Magic Word: Charmed in the Media

[Cranberry]

The fact that this show was "woke" (which is a meaningless term to me at this point because everyone uses it differently) has nothing to do with it. The writing was terrible and the CW is cancelling anything unprofitable. This show's ratings were in the toilet because it's an incomprehensible mess (and not even in an entertaining way like Riverdale) and always has been.

[Camera One]

The Hollywood Reporter article pretty well explained why the newly bought-out CW cancelled so many of its shows this year.

If CW hadn't been sold, I wonder if "Charmed" would have gotten another season, or if this show would have exited its Safe Space regardless.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Camera One

[Keywestclubkid]

On 5/15/2022 at 11:37 AM, Cranberry said:

The fact that this show was "woke" (which is a meaningless term to me at this point because everyone uses it differently) has nothing to do with it. The writing was terrible and the CW is cancelling anything unprofitable. This show's ratings were in the toilet because it's an incomprehensible mess (and not even in an entertaining way like Riverdale) and always has been.

I love when people throw around the woke shit like its some "evil" thing to have characters and situations about everyone ... because before that NONE of these issues were relevant? or none of these issues apparently were issues at all ..eyeroll .. 

[LadyIrony]

On 5/16/2022 at 1:37 AM, Cranberry said:

The fact that this show was "woke" (which is a meaningless term to me at this point because everyone uses it differently) has nothing to do with it. The writing was terrible and the CW is cancelling anything unprofitable. This show's ratings were in the toilet because it's an incomprehensible mess (and not even in an entertaining way like Riverdale) and always has been.

All the writing on CW shows is terrible though. They tend not to rate well either. The new owners want profitable shows. As the saying goes "Go Woke, Go Broke".

On 5/17/2022 at 11:14 PM, Keywestclubkid said:

I love when people throw around the woke shit like its some "evil" thing to have characters and situations about everyone ... because before that NONE of these issues were relevant? or none of these issues apparently were issues at socialite  ..eyeroll .. 

When characters wear t shirts with political slogans and recite speeches rather than meaningful and relevant dialogue than yes, I roll my eyes and then off.

[Keywestclubkid]

2 hours ago, LadyIrony said:

All the writing on CW shows is terrible though. They tend not to rate well either. The new owners want profitable shows. As the saying goes "Go Woke, Go Broke".

When characters wear t shirts with political slogans and recite speeches rather than meaningful and relevant dialogue than yes, I roll my eyes and then off.

Meaningful dialogue?  so when they ran around in mid drift tops and ridiculous outfits and spent seasons of recycling the “finding love” for phoebe storyline with cheesy I must find a man and have a baby dialogue or Piper spending seasons trying to get leo it’s was ok and fun ,, but giving them some agency other then getting pregnant and finding that one tru “love” is woke and bad? I mean let’s be honest here the original was problematic in its own way… 

 

was either show written really well? Not really.. but at least they tried something new with giving them more of a rounded personality  

Edited May 19, 2022 by Keywestclubkid

[LadyIrony]

7 hours ago, Keywestclubkid said:

Meaningful dialogue?  so when they ran around in mid drift tops and ridiculous outfits and spent seasons of recycling the “finding love” for phoebe storyline with cheesy I must find a man and have a baby dialogue or Piper spending seasons trying to get leo it’s was ok and fun ,, but giving them some agency other then getting pregnant and finding that one tru “love” is woke and bad? I mean let’s be honest here the original was problematic in its own way… 

 

was either show written really well? Not really.. but at least they tried something new with giving them more of a rounded personality  

The original Charmed was at least entertaining. I actually don't find any member of the new cast to be well rounded or charming at all. 

Since you brought it up, what exactly is the purpose of the current (un)charmed ones? 

 

The original made sense, until the last season anyway.

Edited May 19, 2022 by LadyIrony

[Cranberry]

I do roll my eyes when shows basically lecture the viewer, even when I agree with the points they're making. Supergirl was especially bad for this. I don't like the, "Get woke, go broke" phrase, though, because I think it oversimplifies things and makes it sound like a show having LBGT characters, POC characters, and/or a predominantly female cast is a mistake, or that shows should never tackle social issues in their storylines. The problem is the handling of those issues, not the fact that they're included. There have been plenty of shows that "got woke" and did not, in fact, go broke, because they put the story first and integrated the message instead of putting the message first and trying to force the story around it. (Friendly Space Ninja mentions some of them in the video I linked, which is an excellent essay.)

