Episode Report Card Owen: D | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Morality Bites
By Owen | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.06.1999
The attic. Leo appears in front of the Book of Shadows. He holds his glowing hands two feet above the pages as they flip about. Smart move. I don't know where the BoS has been, either. The sisters enter and Leo's vapor. Piper bitches about her broken date. She notices that the pages were doing "that flipping thing" again. They look at the open book, revealing the headings "To Move Ahead in Time" and "Return Spell." Prue the brain trust informs them, "It's a spell to take us into the future." Piper adds, "And one to send us back again!" Jeez, what is this, a radio program for the blind? Apparently they only get one shot at time travel, because the spells disappear after use. Phoebe is concerned, because last season they almost died traveling to the past. Alyssa, if you don't stop acting with your hands I'm going to take them away from you. Prue argues that they have to go to the future to find out what Phoebe did that put her on the pyre. Phoebe's swayed by this, because her guilt shouldn't be automatically assumed -- a warlock or demon might be to blame. She caves. Piper says they need a target date. The sisters take the BoS and gather around a short table. Phoebe directs them to two weeks before the date of her execution. Piper wonders how she looks, or rather how she will look after ten years of wear and tear caused by "vanquishing." Prue rips out the future spell page, and sets it on fire. The sisters recite: Here are these words/Hear the rhyme/We send to you this burning sign/Then our future selves will find/In another place and time. Based on this spell, I continue to suspect that the BoS is really just a very old dust jacket enclosing a girl's seventh-grade study-hall notebook, but the spell works. The sisters vaporize. Why spend money on state-of-the-art F/X when dry ice and laser pointers do just as well?
Exterior shot of Halliwell Manor. Sped-up time-lapse F/X. Fireflies buzz around the living room and alight on a prone figure on the sofa. A little girl runs into the room, yelling "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" Piper rises from her fetal position on the couch, looking quite beautiful with wavy hair pinned back up off her forehead. Piper says to the moppet, "I think you have the wrong house." Instead of wondering if Mommy's been morning drinking again, the girl smiles and tells Piper that she's "fooling" and embraces her. Piper's taken by surprise. A car horn sounds. The little girl yells that she's "coming." Piper looks at herself in the mirror, touches her hair, plucks at the weird sash thing on her blouse, and notices that's she's wearing a wedding band. She sees a news report on Phoebe on the TV in the background of the reflection. She wonders aloud where the volume is, and a woman's voice proclaims, "Command recognized." The sound on the set comes on. Cool, but that command proclamation would work my last nerve. The talking head reports that there will be a special report upcoming on the execution of Phoebe Halliwell after "regularly scheduled programming - MTV's Real World 18: On the Moon." I don't have the heart to attack this pathetic attempt at satire. Piper's daughter says she's going to be late. Piper, reading my thoughts, screams at the TV, "OK, TV. Shut up! Mute! Something!" The command is recognized.