8 Reasons You Hated 'Charmed' And 7 Reasons You Loved It

Who out there has a guilty confession to make? Did you at any time in your young life stay home on Friday night, curled up on your sofa with your favorite pillow and maybe a drink and snacks to watch a television show? This was not just any television show. It was your favorite! And since you didn't have a hot date night with that guy you had been after for ages, you were totally fine with staying home. I think we can say that we've all been there.

The show I'm talking about is not just any TV show. It was Charmed. This was a show that some people loved… and others totally hated. Maybe you were laughed at for watching it. I was a HUGE fan of the show Charmed, created by the late Aaron Spelling (yup, the guy behind Beverly Hills 90210). It was one of my guilty pleasures growing up, like a lot of people I know. But there were a lot of people that laughed at me for watching a cliché, predictable, and poorly written show. Many of these same people had issues with Aaron Spelling's other shows too, but hey, I agree they were predictable fluff, but after a hard week at the office, who doesn't look for escapism in their television experience?

Here are 8 reasons you hated Charmed and 7 reasons you loved it.

15 Hated: Predictable And Cheesy Storylines

The people who hated Charmed were usually the ones who were sticklers for intellectual discussions about life and spirituality. They were not interested in a show that tackles these kinds of things in a more fun and entertaining way. Sure, the sisters were not having discussions about life, death, and religion and their supernatural powers in a scholastic way. They were trying to live as normal a life as possible: holding down jobs to pay bills, dating men (preferably human men), and dealing with how they would eventually break the news about their “differences" to them. Yes, their witchcraft and Wiccan spirituality was dealt with but it was sometimes in the background of their normal lives. For people who were looking at a more serious take on Wicca, witches, and how young women would deal with living life as a modern day witch, this was the wrong show. Sorry to break it to ya.

14 Loved: Phoebe's Coming Of Age

Who didn't think Phoebe, Alyssa Milano's character, was funny, hot, and also the most believable of all the sisters? What many people like myself liked about her was her vulnerability and the fact that she has no idea what she was going to do with her life when the show started. She had to move back home after her grandmother's funeral and she was such a lost soul. She had no ambition, didn't know what to do. Even after she found out she was one of the three “Charmed Ones,” it took her a while to find her groove in the Wiccan sisterhood and what her power is. When she does, she masters it but then when she gets more power later in another season, she loses it due to abuse of power. She learns hard lessons about power and responsibility and what it takes to be a real witch, heroine, and help people. She learns a lot about herself and goes from struggling career wise to having a Ph.D. in Psychology and counseling others through her newspaper column.

13 Hated: The Sisters Look TOO Perfect

Did you ever notice how after many of the battles, the sisters all looked amazing? Their clothes were all in one piece and their makeup and hair still looked flawless. That's because the show was not about realistically attempting to show witches in battle. It was about beautiful, intelligent modern young women who just happened to be witches and who dealt with this along with all the other stuff modern society threw at them. People who were looking for a more realistic show were disappointed that it was a soap opera more than a fantasy/horror show. Fans flocked to it for pure escape from their everyday reality. Hey, if you were a modern day witch, wouldn't you like to be as smart and hot as these women were? Those that couldn't get this hated the show saying it sent a mixed message about the seriousness of the mission the Charmed Sisters supposedly had to fulfill. We all wished we could look that good after a rough day at the office!

12 Loved: Some Plot Devices

For all the comments about the predictability of the writing and the cheesy jokes, there were many great plot twists, like Leo's choice to accept being the top Whitelighter and what it cost him in his life and Pipers'. Also, the twist on Chris being his and Piper's son from the future coming back to warn them to change things or it could get worse for them all. It was also the backdrop that resulted from these main stories. The fact that with Leo leaving Piper had to face single parenting and dating again. When it was revealed who Chris was, that caused some tensions and other little story lines about what the future would hold, good and bad, as well as some funny moments, like when he had to be conceived in real time or else he would not be born. The episode where he and the other sisters are trying to get Piper and Leo out for some action was entertaining, too, and we will always remember that.

