WITCH TRIAL

PLOT

Phoebe reminds her sisters that it's the one year anniversary of them becoming witches, and that it also falls on the Autumnal Equinox, one of the most powerful wiccan days.  Prue seems more interested in the fact that they've been demon free for over a month now, and that's something she'd like to keep up.

In the attic, the girls see the pages in the Book of Shadows flick through to a page describing the Rite of Passage.  Phoebe reads that it must be fought with the power of one before a portal in the wall opens and, when Prue finds herself unable to use her powers against it, a cloven-hoofed demon steals the Book.

Piper and Phoebe assume that the 'power of one' means Prue, and that they had better act fast as without the Book they are no longer the Charmed Ones any more.

They are disturbed by the doorbell and a young girl begs to use the phone, closely followed by a man who introduces himself as Dan Gordon, their new neighbour.  The girl is his niece Jenny who is living with him for the year.  After they've gone, Prue is more interested in going to work than retrieving the Book and Piper reminds Phoebe that this is the first demon they've gone up against since Andy died.  Meanwhile, the demon starts reading the Book of Shadows backwards.

Phoebe drags a sceptical Piper along to a meeting of wiccan believers where she meets her friend Stevie who had previously warned her about the Equinox.  Stevie tells the sisters that all they have to do is connect, and Phoebe decides that they have nothing to lose.  "Well, apparently we've got our clothes to lose," complains Piper as the others start undressing.  When the pair are naked, Phoebe hears Grams whispering "The Power of Three", but Piper hears nothing.

Piper meets Rob the banker at a club that she's planning to buy.  She babbles on about all research until he calms her down because she's shown him it already.  He asks why she wants to risk losing everything and she tells him that she wants to run her own place and that a club is actually less risky than opening a restaurant, which is what she really wants to do.

The demon reads the Warlock Spell backwards, bringing back Jeremy, giving him a second chance to destroy the Charmed Ones.

As Piper celebrates Rob agreeing to the loan, she also hears Grams and then Jeremy appears in the club, knocking Rob aside.  Piper freezes him and phones her sisters - without the Book of Shadows they haven't got access to the spell which defeats him.  Phoebe chiming "AT&T Power of Three" reminds Prue how to defeat him, but Jeremy has already broken through the freezing.  Piper freezes him again and as he lunges after her, the three of them chant the spell to destroy him.

Prue arrives at the club to see the paramedics taking Rob away, while Piper claims that she didn't see the attacker.  Prue thinks the club is great and Piper jokingly asks her for $60,000 before telling her about Grams.  Prue hopes that Phoebe will find something in the wicca books that she bought at Stevie's shop the previous day.

Phoebe is chatting to Jenny when she realises that the triquetra knot on Kit's collar is also on the front of the Book of Shadows.  She tells Piper that all they have to do is ask the Book of Shadows, and she digs out the spirit board which told them how to find the Book in the first place.  Both of them hear Grams whispering "The Power of Three" before the spirit board spells out 'Abraxas', who Phoebe discovers is a demon of the astral plane who destroys witches by demonising their powers.

Piper surmises that he's turning the Book evil, before she sees the Woogyman start to form across the room.  She and Phoebe manage to remember the spell to vanquish it and Piper then guesses that Abraxas is reading the Book of Shadows backwards since the spell to vanquish the Woogyman was before the one to vanquish Jeremy.

Phoebe has a premonition of the warlock Nicholas killing Prue but when she tries to warn her, Prue is too busy at a preview to take her call.  Prue sees him in time, but back in her office he causes her blood to start to boil and she just manages to say the spell that vanquishes him before collapses.

Piper and Phoebe visit her in the hospital.  The Doctor wants to run move tests to see why her body temperature rose spontaneously.  Prue reassures him that she can prevent it happening in the future and he agrees to discharge her.

Phoebe explains that Abraxas is a demon from the astral plane, which co-exists within our own plane and since no demon has managed to take the Book out of the Manor she guesses that it's still in the house but on a different plane.  They need to find a doorway or window by sunrise tomorrow to get it back

Prue thinks this is a long shot and that if Abraxas gets to the first page he can recite the incantation that gave them their powers and take them.  Then they'd be able to live normal lives and stop watching the people they love lose theirs.

Rob's assistant phones the Manor to tell Piper that her request for the loan has been denied, and Piper tells Phoebe that she's really glad she never slept with him.

