Season 03, Episode 06:
Primrose Empath
Prue, or so it appears, tries to telekinetically move a fork on the table without any success. When Phoebe comes downstairs and self proclaims herself a fashion blunder. Seeing Prue's attempts to move the fork, she fears Prue has lost her powers. It turns out, however, that Prue was in astral mode, which makes Phoebe relieved but unhappy because she hates Prue's "astral games". Prue tells Phoebe that they wouldn't last long against Belthazor, and is trying to train her astral self how to fight. Phoebe has a lunch date with Cole, and is nervous.
Prue drives to a dental appointment and finds herself being directed down a particular path. She does not know that Cole is doing the directing. She finally finds herself in front of a condemned apartment building and hears of a man still inside. She goes upstairs and finds the man cowering inside and begging her to go away. He complains of feeling everyone's pain all across the city, and even Prue's toothache.
Piper had met an old acquaintance and introduced Leo as a "friend", to his resentment. Piper did not want to answer the usual questions that would have followed introducing him as her fiance. Prue and Cole enter, followed by Phoebe, and Prue tells them of the shut-in. Cole slips into the kitchen, claiming to need to use the phone, and tells his shadow not to report to the Triad just yet. Leo believes that the shut-in is a budding empath and that Prue should help him. Cole offers the help of the Housing Authority in relocating the shut-in. Leo asks if he and Piper can come along with Cole and Phoebe on their lunch date, and Phoebe agrees.
At Crest Hills Psychiatric Hospital, Father Thomas sees a newspaper article on the shut-in, he tried to escape, but is restrained. Prue returns to the condemned building, having taken aspirin for her tooth. She has been told that the shut-in is called Vince, and is due to be arrested if he doesn't leave. Prue begs Vince to come with her, but he refuses to leave the room. However, he knows he'll die in jail. Prue tells him that she knows how he feels to have a power he didn't ask for. Vince tells her that he knows she feels something is coming after her. The deputy pounds on the door, and when he enters, Prue uses her power to hold the door shut and casts a spell to relieve his pain, not knowing that Vince is taking her by the hand. Vince is now ready to leave. Prue leaves, and Vince takes the deputy by the throat and burns him from the inside, killing him, the first sign he's no mere shut-in.
Cole, Phoebe, Leo and Piper are in a restaurant facing an awkward silence. Phoebe mentions the 49ers, and Cole, oddly, doesn't know who they are. Phoebe says "he isn't human" and Cole nearly chokes and asks for the check. Piper and Phoebe excuse themselves to talk, and Phoebe mentions that she's afraid Cole is pulling away from her. Cole offers to split the bill with Leo, and Piper covers for him.
Cole's pager sounds. He excuses himself and shimmers to Vince's apartment. Vince greets Cole as Belthazor. Vince is really a fellow demon, and Cole arranged for Prue to cross paths with him so he could pass his empathy to her. Vince says that Prue has about a day before the emotions she feels destroy her; since she's human, she can't handle them the way a demon can.
He is after Father Thomas, but Cole doesn't want Father Thomas harmed; he doesn't want to chance the witches finding out what has happened and reversing the spell. Vince doesn't think that's an issue; he says he's immune to witchcraft.
Prue tries to reschedule her dental appointment and begins to feel the emotions of people around her. In particular, she laughs uncontrollably in empathy with a patient being given laughing gas.
Cole seems to want to break it off with Phoebe. As Cole leaves the manor, Prue passes him and tells Phoebe that Cole is falling in love. Phoebe feels that Prue is wrong, but Prue says that Phoebe is in love, too. The two tell Piper and Leo that Prue has become an empath. Leo is worried that Prue can't handle being an empath because she wasn't meant to have that power. Prue thinks this was the power boost she was looking for in order to fight Belthazor. She feels the growing concern of Piper, Phoebe and Leo, and it causes her to telekinetically blow out the kitchen television. Phoebe offers to consult the Book of Shadows in order to help Prue control her new power, but Prue suggests that she go see Cole instead.
Piper and Leo offer to help, but Prue says she'll look herself; she can feel tension between them, and it's giving her a headache. Leo says he was embarrassed when he wasn't able to pay for lunch. He knows that Piper wants him to be part of the real world, but he really isn't a part of it. Piper tells him that she couldn't be more proud to be with him, and wants to share him with the world. They start to kiss, but Prue tells them she still has a headache.
Phoebe goes to Cole's apartment and kisses him as soon as she's in the door. Within minutes, they're in bed, passionately kissing in one of the most tender love scenes of the series. Phoebe stays and says "last night was magical."
Vince enters Father Thomas's former church and demands to know where Father Thomas is. A woman directs him to Crest Hills; he had a nervous breakdown after losing his ability to care for people. Vince kills her.
