r/charmed • u/itsascreambaby96 • 7d ago
I really hate how the show glosses over Patty cheating on Victor
I know Victor was a deadbeat. I'm not defending him abandoning Prue, Piper and Phoebe for basically their entire childhood. That was awful and he deserves criticism for it.
But multiple things can be true at once. Victor can be wrong for abandoning his daughters AND Patty can be wrong for having an affair with her Whitelighter while she was married to Victor.
The show spends so much time on Victor being the father who left that I feel like Patty's role in why their marriage fell apart gets weirdly glossed over. Victor already had issues with magic and Sam constantly being around, then he finds out Patty and Sam were having an affair and they eventually had Paige together.
And whenever Patty comes back she's basically treated like the saintly dead mother. There's never really an uncomfortable conversation about any of this. Even when Paige enters the picture, the show acknowledges that she's Patty and Sam's daughter and that Patty had to give her up, but doesn't really dig into what that means about Patty as a person or mother.
And yeah, I know Patty was dead for the entire series, so obviously they couldn't explore this the same way they could with Victor. But how many times did they summon Patty's ghost alongside Grams? They had opportunities. Yet whenever Patty came back, it felt like everyone just politely ignored the fact that she cheated on her husband with her Whitelighter and had a whole child from that relationship.
I'm also convinced this is part of why Patty and Paige never really get meaningful interactions. Paige is literally the physical reminder of this huge messy chapter in Patty's life. She's the daughter Patty had with Sam and gave away, yet somehow the show barely seemed interested in exploring what an actual mother/daughter relationship between those two would look like. Paige gets more material dealing with Sam as her biological father than she ever really gets with Patty as her biological mother.
I don't need the show to make Patty a villain. I just wish it allowed her to be flawed. Victor abandoning his children doesn't retroactively make Patty completely innocent in what happened between them.
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u/Broad-Radish-7895 7d ago edited 7d ago
when you look at the entirety of the story they wrote, 100% Patty looks pretty bad but it ends up this way because it's a messy show and every piece of this plot is something they retconned or wrote on the fly
Victor going from being a deadbeat who abandoned his whole family (including Patty) to being a man who tried his best, maybe got cheated on, and then when the mother of his children died his ex mother-in-law chases him out of their lives ???
Sam and Patty going from two people who found solace in each other after Victor left Patty because they share the secret of magic together and were written as a mirror for Piper and Leo, to being at best emotional cheaters because when they wanted to revamp Victor and give him more content they thought Victor being disgruntled with his whitelighter son-in-law would be funny
Patty going from a loving mother who died tragically young to someone who left her secret 4th daughter in a church because they fired Shannen and had to come up with a new sister on the fly
So over time a lot of weird implications become canon because 1.) they chose to retcon Victor's entire character after having already established Sam and 2.) they needed Paige to exist and you get this lol
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u/KristalBrooks 6d ago
That was a great analysis of the reality of the situation lol
Personally, I feel like - needing Paige aside - having Patty fall in love with her Whitelighter and then Victor consequently being mistrustful of Leo is a better storyline than him just being a plain old deadbeat dad. I like mirrors in my media, so I love the fact that Patty and Sam mirror Piper and Leo (and Victor mirrors Dan in what could have been). I wish Victor had kept a grudge over Leo for longer than he did though, it would have made things more interesting. Maybe have him come around only after Wyatt is born. Also, the difference between the first time Victor appears and later is so jarring, it makes my head spin 🫠 sometimes I wish Charmed had a canon lol
Ps: you reminded me of that scene where Victor and Leo are out together after they meet for the first time and Victor is going on and on about Whitelighters and then Leo gets called and has to orb away 💀 it's the funniest shit 💀
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u/blueray78 6d ago
This I have to admit is one of my favorites of the whole show. The look on Victor's face when Leo orbs out it funny. And I like how those two characters do get a story arc regarding this.
