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THE PLOT

Prue and Phoebe return home after a shopping trip to find a half-dressed Piper with Leo.  Later, a ghost-like Rex appears and tells Prue that the tiara in her briefcase is actually her datebook, while she puts away thinking no more of it.

Prevented from watching Prue undress by the hissing Kit, Rex demonstrates his new power of astral projection on Hannah, who complies with his instructions.

The following morning.  Prue and Phoebe arrive at Buckland's, to learn that a tiara is missing.  Morris and Trudeau are (unsurprisingly) investigating and Hannah "helpfully" tells them that Prue was the last person to see it.

Rex asks Phoebe to a Verve concert, much to Hannah's annoyance, but he tells her this helps their plan to frame Prue and to force the sisters to relinquish their powers.

Morris tells Trudeau that he thinks Prue could be guilty, especially since one of the security videotapes is missing.  After the concert, Prue tells Rex that the police think the theft was an inside job.

The following morning, Morris and Trudeau have a warrant to search the Manor for the tiara.  Rex's projection sends subliminal messages to the two detectives, forcing Piper to keep freezing the room so that they can move it.  Eventually Phoebe hides it and the two detectives are reluctantly forced to end their search.

After they've gone, Prue says that someone is setting her up and Phoebe suggests that Leo could be a warlock.  Prue suspects someone at Bucklands - especially since Hannah told her she wanted to destroy her.

In the attic, Leo opens chests and drawers using telekinesis before being found by Piper.  He makes an excuse for being there, but after he's gone, Piper finds the tiara which Phoebe had hidden there.

Phoebe has been invited to a dinner party by Rex.  On her arrival, his projection tells her that she will see "a spectacular apartment".  His project suggests to her that she's having a premonition of Prue being chased by a warlock.  Once she's gone, Rex dials 911 and claims that he's at Buckland's and that someone's trying to kill her.

Prue is the last person in the building and logs onto Hannah's PC, finding no records for either Hannah or Rex.  Rex's projection suggests that a warlock's after her and then that there's a scream from the warehouse and that she should grab the artifact just inside the door.

Jaime the security guard is checking out the warehouse when Hannah fells him, dropping the missing security tape by the body.  Arriving on the scene, Prue finds Jaime dead, and picks up the statue Hannah used to hit him, only to be seen by Phoebe.

Morris and Trudeau view the tape, which shows Prue stealing the tiara.  Prue and Phoebe believe someone manipulated Prue into taking the tiara and also Phoebe into witnessing Prue with the murder weapon.

Prue is arrested for murder.  Piper and Phoebe return to Rex's apartment, hoping he'll help get her out on bail but it's completely empty.  Phoebe finds her lipstick, which she dropped there earlier and the two realise that Rex must be a warlock.

Andy starts to doubt Prue's guilt, telling Morris that it's all too easy - the clues have fallen into their laps.  Morris tells his partner that he stopped dating Prue because she appeared to be mixed up with all their cases.

Piper and Phoebe break Prue out of the her cell, but are photographed outside by Rex.  He's seen what they can do when confronted so has opted to blackmail them into giving him their powers.

Reluctantly, they cast the relinquishment spell at the Manor, and the spells in the Book of Shadows are transferred into a lantern supplied by Rex.

Andy's checks on Hannah and Rex reveals that neither looks the same as their records, and that they were both murdered on 20 August 1998.  He calls Morris, telling him that he's worked it out.

At Buckland's, Prue hands Rex the lantern, and then a black panther - which is actually Hannah - emerges from his office and stalks them.

In the attic at the Manor, Leo sees that the pages in the Book of Shadows are now blank, but magically rewrites it.

The panther leaps for the sisters but Piper accidentally freezes it.  Realising that their powers have been returned, Prue moves Rex into the panther's path and it kills him before reverting back to Hannah, who is consumed by fire, protesting that it was Rex who failed, not her.

Andy and Morris visit Prue in jail.  She's off the hook - Rex and Hannah have vanished, and they found the tiara in his office, along with the photo taken outside the station.

The sisters are looking through the Book of Shadows when Leo enters the attic to pick up his toolbox which he left there the previous night.  He's leaving, but promises Piper he will be back.  Once he's gone, Phoebe wonders whether Leo had anything to do with them getting their powers back.  As Prue burns the page containing the relinquishment spell, Leo dissolves into sparkles as he walks out of the Manor.

NOTES

Leo is revealed to be something more than the average handyman, with some sort of telekinesis, the ability to rewrite the Book of Shadows and the sparkling thing.

The relinquishment spell is: "From whence they came, return them now/Vanish the words, vanish our powers".  All three sisters saw this one after the other.

Kit can sense Rex's astral projection.

Rather unbelievably, Rex is "good friends" with The Verve.  Phoebe describes Bitter Sweet Symphony as "the best song ever".  How does he know what's in the Book of Shadows?

The "real" Rex is supposed to be 24 but the guy in the photo looks a lot older!

THE POWER OF THREE

Prue pulls her shoes towards her when trying out her new wardrobe.  After being locked up, she throws the guy in the next cell against the wall.  She also moves Rex into the path of the frozen panther (in reality, Hannah).

Piper freezes the hallway when Prue and Phoebe return home to catch her and Leo.  The next morning tells them that she kept freezing him the previous night, but that she didn't mean it the first time, she was just nervous.  She also freezes Prue's bedroom three times when they're looking for the stolen tiara, freezes the guard in order to break out Prue and freezes Hannah (who has taken the form of a panther).

Following Rex's suggestion, Phoebe has a premonition of Prue being chased by a warlock (actually Hannah in the form of a panther). 

COMMENTS

The Rex and Hannah storyline finally gets resolved and we also discover something new about Leo.  In fact, we possibly discover too much about Leo as it might have been better to have just hinted at something more, omitting the whole rewriting of the Book of Shadows (or at least keeping it a mystery) and the sparkling bit at the end.

Rex and Hannah haven't been particularly interesting adversaries and they're not particularly interesting here either.  Some nice bits, such as Rex resorting to blackmail rather than something rather more direct, but neither was anywhere near as interesting as some of the bad guys we've seen on, say, Buffy.

It's also a shame that, despite having a few ongoing subplots, Charmed only really bothers with the current episode.  There's very little evidence of something happening in one episode that appears insignificant but which is picked up in a later episode.  Instead, things are mostly done and dusted in each episode, which means that while the series is usually enjoyable, it's often a little shallow as well.

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