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Television | Race | Opinion
How Microaggressions and Mean Girl Antics Ruined the Legacy of ‘Charmed’
A racially-charged war of words between the casts of the original ‘Charmed’ and the 2018 reboot tainted my feelings of the OG series.
In the Charmed Season 2 episode “Chick Flick,” secret witch Prudence “Prue” Halliwell, played by the late Shannen Doherty, picks up a valuable lesson that I once had to learn as well.
After a long day of shadowing her idol, a curmudgeonly cocky lensman named Finley Beck, Prue quickly develops the sense that meeting him has ruined her once-perfect image of his talent.
“I realize [now] that the brilliance of your eye,” she states in frustration, “is destroyed by the ignorance of your mouth.”
Right on cue, one of Prue’s negatives goes up in smoke after being under a magnifying lamp too long. The irony leads Mr. Beck to impart one final lesson onto his disappointed student.
“That’s the thing about art, Ms. Halliwell,” he notes. “If you leave your subject under the light for too long, it burns.”
Charmed is often considered a highlight of 1990s television and pop culture. Originally broadcast on The WB and then…
