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YMMV / Charmed S2E2 Morality Bites

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  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Despite the new fashions and hairstyles, none of the Halliwells looks that older ten years into the future. Given that they're implied to have created more personal gain spells, possibly they made one to slow the aging process.
  • Anvilicious: Phoebe spells out the moral that might doesn't equal right, the wrong thing done for the right reasons is still the wrong thing, and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope can start from little actions that build up over time.
  • Broken Base: Fans can be a bit divided on the episode's Aesop; one camp finds it to be straddling the Can't Get Away with Nuthin' line, while others agree with Phoebe's point that "once you break the small rules, it's only a matter of time before the big ones are next."
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Melinda, Piper and Leo's daughter in the Bad Future. Even though Seasons 5 and 6 reveal that changing the timeline resulted in two sons, fans still liked the idea of her being born anyway. This became Ascended Fanon in the series finale, which shows that Piper had a daughter too, giving her her own subplot in the sequel comics and a brief cameo in one of the tie-in novels. She enjoys great fan press in next generation fics.
  • Fanfic Fuel: Of what parts of the bad future were and weren't changed. Likewise what happened to other characters such as Nathaniel Pratt and Cal Greene. The Season 9 comics revisit this plot and reveal that the friend Greene murdered was Elise Rothman.
  • Fanon: Fans have come up with the theory that Phoebe's Shock and Awe power is a manifestation of the empathy power she gains in Season 6. The Season 9 comics confirm that she is creating a feedback loop from the target's negative emotions that is capable of overloading their brain. The technique is also given the proper name of Psychic Reflection.
  • Fans Prefer the New Her: Prue looks fantastic as a blonde, despite it being a reflection of her Corrupt Corporate Executive self.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Everyone's shock at Phoebe's future self becoming self-centred and killing someone with her powers. In Season 6 Phoebe starts misusing her powers for personal gain - even allowing a man to be killed by demons (this man also a wanted murderer). She even gets punished by the Elders because of it. Luckily she does grow out of it by the last season.
    • Prue being shown in a Bad Future where she's implied to be estranged from her sisters. In Season 3 she's Killed Off for Real which it turns out is a consequence of avoiding this particular future. Piper even lampshades this in Season 5.
    • In the future, Phoebe is exposed as a witch but Prue and Piper have still preserved their cover. This is the opposite of how "All Hell Breaks Loose" goes - where Piper and Prue are exposed to the world and Phoebe is safe in the Underworld. Once again it results in the death of a Charmed One, and this time it's not fixed with a Reset Button.
    • There's a scene where Prue discovers her future self is about to lay off loads of employees. The episode is set one year after the 2008 recession, which the writers obviously couldn't have foreseen, but it retroactively makes future Prue even more corrupt; she's about to lay off a bunch of workers during a recession when she has a spell to create money.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight:
    • It's said that Piper and Leo's marriage failed because she wouldn't let him clip his wings for her. Later that season, he's Brought Down to Normal as part of a sacrifice to save Piper's life. And while his powers are restored, he gives them up for good in Season 7. All out of love for her.
    • In the Bad Future, Prue is a ruthless, corrupt executive that's such a workaholic that she has no one in personal life to miss her if she died. ("Here lies Prue. She worked hard," she observed.) Once back in the present, Prue resolves to not become like her future self by making time for things other than her job. Half a season down the line, she quits working at Buckland's to protest a business deal scamming a customer, ultimately ending up as a photographer (a job she considers more fulfilling on a personal level). Though she dies sooner than she would've in the Bad Future, her funeral is very well-attended, demonstrating that lots of people miss her.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The hairstyles on the sisters' future selves - where Phoebe and Prue's are really different but Piper's isn't - reflects how Holly Marie Combs would notably not change her hair very much throughout the series.
    • Phoebe is shown levitating Cal Greene into the air in her premonition. At the end of the season she's temporarily given the power to fly - and then develops it naturally in Season 3.
  • Narm: Brian Krause's performance as the angry future Leo is especially forced.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A Bad Future in which modern day witch burnings happen, and the accused have to live underground. That's some impressive material for a whole season in its own right.

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