Prue cowers in the manor basement. She's picking up the emotions of the whole neighborhood and is trying to hide. Leo and Piper convince her to come out and help them find Vince, but not before Prue causes a beam to fall from the ceiling. They meet Phoebe outside the church and go to the room where Vince had been hiding. Phoebe gets a premonition and sees Vince's past victims as well as Vince killing a man who turns out to be Father Thomas. She didn't even touch anything; Leo thinks the room is full of psychic residue. Phoebe sees Crest Hills, and they go there and meet Father Thomas.
Father Thomas tells Piper and Phoebe that Vince is really a powerful demonic assassin named Vinceres. Father Thomas had been an empath and had actually been helping Vinceres when he thought he was human, but Vinceres tried to pay him back by killing him. He passed his empathy to Vinceres, rendering him unable to kill again. Father Thomas is fearful on learning that Vinceres is free; Prue feels his panic and shakes the entire room.
The sisters, Leo and Father Thomas return to the manor; Prue hides in the basement again. Father Thomas fears that Vinceres can't be stopped. The only reason Prue's spell worked was because Vinceres wanted it to work. Phoebe thinks that Prue could learn to channel the emotions she's feeling, and so become powerful enough to fight Vinceres. Father Thomas thinks Prue is too far gone, but Piper refuses to accept it, and convinces Father Thomas to talk to Prue.
Father Thomas tries to snap Prue back to herself. He feels that Prue is suffering because she's trying to fight the emotions she's feeling—the same thing Vinceres did. However, Vinceres was only able to fight the emotional load because demons can't feel human emotion. Vinceres bursts in.
Piper tries to freeze him, but it only slows him down. Piper cracks Vinceres over the head with a flowerpot, but it doesn't even scratch him. Vinceres flings Piper into a wall. Phoebe tries to attack Vinceres, but her kicks and punches have no effect, and he flings her into the wall as well. Piper tries to freeze Vinceres again, with no luck.
Father Thomas tells Prue to channel her empathy into strengthening her powers. Prue doesn't think she can, but Father Thomas tells her that she can feel all that it means to be human.
Vinceres has Phoebe by the throat and demands to know where Father Thomas is. Just then, Prue comes up from the basement with Father Thomas and Leo. Prue flings Vinceres into a wall and engages him, matching him blow for blow. Finally, she astral-projects and astral Prue leaps into Vinceres, who warps and explodes. Prue is no longer an empath.
Idol plays P3. Prue says she just came from the dentist and that he left her tongue numb. Piper says she is lucky he saw her. Prue says she was able to kill Vinceres by forcing him to feel all of the pain she was feeling as an empath; the emotional load literally tore him apart. Leo joins the sisters and says that Father Thomas has returned to his church. The four speculate that the signs that Prue received must have been either from Belthazor or from the Triad. Prue thinks she just got a preview of what her powers will be like once they grow to their full potential.
Phoebe goes to Cole's apartment; he's staying a little longer because an "associate" (who we know is Vinceres) didn't do as he was told.
Tropes:
- And I Must Scream: As an empath, Vinceres is incapacitated because he can't handle human emotion or so many voices talking at once. Father Thomas feels he's also cursed—being immortal and no reason to be.
- Becoming the Mask: When Cole says he doesn't need to watch the Halliwells lose one of their sisters, Vinceres is surprised to hear Belthazor show compassion. He says Belthazor has been in disguise too long. Cole doesn't deny the point, he merely states that it isn't Vinceres' concern.
- Brought Down to Normal: Father Thomas transferred his power to Vinceres.
- Cerebus Retcon: Prue getting the empathy power is Played for Laughs at first. But after one day, it becomes too much for her to bear and it's played for drama from thereon.
- Continuity Nod: Prue sense Cole's feelings for Phoebe with her Empath powers and compares them to how she felt for Andy when he was still alive.
- Deadly Upgrade: Happens when people who aren't meant to be Empaths take (or are given) a legit one's power anyway. However, Prue really turns it up a notch: powers in Charmed are fueled by emotion, and the more emotional you become the stronger your powers become. So, when Prue gets the empathy power she feels more emotions (specifically, those closest to her), so her empathy power becomes stronger. Its area of effect therefore increases, so she feels more (further off) emotions, so her empathy power becomes stronger again, so her area of effect increases again—positive feedback continues ad infinitum. Unfortunately, on top of the fact that these power boosts occur quicker than she has time to adjust to them (making them exponentially unstable), she still has her original powers, which logically "piggy-back" on the gains made by the empathy feedback loop. Given that one of them is telekinesis, the result is ... interesting.
- Didn't Think This Through: Lampshaded when Plans A and B don't work, and Phoebe asks if there's a 'Plan C'.
