Charmed Season 2 Episode 5 Review: The Truth About Kat and Dogs

This Charmed review contains spoilers.

Charmed Season 2 Episode 5

Despite the title of this episode, Kat does not feature heavily and, in the words of great modern philosopher Drake, I’m upset. But what this episode lacks in flirtation between two magical, queer, Brown girls it makes up for in White Man Feelings. And I’m gonna let it rock… this time. So, let’s get into it.

In last week’s episode, Macy fell for the okey doke and was whisked away by Not-Harry, while her sisters and Abigael sauntered casually through a portal to safety without her. They did not immediately check to make sure Macy and Harry made it home, because if they had, they would’ve known sooner she’d been taken by the doppelganger, whom we now know is Harry’s Darklighter. Mel and Maggie are searching for her, by questioning demons, who — for some reason — they think are working with Not-Harry, but when they come up dry, they decide to use a banned (formerly, since the Elders are dust) Absum Veri tracking spell to find her.

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On their way out of SafeSpace, Kat stops Mel and Maggie. When Mel introduces her to Maggie as the one who took her to the astral plane, Kat asks if Mel has had any residual side effects since, like seeing worms. Mel says no, but she’s lying your honor! Mel rushes away, saying they’ll do coffee later. Later in her shop, Kat says “please stop” to something or someone we can’t see or hear. When the other person in the shop looks at her weirdly, then leaves, she agrees to do what the invisible entity wants. Kat calls Mel, but is sent to voicemail. Then, frustrated, Kat says to the invisible entity, “I’m trying.” Kat continues to try to get in contact with Mel throughout the day. Someone wants her to talk to the Charmed Ones.

Harry decides the best way to find Macy is to learn more about his Darklighter. He struggles deciphering the Book of Elders, out loud, and Abigael (still imprisoned) taunts him a bit about being connected to his Darklighter, before offering to help him regain his memories…if he lets her out, which, lo and behold, he does. She doesn’t run, which would’ve been more in-character than her actually helping, but I guess she really is invested in finding out why Not-Harry came for her? They step out of the command center into SafeSpace public area, where her demon powers work, and — in the middle of a random, not hidden hallway — she puts her hands on his head and they “demon mind-meld” (her words).

Inside this, what I’m going to call, mindscape, Harry’s memories start to surface. At first, they are cute little moments with his grandma and other mundane things, like his first kiss. But as they go deeper, the memories get more raw. They get to a memory of a woman confronting him about having a second family! This man had two whole families! James, Harry’s human name, was out in these streets, a whole philanderer. You hate to see it. Abigael says, “I guess that’s where the dark in your Darklighter comes from,” and she’s not wrong, he was… not great. I’m confused, to be honest. His attention is pulled away by a cloaked figure who disappeared once Harry went after them. As one does.

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Then Harry and Abigael hear screaming. They follow the sound to a door, and it is locked. When brute force doesn’t work to open it, Abbie tells him he needs to stop playing and dig deep. He gets it together and gets the door open. They walk into a room where hanging is a picture of Castle Breithe, which is “infamous,” and “heavily guarded.” He asks Abbie to pull him out of the mindscape. When she asks what he’s doing, he says, “I’m tired of secrets. I’m going to Scotland. Are you coming?” And that was a cool little moment but why would he ask her to come instead of putting her back in her magical cage to be problematic under supervision?

When they get inside the castle, Harry remembers it’s where he learned to heal as a Whitelighter. He finds dead bodies, and a muzzled person comes toward him, before Abbie kills it with a fireball. (Demon powers make valid points.) He asks why she did it and she tells him it’s a Caliban, a hired assassin that kills anything it touches. He asks why she knows so much about it, and we are treated to a lovely backstory about her thirteen year-old self seeking out her demon father, and her demon father sending Calibans after her. Harry, is of course, empathetic. I, on the other hand, don’t know what one would expect of a demon. But I digress.

Harry nearly has a panic attack while approaching a slab, but he puts his hand on it, and is flooded with memories. In the sepia-toned flashback, we see him lying on the slab surrounded by cloaked figures who are chanting. An essence is released from his body then captured into a bottle that is then stored on a shelf. There are many bottles on the shelf. When Harry emerges from the flashback, he tells Abbie how Helen — the institutionalized Whitelighter he met in the previous episode — was the Elder’s first “attempt” at a Whitelighter. They learned from her, that it was unsafe to give Darklighters corporeal form, so they imprisoned them in the bottles.

