ALISON KENT
They’re young, they’re beautiful, they date hot guys . . . you’d think the Halliwells lived in a chick-lit kind of world. Alison Kent studied season one and found that each of the sisters approached her love story differently, but they all ended the same way: teary-eyed, undefeated and supported by their sisterhood.
WHETHER A WITCH by reputation or through inherited powers, every girl deserves a little love.
It could be argued, in fact, that witches may need even more than most women considering the constant uncertainty in their lives—uncertainty that is about more than filling a social calendar, hitting upcoming sample sales, making ends meet or balancing overtime with aerobics.
Seriously, what woman wouldn’t want a strong, supportive man to turn to at the end of a long day spent battling warlocks and sorcerers, demons and ghosts?
Picture it. An intimate wine and candlelight dinner (or even burgers and fries by flashlight) over which to discuss the latest auction house acquisition or exclusive catering booking or shape-shifter annihilation. Follow that with a nice back rub or foot massage before cuddling up to a big male body and letting him, like Calgon, take you away.
Mm, mm, mm. All the stuff that makes romance fiction romance fiction. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl—though, in the romance genre’s current climate, the story arc is just as likely to be girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins boy.
Having written romance now for a dozen plus years and followed the shifts in what the market will bear, as well as what readers expect in a contemporary heroine, the Halliwell sisters have for me been the perfect example of single female twenty-somethings seeking. Well, plus magical powers.
Whether struggling to find their place in the world, working to balance a demanding career with a personal life, or learning to accept the weight of their family heritage, the Halliwell sisters are no exception to the age-old quest of a woman seeking a mate.
Neither were the writers of Charmed shy in their employment of the romance genre’s conventions, tenets and clichés when crafting the show’s first season. Watching the original twenty-two episodes again, I was struck anew at how each sister exhibited characteristics of a female protagonist seeking love, companionship, intimacy and that Jerry Maguire completion—yet how each was drawn as an individual, approaching the dating game from a perspective unique to her own personality, her desires and her preferences when it came to the opposite sex.
That individuality, in fact, lent itself to plot lines and continuing story arcs that encompassed the broad spectrum of romance as a genre, from mainstream women’s fiction to chick-lit to almost—just almost—the traditional romance novel with its happy ending. Yet, Charmed Ones or not, the sisters figured out quite quickly that their powers were good, as Prue said, “for everything but our love lives.”
So why, in those early days (pre-Piper and Leo, pre-Prue’s death, pre-Paige’s appearance), did things continually go wrong on the Halliwells’ road to romance? Were their failures to find—or accept—true love based solely on wrong choices in men? Were the sisters themselves simply not ready for what came their way? Or did their magical powers create an obstacle too big for romance to overcome?
Their belief in the power of love appeared in the first season’s sixth episode (“The Wedding from Hell”) when, after sending the demon goddess Hecate and her demonette posse back where they belonged and reuniting bride-to-be Allison with her fiancé Elliott, Piper wondered aloud if she, Prue and Phoebe would live happily ever after. Phoebe’s answer? That if Allison and Elliott could do it, so could they. To that, Prue replied, “I guess true love does conquer all.”
In the previous episode (“Dream Sorcerer”), after Prue told her sisters that since men wanted the unattainable, the three of them needed to stop trying to please the opposite sex and focus on what they wanted instead, Phoebe stated that she wanted “tons of fun, lots of heat and no strings attached,” while Piper responded that no matter how un-pc it was, she preferred, “romance, long, slow kisses, late night talks, candlelight,” ending with a sigh and a declaration that she “love[d] love.”
During the same episode (and obviously having ignored Prue’s directive), Piper agreed to go along with Phoebe in casting a reversible spell found in the Book of Shadows, one that would enable the sisters to attract lovers. Sitting at the low table in the attic, they read aloud one another’s wish lists for what they want in a man.
