Episode Report Card Demian: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Secretly INSANE Brody And The Warehouse Of Doom
By Demian | Season 7 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.15.2005
Cut to the Paramount backlot, which is now at long last portraying the city it was always meant to represent. The camera peers down through a railing into a subway entrance from the "snow"-glazed sidewalk above; the vortex opens in the graffiti-scarred hallway below to disgorge Raige and The Bulge That Won't Go Away. Raige, entirely unaffected by the journey, practically has to drag the gagging and doubled-over Brody up the steps, with the latter insisting despite all evidence to the contrary that he's fine. "Oh, my God," he breathes as they mount the remaining stairs to the sidewalk and he gets his first look at the streetscape around them. Which, you know, is the exact same streetscape he last saw in "Charmed Noir," only this time it's in color, with festive Christmas decorations replacing all those tommy-gun-toting sociopaths. So I guess I can understand his apparent confusion. Christ, I hate this show. "Wait a minute," he gulps suddenly before darting heedlessly into the street. "Something's not right!" "What's not right?" Raige calls after him as he's nearly run down by a Cadillac with -- props to the props people -- a period-appropriate orange-and-blue New York State license plate affixed to the front bumper. God, those things were ugly. As Brody and the Cadillac driver exchange a few choice words, Raige yells, "Where are you going?" Brody stomps the rest of the way across the street and hustles over to a newsstand, where he hoists a copy of that day's New York Monitor. Which, for some strange reason, features The New York Times's "All The News That's Fit To Print" motto on its upper-left-hand corner. Whatever. I was supposed to be paying attention to that "President Reagan Announces Sanctions Against USSR" headline, anyway, which I'm going to pretend I didn't see, because acknowledging it would mean I'd be forced to check if any such thing happened on or about December 28, 1981, which is when the events of this subplot are taking place. Then again, I think Reagan was announcing sanctions against the Soviet Union every damn day for eight years, so researching the accuracy of the headline is probably unnecessary.
In any event, Raige confirms that the afternoon of December 28, 1981, was indeed the worst of Brody's entire life, but that's not the problem. The problem is, they've landed outside Columbia University where his parents taught, and not in the "warehouse near J.F.K." where they died "at 7:52 at night." "Maybe we're starting here for some other reason," Raige wisely suggests. "Yeah," Brody impudently snaps, "because the Avatars want me to miss seeing it." "Not gonna happen," he snorts, dodging passersby to the curb to hail a taxi to the airport. In a crappily overdubbed insert, Raige, spotting the badly CGI'd ad atop the not-stopping cab, croons, "Cool. Raiders of the Lost Ark. I always wanted to see that." Brody grimaces in disgust and darts off down the sidewalk, for he, as we shall presently learn, is an Indiana Jones aficionado, and cannot mask his contempt for someone who has somehow missed catching Raiders once ever in her life. I grimace in disgust and dart...nowhere, actually, but that's not the point. The point is, Raiders was released in June of 1981, so it's extremely unlikely a cab in New York would still be advertising that movie in December of that year. Then again, they've screwed up movie release dates before, so I don't know what I was expecting.