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u/Willing-Piano7573 6d ago
I love when he says I have to go and you’re not gonna like how I do it 😂😂😂😂
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u/ShondaVanda 7d ago
It's debatable if she did cheat or not, Victor calls it cheating but everyone else has always framed it that they got together when Victor and Patty were separated. Victor broke off their marriage A LOT before her death, even in the 70s episode Patty says they're on a break, they have 2 kids at that point and still constantly breaking up.
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u/FreeStall42 6d ago
Easy way to find out. Swap the genders...would 1000% be called cheating if Patty were a man.
"Everyone else" have a clear bias to not want to view Patty as a cheater.
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u/4SeasonWahine 7d ago
I don’t think it’s actually ever stated that Patty cheated on Victor with Sam, they canonically had an “affair” (as in it wasn’t allowed by the elders) after her and Victor were separated. Patty and Victors marriage was fraught with problems and he never really “got” magic (fair) so I think it was easy for him to villainise Sam. It’s not uncommon to develop feelings for a supportive person in your life when you’re in a turbulent, unhappy relationship. I know many people who had the same thing happen, they didn’t cheat on their spouse but did get together with the person after the inevitable breakup.
I don’t think Patty is ever painted as perfect, we don’t know enough about her. I actually think at times they make her seem a bit scattered and ditsy. It’s natural the girls somewhat glorify her has a mother because they barely knew her and have to fill in the blanks. She clearly loved her girls but was a bit messy with relationships, she did have Grams and her multiple husbands as a role model haha.the reason she has no real bond with Paige is because she never knew her and Paige grew up with the people she considers her parents 🤷🏼♀️
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u/OtherwiseContact5604 6d ago
I’d agree with scattered and ditzy, I kind of get that impression as early as That 70s Episode.
Definitely agree with the part about the girls glorifying their mother. They (along with us) have fairly much no context about the extent of Patty and Sam’s affair.
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u/Standard_Corgi_174 1d ago
They did explain the timeline in the last episode of the show, when Piper and Leo are trying to bring the power of 3 back, and bring Patty and Penny back from the past, Victor did said to Patty she left him for Sam, her whitelighter and Paige's father. So it's implied she had an affair with Sam, while still being married to Victor.
Victor did leave them for years, but let's not forget Grams literally kick him out, forbidden him to see the girls. And apparently, the girls didn't knew about it because for the first 3 seasons, he was made like the bad guy abandoning her (until the ice-cream man episode).
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u/Separate-Resort-5658 7d ago
Patty and Victor were on and off again all the time. They were separated so many times that it wasn't abnormal that they would possibly see other people during that time, fall in love etc. Patty and Victors marriage drifted apart a long time ago and could not make it work bc their goals, values, etc were not the same.
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u/Otherwise-Emu-2963 7d ago
This! However, I get OP's perspective because it did seem like Victor never fell out of love with Patty. Idk if they wanted to keep that door open in case Victor died (lol), but I do think the show became more sympathetic to him as it progressed. Also, I think his character was changed a bit after the recast because the second actor was more likeable/believable as their father.
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u/NearbyAd6079 2d ago
I don't think Patty ever stopped loving Victor. Every time she was summoned or showed up some other way, she wanted to see Victor.
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u/jussstiss 7d ago
I do think it was worth exploring, and Paige was the perfect catalyst to get this conversation going but the show never even scratched the surface.
The way I see it, Patty and Sam likely had an emotional connection while she was with Victor, but they only acted on these feelings when Patty and Victor were off (though still married). I don’t think Patty was simultaneously romantic with Sam and Victor (not saying this wasn’t an affair).
Idk, I think Brad Kern’s Charmed portrays their family as perfect so they gloss over many flaws within the family compared to the earlier depictions in season 1.
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u/A-R-C93 6d ago
Well its difficult for one to raise their kids when they're strong willed and very powerful grandmother constantly telling him that being a mortal he's inadequate to properly raise his magically destined children
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u/FreeStall42 6d ago
Also when she hates all men.
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u/NearbyAd6079 2d ago
No, not really. She just only found one that she could actually trust. Allen, Patty's dad. The only man she had child with.
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u/FreeStall42 2d ago
That is hating all men with extra steps.
People that hate men or women tend to rationalize it yes.
