Totally Charmed

A friend of mine, Valerie Taylor, began to watch the show with her very smart nine-year-old daughter after I said, “You have to see this.” When I asked her how that was working out, her story of watching Charmed with Jane was so charming, I made her write it down.

A YEAR OR SO AGO, my friend Jenny Crusie recommended a show she was watching called Charmed.

Jenny’s a pop culture maven and has made some great TV recommendations in the past—Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls, among others—so when my local cable station started up with the first episode of Charmed in daily reruns, I decided to give it a look-see.

“It’s camp,” Jenny told me. “Jane might like it, too.”

Jane is my daughter, then nine years old and entering her “tweenerhood,” that period between true childishness and becoming a teenager.

Jane did like it, and so did I. We TiVoed it each evening religiously and watched it together the following afternoon when she got home from school. I spent significant portions of the years since the birth of my first child—hours of my life I’ll never get back—clenching my jaw to keep from yawning through eyecrossingly vapid episodes of Blue’s Clues, That’s So Raven and all the stuff that came in between. It was really quite a thrill to find myself curled up with my daughter on the couch watching something we were both actually enjoying.

And as if that weren’t enough to make me like the show, Charmed had a lot going for it from a mom’s point of view. Strong women triumphing over scary things. Siblings realizing they were stronger together than apart. Extended family overcoming differences. Women refusing to change their basic selves in order to keep a man. The transformational power of love. Demons getting zapped. This was great stuff.

But there were also a few things not to like. For one thing, Charmed is full of storylines and plot elements that, while they work on several levels and therefore are part of what makes the show appeal to both of us, contain complicated enough symbolism or complex enough moralities that they sometimes made me wonder a bit uneasily what Jane might be taking away from them. Sophisticated sexual situations, for another really big thing. And, of course, lots and lots of violence, often in the course of events like abductions, blindings and feedings on live victims, generally culminating in often-grotesque death.

The violence was what struck me first. In the very first episode, “Something Wicca This Way Comes,” Piper’s boyfriend Jeremy (unbeknownst to her a warlock) tried to kill her with a knife—an athame, in Charmed’s pseudo-Wiccan parlance, though at that point Piper had probably never even heard the word—and later sprouted thorns from his entire face and body before the sisters finally exploded him into tiny bits. It all seemed pretty scary to me, but it was cartoonish enough that it didn’t seem to bother Jane at all. That turned out to be the case for the entire series. Other than the occasional, “Eeew, gross!” when the blood and gore were really over the top, Jane was unfazed. So I made my peace with the violence early on.

Then there was the sexual content. These are not just sexually active women. These are women who are downright exuberant about their sex lives. They enjoy men, and they quite frankly want regular sex and miss it when they don’t get it. They joke about getting it—or not getting enough of it—among themselves and openly go after attractive men.

Which is not necessarily a problem. I’m no prude, and in general sex in pop culture bothers me less than violence. It’s my feeling that forbidding sex before marriage encourages intemperate early marriages between very young adults who don’t have the experience to realize that the fact they want desperately to have sex with someone has very little to do with whether or not they should try to build a life with that person. I had lots of sex before I was married, and I’m really glad I didn’t marry Major Boyfriends One or Two—each of whom I thought I loved permanently and either of whom I might have married had I been dedicated to the proposition of taking my virginity to my marriage bed. So I have no argument with adult women engaging in sex without a lifetime commitment.

But I do think it’s a really bad idea to present promiscuity to tweeners (or teenagers, for that matter) as healthy and normal. So when we first encountered the sexual sophistication of Charmed, I was a little concerned.

So was Jane. “Mom, should I be watching this?” she asked the first time a scene opened with a couple in bed together, clearly to my adult eyes pre- or post-coital.

“Um, let’s just skip this scene,” I told her.

She flipped past it, and that’s how we handled it from then on. I let her manage the remote, figuring she was the best person to decide what she felt comfortable with. Sometimes she flipped past stuff that seemed pretty innocuous to me. Other times she watched stuff I thought would have been embarrassing to her.

And over time what we both saw was that these women aren’t promiscuous. They’re serially monogamous. They are faithful to their boyfriends, and they expect their boyfriends to be faithful to them. Relationships end and it’s not the end of the world—or at least, by the end of the episode the world is back where it belongs. They cry, they mope, they eat too much ice cream and do other neurotic things—mostly temporarily—and then they move on. They want eventually to get married and to raise children with their husbands. Divorce is not something to be approached lightly. It all actually seemed pretty healthy to me.

