Episode Report Card Demian: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Soul Soporific
By Demian | Season 6 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.01.2003
P3. Pointless Subplot Number One. "Ryan," the first of Piper's dates, descends the stairs to greet her, and she drops the single-mom bomb by rolling Tiny Gay Chris out from behind the bar. Ryan's delighted to meet Tiny Chris, and instantly suggests they alter their lunch plans to include the kid. Piper's pleasantly surprised by his reaction, and crosses to her office to retrieve her purse as Ryan hoists Tiny Chris from his little walker-thingy to make googly noises at him. Ryan's soon silenced, though, when Tiny Chris -- who's facing away from the camera -- unleashes some sort of sparkly blue mojo from his face. Horrified, Ryan places Tiny Chris on the floor and flees. Piper returns in time to catch sight of Ryan's ass as it vanishes up the stairs and through the front door. Tiny Chris innocently toddles over to his unamused mom. Piper picks him up and gives him a wicked side-eye as we hear Ryan squealing away in his car.
Somewhere else, Raige and Slampiece Buttfuck amble down a sidewalk as Buttfuck exposits that he's now living alone in Castle Montanague. The rest of his clan, you see, rather conveniently followed Lady Montanague when she moved "back East" after that unpleasantness with the late Olivia was resolved a couple of weeks ago. With the Montanague clan's potential drain on the casting budget so tidily dispatched, the two turn to the issue of Dead Larry. Raige is convinced she was sent to Dead Larry's office for a reason. Buttfuck's of the opinion that things like fate and destiny -- if they exist in the first place -- are there only to screw people over. Raige confesses that Piper and Phoebe have told her to just let Dead Larry go, but she herself feels as though something remains to be done. Buttfuck grins and suggests she summon Dead Larry's ghost to ask it directly about the whole thing. Raige's face lights up at the suggestion, and the two pass out of the frame, presumably to head back to the Manor for a séance.
The screen flares white, and when we return, we find ourselves in the middle of a slave auction down in Hell, hosted by this week's guest demon, Keith Szarabajka. Most of you will know him from his work on Angel, but I remember him best as Jamie Ross's evil child-stealing, scumbag-defending ex in that three-episode bi-coastal Law & Order O.J. rip-off from a few years back. I must say, he hasn't aged well. Or, at the very least, he's aged strangely. Not that he was ever an object of anyone's lust in the first place, mind you, but he's sporting a mustache now, and with the pounds he's added since last I saw him, he looks like Martin Mull: The Roseanne Years. Anyway, Keith's some sort of soul broker, and Dead Larry's one of the items for sale. The bidding demons -- and there are about twenty of them -- exchange powers for human spirits, but it's never really explained what the demons do with said spirits once they've purchased them. Sure, Keith describes his merchandise as "true prize[s] for any soul collector, eater, or trader," but whatever. I can't imagine storage space is easy to come by in the Underworld, and what's your typical demon-on-the-go gonna do with eight or nine human souls hanging around all the time? Feh. It's one ridiculous plot hole in an episode filled with them, so I'm not going to waste time thinking about it. In any event, Dead Larry's on the block, clad in what appears to be sackcloth and chains. Keith exposits that, thanks to his intervention, Dead Larry "became one of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco." Just as Keith opens the bidding "at two powers," though, a swirling cloud of glowing golf balls engulfs Dead Larry and whisks him upwards. Dead Larry's now-empty chains clank onto the ground as Keith rages, "Find him!" A flunky charges through the crowd and vanishes by dimming into a white-outlined black silhouette of himself and dissipating into the air.
Up in the Manor hall, Dead Larry materializes in the center of a ring of candles Raige and Buttfuck have arranged on the floor. "Welcome back," Raige greets him. Dead Larry gapes and pants and bugs out his eyes as we vanish into the commercial break.