[LadyIrony]

23 hours ago, Cranberry said:

I do roll my eyes when shows basically lecture the viewer, even when I agree with the points they're making. Supergirl was especially bad for this. I don't like the, "Get woke, go broke" phrase, though, because I think it oversimplifies things and makes it sound like a show having LBGT characters, POC characters, and/or a predominantly female cast is a mistake, or that shows should never tackle social issues in their storylines. The problem is the handling of those issues, not the fact that they're included. There have been plenty of shows that "got woke" and did not, in fact, go broke, because they put the story first and integrated the message instead of putting the message first and trying to force the story around it. (Friendly Space Ninja mentions some of them in the video I linked, which is an excellent essay.)

Supergirl was awful! What I found funny was that in the show Supergirl and Co were basically trying to overthrow humans more or less and yet couldn't understand why some humans were unhappy about it. 

Show me an interesting story and characters and I don't care how they identify themselves. I think there are lots of wasted opportunities story wise to be honest that would involve the identities you mention. Different angles. When they brought back Will & Grace all they did was complain about politics, if they had to mention politics at all why not have Will or Karen as conservatives or even Grace? It was an echo chamber and boring. But mostly, politics doesn't need to appear in a show like that. 

"Go Woke, Go Broke" as a general rule is true though. A lot of companies and TV shows etc, movies have flopped because they alienate or just bore their audience. 

[GaT]

On 5/17/2022 at 6:14 AM, Keywestclubkid said:

I love when people throw around the woke shit like its some "evil" thing to have characters and situations about everyone ... because before that NONE of these issues were relevant? or none of these issues apparently were issues at all ..eyeroll .. 

 

On 5/19/2022 at 3:07 PM, Cranberry said:

I do roll my eyes when shows basically lecture the viewer, even when I agree with the points they're making.

Blame Sarah Jeffrey for a lot of the "woke" crap. When stars of the original criticized the reboot, Sarah tweeted out 

Quote

I truly hope they find happiness elsewhere, and not in the form of putting down other WOC. I would be embarrassed to behave this way. Peace and love to y’all.

Nobody had said a thing about WOC up until that point, she's the one who decided to raise that flag. 

[Cranberry]

I don't blame an actress for what the writers did with the show. I also, again, don't think the so-called "woke" subjects were the problem. This show sucked because the plots were rushed, there was very little character development, the sisters were split up half the time, and the writing was, in general, an incomprehensible mess. Shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Boys, Jessica Jones, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Hacks, Mr. Robot, The White Lotus, Sex Education, The Wilds, and so many others were (and are) out there handling "woke" subjects deftly because they actually have decent writers who believe in character development and consistency. I would have loved this show if it had been about these exact same characters and even the exact same issues but they'd just been written in a way that made sense and didn't condescend to the audience.

[ketose]

The massacre at the CW has something to do with Warner Media breaking deals with Netflix to improve their streaming outlets while making the network cheaper for Nexstar. Supposedly, online CW is pretty popular and shows with whole seasons on CW Seed were mostly spared the ax.

Not sure about wokeness, but I found it funny that Supergirl killed off Dean Cain's character while Cain's CW show about stage magicians got higher ratings.

[Camera One]

Twitter war ignited by original "Charmed" writer, according to this article:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/charmed-reboot-finale-writers-imposters-1235163868/

Further responses to Twitter thread:

Edited June 13, 2022 by Camera One

[Primal Slayer]

The EP gave a final interivew

Quote

Here's all the "important" bits (to me)

-The original S1 plan when mapping out the season was to have Phoebe Halliwell aka Alyssa Milano show up in the finale.

-That was scrapped as TheCW wanted to take the show in a new direction as they disliked the comedic tone and were wanting the show to be darker. They told the writers in S1 to wrap up majority of their storylines so they could start fresh in S2 when new showrunners would take over.

-The writers found demons boring and believed that TCO vanquishing demons was an outdated concept in 2018. They wanted things to be much more grey.

-After S1 got backlash for being to on point with politics and what was going on in the real world, by the time they got to S4 they wanted to merge in real life politics more naturally w/The Unseen being their version of Qanon.

-They wanted to do a musical episode but didn't have the budget for a full episode of songs and not enough time to write original songs.

-In S2 they introduced Katrina Chandra who was meant to be a new love interest for Mel. The character lasted 5 episodes and was ultimately written out due to lack of chemistry between the actresses.

-The S2 showrunners didn't care for the S1 powers and thus got rid of them. The writers found it difficult in s1 to write exciting scenes that involved Mels Molecular Stasis/Freezing power as it made things to easy to save the day so they were happy to get rid of it.