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As it were, they all died when there Whitelighters did. Harry finds his bottle opened, showing that his Darklighter was freed, and Harry says, “he has a master.” Which is ominous. After that revelation, Harry asks for Abbie to mind meld with him again. In the mindscape, he goes after the hooded figure, and when he catches up with them, he unveils Macy.

Macy is talking to him, but not him him. He’s seeing Not-Harry’s memory of the conversation we heard in the first episode, when he first appeared to her. “You seem different Harry,” she says. “I am different. Do you like it?” Not-Harry replied then, and Harry repeats now to mindscape Macy. But this time, she says “yes!” And they lean into each other. Then Harry is yanked out of the mindscape ’cause Abigael finally dipped. :whispers: Biiiiiitch!

Meanwhile, in Vera Manor, Mel and Maggie are putting together ingredients for the tracking spell. They need something Macy dreads, something she denies herself, and something she desires. They choose alcohol for her dread (being out of control), and milk for what she denies herself (she’s dairy-free?).They disagree on what her deepest desires are, but decide to go with Maggie’s choice: family. They do the incantation — it’s a rhyme and everything — then an aggressive hellhound appears. They use tofurkey to lead him into a shed, where they lock him up. They try again, using Mel’s suggestion that her deepest desires are her career ambitions, and they repeat the incantation. Another (worse) hellhound appears. They run away from it and hide in a bedroom.

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Somehow, their discussion about Macy’s deepest desires turned into jabs at one another about their respective relationships and ensuing problems. Maggie is upset that Mel is breaking their no-dating rule with Kat. And Mel says that she hasn’t, but admits that she wants to. (And I would like to see it.) They do what they always do, get over their petty issues, then decide to violate Macy’s privacy by perusing her journal to discover her deepest desires. When they leave the room, the hellhound is out of sight, but when Kat calls Mel (for the upteenth time), the ringing phone alerts the Good Boy and it chases them.

They just make it into Macy’s room, and Mel continues to ignore Kat’s calls, while she and Maggie search for Macy’s journal. They don’t find it, then Mel gets a text from Kat that says, “Marisol wants you to know what you’re looking for is between the sheets.” They’re shookington cause Marisol is their mom and Mel has never said a thing to Kat about her. They don’t find the journal in the bed, but under the sheets in the chest at the foot of it. Why Marisol couldn’t say “in the chest” is beyond me, but I guess communication from beyond the veil has to be vague. When they open the journal there are hella sketches of Harry. Not Potter, their Whitelighter. Dear reader, I gasped!

Maggie asks, “What if he’s all of them?” (*sings* Her power, her pleasure, her pain!) “Dreads, denies, desires. Not three things, but one.” Then they decide he is and do the incantation again. This time a well-mannered hellhound appears and, I kid you not, projects coordinates from his eyes onto a curtain. They go back to HQ and plug the coordinates into the s(witch)board and don’t see a red dot indicating a witch is in danger. Harry tells them it’s because she’s not in danger, “at least not yet,” because Not-Harry has feelings for her. They ask how he knows that, and he says…

:deep breath:

“Because… So do I.”

:screeches:

SO *clap* DO *clap* I *clap*

I am writing this from beyond the grave because I actually died. I didn’t think I cared about their relationship, and I still don’t know if it is what I want, but I literally screamed and then shed this mortal coil. Harry saying the words is why I’m forgiving them for keeping my girl Katrina on the sidelines… For now.

Truthfully, I don’t care much about Abigael at this point. I’m only mildly interested in whoever freed Not-Harry. The Charmed Ones seem to have gotten more comfortable using potions and spells, like I hoped they would, so I am less concerned about them getting their powers back. I am here for one reason now, and I didn’t want it to be this way, but the ships — plural, I haven’t forgotten about Kat or Jordan — might be what keeps me invested. SMH. Hopefully they get at least one of these right.

Additional thoughts.

They called the hellhounds Demon Dogs, which I reject. We know what they are.

Abigael has a lot of feelings about the Charmed Ones killing her demon dad and brother but also seemingly hated them, so oprah-what-is-the-truth.gif You mad or nah?

I know people are self-absorbed and don’t pay attention to other folks, but they really stay popping in and out this random corridor, someone in SafeSpace has to realize.

Give Katrina her screen time or catch these hands. Stop playing on my TV and let her be great.