First, Phoebe went over Piper’s list, reciting, “You want a man who is single, smart, endowed . . . employed. A man who loves sleeping in on Sundays, sunset bike rides, cuddling by a roaring fire and late night talks. A man who loves love as much as you do. Wow, you’re a romantic.”
Piper admitted that she was, then read Phoebe’s list. “You want the sexy silent type that finds you driving through town on the back of a Harley at three o’clock in the morning. A man who appreciates scented candles, body oils and Italian sheets.” At that point, Phoebe took over, adding, “He’s about hunger and lust and danger. And even though you know all this, even though you know he’ll never meet your friends or share a holiday meal with your family, you still can’t stay away.”
We know, of course, that in season one none of the sisters would find and fall in love with a man possessing all of the above characteristics, or live happily ever after with him when they did. They would find, instead, many men possessing but one or two admirable qualities, and many more possessing traits of a more otherworldly, if not evil, nature.
Phoebe, the youngest sibling, was cast from the beginning as the wild child, the free spirit, the bad girl who after losing her job and being up to her eyeballs in debt, returned in the series’ first episode from New York to San Francisco. She also returned to Piper’s open arms and cold looks from Prue and was immediately forced into a defensive mode, denying the unspoken accusation from her oldest sister that she ever touched Prue’s ex fiancé, Roger (“that Armani-wearing, Chardonnay-slugging trust-funder”).
Further into the season, after Piper had shown an interest in handyman Leo Wyatt (“The Truth is Out There . . . and It Hurts”), Phoebe, while under Prue’s truth spell, admitted that she was only after Leo because Piper was. And when the question was finally out in the open in “The Fourth Sister,” her sisters told her that she was definitely a “boyfriend thief.” Phoebe even dated Rex Buckland, Prue’s boss at the Buckland Auction House, before finding out he was a warlock.
Phoebe’s tendency to find her dates a little too close to home didn’t sit well with her sisters. Prue preferred to keep her work and personal lives separate. And Piper found herself playing peacemaker between her older and younger sisters.
Set up early as a girl intent on a good time, Phoebe went out with Alec, “some hottie she hit on” in Piper’s restaurant, as well as “tall, dark, brooding, very New York” Stefan, a world-famous photographer who invited her up to see his etchings . . . er, photographs, both in “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” At the end of the episode, after Stefan, a.k.a. the demon Javna, had been vanquished, Phoebe admitted that she needed to be more careful in her choice of dates—though at least she was now seeking out men on her own rather than borrowing from her sisters.
Of course when she and Piper cast the spell to attract a lover in “Dream Sorcerer” and Phoebe met Hans (who actually did arrive in her life on a motorcycle), she threw caution to the wind and had “safe sex, a lot of safe sex”—only to eventually feel smothered by this lover who she had attracted for all the wrong reasons. They jumped into bed based on nothing more than a physical attraction, never exploring beneath the surface of her “man wish-list.”
Hans, in fact, not understanding the root of his obsession with Phoebe, eventually turned on her. And romance readers were hardly surprised. The couple’s bond wasn’t based on mutual interests, shared passions, similar outlooks and smoldering heat, but on magic. And as much as the genre’s readers know romance is magic, they also know it’s magic of the unexplainable—not the supernatural—kind.
Phoebe’s most serious love interest in the first season, however, was her ex-boyfriend—the man from her days spent living in New York, the man she wanted to give a second chance now that he was in San Francisco, but the man who ended up being the same one she left behind, one who was always looking for an easy way out.
Seeing Clay again in “Feats of Clay” was a turning point for Phoebe. When Clay reminded her that in New York she needed three jobs to afford her social calendar, she let him know that things had changed. That she had changed. And as viewers, we’d seen it happen. She had become less the wild one than she was upon her return to San Francisco, seemingly intent on settling into her role as the youngest of the Halliwell sisters.
Even though Phoebe couldn’t help but wonder if Clay was the one, even though he charmed her by telling her how much he missed “the day to day of us,” she didn’t deny Piper’s observation that she wouldn’t be the first Halliwell to misjudge a man. Neither did she counter her sister’s belief that she wanted to give Clay a chance because she always sees the good in people.
