The Good

If you have been following the show it's nice to see that it ended strongly.

The Bad

This is really the end...

All good things must come to an end and that is clearly the case with Charmed: The Complete Eighth Season. That said, it isn't like this 6 disc release is merely some lame duck outing that is dragging its feet to the finish line. The Halliwell sisters have their work cut out for them and this is compounded by the fact that they are trying to take a hiatus from fighting for humanity. In their absence, a void is filled by all kinds of bad types which sees Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), Paige (Rose McGowan) and Piper (Holly Marie Combs) all called back into action. Things take a startling turn when Phoebe and Piper's father finds his life in danger. The girls all find new things and ideas to occupy their lives, but there is tremendous conflict when Billie (Kaley Cuoco) turns up on the scene. Not knowing restraint as far as her powers are concerned, Billie finds herself being taken under Paige's wing but that doesn't help much. In the end, it seems like the Halliwell sisters might find that their biggest conflict is amongst themselves.

I must admit that I really never followed this show until I was given some seasons to peruse. For some reason the witch inflected subject matter didn't grab me. However, as time has worn on I have come to have a great respect for everything that Charmed accomplished. I am not saying that this is a landmark show and that its reinvented the wheel, but how many shows run for 8 seasons nowadays?

Features

Featurettes

The creators of this DVD set have seen to it that fans of this show get sent off right. Here are the featurettes that are offered:

- "The Making of Charmed"

- "Story of Charmed"

- "To the Manor Born"

- "Forever Charmed"

I don't know that I was that into all of these featurettes but they seem to have something for the various levels of fans. If you're a rabid fan and you've seen every episode, I would certainly suggest going through all of these. If you're a level below that, you can probably get by with the Story of Charmed wish is a two part documentary on this show. We are taken into this world, we see the day to day aspects of production, how the stories are broken, etc. Heck, I guess one could even throw in To The Manor Born, which gives us insights into the Halliwell home. For a lot of fun, one could certainly do a lot worse than examining Forever Charmed, which looks at the fanbase behind this show. The more I think about it, I think it's really cool that the makers of this DVD set put this on here.

Commentary Track

Video

1.33:1. There is an energy to this show that seems to be evenly paced throughout all the episodes. Aside from some tracking shots here and there, I didn't find anything about the way these episodes were shot to be that awesome. What did catch my eye were the effects. I have never expected much from TV effects but I found that what was put across here was done quite well. While not the greatest looking things I have ever seen, the effects shots don't look bad.

Audio

Languages: English, French and Spanish. The audio on this show was solid. I didn't even have to turn up my set that loud and everything played strongly. While this show does feature a lot of quick witted, back and forth dialogue, I thought that everything worked well. As I have labored about before, it isn't like the audio is used to expand out the characters. Things for Charmed: The Complete Eighth Season are pretty straight forward, and considering commercial and network constraints that is probably a good thing.

Package

The Halliwell sisters are given to us on this front cover with a greenish gold background behind them. The back of this DVD set offers up a description, some pictures from the show, a Bonus Features listing and system specs. All 6 discs that make up this release are neatly stored inside this packaging, which also features more artwork and lets fans know where to find the extra goodies.

Final Word

As I was sitting through this 8th Season, I must admit that I was filled with a great deal of regret. I say that because there is so much of this show that I haven't seen. I have to believe that A) I am only catching a handful of references and B) Had I been more up to date I probably would have found this whole thing to be an even richer experience. It's interesting because I haven't seen too many final seasons of that many shows. I have seen a lot of show finale's, but I haven't seen the whole ending stretch. As I watched Milano, McGowan and Combs I found myself trying to look for certain things. Were they sad that the show was ending? Were their performances half cooked? How much did the writers have left in the tank for this final season? While I didn't get too in-depth in my thoughts on this, I will say that I think everybody was there until the end.

In melding witchcraft, demons, the supernatural with the everyday, somehow Charmed ends up making more of a statement about the world around us, than perhaps a "normal" show might. This could be because of everything that it incorporates which, as I mentioned above, plays into the richness of the experience.

Charmed was released .