Now that I’ve defended their virtue, I do have to admit it doesn’t help that they all—well, all but Piper—dress like they do it for nickels down at the Greyhound station. Jane picked up on the clothing issue right away. “Mom, is she wearing that to work?” Hard to fathom how a nine-year-old understands more about what is even minimally appropriate for showing up in the morning at an auction house, a social services agency or a newspaper than the wardrobe department of a television production company. When Phoebe, having exchanged karma with Mata Hari in season six’s “Used Karma,” dressed “like a stripper” according to Paige—who in my opinion has very little room to make such comparisons—Jane didn’t get the distinction. I came in late to that episode, and Jane explained what was happening by saying, “I think Phoebe’s supposed to look different,” as we watched Phoebe tear veils from her bikini-like costume and drape them around her boyfriend’s neck. Prue, Phoebe, Paige (but especially Phoebe)—they all dress like a sixteen-year-old’s idea of what she should wear to get served in a luxury hotel bar. Piper, who actually works in a bar and could possibly be considered appropriately dressed for work in a halter top with criss-cross strapping and low-rise jeans with a thong showing, comes off looking nearly dowdy in comparison. Jane’s not-so-complimentary explanation of that phenomenon? “Piper’s a mom.” I didn’t bother to dignify that by pointing out that apart from the memorable “Coyote Piper” episode in season three—which forever changed the music video that plays in my head when I hear the song “Unbelievable”—Piper had dressed that way long before she became a mom.

We first encountered the sexual nature of Charmed early in the first season. Prue ran into her old high school boyfriend, Andy Trudeau, in the first episode. The next episode, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” included a scene that opened with Prue in Andy’s bedroom. It was obviously—again, to my eyes—the morning after. He was asleep in his bed and she was tiptoeing around getting dressed. She snuck out without awakening him and went home, where Piper asked if the date went badly. Prue sheepishly admitted that, on the contrary, it had gone quite well. “You know. Dinner. Movie. Sex.”

Piper responded with a mock accusation of sluttishness. “Excuse me? On your first date? You sleaze.”

Prue deflected this with defensiveness but no regret. “It wasn’t exactly our first date, Piper.”

“High school doesn’t count.”

We were left to wonder whether the high school relationship included sex, but that implication at least I’m sure was way over Jane’s head.

This was the first indication I had that this actually might be a very adult show. Violence aside, it was the first time I really wondered if maybe watching with my daughter wasn’t A Great Moment In Parenting History. Blowing up thorn-sprouting demons was one thing. No one could take that seriously, and Jane clearly hadn’t. But sexually oriented banter between women who are comfortable enough with each other to discuss their sex lives unblushingly? This felt uncomfortably close to reality, and certainly—or so I assumed—would require some explanation. But how do you explain such joking to a person who has only recently learned about menstrual cycles?

Turns out you don’t.

Jane neither questioned it nor appeared to be even considering skipping it. I wondered whether she was taking it in for future processing or if it was going over her head. “Little pitchers have big ears,” was what my mother used to say sotto-voce to her friends when I was pretending to read or play in the next room, meanwhile avidly listening to them discuss the neighborhood gossip. I don’t really remember much about all that gossip I heard, so I’m guessing—or hoping—that it didn’t affect me much. At any rate, Jane doesn’t skip such scenes. She seems to believe that listening to women talk about sex is completely different from seeing a woman in bed with a man. And I can’t really argue with her there.

In an informal and nonscientific analysis of the sexuality of Charmed, I calculated the average number of overt sexual situations or references in a random sampling of episodes from season one—which can be assumed to be the original vision for the show—and compared it to season five, by which time it can, in my opinion, safely be assumed that the producers were (as rumored) aware that they had a large following among tweener and teenage girls. There was a definite difference—on average, eighteen hits for the first season episodes versus five for the fifth season. Was this intentional? Who knows? The sisters certainly didn’t seem to be dressing any differently from season to season, at any rate.

So with the overt sexuality more or less accommodated by the judicious use of the TiVo remote, the remaining trouble spots were the ones inherent in the complicated storylines and plot developments. Perversely, these trouble spots have turned out to be one of the most rewarding things about watching Charmed together. I’ve gotten an opportunity to talk to my daughter about subjects that I wouldn’t otherwise know how—or when—to bring up.

I’ve felt a lot like I feel when I’m driving along on some errand with Jane in the back seat asking questions. I’m not the only mom to spend much of the drive time between school and the dentist pondering questions that demand thoughtful responses. It’s no mere coincidence that this is a favorite time for kids to ask these questions. It might feel easier to us if we could discuss these things while peering into their little faces, but it obviously isn’t easier for them. The whole point, from Jane’s point of view, is that with my attention focused on the road rather than on her, she’s more comfortable asking things like, “Mom, what’s ‘gay’ mean?”

“Gay is when a man falls in love with another man, or a woman falls in love with another woman.”