- The Dreaded: Vinceres is ancient, murderous, and impervious to magic."I gave up everything to keep that beast from killing again! If it's free, you can't stop it! Nobody can!"
- Emotional Powers: This is a a standard trope for this show, but the key to destroying Vinceres is Prue using the empath power to completely embrace human emotions and expose him to them.
- The Empath: Prue, as the episode title indicates, when she takes on Vinceres's "gift". It doesn't go over nearly as well for her, which is also implied by the episode title; see the second entry under Meaningful Name.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Prue's empathy powers reveal that Cole truly does love Phoebe.
- Fanservice: Phoebe's very sexy top she wears for the lunch date with Cole.
- Foreshadowing: Piper once again has to take charge when Prue is incapacitated, foreshadowing her eventual role as the eldest sister.
- Go Through Me: Prue quotes this word-for-word.Prue: If you want the empath, you're gonna have to go through me.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: The lunch date was supposed to be a way for Piper to do a mundane activity with her supernatural boyfriend. Leo grouses about Piper paying his bill (something unthinkable for the time period he actually lived in), but it's part of ta larger resentment over how he's being pushed to do things that are rather alien to him without any say so.
- Incest Subtext: Averted. Prue (due to her Empath powers) picks up on another man's erotic thoughts and is naturally Squicked to discover those thoughts are because of his attraction to her sister Piper.
- Informed Attribute: For someone who says he can't feel emotion, Vinceres is certainly angry and has a strong desire for revenge.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Vince says his name is misery, Prue responds "would you like some company?"
- Meaningful Name:
- Vinceres, from the Latin for "victory"—since once he is freed of his empathic curse, the demon appears to be practically unstoppable due to being immune to witchcraft.
- The episode title makes reference to the metaphor of "being led down the primrose path", indulging in something seemingly good and pleasurable that ends up bringing on disastrous consequences. This very much describes what happens to Prue, seeing as she both takes on the power to feel others' emotions (something which sounds good on the surface), and her whole drive throughout the episode is either to try and help what she thinks is an innocent or to gain a stronger power so they can fight Belthazor and the Triad, only for terrible consequences to ensue.
- Moment Killer: After resolving their argument, Piper and Leo start kissing on the couch. All of a sudden, Prue shouts from upstairs for them to knock it off, as she already has a headache.
- Oh, Crap!: Leo, upon Prue mentioning in front of Piper that she can just feel the annoying "couple issues" between them.
- Required Secondary Powers: The empath power doesn't come with a way to turn it off, which is why Vinceres and Prue struggled with it. Father Thomas explains that part of the problem is the person's desire to push the voices out instead of embracing them.
- Shirtless Scene: Cole is shirtless when Phoebe pops over to his house.
- Shout-Out:
- A seemingly-innocent, pitiful man tricks a sympathetic character into helping him escape imprisonment (in this case, that caused by his empathic ability overwhelming him), only to turn out to be a demonic being now set loose on the world, while a priest is desperate to ensure he is not freed. This bears more than a few similarities to the plot of the The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Howling Man". (Although in this episode the one who frees the prisoner is tricked by an outside character, Cole, and Prue and the others of course instantly believe everything Father Thomas tells them...it's just by that point it's too late and Vinceres is already free.)
- The fight between Prue and Vinceres contains many attacks and poses from The Matrix, right down to mimicking how Neo kills Agent Smith.
- Spit Take: Cole when Phoebe jokes "he isn't human" after he claims he doesn't follow sports.
- Super-Power Meltdown: Subverted. Prue comes dangerously close to having one of these when she accidentally becomes an Empath but following a pep talk from Leo promptly gets her shit together.
- A Taste of Power: Prue is tricked into taking on the empathic ability that a demon was cursed with, to crippling effect. However, since her magic is powered by emotion, and she has half of San Francisco to draw from, she's as powerful as she'd be in her 60's or 70's and easily curbstomps the demon at the end. Prue invokes this trope by saying she got a taste of what's waiting for her.
- Took a Level in Badass: Prue gets super Matrix-style fighting skills once she's overcome the problems with the empathic power.
- The Unfair Sex: The random girl slaps her boyfriend because Prue grabbed his ass. Apparently that was his fault.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Without his gift, Father Thomas feels he has no reason to exist and yet he's "staring at eternity on Earth."
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Those who gain Empathy when they weren't supposed to (especially for demons who cannot handle emotion).
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: The shut-in Vince is actually the demon Vinceres.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Prue is certain that she's supposed to help Vince because she kept getting signs. Actually, Cole was deliberately causing these signs so that she would free Vinceres.
- You Keep Using That Word: Piper tells Leo to stop calling the empathy power a "gift" since it only causes pain.
