"The power of three will set you free..."


    Charmed opens with a witch we will never see again, one of those characters that you know right from the beginning is marked for death. Within a minute an unseen attacker has stabbed and killed her, another dead young woman for the police to investigate.
    Welcome to Halliwell manor. In enters Piper, the middle sister in the Halliwell family. Her older sister, Prue, is already home and quite bitter that Piper wasn't there to meet the electrician. But Piper was caught up buying ingredients for a recipe. She is interviewing for a chef's job the next day, and she needs everything to be perfect. Her boyfriend, Jeremy even sent her a bottle of port, the final ingredient for her meal.
    A storm is raging outside the house, but inside the two sisters are talking. They have found the spirit board their mother gave them, with a strange inscription on the back. "The power of three will set you free..." They never understood what that meant. But they'll find out soon enough.
    As Prue worries about the ailing chandelier that the electrician was supposed to fix, Piper seems a little anxious. Finally she announces that their younger sister, Phoebe, is on her way home from New York. Prue is furious. She believes that Phoebe put the moves on her ex-fiance, Roger, and she is hardly looking forward to seeing her youngest sister. Unfortunately for her, Phoebe shows up at that very moment. Both she and Piper try to make the best of it, but Prue isn't quite ready for the group hug. Piper, the perfectly trained mediator, does her best to patch things up between her sisters and make Phoebe feel at home. But it's clear that this new living arrangement isn't going to go as smoothly as she'd hoped.
    Piper and Phoebe are obviously close and together they play with the old spirit board. But then when Piper leaves the room, the pointer starts to move on its own. Phoebe summons her sisters who believe that she's pushed the pointer to scare them. But finally Piper sees it moving too. It spells out ATTIC. Curious, Phoebe heads for the attic, while Piper runs for the front door. The power has gone out, and she's completely freaked. Prue tries to calm her down, even as Phoebe starts up the stairs.
    The attic door is stuck fast and Phoebe cannot seem to unlatch it. But then suddenly it pushes open, as if by magic, allowing Phoebe to enter. A strange light is shining down on a chest, and when Phoebe opens it, she finds the Book of Shadows. Opening it to the first page, she reads an incantation. When Prue and Piper enter, and realize what she's done, neither is happy.  Piper is scared and Prue, as always, is angry. But Phoebe seems more excited than anything else. Little do they know that outside someone is watching their house, waiting for the right moment to strike.
    The next day everything changes. Phoebe has spent the night reading over the Book of Shadows, and is eager to tell her sisters about it. But neither really wants to listen. Both Prue and Piper are in for a tough day. Prue's boss, Roger, also her ex-fiance, takes credit for the job she has worked long and hard on. She quits and storms off. Just after she does the pen in Roger's pocket breaks, and the ink begins to bleed down his shirt. He just stares at it in surprise.
    At the restaurant, Piper is hurrying to finish the food for her interview. But before she can add the final ingredient the chef comes in for a taste. She tries to stop him from eating it, realizing that she will most certainly lose the job if he does. And as he lifts the food towards his mouth she throws out her hands in protest. Everything freezes. Piper looks around in confusion. But fortunately she remembers to add the port Jeremy gave her. After a few seconds the chef unfreezes and tastes the food with a smile. Piper has the job. But that's not all she has.
    Phoebe, meanwhile, is biking around town. As she is pedaling along, she suddenly gets a flash, and then a vision of a boy being hit by a car. Seconds later she sees the same scene unfolding before her. She rushes to stop it, and does, but in doing so is injured. Never the less, she seems to have found her power, the power of premonition.
    Prue arrives at the hospital to pick Phoebe up, and runs into Andy, her old boyfriend from college. He's a police inspector now and is investigating the murders of the young women around town. They chat for awhile, reacquainting themselves, and then part, agreeing to get together again later. Finally Prue and Phoebe get a chance to talk, and Prue slowly begins to accept the fact that she's a witch. She quickly learns that anger is the trigger to her power, but not before she's turned a drugstore aisle into a disaster area when Phoebe mentions their absentee father. After the stress release though, Prue seems much happier and she and Phoebe return home.
    While the older and younger Halliwells seem to be bonding, the middle sister is out with her boyfriend, celebrating her new job. Jeremy takes her to an old warehouse promising her a wonderful view. But as they get into the rickety old elevator, Piper begins to get nervous. Suddenly Jeremy pulls out a knife and tries to stab her. She screams and holds up her hands. Fortunately for her he has frozen. She narrowly escapes and rushes home to tell her sisters what has happened.
    Back at the manor Prue, Piper, and Phoebe try to decide what to do. They try one spell, but it doesn't work, and Jeremy bursts into their house. They run up to their attic, but he follows and they are trapped. Prue urges them to stick together and they suddenly remember the saying from the spirit board. The power of three will set you free... They begin to say it together, and even as Jeremy tries everything to destroy them, in the end he is the one who is doomed. He went up against the power of three. He is the first to discover what a big mistake that is.
    The next morning Andy comes by to talk to Prue. When he asks her out, she turns him down, worried that a new relationship will only further complicate her hectic life. Piper and Phoebe join her, and as they watch Andy go, they wonder about the future and what they can expect now that they are witches. Only time will tell...