Meanwhile, Prue visits the station house to see Morris.  She's been avoiding him but she tells him that she's sorry that she hasn't been by to see him.  She asks if Andy said anything to him before he died, and she learns that he just said that they were involved in some of their unsolved cases and had somehow stopped the killers.  He also told Morris to tell Prue that if anything happened to him it wouldn't be her fault.

Piper draws a triquetra knot on the wall of the attic in order to open a portal.  Once it's open Prue is to knock Abraxas aside when the other two get the Book and find the spell to destroy him.  But once the portal is open, Prue finds herself unable to use her powers and the three are thrown across the attic by Abraxas.

Downstairs Prue is defensive, denying that she hesitated.  She tearfully reminds the other two that as the oldest sister, she's always supposed to be the one who figures things out, so how come you couldn't save Andy?  Piper and Phoebe reassure her that it's not her fault, Andy came to the Manor because he wanted to, because he was a protector of the innocent just like them.  All three of them hear Grams and deduce that the "Power of One" means all three of them working as one, which is what the triquetra symbolises.

It's almost sunrise and they can't open the portal in the attic as Abraxas will be waiting for them.  They join hands around Stevie's special place of convergence and read the incantation from the first page of the Book of Shadows.  Abraxas is reading it backwards but the Book flips forward, only for him to reopen it at the front.  The sisters keep chanting and a portal opens, and the Book is return to them before eventually Abraxas is destroyed.  "And we didn't even have to get naked," remarks Piper.

After the Book is returned to its rightful place, Prue and Phoebe surprise Piper by revealing that they've taken out a second mortgage on the Manor so that she can buy the club.  All three hear Grams again before she appears before them.  She is the one who causes the pages in the Book to open, it's just her way of looking after them, but they're not read to understand it yet. 

CAST

Season two semi-regular Greg Vaughan was Richard Anderson in Buffy: Reptile Boy and played Josh Walker in Malibu Shores alongside a pre-Cordelia Charisma Carpenter. 

CONTINUITY

Set on the Autumnal Equinox, the episode takes place a year after Something Wicca This Way Comes and "a month" after Deja Vu All Over Again.

Morris hasn't been assigned a new partner yet.

Grams is revealed as the reason why the pages of the Book of Shadows are always flicking through.

Abraxas is a demon of the astral plane (which co-exists within our own plane) who destroys witches by demonising their powers.

THE BOOK OF SHADOWS

The entry for the Rite of Passage reads "The Rite of Passage - fight it with the Power of One, or else a more powerful evil that awaits will destroy you."

There's a new entry which reads simply, "Happy Anniversary, My Darlings."

THE POWER OF THREE

Prue demonstrates that she's ready to face Abraxas by moving a chair across the attic, but she's unable to bring herself to use her powers, just as she was when the Book was stolen in the first place.

Piper freezes Rob when Phoebe enters the Manor with a cry of "Sister witches!".  She also freezes Jeremy twice but he manages to break through somehow.

Phoebe has a premonition of Nicholas killing Prue.

NOTES

There's the first of several different title sequences this season.  There's also the first evidence of the series' new policy of having the three female leads wearing as little as possible.  It's clearly early days yet though and it's a shame about that rock.

COMMENTS

A fairly lacklustre start to the new season, continuing the usual WB trend of having a strong start to the first season and weaker ones to subsequent seasons.

Despite her "the oldest sister, always supposed to figure things out" speech, Prue doesn't seem as affected by Andy's death as she probably should have been for his death on the show to have meant anything, although her scene with Morris is quite good.

It's nice to see Piper following on from her decision to quit Quake in Deja Vu All Over Again, with her attempts at opening her own club.  Although Prue and Phoebe seem to be able to take out a loan on the Manor remarkably easily considering Phoebe is presumably still unemployed.  She also wears a fairly unflattering dress for much of the episode.

Phoebe continues to be knowledge girl as well as being the slightly flaky one with her new-found (and since this is Charmed probably never to be seen again) friend Stevie, and as Prue points out, definitely loves being a witch. 

Newcomers Dan and Jenny make a fairly uninspiring start.  No doubt most male viewers will cringe at Jenny and Phoebe's chat and Dan does virtually nothing apart from being introduced (sisters: "woah!") and discuss what size tampons to buy (Phoebe: "junior's probably a safe bet").

The episode itself is hardly inspiring either, although just about gets by as a restating of the series' premise and allowing Prue to get over Andy's death.  Jeremy, Nicholas and the Woogyman weren't exactly riveting foes the first time around and having them back for a quick return match is even less exciting.  That's not really the point of the episode but even so, as an episode that allows the sisters to demonstrate their resourcefulness, it's not as interesting as Buffy did in Helpless.

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