“Oh.”

In my experience, “Oh,” should be interpreted as, “Okay, that’s enough information for now. I’ll think about it for a while and get back to you if I have further questions.”

I’m always thrilled when we have these over-the-seatback discussions. I know that because they’re instigated by Jane, they’re timed perfectly. Because I let her control the direction of the conversation, I know I’ve provided exactly the right amount of information. Conversations like these always leave me feeling like a pretty decent parent.

And so it is with Charmed. An embarrassment of riches in difficult questions springs to Jane’s mind while we watch, clearly generated in her pointy little head by all the complex and sometimes morally ambiguous storylines and plot turns she’s seeing. Jane’s capable of sophisticated thinking, but her understanding of adult relationships is, as with most kids her age, not sophisticated. Sometimes her questions are clearly in response to seeing something new and puzzling.

“Why would Cole try to make Phoebe stay with him, mom?” she asked me once when, in season five’s “The Importance of Being Phoebe,” Cole had kidnapped Phoebe. “That’s just going to make her hate him more.”

“Yeah, but he wants so badly for her to love him that he’s convinced himself he can force her to,” I told her. “He’s wrong, of course.”

“Oh.”

Other times she comes up with questions dealing with topics she has clearly wondered about before and given some thought to. For instance, in season six’s “Valhalley of the Dolls,” when Piper asked Leo to stay away from the Manor because having him around was just too hard for her, Jane’s first reaction was, “But Wyatt needs his father, doesn’t he?”

“He sure does, Jane. Piper’s being selfish. She’s not trying to be, and I know she’s in pain, but she’s not thinking about Wyatt.” Jane has friends and cousins whose parents are divorced, so it seemed like a great time to talk about what was happening in those families—and any worries that it might happen in her family—under the guise of discussing Charmed. “Sometimes when two people who used to be married aren’t getting along, they forget how important it is for kids to still spend lots of time with both parents.”

She didn’t say, “Oh,” so I figured there might be more to come pretty quick. Sure enough, she thought about it for a few minutes and then, “I know you and Dad would never get divorced, but if you did, you would never do that, would you?”

“Right, Dad and I aren’t getting divorced. But if we ever did, I would never say you couldn’t see your dad because it was too hard for me. And your dad would never, ever do that either.”

“I didn’t think so.”

But it’s nice to know for sure, isn’t it?

Other discussions center on the relationship between the sisters and their men. Unlike early television witch Samantha Stephens in Bewitched, these women refuse to give up their magic for the sake of a man. They’re still hiding it from the world at large—some things will never change—but when a man can’t handle it, it’s the man who is jettisoned, not the magic.

Jane noticed that the sisters often don’t have much luck persuading non-magical men to accept them as is. Instead, they have to find men who are already capable of appreciating their powers: either other magical men or men who have for other reasons accepted magic as a part of their worldview. Even that doesn’t always work out. Piper finds Leo and then loses him and then finds him again. Phoebe finds Cole and then loses him. Paige finds Richard and then Kyle Brody and loses them both.

In season six’s “Used Karma,” after she had dated him for over a year—since season five’s “Baby’s First Demon”—and just as she was steeling herself to tell him about her powers (prompted by the fact she was planning to move to Paris with him), Phoebe’s boyfriend Jason discovered she was a witch. He didn’t handle it well at first.

“Just like Andy,” said Jane. Jane liked the wimpy Leo and even the evil, kidnapping Cole better because they loved Piper and Phoebe no matter what.

I told Jane about Samantha Stephens and her never-ending struggle to keep from using magic because it made her husband feel threatened. My post-feminist daughter, who never donned a man-tailored suit complete with opaque stockings and floppy silk bow at the throat, thought this was nuts.

“Why did she marry him?” she wondered. “Well, I guess she fell in love with him.”

“Why would she fall in love with a man who didn’t like magic, when she’s magic?”

Good question.

What I’ve found watching Charmed—and other shows that include themes aimed at least partially at an older audience—is that my daughter, at this age, is still very willing to talk to me about all manner of topics. More importantly, she’s still willing to listen to me. And so my occasional anxiety over whether or not we’re getting into some of this stuff a little too early has been overcome by my feeling that opening these subjects in a way that makes her comfortable is a really good thing. In a few years, Jane may feel embarrassed or in some other way less comfortable talking to me about things like premarital sex and how men and women should relate. I’m glad we’re opening these discussions now, while boys are still icky and Mom still knows a thing or two.

Thanks, Charmed.

Valerie Taylor is a mom and writer whose novels include The Mommy School and How to Marry the World’s Best Dad. Jane Finocharo is a fifth-grader and budding pop culture maven. They live in Cincinnati with their family and their TiVo.