Episode Report Card Demian: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I screw dead people.
By Demian | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.27.1998
Hotel Of The Tool. Phoebe and The Tool pedeconference through the lobby, she in her Jeannie togs, he in his Nehru jacket. He natters something about a VIP in the Presidential Suite or whatever, and urges Phoebe to "tell him something good so he'll extend his stay." None of this is important -- it's merely filler chat meant to get them into the bar area in time for Phoebe to spy a businessman leaving his wallet on a table. So much of this episode is useless padding. We know Phoebe won't keep this job, just as we know Prue isn't going to throw Andy over because of the ex-wife, so would someone please explain to me why we have to plod through all of this crap before the gals solve Mark's murder? I mean it. I'm at a total loss to explain any of it. Anyway, Phoebe hoists the businessman's wallet and is flung into a black-and-white premonition. She sees him leaving the hotel through the front doors, accidentally dropping his briefcase into the street, and getting whomped by a speeding Cadillac when he bends to retrieve his briefcase from the gutter. You'll recognize the clip of him flipping ass over head across the hood from the opening credits. Phoebe snaps out of it as The Tool approaches her, asking if she's okay. She lies that she's fine, staring the whole while at The Pleatherette Wallet Of Vehicular Doom.
Manor. The Corpse About Town tries to turn on the television, but his index finger keeps plowing through the power button into the middle of the set. Piper enters the parlor carrying a blanket. "Is that for me?" he asks. Piper allows that it is. "I wasn't sure -- do ghosts sleep?" she hesitates. "I don't even get cold anymore," he answers with a rueful smile. Death Chat. Mark admits that "it's finally sinking in -- everything [he] lost." He waxes nostalgic for oysters and beer and pick-up basketball and arriving home to find messages from his mother asking why he hasn't "married a nice Chinese girl yet" and Piper's panties are getting totally damp. Me? I'm flashing back to Margaret Cho's rendition of what her mother leaves on the answering machine, so I'm giggling instead of getting appropriately misty-eyed. "Boop. Moran? Grandma and Grandpa...they gonna DIE!" Snicker. Mark sits on the sofa and tells Piper about his mother -- how they relied on each other after his father died, and how she taught him everything she knows about cooking. Piper reveals that she's a chef, and they flirt about Peking Duck, with Mark telling her he would have enjoyed being a chef "if [he] hadn't sold out to the molecular biology program at Stanford." Piper titters, "So you can cook and clone DNA?" "Yeah, but the duck's harder." Ow! Stop it with the banter and the innuendoes and the flirting with each other! He's DEAD, for Christ's sake! They don't listen to me. They never do. Piper sits next to him on the sofa, and they flash their teeth at each other and snicker and guffaw and giggle and Piper, honey? Get a vibrator.