11 Hated: The Male Characters Are The Worst

No doubt about it, this show was really hard on men. Sometimes the male characters were bumbling idiots who didn't figure out what was up with the woman they were dating (some of Phoebe's boyfriends come to mind). Other men bolted when they did figure out who the love of their life was (Dan, the next door neighbor losing total interest in Piper when he finds out she is a witch. Others still were being totally evil in the end like Cole or blind to what he really was supposed to do like Leo. It was kind of like reverse gender issues. We get it. The show was about empowering women and we do love that. But a lot of detractors of the show thought that they could empower women without it being done at the expense of the men on the show. When it's the other way around, well, there are protests. This is not really realistic about how the world works… or at least how we hope it works.

10 Loved: The Flash Forwards

The episodes in the last season which flashed forward to the future then to the present and past and back were well done. These episodes showed us how one course of action, good or bad, can carry consequences and affects how our lives turn out, for better or worse. Now ok, we're not all witches fighting demons, but this line of thinking is good to take. It gets you to re-evaluate some of your negative choices and try to make more positive ones that can cause positive outcomes. You can also try and undo negative outcomes by repairing damage in the present so the future is not affected too badly. Some things in the past can't be changed, but helping those around us as best as we can is all we can do. The life lessons that this show portrayed helped people understand how love, family, and power are things that need not be taken for granted and need to harnessed carefully and delicately if things are to kept in balance.

9 Hated: The Unrealistic Stuff

All those battles, demons, and strange magical creatures that attacked the manor, and the sight and sound effects of all that magic… and yet no neighbor ever reported anything to the police or any other authority?! You would think that someone would have heard what was going on and said something. After all, it must have been SUPER loud. But nope. We are left to think that maybe the battles were fought silently or they magically soundproofed the house and its surroundings with some kind of force field so no human could penetrate or hear anything. Perhaps the battles were fought in another dimension. Who cares?! Sit back, enjoy the hot women who have fun conversations kick some demon butt and then go and have dinner. It's just supposed to be an entertaining show, right? The people who really thought hard about the impossibility of some of these plot lines also did not get that the show was meant to be light and entertaining while teaching a lesson or two as a bonus.

8 Loved: The Cool Demons And Magical Creatures

Okay, so maybe I was the only one who thought the demons like Shax, Spider Demon, and leprechauns, and other magical creatures were fun to watch. I also thought it was fun to see the sisters interact with these creatures like they were people from the block party. It was all so “Okay we got this,” even when we could see fear or confusion on their faces as to what the heck do we do now. The creatures seemed eerily real too, and the writers based them on all the fantasy fiction lore we see in fairy tales. They heavily borrowed from that so it was cute and funny and felt believable in the context of a fantasy story. It made the show an interesting escape from real life. It was one of the first shows that spanned a whole bunch of other fantasy shows that did the same thing, and it made the show a nice mix of the every day and the magical.

7 Hated: It Wasn't Real Witchcraft

When did these women actually find time to train and work? Do witches learn everything as fast as they seemed to? Were the sisters portraying actual witchcraft? Of course, some of it was authentic, but most was enhanced or imagined as what would happen IF this occurred in real life. A lot of the spells, particularly at the beginning, were not authentic, and in Wiccan lore vanquishing or beating one's enemy is not that swift or easy most of the time. Real Wiccan takes time and energy to practice. It is a skill you have to hone, basically. And by the way, you are not born a witch. You become one with training. It is not instant gratification like the show points out. Of course, watching a show about young women studying to be witches would not have been as exciting to seeing them perform spells, kill demons, and protect the innocent. Still, it gave a lot of Wiccans grief at the time that their religion was being portrayed in this way.