Even after Clay told her that next time they crossed paths, he hoped he would be the man she always thinks she sees, she finally learned her lesson about inappropriate men and moved forward with her life, taking an active role in her future, admitting she was still looking for adventure and knowing that meant she wasn’t ready to settle down.
During the rest of the first season, Phoebe was more focused on renewing her relationship with her sisters and finding herself and steady employment than on men. Even when she met blind Brent in “Out Of Sight,” she kept their relationship strictly to the business of saving the boys kidnapped by the grimlocks. In this regard, Phoebe closely resembled a heroine found in a chick-lit novel, or in a bildungsroman (a German term indicating a novel of personal growth). Relationship experiments gone awry, she turned her attention to becoming a dependable member of the Halliwell family.
Still, Phoebe quite clearly still believed in love, playing matchmaker between Piper and Josh, encouraging a hemming-and-hawing Piper to let Leo know of her feelings for him and helping Piper over her fear of always falling for the wrong guy.
Phoebe did the same repeatedly for Prue regarding her on-again/offagain relationship with Inspector Andy Trudeau, giving Andy Prue’s cell number despite Prue’s “Cop. Witch. It’s not a love connection” protestation and telling Prue that all she and Andy needed was one hot night to get back on track. When Prue confessed to Phoebe that she believed their secret made it impossible for any of them to have a relationship or a normal life, Phoebe reminded her eldest sister that they had lives and deserved to live and love like everyone else.
Having arrived in San Francisco unexpectedly, Phoebe came a long way in that first season, gaining the respect of both Piper and Prue as a woman capable of holding up her end of their magical triumvirate, as well as settling in and finding her place as their younger sister. As far as Phoebe’s romances went, she seemed to have learned her lesson about keeping her magic fingers out of her love life.
Piper, the middle sister, ever the nurturer, the lover of love, the good girl who is a cross between Emeril and Martha Stewart and admittedly hates to be single, spent the first season continually falling for inappropriate men: as Prue said in “Love Hurts,” “a warlock, a ghost, a geographically undesirable handyman and a very dorky grad student.”
In the series’ first episode, she was dating Jeremy Burns, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle whom she met in the hospital cafeteria the day Grams was admitted. Jeremy handed the bawling Piper a napkin—with his phone number on it. (“How romantic,” was Phoebe’s remark.)
Jeremy seemed perfect. He held down a good job and no doubt the accompanying benefits. He was complimentary of Piper’s cooking and paid attention to her interests. He could flirt and banter like the best romance hero. (Opening his fortune cookie in the first episode, he read, “Soon you will be on top—” before Piper took it from him and finished the thought, “—of the world.”)
He wanted to show her beautiful views of the city—the bay, the bridge—and took her to the top of the old Boeing building for a surprise. How romantic, we thought. The perfect boyfriend. Except he was a warlock intent on stealing the sisters’ powers. After he tried to kill Piper and failed, she returned the favor and didn’t. Their relationship ended, uh, explosively.
Remember Mark Chao from “Dead Man Dating”? He and Piper had a perfectly simpatico relationship that held great romantic promise . . . had Mark been alive. Unable to communicate with the non-magical living, Mark told Piper that if his body wasn’t found, a funeral held and a proper burial completed before Hell’s gatekeeper, Yama, captured his soul, he would be taken to Hell forever.
He and Piper then spent the hour working to help the ever-present Inspectors Trudeau and Morris solve Mark’s murder—i.e., the story’s external plot. The internal plot epitomized the perfect progression of a romance as Mark and Piper got to know one another. He explained how he and his mother had relied on each other after his father had died, and how she had taught him everything she knew about cooking.
Once Piper told Mark that she was a chef, the two flirted about Peking duck. Mark admitted that he enjoyed cooking enough that he could have seen himself as a chef had he not gone into molecular biology. Later, at his apartment, he gave her a box containing his family’s recipes that he obviously no longer had use for.
