Primrose Empath

"Primrose Empath"

Primrose Empath is an episode of The WB drama series, Charmed.

Synopsis

Piper and Phoebe are on a mission to save Prue after a spell to save an innocent horribly backfires and she is given the unwanted gift of uncontrollable empathy; feeling all the pain in the world, causing the cacophony of human emotion to threaten her sanity and life.

Book of Shadows

Enemies

• Vinceres: Vinceres is a demonic assassin, a timeless, unstoppable hit man who keeps going until he gets his target. He is immune to witches' powers. Vince possesses the power to burn people with the touch of his hand. An empath cursed Vince by passing on his gift to him to make him feel the pain that he inflicts. However, he tricked Prue into removing this power so that she unknowingly received them instead. Vince was vanquished by Prue's astral projection with the human emotions she could read.

Note: This is also the first episode to show Prue in a long physical fight.

Spells

• To Free an Empath: Free the empath, release his gift. Let his pain be cast adrift

P³ Performance

Artist: Idol
Song: Shameless

Episode Stars

• Shannen Doherty as Prue Halliwell
• Holly Marie Combs as Piper Halliwell
• Alyssa Milano as Phoebe Halliwell
• Brian Krause as Leo Wyatt
• Julian McMahon as Cole Turner

Special Musical Guest

• Idol

Co-Stars

• Randy Thompson as Deputy
• Ty Upshaw as Foreman
• Brittany Ishibashi as Receptionist #1
• Colin McClean as Dentist
• Sharon Madden as Secretary
• Larry Weissman as Patient #1
• Michael Fetters as Patient #2
• Marianne Muellerleile as Receptionist #2
• Wendy Worthington as Nurse

Trivia

• This is Charmed's fiftieth episode.
• The episode title is a play on words to a pleasurable life style, from Hamlet Act I Scene 3: Ophelia: Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
• In Season 6, Phoebe receives the power of empathy, to later get it taken away from her because she misused it later that same season.
• This episodes marks the second time Phoebe received a premonition without making physical contact with anything. As Leo said: "This room must be dripping with psychic remnants." From this point on, Phoebe has the ability to receive premonitions by only feeling the cosmic or psychic energy contained in a room. She did once have a vision of two young boys being struck down by a car and was able to prevent this from occurring, but as Phoebe was new to her powers then, this was likely a fluke occurrence. Between that incident and this one, Phoebe has only been able to get premonitions by touching an object associated with her vision, except twice where she was watching the news and had premonitions.
• The scene where Prue defeats Vince is identical to the way Neo defeats Agent Smith in The Matrix, complete with the one-armed punch blocks, twisting arm, shove, and then diving into the opponent which makes him explode.
• Actor Harry Groener was also in the similarly-themed Star Trek: The Next Generation's episode "Tin Man" in which he played an empath/telepath, who was over burdened by the thoughts and emotions of the humans around him.
• Phoebe sleeps with Cole for the first time in this episode.
• In this episode, Prue was trying to use telekinesis in astral mode, but fails.
• At the beginning of this episode, Prue is reading a book "Telekinesis" by "Chele Knapp Robinette." Robinette is the production assistant to producer Les Sheldon.
• Prue's telekinesis power doesn't work in astral form because she is already using it to make her astral form solid, a feat which Rex Buckland failed at. She can, however, use other powers such as empathy in astral mode. She can cast spells in astral mode as well (such as in Ex Libris)
• When Prue is exiting the dentist's office she grabs a man's rear end. His girlfriend gets upset, and you think he asks "What did I do?", but if you look at his lips, he doesn't actually say this.
• Bram Stoker wrote a novel titled "The Primrose Path"
• Also when Prue is unstable and visits the priest at the psychiatric institution with her sisters the real name of Vince (Vinceres) is at that point not revealed, though Phoebe calls the demon Vinceres to the priest. When they find out that the demons name is Vinceres it is at the manor from the Book of Shadows AFTER the psychiatric institution.

International titles

• French: A fleur de peau (Extremely Touchy)
• German: Die Macht der Gefühle (The Power of Emotion)
• Spanish: El camino de rosas de la empatía

External links

• TV.com episode guide