6 Loved: The Female Empowerment

The show empowered a lot of women, whether of pagan or non-pagan beliefs, and showed female empowerment at its best: three sisters who loved each other, went through hell and back, (sometimes literally) for one another, and fought the brave fight so that they and their families and friends could be safer and better. The message was simply that women are strong and can do anything. The female line was the strong one. When Piper gave birth to a son there was shock at first. The family name and traditions had always been passed to women as they were the carriers of power. This is exactly the opposite of what our society today still espouses in many ways. It's nice for young women to hear how they were matriarchal societies once upon a time. Charmed is fictional but it touches on that reality. This is good for young girls to keep in mind.

5 Hated: Prue Died

So first of all, we HATED that Prue died. We loved it and it was super sad. But we also hated that a big thing like the death of a main character was not even focused on all that much. All we saw was a shot above where she was killed. There was no big scene and fight with her and Shax and her sisters trying to intervene. And then the next season opens up with the funeral and the fact that Shax killed her and nothing else. Everyone knew there were problems on set for Shannon Doherty and Alyssa Milano so the parting was not an amicable one, but come on, in the taste of good professional storytelling, killing off a main character in such a blasé way upset a lot of people. Many stopped watching the show after that and the ones who never liked it used this as another proverbial nail in the coffin to say that the show had its days numbered. This was a chance to for some better than writing than on some of the other episodes and it was overlooked.

4 Loved: Being Wiccan Was Made More Mainstream

Okay, so the portrayal of being a witch/being Wiccan is not actually accurate. But this was one of the few shows that aimed to do at least show witches in a positive light and not as hags that eat eyeballs and are pure evil like usual. Yes, witches were not one hundred percent accurately displayed and being Wiccan was not exactly explained in full detail. Still, the show at least brought some of this stuff into the mainstream, which was definitely something. It brought many real witches forward and started a discussion of how these women are healers in their communities. It's definitely a good thing that this dialogue got going. The next step? That would be for people to spread the truth about being Wiccan and spiritual in other ways so there can be more accurate portrayals of it in the media. There's going to be a reboot, so maybe that will happen then?

3 Hated: There Was ZERO Diversity

The show was so white. This does not accurately reflect America or any city any more. It would have been great to more women and men of color and different racial and ethnic backgrounds. What about people who have different preferences and affiliations? In today's modern world, there are a lot of differences that we could be celebrating. When mainstream shows are afraid to portray that or seem to forget to portray that, it makes you think that they are worried that more people want things to stay at status quo which is not the case. It bothered a lot of people at the time that characters were not portrayed in a real way. That is something that needs to change in the modern world now and needed to change back then. Many people thought this made the show not very accurate because of this and turned away from watching it.

2 Hated: The Writing Was Super Corny

The writing was corny and very cliché. You could see all of the jokes coming and the tension and romance were so obvious. All that was missing was the ominous music when the evil characters came in. The people who loved it accepted the show in spite of this and, no pun intended were charmed by the obvious plots. They viewed it as you would a paperback romance: relaxing to read, fun with everyone knowing that in the end the good guys or girls would win and all would return back to normal, or in this case, some sort of normal until the next big event took place. The people that thought the show would have something new to say about witches and the discourse around them were in for a rude surprise and they were the show's biggest detractors. If you suspended disbelief in certain things, you would have enjoyed watching the show, though.

1 Loved: The Sister Stuff

The one realistic thing I liked and that many other people enjoyed about Charmed was the fact that even though their life was crazy unpredictable, supernatural, and unbelievable in general, the sisters still had the same old boring problems that we do. Piper almost lost her club which paid the bills and suffered through the pain of divorce. Paige went through a super tough time when she discovered that she actually had a family that she knew nothing about. Phoebe went through the absolute hell of dating and struggled in school to find a career that she loved and was meant to do. In the end, it all came together with their crazy witch adventures and they formed a happy life at the end of the series. This is kind of like what happens to real mortals. We chug along doing the best that we can and have obstacles to deal with along the way. But of course, having some magical powers would make life a bit easier (and a lot more fun), right?!