They also discovered a shared love for Camus, Piper flipping open a book she pulled from Mark’s shelf to read, “I love this world as a dead world, and as always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, and all one craves for is a warm face—the warmth and wonder of a living heart.” Sigh. If only Mark hadn’t been dead. (A paranormal romance author could have done great things with this plot!) As Piper said at the end, “Leave it to me to fall for a dead guy.”
When she and Phoebe cast the spell to attract a lover, Piper dated the perfect Jack Manford—though the perfection, she realized, was because of the spell, not because of any chemistry between them. When Phoebe argued that maybe the spell allowed Jack to say and feel what he would have said anyway, Piper responded that, “Love is a magic between two people that cannot be explained and cannot be conjured.”
Smart girl, that Piper. At least until she reverted and based her decision not to date Lucas DeVane in “From Fear To Eternity” on superstition, having met him on Friday the thirteenth—the same day she met Jeremy. Later, when pursued by Josh in “When Bad Warlocks Turn Good,” she decided to trust her instincts and lay low. She’d had enough of inappropriate men.
That said, Piper was enough of a romantic that in the episode “Feats of Clay,” she took on the role of matchmaker, playing Cupid at the risk of her own job by putting a spell on Doug, a bartender at [quake], that enabled him to have the confidence he needed to propose to his long-time-yet-recently ex girlfriend Shelly.
Unfortunately, the spell backfired, and Piper realized that true love has to take its natural course. She told Phoebe that there was not a thing wrong with a great guy like Doug, even if he was a little “boring on the surface” and “easy to overlook,” since “the wrong guys are usually the most interesting. Until you get your hopes up and let your guard down and they reveal their true selves.”
When Leo first appeared in “Thank You For Not Morphing,” it was as the handyman the sisters had called to fix their attic door. He made his second appearance several episodes later and was by then a fixture in Piper’s life.
She first tested out the attraction while under Prue’s truth spell and then finally asked him out, making the leap into a relationship. In the same episode, once they’d made love, Leo told her he might have to leave. The upturn in the relationship reversed immediately, ramping up the conflict between them and the stakes of the romantic plot line. When he returned several episodes later in “Secrets And Guys,” Phoebe was the first to discover his true identity as a Whitelighter, a guardian angel for good witches. Unfortunately, Whitelighters were forbidden from falling in love with said witches.
This created even more conflict on Piper and Leo’s road to romance—as did the fact that she found him “geographically undesirable.” She preferred not to get involved with a guy she couldn’t see regularly—or so she used as an excuse instead of letting him break her heart. Yet when she finally broke up permanently with Josh, it was because she knew it was unfair to ask him to remain with her in San Francisco and turn down a job offer in Beverly Hills when her thoughts were still with Leo.
Leo’s return in “Love Hurts” signaled the end of the Piper and Leo relationship for the first season. Though each admitted their love for the other after Piper saved Leo’s life, they recognized their Whitelighter/ good witch circumstances would not allow for their romance to blossom. At the end of this story arc, the crisis was not followed by a satisfying romantic resolution—though it did end in such a way that would work in women’s fiction, as it was an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
When Leo admitted that he could become human again, Piper refused to allow him to do so. Instead, she made the sacrifice and let him go, knowing that his work was more important than their being together. She had saved the love of her life. They were still in love. And nothing would change that.
Prue’s primary romantic interest in the first season was the most traditional in many ways, and the ups and downs of the relationship made it the most mainstream. Inspector Andy Trudeau filled two romance conventions—that of the alpha male protector and that of the best-friend-turned-lover.
As a child, Andy had been a big part of Prue’s life. We even saw the two of them as children (“That ’70s Episode”) when the Halliwell sisters cast a spell that returned them to the past to stop their mother from making a pact with a demon. During that episode, little Andy ran into Halliwell Manor dressed as a cowboy (another romance novel convention), guns drawn as he chased Piper and Prue. In the same episode, Phoebe admitted to her sisters that she used to listen to Andy and Prue through the heating vent that ran from the kitchen to the house’s second story when Prue would sneak him up to her bedroom during their dating days in high school.