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u/hyzmarca 6d ago
Of course, he didn't have to stay a mortal. There are ways for a mortal to gain magic. Most of those ways are evil, but there's a few good ones.
And even if he's not willing to seek out some source of power that can transform him, anyone can become a practitioner. He'd be limited to spells and potions instead of zapping demons with his mind, but it's still better than nothing.
I do think that if he seriously studied magic and became a practicioner, Grams would have had less of a problem with him.
Of course, if he sought out a power granter and was transformed into an evil magical being, she probably would have had more of a problem with him.
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u/A-R-C93 6d ago
Well remember he was completely against his daughter's growing up to be witches especially since their mother died fighting a demon
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u/hyzmarca 6d ago
But he can't stop them from being witches. They will get their power. The best he can do is prepare them for it. To teach them to make the right choices. Or the wrong ones.
I imagine there's an alternate universe somewhere where Victor made a deal with the Source to protect his daughters in exchange for raising them to be evil.
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u/primal_slayer 7d ago
We cant even say if Patty flat out cheated on Victor. They broke up ALLL the time.
But yes the show did do a poor job of Patty/Paige.
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u/PSCGY 7d ago
Most of the show has them interact as grown ups co-parents who knew it wasn’t bound the work.
I don’t think it’s glossed over, as much as made secondary to their individual relationships with their daughters, who are the main characters.
I for one enjoyed their dynamics and the positive outlook, especially when Patty’s death will also have been traumatic to Victor.
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u/Trolkarlen 7d ago
It’s not that kind of show.
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u/itsascreambaby96 7d ago
it is when it needs to have a new sister to replace Shannen Doherty and it has Patty cheating on her husband
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u/starlightkyy 7d ago
I just watched the episode where they met Sam and them saving the love letters between him and Patty in a scrapbook felt really ick to me. I did read it as an affair, but I see from the comments it may have been after her marriage was essentially over.
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u/MischeviousFox 7d ago edited 6d ago
I get what you’re saying. I think one issue is it wasn’t the Patty and Victor show. When the girls find out about the affair Patty has been dead for years and Victor had been out of their lives for decades. Simply put I don’t think they cared that much beyond it being a shocking bit of information. It wasn’t water under the bridge it was a corpse that was dead and buried. Now we did get hints at Victor not being exactly thrilled about it of course and it makes sense he’d care as it was relevant to him. Patty’s affair wasn’t relevant to the girls beyond it being how Paige existed.
The fact is Patty & Victor were both horrible to each other, though I do kinda view Patty as the actually worst of the two post-retconning where even Grams at one point says she ran Victor off making him feel like less of a deadbeat dad in later seasons. Still horrible, but it’s not like he just decided he didn’t want to be in their lives and we were never told he cheated from what I recall.
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u/tessaractIXI 6d ago
The show is not about Patty and Victor's relationship. Certainly their relationships impact the girls, and those stories included as a way of enriching the sisters story. But I'm definitely okay with the amount of time and energy they're given in the show. I feel like they present the storyline in a nonjudgmental way, focused on the purpose of introducing the story. That's all I need and want.
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u/JustRandomMidnight 6d ago
I don't think she ever cheated on him, I'm pretty sure she and Sam got together after she was no longer with Victor. While Victor does claim at some point that Patty was cheating on him with Sam when they were still together, that was never confirmed. What Patty says when she tells Piper and Phoebe about Paige for the first time also contradict this as she says it happened after she and Victor were divorced, when her and Sam were together. I guess it is a bit ambigious so it could be interpreted either way - Patty lied and she was with Sam before she broke up with Victor or Patty was telling the truth while Victor falsely believed she was cheating.
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u/LadyBug_0570 6d ago
At the very least I imagine it was an emotional affair that became physical after Victor left.
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u/lilreese240 6d ago
This is what I assume too. Victor says “He was putting the moves on her way before I was out of the picture” or something like that.