-Pre-Covid they were planning on Abigail having 2 sisters that would essentially be the darker versions of TCO but it was scrapped once COVID hit.

-Every season they thought about expanding on the Vera family history but it kept getting thrown out for various reasons.

-There were never conversations about having Josefina (TCO cousin) potentially be Charmed, they wanted a fresh new character that they could build from the ground up.

-Jordan isn't a whitelighter. He only got the power to heal because it goes with who he is as a character deep down.

-S5 would've partially been about the Triquetra-verse. Each point of the Triquetra representing a different universe that housed Charmed Ones (OG/Reboot/male charmed ones). Would've attempted to incorporate the OGs for a few episodes before sending the reboot CO off to the third world where the male charmed ones would've shown why its better for women to have the power. They had a plan for if they had gotten Shannen Doherty and explain how Prue was alive.

[Camera One]

Those types of behind-the-scenes opinions and choices really explained why the show was such a mess.  Even a darker show needs humor so the CW's direction sabotaged it from the start. 

Whatever the S2 showrunners came up with was a hundred times more "boring" than what had been established before they arrived.  I don't remember how many scenes I tuned out in the second and third seasons.

I thought Katrina Chandra did have some chemistry with Mel.  Their pattern of constantly changing Mel's love interest and not developing them certainly didn't work to build chemistry.  

LOL that they thought they were bringing in real life politics more "naturally" in the final season with the Unseen = QAnon.  

I'm sure showing how a world with all male charmed ones will be worse than all female charmed ones would have been as subtle and nuanced as always.  

I wonder if Alyssa Milano or Shannon Doherty would actually have agreed to appear on this show.  I'm not sure I trust this show's writing staff enough to write for the original series' characters.

I also wonder how Season 4 would have been different if Macy had stayed, since most of this season's plots revolved around grief over her death and the "mystery" of the new "sister".

Edited June 18, 2022 by Camera One

[Primal Slayer]

I think if they managed to get ANY of the OGs back, they would've had a lot of say in their characters portrayals. But just imagine if 3/4 said 'sure, we'll do it'....they cant even budget for music or special effects...how were they going to afford any of them? CBS gonna give them some extra bucks for it? 

As far as Macy...I think the season would've largely been the same with the overarching plot of the magical community turning against them.  

[GaT]

14 hours ago, Primal Slayer said:

Here's all the "important" bits (to me)

-The original S1 plan when mapping out the season was to have Phoebe Halliwell aka Alyssa Milano show up in the finale.

-That was scrapped as TheCW wanted to take the show in a new direction as they disliked the comedic tone and were wanting the show to be darker. They told the writers in S1 to wrap up majority of their storylines so they could start fresh in S2 when new showrunners would take over.

-The writers found demons boring and believed that TCO vanquishing demons was an outdated concept in 2018. They wanted things to be much more grey.

-After S1 got backlash for being to on point with politics and what was going on in the real world, by the time they got to S4 they wanted to merge in real life politics more naturally w/The Unseen being their version of Qanon.

-They wanted to do a musical episode but didn't have the budget for a full episode of songs and not enough time to write original songs.

-In S2 they introduced Katrina Chandra who was meant to be a new love interest for Mel. The character lasted 5 episodes and was ultimately written out due to lack of chemistry between the actresses.

-The S2 showrunners didn't care for the S1 powers and thus got rid of them. The writers found it difficult in s1 to write exciting scenes that involved Mels Molecular Stasis/Freezing power as it made things to easy to save the day so they were happy to get rid of it.

-Pre-Covid they were planning on Abigail having 2 sisters that would essentially be the darker versions of TCO but it was scrapped once COVID hit.

-Every season they thought about expanding on the Vera family history but it kept getting thrown out for various reasons.

-There were never conversations about having Josefina (TCO cousin) potentially be Charmed, they wanted a fresh new character that they could build from the ground up.

-Jordan isn't a whitelighter. He only got the power to heal because it goes with who he is as a character deep down.

-S5 would've partially been about the Triquetra-verse. Each point of the Triquetra representing a different universe that housed Charmed Ones (OG/Reboot/male charmed ones). Would've attempted to incorporate the OGs for a few episodes before sending the reboot CO off to the third world where the male charmed ones would've shown why its better for women to have the power. They had a plan for if they had gotten Shannen Doherty and explain how Prue was alive.

THIS is why we got stuck with the stupidity that was "SafeSpace Seattle"? Which they never even bothered to explain? S1 wasn't really that good, but every decision they made for S2 & beyond was a total mess.