With a shared romantic history, the sexual tension between Andy and Prue was already established the minute they reconnected in the hospital emergency room after Phoebe’s bicycle accident during the pilot. Their first conversation established that both had kept tabs on one another. She knew he had been in Portland. He knew she had been engaged to Roger. The viewer was given a quick history of Andy as a third generation law officer, and of the Halliwell sisters as recently reconnecting and returning to the home in which they grew up.
Having the introductory niceties out of the way quickly (no long, drawn-out past history conversations necessary here), the Prue and Andy story arc began at the end of the season’s first episode when Andy stopped by to invite Prue out to dinner, asking her when she hesitated if she was afraid of “having too good a time, stirring up old memories, rekindling the old flame.”
The romance novel convention of the old flame as hero enables the storyteller to bypass a lot of the awkward moments that naturally occur between two strangers getting to know one another amidst the rush of sexually charged hormones. It also allows for the characters to reach a deeper emotional connection that much sooner.
The beginning of the second episode found Prue sneaking out of Andy’s bed. Once she was home with her sisters, we discovered that the couple had slept together at the end of the date, their first since high school, even though Prue had wanted to take things slowly. As amazing as things were between her and Andy, she wished it hadn’t happened.
Andy called her later and tried to allay her misgivings. He told her he hadn’t meant for what happened to happen. Aware as we were that they had known each other a long time, it wasn’t hard to believe they were unable to help themselves. He wanted to talk, but Prue put him off. And the viewers got the first inkling that all would not be well in this reunion romance.
When they went out to lunch later in the episode, Andy told her that he wasn’t sorry they made love. Prue, however, was—not because she didn’t enjoy it but, not having seen him in seven years, picking back up where they left off seemed as if they were rushing things. She didn’t want to rush, what with her life having grown so complicated. “We had sex. Doesn’t mean we have to elope,” Andy protested.
He then suggested they pretend like their night in bed never happened—that they count it as part of their old relationship, enabling them to slow down and start over, because they’d been given a second chance that he didn’t want to blow. All Prue could do was agree to think it over. Her internal conflict had come into play (will she or won’t she tell him that she’s a witch?), tossing up a roadblock she would have to overcome before allowing herself the relationship.
The subtext of their past, however, continued to play close to the surface. During the episode “Thank You for not Morphing,” when the Halliwell sisters’ father reappears after a twenty-year absence, Prue listed for Andy several things she wished she could tell her father that he missed out on by not being around—one of those items being her prom. At the reminder, Andy replied, “Didn’t we miss that, too?” Yet he encouraged her to talk to her father. He even told her he’d drop her off at the restaurant where Piper and Phoebe were dining with Victor.
Andy was there for Prue. A shoulder for her to lean on. An ear for her to bend. For her birthday, he wanted to take her away for a spa weekend. To be with her. Away. Together . . . again. Andy’s potential as a romance hero was classic. He was thoughtful, sexy, fun to be with—he was one of a few good men. But Prue’s secret didn’t allow her the luxury of making the leap into commitment. She had to think about it. And when she blew up after finding out that Andy was divorced, he challenged her on the very secret she was keeping from him.
Yet he continued to court her. He called to do no more than hear her voice in “Dream Sorcerer.” When in that same episode she was injured in a car accident, he showed up at her bedside with cheeseburgers, fries and a single red rose. They argued over videos for an at-home date, then argued over the constant interruptions to the dates they were never able to finish. Their bond continued to deepen as they shared their frustrations—Andy’s that they never had time together, and Prue’s that she couldn’t share the truth. That frustration finally culminated in Andy walking out after Prue broke the same date three times.
He told her that he loved her and went on to say that it was obvious one of them was more interested in the relationship than the other. He admitted being hurt by her lack of trust and stressed that he’d done all he knew how to do to assure her that he was there for her, but he no longer knew if he could deal with her continually putting him off.
