Pre-Witched

Piper and Leo feel lack of privacy and decide to move to a rented apartment. When they tell Prue and Phoebe, the Halliwell sisters recall their troubled relationship with their grandmother Penny before they acknowledge that they were The Charmed Ones. Meanwhile an evil warlock and former cat forces the sisters to kill him nine times to leave definitely his past life as a cat and transform in a warlock forever.

"PreWitched" discloses how disconnected the sisters were before the death of "Grams" Penny, with Phoebe being a troublemaker and Prue moving to New York. Their fight with Shadow is flawed, without explanations how the cat transformed in a warlock and how they were successful in destroying him. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Pré-Bruxas" ("Pre-Witches")

This is a curious mix, consisting mainly (as you might expect from the title) of a lot of content relating to the sisters' lives before and leading up to their Grandmother's death. It explains the arrival of the cat in the household. It also includes discussion of the sisters' earlier living arrangements, including Phoebe's departure to New York. That ties in tightly with Piper and Leo's current discussions as to where they should live in their new circumstances. The rest of the script is an interesting puzzle, involving a cat turned into a demon, which is eventually solved by a variant of the Fox, Goose and Grain Problem. Didn't see that coming, although I probably should have! Overall, it fills out the background story nicely, and gives us a good amount of character development.

Pre-Witched is to me the best episode of the series, simply because it is flawless. It might not be a very important episode as far as plot development in the overall season-long arc, but it wonderfully executes the present demon storyline with the Charmed Ones' lives before they received their powers. It demonstrates their grandmother's obsession with controlling her granddaughters' destiny and it shows how distant the sisters used to be. The episode has brilliant editing, as well as great performances from the three leads, who have to give themselves up to what they used to be. This might be a very simple episode, but as far as the show goes, it is emotionally charged and I wish they would have done more with their past in the future episodes. Charmed's finest.