Charmed is getting two new showunners and a new focus after the reported exit of Carter Covington, who helmed the show for its first season.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in the next season, Charmed is expected to “lean harder into its supernatural storylines and less into the family dynamic that made Covington a fit.” Covington had previously worked on Hart of Dixie and Greek.
I have mixed feelings about all of this. Despite my feelings about some of the behind-the-scenes issues with Charmed, it’s an enjoyable, campy show that I think it suffers more from the network it’s on and some kind of meh writing when it comes to the lead actresses. It sometimes touches on something really real and tangible, but most of the time, it’s just of lackluster. I still think it would have benefited a lot more from being an original project than a remake of a highly popular series.
The original Charmed did suffer from a severe lack of continuity and lore consistency, so I think there’s plenty of room for this incarnation to really exceed its predecessor. However, the family dynamics on the show are something I think could actually be stronger.
In the first three seasons of the original, Prue, Piper, and Phoebe grew up together had these longstanding relationships that played a role in their interactions. They shared father drama, maternal loss, and one of the things I really enjoyed while rewatching the season one Blu-ray was a real sense of sisterly intimacy.
They held hands when they walked and ran together; they were always hugging and being cuddly with each other and were playful. The new Charmed isn’t absent of this, but it doesn’t come across as naturally because they didn’t screen test the sisters together.
They also had messy issues when it came to ethnicity aspects of it and had to give the sisters different dads, with Mel having one father and Macey and Maggie finding out several episodes in that they are full siblings, not half (and even retconned that from what was originally set up).
Charmed worked best as a series when there was a balance between the sisterly bond and being witches, not a separation of the two. I also think that, for a series that is “Latina themed” and has dealt with race and has three non-white leads, it should probably have a non-white Latinx showrunner, at the very least. I know the writer’s room is diverse, but it says something that the people charting the course are white.
The CW is the most diverse network on television right now, which means they have a responsibility to be diverse from the top down, especially when their motto is “Dare to Defy” and campaign slogan is “Open to All.”
Either way, I wish Melonie Diaz, Sarah Jeffery, and Madeleine Mantock the best, because they are talented women, and I have enjoyed watching them on screen. We shall see what season two brings.
(via THR, image: Robert Falconer/The CW)
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