Jem Girls Podcast

We’re almost at the end of the season! Before we close out our initial season of Charmed, however, we’ve got to deal with one stalker-of-an-ex-boyfriend who has death hands!

Technically it’s Eric Foreman’s sister who has to deal with the aforementioned abuser (thanks, multiverse!) but we’re the main character of this meta-narrative so anything that’s happening in the show is actually happening to us in our real lives. So, yes, we also need to save Leo from a darklighter arrow (or something like that) before he shuffles off the mortal coil. It’s best not to think too hard about it. We certainly don’t!

No funny jokes or nonsensical rants today, dear listeners, because here in the Charmed fandom (Charmisphere? Charmedom? Charmography?) it's still a solemn time. We lost the apex of the Halliwell sister power triangle over the weekend, with Shannen Doherty, who of course played Prue, passing away on July 13 after a long battle with breast cancer.

All we can do is offer our sincere gratitude to the woman who ALWAYS brought the eyeballs to the Charmed party. We know we're going to lose Prue/Doherty at some point in the show's timeline, it just sucks to see that loss venture out here in the real world.

If you're torn up a bit like we are, then we hope our dumb rantings (recorded well before the news broke) will help ease the pain a bit... but more likely make it worse because we often have nothing nice to say.

As an ocularly-obsessed podcast we, the Immortal Frenemies/Jem Girls, strive for eyeball-inclusion at every blink of passing time (time being an eyeball, btw). And while, in this here episode of Charmed, two of the show's best supporting actors (Prue's eyeballs; they've been doing the most since day one, henny) are shunted into minor roles, we can't help but celebrate all of the other (Hakim) optical hijinx that goes down in "Out of Sight." Whirly eyeball demons? Blind people who can somehow "see" through the power of eyeless sight? Eyeball-related kidnapping? Children getting zapped and nabbed (when one's eyeballs are electrocuted, then nabbed out 'yo face)? Truly, this episode has everything we want to see on our screen(ez).

Sure, we could tell you what ACTUALLY happens in "Out of Sight," but then YOU'D be losing sight of the core message. Which is: eyeballs, eyeballs everywhere, and may the Lord (of Eyeballs, duh.) bless us with more.

We are near the end of Season 1 of Charmed (yay?) and, oh mama, the sense is dissipating rapidly. Like, this here episode, lacked a lick of sense. If you brought a spider to watch "When Bad Warlocks Go Good" that arachnid would be able to sense no sense. Which is saying something, because spiders are incredibly sensical and have extra-powerful spider senses. Read that in a comic book once.

What makes this almost-the-end-of-the-season-episode especially silly? We'd say it starts with the idea that Catholic priests are somehow immune from evil, hits an unseen high during an impromptu horseback riding race, with a denouement including Prue gaslighting Phoebe and Piper into helping some guy she "has a feeling" about. Okay, a lot of that is in a standard Charmed episode but we swear, our girl Prue is really losing all reason at this point.

As always, decide for yourself! Just remember to listen and share <3

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me…

I’m not sure this would be the JemGirls podcast if we didn’t wax poetic about the nature of time. We’ve said it before (and we’ll say it again) - time is an eyeball. You know this, I know this, your mom knows this and your aborthed fetus knows this too. This is simply the work of the Lord of Eyeballs and we’re all just players in his game. 

Because the Lord of Eyeballs makes the rules, you should never EVER fuck with time. Time travel can get real messy and can have devastating consequences for the present. I don’t need to edumacate you on this, especially if you’ve taken our seminar Time 101. 

The Halliwell sisters seem not to have gotten the memo, though, and they plunge into the bowels of time and come out the other end, way back to the 1970s when they were children and their mother and grams were still alive. They do this to stop a power-stealing warlock named Nickolas and they obviously manage to do this, just in the Nickleback of time. 

Now here's a little math problem you probably didn't see in school: The kinetic power of one set of (read: two) eyeballs is multiplied by how much force when the number of sets is raised by three? And by how much is that kinetic force restrained when two sets of eyeballs have been murdered by a mystical sword and the remaining, original set is wearing sunglasses?

Technically, this is one of the universal mysteries, so there isn't one definitive answer. Also, technically, this is exactly what this episode of Charmed is basically about. Whether or not "Which Prue is Anyway?" secretly bears a hidden knowledge that explains the meaning of life and is only known to mystics of the highest order is up for you to decide.