When Prue cast her truth spell in order to find out how he would feel were he to discover the truth of her identity as a witch, he told her he honestly didn’t know if it was a truth he could accept. When pressed, he told her it wasn’t a future he’d envisioned having, and Prue broke it off entirely. Once their relationship was over, Andy could no longer overlook Prue as a suspect in several unsolved and ongoing cases. Even his partner, Inspector Morris, wondered if Andy’s personal feelings for Prue hadn’t been getting in the way of his seeing her “secret life of crime.”
When called to help the innocent young witch Max, Prue visited with the distraught father of the missing boy, listening while he told her how his recently deceased wife kept her identity as a witch from him. His feelings mirrored much of what Prue had heard from Andy. Max’s father said that such a family secret would have been easier to accept had he known it sooner. When Prue countered that perhaps the man’s wife was afraid he wouldn’t accept her and love her, we heard the echo of her own insecurities about her relationship with Andy.
We also saw the truth and the depth of Andy’s feelings when he thought Prue had died in “Which Prue Is It Anyway?” Though they were no longer dating, he was devastated to think he had lost her. Once Andy finally learned of Prue’s powers, he was still not certain how he felt—though he wasn’t the least bit happy to find out she had based their break-up on his response while under her truth spell.
Later, however, he told her that, magic or no, a minute, month or year, nothing would change. One day, he wanted a normal life—a twocar garage and a screaming kid, a white picket fence but no demons. And so came the end of their relationship . . . or so we thought. When he turned in his badge instead of revealing the truth about the Halliwell sisters to the department’s Internal Affairs division, we saw that he was unable to write Prue out of his life entirely, sacrificing his career rather than giving away her secret.
The most telling events in Prue and Andy’s relationship occurred during the first season’s final episode, “Déjà Vu All Over Again.” The demon posing as Inspector Rodriguez was out to prove himself by killing the three Halliwell sisters. Rodriguez was mentored by Tempus, the devil’s sorcerer who could manipulate time and did so, resetting the day each time Rodriguez failed to succeed in his mission. The first time the day occurred, Phoebe was struck with a premonition of Andy’s death. Prue went to warn him, telling him she didn’t want anything to happen because of how much she still cared for him.
When the day arrived for the second time and Prue went to Andy, she told him that she loved him—a fact he admitted not knowing. A fact that left him shaken. The third time the day rolled around, she told him she would die if anything happened to him and they admitted their love to each other. It was the fantasy of being given a second or third chance to make things right, even while destiny meant they wouldn’t be allowed to be together, that made the episode so emotionally compelling. And the sacrifice Andy made in the end, giving his life for Prue, spoke volumes about their love.
At the end of the first season, though none of the Halliwell sisters had found a soul mate (at least not one existing on a worldly plane, or one who was alive), they had come to realize there was more to life than the hot sex and temporary relationships they’d experienced diving into the dating pool. They’d each come away with an understanding of the challenges involved when mixing romance and witchcraft, challenges made all the more difficult by the secret they kept.
More importantly, the three had settled into their roles as sibling supporters, protectors, nurturers and friends. They’d shared the truth of their lot with family members from the past who’d taught them about themselves and about their powers. Through love lost, love found, love sacrificed and love denied, the sisters recognized that the greatest power of all was, indeed, love.
Saving the world may not have been their career choice, but they had accepted it as their calling—even if it meant true romance would have to wait. And with love on their side, how could they fail?
Alison Kent was a born reader, but was married with children before she decided she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. She found a home at Harlequin when she accepted an invitation issued by her editor live on the “Isn’t It Romantic?” episode of CBS 48 Hours. She now writes for both Harlequin Blaze and Kensington Brava, penning stories she believes in—fantasies that show readers the way love was meant to be. She lives in Texas with her hero, four vagabond kids and a dog named Smith. And she actually manages to write in the midst of all that madness.