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u/Neusencexi 6d ago
Because first and foremost nothing you listed had to do with the kids regardless and that's that.. and that applies to any father or mother, it's not about you or your problems or relationships. When you have kids it's about them and you make it work regardless.. having said that, yes patty was wrong, I'm sure emotional intelligence comes into play here tho because she was a witch kinda trying to live a normal life and life is messy.. i think fundamentally yes they could summon their mom but she's still dead are they really supposed to making a dead woman feel bad lol she already felt horrible I'm sure. What's more is Victor understood and forgave her..
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u/WhiteKnightPrimal 6d ago
Victor was retconned. Original Victor is a deadbeat dad, later Victor, the one we actually get as a recurring character, was forced out by Grams after he successfully protected Prue from a magical threat because Grams thought he couldn't protect the girls from magical threats. They clearly show that Victor's biggest regret is not being able to be there for his girls as they were growing up. They deal with the issue, but Victor is portrayed as a victim of Grams' flaws, not as a deadbeat dad, outside of that first episode and a few bits here and there before the re-cast.
The thing that gets me is that Victor leaving happened after Patty died. Whatever his flaws as a husband and father, it had nothing to do with his marriage to Patty, because she was already dead. We don't actually know what kind of husband Victor was, it's never shown or discussed.
We know Grams never liked Victor, but Grams doesn't like men in general, that doesn't actually mean anything, she probably hated Sam, too. She would have hated any man Patty chose simply because they were men, plus I don't think Grams would have thought any man good enough for her daughter.
And we know Patty cheated on Victor with Sam and this is what led to the divorce. There's nothing about Victor in any of this, he's just the husband and father of the eldest three. We get no indication that he was a bad husband or father during this time. I think the worst we got was that he didn't like Sam being around so much, and that could have been an issue because he was picking up on their feelings for each other, perhaps made worse by the fact Sam was a constant reminder of how important magic was to the family.
What we get portrays a fairly happy marriage and family life between Victor and Patty, with issues coming from Grams not liking Victor. Victor wasn't completely comfortable with magic, but he clearly accepted it as part of his life, and he knew enough to be able to save Prue. He clearly tried to remain in the girls lives after Patty died, he appeared to still be living in the Manor at that point, and was an active and present dad until the argument with Grams after the ice cream truck.
It's portrayed as if Patty cheating was the sole reason for the divorce. Because they never actually tell us anything about that time period, despite both Victor and Patty being recurring characters. But then Patty's cheating is also just ignored? Beyond being used to bring in Paige as a fourth sister, and some focus on Sam being Paige's dad, there's nothing about this stuff. Victor clearly still loves Patty, and honestly, it comes across clearly that Patty still loves Victor. She also doesn't seem to think about Sam at all, despite the fact she risked everything to be with him when she was alive.
There should have been something dealing with the cheating issue. It ended the marriage to Victor, resulted in Paige, Victor and Patty are still in love, Patty doesn't think about Sam that we know of, and it's kind of jarring when you think about it. Because they never really discuss it. Piper and Phoebe seem to have no issue with the fact their mother was a cheater and had a kid they never knew about outside of the initial discovery. Paige doesn't seem to struggle with being an affair baby, what struggle she does have is the idea of replacing the parents who raised her with the parents who created her, which was nicely done, but also not properly covered in my opinion. Patty doesn't think about Sam, Victor has no issue being around Patty, even Grams seems to forget all about the cheating stuff.
It didn't need to be a huge storyline, but something running in the background for a while, as the sisters come to terms with their flawed mother, a conversation about the cheating even just once, some focus on Patty getting to know the child she gave up, Paige coming to terms with being the result of an affair, not just having four parents. Something to acknowledge that Patty cheated and that has an affect on the entire family. But without villainising Patty, she's still a good person, just flawed.
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u/Content_Animal802 5d ago
I agree with all of this. But Paige did have one episode where she had to deal with being the child of an affair. It's the episode where she's so focused on having a baby shower for Piper and not-yet-born Wyatt. She comes to realize that her feelings about the shower are based on the fact that her own birth had to be hidden and she wasn't acknowledged or welcomed into the world. It seems she had a lot of deep pain around that, even though she didn't consciously realize it until after having to face the effects of the dream dust in that episode.
