Loveday Writing

Later, Mel talks to Kaela about the situation. Mel is a little peeved that Maggie didn’t call her, Jordan or Harry for help. Kaela tells her that Maggie and Jordan had a fight, and Harry told her that he was going to go and live a little (whatever that meant), and she didn’t want to pry Maggie about her arrest. Mel tells her that she wants Maggie to open up, but Kaela believes she needs space. Mel tells Kaela that she would like to take Maggie away somewhere for a break, and Kaela offers to hold down the fort at the Command Centre for a few hours. Mel gives Kaela a GemCast for any non-witch and demon calls, and a summoning conch for her to call, in case the witchboard goes off.

Mel manages to talk a reluctant Maggie into going to the magical spa, with Maggie setting the condition that Mel can’t ask her about what happened the previous night.

When they arrive at the spa, the first thing they are treated to is a facial, Mel tries to get Maggie to open up to no avail. Maggie tells her that she’s a person not a project, Mel tells her that comment isn’t fair, and that she attacked a human, which she needs to address. Maggie tells her again that she doesn’t want to talk about it, Mel decides to go home but Maggie stays. Meanwhile, Robert, a new spa employee is killed by the Tallyman, and the Tallyman disguises himself as Robert and gives Maggie a scalp massage, taking a strand of her hair in the process. Maggie looks at him, sees his face, but thinks he is Robert.

When Mel goes to the front desk to leave the spa, she sees Arnold dragging a heavy bag down the hall and follows him. When she catches up with him, she discovers Arnold was dragging Robert’s corpse away, and demands to know what is happening. He tells Mel that there’s never been a death at the spa before and he panicked. Mel tells him she needs to find Maggie, he tells her that according to the schedule she’s in the aromatherapy room, which scents send people back to their happy memories. As Mel is making her way there, she looks the Tallyman in the eye and nods at him, he then places a black rubber duck into the magical spring to release a toxic potion to taint it.

When Mel gets to the aromatherapy room, she finds a happy memory of Maggie’s from their pre-witch days in the Manor. Mel finds present-day Maggie in the kitchen by a plate of nachos, a snack they would constantly make. Maggie apologises to her for her behaviour and admits that she’s lost control, and would like their lives to be as close to their old lives as possible. They then hear Arthur telling people at the spa to stay away from the spring. When they get there, they find the tainted spring and the lotus on top of it killed. When Arthur mentions Robert dying, Maggie tells them that he gave her a massage, the Tallyman rhyme then starts to play.

The lotus starts shooting thorns at everyone and Kaela arrives to help them. Maggie tells Mel to find the Tallyman, while she tries to help everyone else. Mel sees the Tallyman and follows him to the aromatherapy room, where she walks into a memory of him as an 18-year-old with his brother, testing out his gremlin abilities, only for his hand to be hurt. Meanwhile Kaela manifests multiple bath bombs so they can cast a purification incantation on them to throw in the spring, to reverse the Tallyman’s actions. This eventually works.

Kaela and Dev – While Kaela initially has fun in the Command Centre by herself, she eventually becomes bored when no witches are in need of help. When one of her doodles comes to life, she ends up accidentally breaking the witchboard and the summoning conch. When she goes to see Roxie at the Blue Camelia for help, the bartender tells her she’s not available and Dev, the singer she ran into in the previous episode, offers to help.

Dev tells her that he is a Ghandarva, which, according to the Charmed Wikia page, is a magical being that can affect his environment with his singing voice, which we saw in the previous episode when he was performing. Dev quickly identifies Kaela as an artist and a newbie to the craft. Kaela practices manifesting by continually drawing a martini glass in front of her. When she expresses her frustration over not being in control of her power, Dev tells her that she needs to think about the experience of a martini, rather than the martini itself. She is able to manifest a martini, which Dev jokes has too much vermouth in it, however she accidentally manifests multiple martinis, which show up all over the bar, causing problems. When she goes to leave, the Blue Camelia’s bouncer, Duncan, tears up her drawing of the martini, showing her how to stop manifestations from occurring, before kicking her and Dev out.

Kaela and Dev find themselves back in the Command Centre. When Dev sees the Book of Shadows and she mentions Mel and Maggie, he realises she is the new Charmed One and tells her there are rumours about her legitimacy as a Charmed One going around in the magical world. When he tries to talk with her about it as she’s trying to leave to help Mel and Maggie, he touches the desk marble and the witchboard shuts down. He gives her the ingredients to make a reconfiguration potion, which restores both the witchboard and the summoning conch, she leaves to go to the spa.

At the end of the episode, after her, Mel and Maggie have dealt with the spa crisis, they make nachos to eat. Kaela tells them that she believes she’s not ready due to the mistakes she made, however Mel tells her that screwing up is part of the job. Kaela also tells them about the rumours and they have inspired her to look into her parentage. Maggie also points out that the Tallyman didn’t do anything to her when he had the chance, which makes her question his endgame. The clock that Mel “incinerated” at the beginning of the episode reappears with the time unchanged, which makes her realise that she sent the clock through time and therefore her powers are not only returning but growing.

The episode ends with everyone at the Blue Camelia watching the Charmed Ones via GemCast, believing that they don’t care about them. The Tallyman is there, fuelling the rumours, starting to turn the magical community against them, to Dev’s disbelief.

Overall I felt that this episode was an improvement over the previous two episodes. Mel addressed her issues with Ruby last week, and now Maggie is being forced to face her own issues with the assault charge. The episode ends with her and Mel bonding with Kaela even further, which shows growth in their relationship. Kaela was given major character growth with her willingness to both help Maggie and hold down the fort while Mel and Maggie were at the spa, showing she is taking her magical duties more seriously. I enjoyed the scenes between Kaela and Dev, especially as Dev was hinted at being the right person to coach her last week by Harry, who wasn’t present in this episode. Harry’s aggressive coaching in the previous episode was driven by his grief for Macy and Kaela unintentionally hitting that nerve, as well as being used to Mel and Maggie and not a new witch. In comparison, Dev’s coaching was driven by not knowing Kaela but wanting to get to know her, as well as the fact that he is creative like her, and he gets her to channel her creative process into her manifesting. I also found the martini manifesting scenes and their unintended consequences hilarious, especially Duncan’s reaction. I’d honestly like to know more about Duncan, surely being the bouncer of a magical club, he’s seen every magical power in the book and he knew how to stop Kaela’s unintentional manifesting, he’d be quite handy in the magical world, not just as Blue Camelia’s bouncer.

The Tallyman also had some major character development as we saw his face for the first time and he got closer to the Charmed Ones. It was also made clear in this episode that this threat’s character development is going to be more of a slow burn this season, in comparison to the development of the major threats in previous seasons. Perhaps, this is due to this season being the series’ shortest, however as it is such a short season, while I appreciate a slow burn in a show, we’re two to three episodes away from the halfway point, I think this slow burn needs to speed up.

Stray Observations:

-Kaela used to be a temp night watchmen in high school.  

-According to Mel, GemCast is mostly crowdsourced complaints for the magical world, such as ‘Kyons are getting into my trash’. They’re also a good way to keep tabs on the non-witch and demon action in the magical world. Kyons were previously seen in Deconstructing Harry.

-The episode title comes from the name of the magical spa Mel takes Maggie to for their break.

-Harry and Jordan didn’t appear in this episode.