Just last week, the CW released a trailer for their newest show, Charmed, which, if you haven't figured out, is a reboot of the late 90's early 00's program, Charmed. The show seems to have the basic idea down; three sisters find out they are witches with special powers, the legendary Charmed Ones, and they have to defeat a weekly evil that's going to be plaguing them every episode.
On paper, rebooting Charmed doesn't seem to be the worst idea out there. It was a very popular show, the cast was good, the writing was good, it was just as the supernatural genre of television seemed to be taking off. (Off the top of my head, I believe the show was around the same time as Buffy and it's spin off Angel, and Supernatural was just starting as the Charmed ended.) And, since the CW seems to be championing shows designated at the teen / young adult demographic (even if their shows aren't very good), who else would pick up the idea?
But there's a problem with the reboot, and you can see it from the trailer. No, it's not that instead of it being more of a next generation thing with the Halliwell kids, it's three brand new sisters with no connection. No, it's not that the three sisters are Mexican now and that they have "M" names and not "P". No, it's not even that they're college aged now, even if I don't really understand why they did that.
The writing is just so bad already.
I'm sure the three girls starring in the show are talented. But even talented people struggle to shine if the writing is suffering. And boy, does the writing suffer. The dialogue in the trailer was... okay, a little corny from what I saw, but livable... in a 4 minute trailer, at least. But the direction they seem to be taking the show in is making me scratch my head.
For instance, the oldest sister of the new Charmed ones seems to be Prue (the older sister with the ability to move things) and Paige (the secret half whitelighter sister who comes in after Prue dies) combined. Which is okay, I guess, if you want to have both those story lines in the show and you have no plans on killing a sister off. I could even give the show a pass if this was the only weird change they made, but there's still more that bugs me.
What bugs me the most is the changing of the younger sisters powers. Pheobe had the power of premonition, and would have a vision of danger about to happen, usually after touching something or someone. The new show seems to have changed that power to mind reading, which... I don't understand what the need to change that was. Was it to make it differ from the original? Why not change everyone's powers then? And when you have the older sisters story changed, it makes it different enough, so why this?
And then there's the fact that the show seems to be also making Charmed into a murder mystery, with a "Who Killed Their Mom" story going on, but I'd be more shocked if the show didn't add that in. Look at Riverdale. CW sees an interest in it, and they're going for it.
It may seem like small criticisms, and maybe there's bigger ones that I am overlooking, but the show just.... doesn't have the same charm to it. And this is coming from someone who is more of a casual rerun watcher than a Charmed aficionado. I'll give the new show a chance, mostly because I enjoy watching bad television, but I know it won't be anywhere as good as the original. Maybe accepting that will make me like the show. Maybe.
