone have favorite episodes? Mine mostly revolve around Pacey/Joey because, again, I am hopeless. They were my OTP years before anyone ever used that term!
  3. Eva Marie, you focus on the acting in all of your posts, so I'd love to hear how you feel about other aspects of the show: the characters, the sisters' relationships, the way that magic is (and isn't!) woven into the show, the general feel and tone, and so on! And especially relevant to the thread we're in: which seasons do you like most and least?
  4. As I'm rewatching, I'm developing the very popular opinion that instead of getting more and more unlikable with every passing season, Piper is actually the most lovable and sympathetic in S6 than she had been since her brief peak in S1. A others have said, being a mother brings out the generous, loving, fierce yet soft facets of Piper's character, and it's lovely watching her do something other than criticize Leo and her sisters while whining about having to be a witch in every scene! Her relationship brings out the angry shrew in her, so the two of them being separated for most of this season actually serves the character well imo, especially when she comes to a point of sage acceptance about Leo not being there and focuses on the other areas of her life instead. I love her a heck of a lot more than I did when she was so sour and querulous over less important issues in S2 and S3. I realize this is unpopular, so please be kind!
  5. 1. Season 2 - I'm surprising myself by placing this one atop my rankings! Every season has its unique charms (forgive me, I couldn't resist) and flaws, so for me it's less about which seasons come together best as a cohesive whole (they don't, lol) and simply which ones have the greatest number of episodes that I love and find myself wanting to watch most often. S2 has a lot of my favorites, and even the worst episodes have parts that I enjoy. I'm in the camp who, despite liking Paige, thought the original power of three was by far the better trio whether we're evaluating them as witches or sisters. They have a lot of their best scenes in this season imo, as individual characters and as a bonded unit. This is definitely Phoebe's best season (imo), one of Piper's better seasons since despite the painfully terrible love triangle and signs she's already becoming too sour, harshly critical and pissed at everyone and everything she's still recognizably the Piper I loved in s1, and it's possibly Prue's best season too. S2 feels a little less awkward and outdated than S1 while still retaining a lot of what I loved about that season and missed in later seasons, the focus on the sisterly relationships and the sisters using their powers to help innocents...and the lack of Cole :-) Cons: The worst love triangle ever - endless, dull, not over even once Piper officially chose one over the other, an increasingly querulous, dour Piper choosing between two identically boring generic guys and never seeming pleased with either. Stop trying to make Prue/Jack a thing, show! P3 and the show wanting us to immediately buy that the Piper we met the first season would even love hanging out in nightclubs, let alone give up her one true passion---cooking---to run one. 2. Season 1 - No elders, strong focus on the sisters helping innocents and becoming closer to one another, by far my favorite season for Piper and second favorite for Phoebe, Quake and Buckland's are much better to me than P3 and Prue becoming a freelance photographer Cons: Already too strong a focus on random romantic issues, most involving guys with no personality and not a particularly strong or convincing connection with our sisters Like others have said, parts of s1 suffer from New Show-itis, feeling clunky and awkward and just generally outdated The pacing of the Piper/Leo is so off - they go from barely knowing or spending any time with each other to Leo disappearing for a long stretch of the season to melodramatic declarations of eternal love While I like nearly every episode, there are fewer that I really love as compared with s2 3. Season 5 - The show takes the brave and rare step of acknowledging Phoebe/Cole as too toxic to work while most shows then and now romanticize that dysfunction, I feel like this is Paige's best season and the season where Piper/Phoebe/Paige work best as a trio, I'm in the camp who enjoys this deranged Cole more than any previous version of his character, there are just a surprising number of episodes that I love - a greater number than in any other season other than S2 Cons: This is where Piper/Leo really start to exhaust and annoy me more than ever before, and it only gets worse from here! By this point Phoebe is unrecognizable to me. This isn't even her worst season, but as she becomes a local "celebrity" who's suddenly obsessed with career success and dates dull and smarmy rich boy Jason, I realize that she just no longer feels at all like the Phoebe of the first 2-3 seasons even now that Cole is gone. You can kind of feel the show floundering and going through an identity crisis. The Cole arc that, for better or worse, defined a lot of S3, S4 and the first half of S5 is wrapped up, and yet they can't or won't go back to the format, focus and feel of S1 and S2, so what does Charmed become now? I'm not sure they were ever able to fully answer this question, and some of the gimmicky, supposedly sexy costume-heavy episodes feel like a show that's desperately grasping. 