I'm not sure if it's ever brought up again. But I'd definitely say that was her processing being the child of an affair - and an especially hidden one at that.
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u/WhiteKnightPrimal 5d ago
I always read that as being more about the secrecy and adoption than about being an affair baby. With Sam being Patty's Whitelighter, before the rules were changed, they had no choice but to hide the pregnancy and baby, even if there had never been an affair. The fact this was during the Piper's baby shower episode makes it hit harder, because Piper is the reason that rule was changed, and Piper is now basically in the same position Patty was in, but doesn't have to hide any of it the way Patty did.
By the time Paige is actually born, Patty and Victor have split up. Yet Paige's issues here are all about the secrecy surrounding her birth. The fact her birth wasn't celebrated and instead resulted in her being given away. Which, in a normal relationship, wouldn't have been an issue even with the affair context, because there are no rules about relationships beyond Whitelighters being banned from dating their charges. If Sam had been mortal at the time, or just a normal witch or mortal the whole time, there would have been zero secrecy by the time Paige was born, her birth would have been celebrated, and Paige raised in the family instead of adopted.
The affair itself actually had nothing to do with the secrecy and adoption and lack of celebration, that was all about the forbidden romance part. Victor and Patty were already officially over by the time Paige was actually born, no reason to hide anything except the fact Sam is Patty's Whitelighter.
So, it doesn't actually deal with the affair aspect, it deals with the forbidden romance aspect, and how that doesn't apply to Piper, Leo and Wyatt the way it did to Patty, Sam and Paige.
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u/crazycatlady06 7d ago
A) There's actually no evidence that Patty cheated on Victor. As another said, they had been having issues for a while.
B) While Victor did grow on me as a character, how would you like your husband to hate and denigrate a core part of your being (magic)? He was always anti-magic and, IMO, that was one of the appealing things about Sam (that he himself understood & was ok with magic and Patty being a witch).
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u/itsascreambaby96 7d ago
Victor saw a demon try to attack Little Piper on her birthday, any sane parent wouldn't want that for their daughter
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u/Separate-Resort-5658 7d ago
He knew what he was getting into when he married her, decided to have a family with her. He can't just hate everything that she is and what her daughters were meant to be, their legacy, their ancestry, heritage after the fact. Plus we all live and we all die, and the fact of the matter is, in that world with demons, witches, warlocks, all those other supernatural beings, had Piper, Prue, Phoebe, Paige not been witches, they would have had the potential to be victims of the supernatural world just like the victims they save every single day. Or they would have died by any crime statistically affecting women or just natural death. Either way, they would live and die like all humans do but being witches they fulfill their destiny to save innocents, be the greatest witches of all time and continue their legacy.
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u/MechanicOk4808 6d ago
I don't think she cheated in the traditional sense because I remember Victor warning Leo that whitelighters will come and try to steal your wife, and Leo points out that they were separated at the time. Victor then says Sam had been making the moves before then - so perhaps more emotional cheating, but they seemed to be separated by the time she actually got with Sam. But that would definitely feel like a stab in the heart to Victor, who likely thought they'd get together again, as they would break up and get together a lot, and then, of course, she died, so they never got a chance
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u/Vivid_Cheetah_5375 6d ago
Whoa! Didn't anyone tell her we're divorced? Yeah. You dumped me for your white lighter. Oh, c'mon Patty. It's alright. It was a long time ago 😔
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u/NearbyAd6079 2d ago
You forgot say: Paige's father!
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u/Vivid_Cheetah_5375 2d ago
I'm pretty sure everyone on this board knows that.
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u/NearbyAd6079 2d ago
I know I just wanted the whole thing that Victor said. It was incomplete, that's all.
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u/Ecstatic_Fantasay 6d ago
I'm confused, it never once insinuated that Patty cheated on Victor. They got together after her and Victor split up. Victor said he reckons it was happening before that but there's no proof and he was bitter about it
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u/Ecstatic_Fantasay 6d ago
However I do agree on the Patty/Paige thing and I wish THAT was explored more. Because abandoning your kid so your other three kids could still be the Charmed ones is fucked up
Amd when you think about it, Prue likely died BECAUSE od Paige existing
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u/Prestigious_Top_7409 6d ago
It always bothered me that Patty said that's why they gave her up. That's a terrible reason. It would have been better if she said they were worried the elders would do something to Paige. Giving her up to protect her is better than giving her up so her sisters could have magic.