Actually, no, it isn't! That's our job!

Keeping that very important fact in mind, the answer is, yes. To all of the aforementioned questions. Plus the secret of life (which, by the way, is not THE secret) for good measure. Oh ya, and be sure to enjoy our general ramblings!

As children, we all feared basements for one reason or another, cause let’s be real: basements are essentially portals to hell.

Since basements are cold and dark (and generally avoided unless absolutely necessary), they are the perfect places to commune with demons, hide your mother’s mummified corpse, and/or impregnate chained up women to create babies to sell on the black market. 

In the Halliwell Manor, the basement is home to a shadow demon called the “Woogy Man”, who aside from being a terrifying and malevolent ghoul, also has catch phrases such as “Don’t be jealous of my woogy” and “how you woo-in” (he is a Wendy Williams-type in another dimension). 

This episode of Charmed also sees Phoebe finally gain a (temporary) active power. After being possessed by the Woogy Man, she can magically conjure large blunt force objects such as baseball bats and machetes to murder her sisters. She’s also kind of serving evil gay slut bitch energy and we love that for her. 

It’s also fun to think about how if Phoebe actually DID murder her sisters with a machete, she could simply shrug her shoulders and sing the tune “Don’t blame it on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times, blame it on the Woogy.”

Ordinarily, we'd start one of these episode-blog posts about some random element of the story at-hand. Instead, we begin with a dire warning:

Ok, so, listen. They see us orb'ing, and they're all hating, absorbing and trying to catch us orb'ing dirty. Which is obviously not the case. Sure, we may orb as a single orb instead of orb'ing as a column every once in a while. Who doesn't? To imply we orb in any fashion that isn't orphan style (or, more broadly, "orphenomenally") is like saying we, the Jem Girls, aren't collectively known as the "Lizzo for orphans." Just be sure to (shhh!) not tell your mother. For obvious reasons.

And end simulation! Whew! Did that feel like a minor hallucination or what! The best part is, this is merely a tidbit of our discussion of Charmed, Season 1, episode 14, "Secrets and Guys." We actually do talk about what happens with the Halliwell sisters but mostly, the above paragraph is our conversational terrain. Enjoy (and be sure to read the above again after listening because it does follow a twisted logic <3)!

"From Fear to Eternity," this week's episode of Charmed, raises a lot of questions for the viewer. For one, why do the demon of fear's teeth be like that? But primarily (and tangentially) - what the fuck kind of name is Tanjella, and why is it the best name I've ever heard? 

Must be tanjelly cause jam don't shake, for real mama, cause this name is giving us all that needs to be given, hunties! Is she Nigella Lawson's evil twin, Tanjella Lawson? Is she the late, great anti-apartheid activist, Nelson Tanjella? Is she tan jello, the recommended side dish to man jello? Or perhaps she is simple the tangible (tanjible?) manifestation of our innermost fears. Actually, I think she could just be one of them tanjellicle cats from the internationally reviled movie adaptation of Cats the musical. 

Speculation aside, no one truly has the answers to my questions but all I know is that I am tanjealous that I don't have a cool name like that!

We did a bit of research into this episode, more than the usual none, because we already knew it would deal with some heavy topics. Top of them all, of course, is violence towards WendigoWilliams in any shape, way, or form. Fortunately, the showrunners behind Charmed understand how endangered the Wendigowilliams population (Only one has been sighted in the last decade! Mind you, she does keep getting sighted... and had a TV show. We talked about it for a minute!) is and we're happy to report not a single Wendigowilliams was harmed during the filming of this episode.

For anyone not familiar with the traditional Indigenous myth of the "Wendigo," or the modern urban myth of the Wendy Williams, then that whole paragraph probably meant nothing but nonsense to you. Honestly, you don't even need a knowledge of either to see the nonsense.

Same goes for this episode of Charmed, because, while the story does prominently feature a Wendigo, what we're really seeing is more of a... werewolf? Like, mama, if a wolf talks like a duck, hunts by the full moon like a duck and infects via bite/scratch like a duck, then, henny, that wolf is certainly were.

Sorry, mixing metaphors for no reason again. Getting back on trackula.

In sum, this wendigo is more of a werewolf. Not that its central to the plot (or our conversation) much at all. We just wanted to make sure you got at least a bit of edumacation today. Listen and enjoy!