4. Season 3 - This season contains a lot of Prue's best moments, a few of the series' best episodes and some of the sisters' greatest bonding moments Cons: Cole and how he affects the tone, focus and feel of the entire series for me. This is when I start to lose some love for Phoebe, and I loved to love Phoebe! Piper seems particularly whiny and self-pitying this season, and it's generally over comparatively petty nonsense. Like someone else said, at least when she's being miserable and peevish in later seasons, it's over more serious issues - the protection of her kids, losing Prue, the imminent end of the world. Here we see her complaining bitterly and constantly about things like not having the perfect wedding and not being able to travel to her honeymoon "like a normal couple" and it's like, you finally have Leo and your lame tacky club seems to be turning a profit and you and your sisters have still managed to stay alive and help a bunch of people along the way, so can't you just be a little bit happy and pleasant for even a few episodes?! 5. Season 4 - As much as I miss the original trio, there were aspects of Paige's introduction and the sisters' grieving over Prue that I found interesting and S4 has a lot of episodes that I love - maybe even a few more than S3 has, though S4 has lower lows too. Cons: Turns out I don't like or trust Cole any more as a human than I did while he was evil. As much as I enjoy the queen of the underworld arc, seeing Phoebe choose Cole over her sisters and her entire life does tarnish her and sets the stage for a Phoebe who's so crazily obsessed with romance for the rest of the series. Remember when Phoebe was the sister who most enjoyed being a good witch and cared most about the innocents? The writers sure didn't :) Phoebe's insta-success at her new job irks me, especially because it's a new job that takes her further and further away from being a witch, which, again, the original Phoebe loved! As others pointed out, Paige seems like a badly defined character for a lot of this season, too similar to the old Phoebe. And her presence brought out some highly unlikable sides of Piper. 6, 7 and 8 are all tied for me. There are a few things I love about each of those seasons and a lot that I don't! Despite the above complaining, I do love this show! No matter how many cons I listed, it doesn't change how much this show still entertains me and it will always have a lot of sentimental meaning to me.
  6. I'm so conflicted about Piper. I agree that she has interesting emotional layers and profound generosity, kindness and sensitivity beneath the bitter, cynical, high-strung snarkiness. She's closed off and guarded in some ways yet so deeply loving and nurturing, a contradiction which makes for wonderfully rich characterization. I also love how she's an anxious, insecure character in ways I relate to who overcomes that anxiety and insecurity when circumstances call for her to be strong. I identify so strongly with her introversion, how deeply she cares and how much she worries, how hard it is for her to let go of the past, and how she's a homebody who craves the peace that always seems elusive. The actress did a great job of making it seem like Piper always had a lot of thoughts and feelings simmering beneath the surface, a rich inner life to which the viewers were only partially privy. The theory that she battles a certain amount of anxiety and depression fits with much of what we saw and makes me sympathize with her even more. When I think about writing Charmed fanficition, it's my natural instinct to write from Piper's perspective. BUT...! But the actress and writing really went way overboard with the prickly, sour, perennially peeved discontent. It often came off less like a manifestation of her neurotic anxiety or even the show attempting to be funny as much as it just seemed like Piper just enjoyed being genuinely mean and nasty, which I'm guessing was not the original intention. I also agree that it too often came off as she was lashing out at Leo and her sisters, criticizing and complaining constantly. And which writer thought it was a wise idea to have a character who we knew was stuck being a witch anyway whine nonstop about being a witch for all 176 episodes? I agree with the people who contend that Piper started becoming too sour and negative by S2, not just after Prue's death. Some say that the actress has a very acerbic personality in real life, and I wonder if that bled too heavily into her performance as Piper.