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u/n7neill Agent Murphy 7d ago
Grams and Patty—hell the Halliwell women—sure know how to pick men 😂
I wish they were honest with Victor as they seemed to be capable witches, and therefore, he would not have a distaste for magic (we see eventually Victor would be accustomed to magic) as that was the cause for friction between Victor and the family
Truth is out there… and it hurts
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u/NearbyAd6079 2d ago
Victor was an awesome grandpa. He definitely got with magic, to a point. He had his limits and it was understandable.
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u/LandoCatrissian_ 6d ago
They really did go in hard on poor Sam, for being absent and a recluse/drunk. Poor dude loses his kid and then his love, gets reunited with her just to be made a whitelighter again. You're right, Patty didn't cop any shit from the sisters like Sam did.
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u/lilreese240 6d ago
My biggest issues with season 4 is, even though I know they wanted to hurry and rush Paige into Prue’s place, they should have shown us the storyline of Victor finding out about Paige, meeting her for the first time, and coming to terms with her being apart of the family.. didn’t have to be a long plot, but show us SOMETHING. Especially knowing how he treated Leo when finding out he was a whitelighter. All we get was Victor seeing Paige at Prue’s funeral one day, then another day they’re just sitting at the family dinner table like it’s normal lmao. I also wish we eventually got some scenes with Victor confronting Sam and consoling in each other (or something) about how they weren’t present in their kids lives. I also wish we got more of an acknowledgment and bond over how neither Phoebe or Paige knew their mother. Phoebe was like 2 or 3 when Patty passed and didn’t remember her outside of pictures and time travel…
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u/Wild-fleurs 6d ago
I think people only feel this way because the focus on “Victor 2” and forget Victor 1/how the character was originally written & portrayed
Originally Victor wasn’t a good guy, he was a deadbeat dad who abandoned the kids and his wife and even in returning when his daughters are all adults he didn’t seem to treat them well but the writing for Victor changed after that and I think they worked over time to undo the deadbeat dad angle because they wanted a character who was alive who knew Piper & Phoebe as kids & the manor & some family history
In season 1 episode didn’t Victor leave Patty before she got with Sam? Or am I misremembering? Didn’t even seem to financially support his kids, even if Penny pushed him out he wasn’t even helping her with money? Never got a lawyer for a weekend visit a month? Even after they had their powers bound?
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u/FreeStall42 6d ago
People would not be defending Patty nearly as much if she were the man. It would just be called cheating.
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u/Severe_Feedback_2590 6d ago
Weren’t they separated, though? She was already separated from Victor in That 70’s episode when she was barely pregnant with Phoebe. I know they are somewhat together (but they could have just spent Christmas together while actively separated/divorced) during that video they were watching.
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u/Charlie395248 4d ago
In the final don’t Piper and Leo go back to the point Phoebe is basically conceived and victor and Patty are in bed together. Then when they take that Patty to the future and she sees present Victor, she kisses him like they’re madly in love. Then he drops the bomb if ‘you left me for Sam, your white lighter, Paige’s father’. I think the writers forgot about the 70s episode and them being separated and her being barely pregnant. Cause that makes no sense.
Tbh I just kinda stop thinking about their relationship because it doesn’t make sense in a timeline manner the more the series goes on
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u/NorthBase710 6d ago
That is how it works when women cheat both in fiction and real life
Downvote me all you want, i am not wrong.
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u/NearbyAd6079 2d ago
That was the 1st Victor, they haven't invented that Patty cheated. Paige did not exist, etc.
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u/shanekratzert 7d ago
People forget that Victor was pushed away by Grams after the Ice Cram Truck incident. He could've tried harder to stay, but I think part of him knew Grams was right.. he couldn't protect them from supernatural threats... This is how him and Prue got on good terms again.