  7. The title of this thread is pure perfection :) I've surprised myself by becoming increasingly fond of the Barry/Iris relationship. In S1, I definitely preferred the idea of Barry ending up with Caitlin. I was wary of Westallen for several reasons: the show reminding us that Barry and Iris were raised essentially as brother and sister throughout their childhoods to the point where they both call Joe "Dad" didn't exactly scream romance to me, my personal dislike for the Lois Lane/Superman trope where the woman falls for the flashy superhero first and THEN is all "oh, yeah, and I'm fond of the human he is as well" (the show ended up dealing with this much better than I'd feared!), the fact that the feelings between them seemed so one-sided, emphasized by Iris seeming to choose Eddie over Barry over and over, and so on. Iris also made a few remarks about not liking or getting Barry's "nerdy" interests, and as a nerd myself, I tend to love when nerds find people who share or at least understand some of those same passions. The nerdy guy/cool popular girl thing that's so popular on TV often ends up feeling like we should feel like the guy is lucky to get a girl so out of his league rather than the more balanced and mutual dynamic I prefer. So that is a lot of reasons not to initially root for this couple, but somehow I ended up liking and often even loving them. I find them affectionate, loving, and genuinely sweet without being too grossly cutesy. Iris still isn't an especially well-developed and sharply defined character, but a lot of characters on these type of shows aren't, so it doesn't bother me all that much. I do think we've seen a little bit about how she's both similar to and different from Barry in ways that generally work. As always happens with these shows, Iris benefited from finally being in on the secret identity that the audience and about 95% of the other characters have known about the entire time. (In my opinion, keeping Iris in the dark for so long was the one major misstep in an otherwise amazing first season!) I'd prefer her as a journalist or some other career of her own rather than Team leader, but I do see why they wanted to make her more integral to the main storylines. Honestly, I love the actor who plays Barry and the actress who plays Iris to the point where they usually rise above the material for me even when the writing gets too CW-ish. I still love both Caitlin and Cisco too and have occasionally wondered if they're eventually planning to put them together. It really wouldn't matter to me much either way - I just love all these characters and their interactions. Barry/Joe is probably my favorite relationship on the show, but I love most of them. I know there's a general consensus that the show has gone downhill, but I still love it: the fascinating (albeit sometimes absurd!) ideas about time travel, multiple universes, etc., nearly all the characters and actors, the look and feel of it, the fact that this is one of the only superhero shows that, despite getting dark at points, still usually remembers that comic book shows can and should be fun and lets itself be sweet, silly, joyful and energetic rather than the self-serious funereal broodfest we get from so many other superhero shows.
  8. She essentially did say this exact thing, though---to Luke in Run Away Little Boy.
  9. I actually love Anna for some strange reason. The closest I've come to really shipping on this show is Dean/Anna because I always seem to develop the strangest shipping preferences possible. But I agree with you completely about Pamela. I really loved her and wish we'd seen more of her. And I'm very excited that you share my love for S4!
  10. Here's one that seems very unpopular: the fourth season of this show was my very favorite. By far! And I don't usually like when my shows get grimmer, darker and more "epic" in scope, but I felt like S4 still retained a lot of SPN's humor and intimacy while getting a lot more interesting and thought-provoking. It contains a lot of my favorite episodes, and I'll always cherish how much I enjoyed the introduction of Castiel and the heaven/hell/angels mythology as it was back then or at least had the potential to be versus how it was dragged out and mangled over the next million seasons :) I will add that I love Sam and Dean, and even though I understand why a lot of Sam fans feel that S4 assassinated his character, I felt like Sam's motivations and behavior were more understandable and even sympathetic in S4 than most other seasons.
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