Episode Report Card Demian: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Biting the hand that snatches food from their mouths
By Demian | Season 6 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.08.2004
Cut to a crystal ball being lovingly buffed by Head On A Nerd. Snidely storms into his office and telekinetically flings shut the door behind him. "Something wrong?" Head On A Nerd asks, for Head On A Nerd is nothing if not perceptive. "Yes," Snidely grimly confirms. "I think they're about to figure us out." Snidely flares his hateful nostrils around until said hateful nostrils are overwhelmed by the opening credits.
Okay, that feminine hygiene ad where the chick shoves a tampon into the hole in the bottom of the rowboat to stop a leak? So very, very wrong. All I can think of whenever I see it is the opening shower scene in Carrie where Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, and Edie McClurg are screaming, "Plug it UP! Plug it UP! Plug it UP!" while a bleeding and terrified Sissy Spacek cowers, screaming, on the tile floor. I don't think that the association they hoped viewers would make when they came up with this idea for the spot, you know what I mean?
A brief and ovary-free opening travelogue whisks us over to the Manor where, up in the nonexistent attic, Raige tortures a dark demonic sort by activating a flaring set of Mystical Crysticals arranged around his prone form on the carpet, the better to zap him with bolts of sporking electricity. Big Gay Chris winces in empathic pain before wondering, "You're sure he's a demon, right?" There's an Abu Ghraib joke buried somewhere in all of this, and were I tasteless enough to find it, I'd share it with you. Raige mugs for a moment in response to her overly cautious nephew before activating the Crysticals once more and demanding, "Tell us everything you know about the witches who were murdered!" The demon feigns ignorance, but quickly changes his tune the moment Raige sporks him once again. "Oh!" he splutters. "The witches! Well, the one last night, she put on a great show. She shot fire from her hands, and-and-and she put up a great fight!" Raige wrinkles her nose at the stench of the presumed bullshit streaming from this guy's mouth, and snatches up a handy potion vial to fling it into his head as the shot cuts to another overhead of the action. The demon's body, surprisingly enough, does not erupt instantly into a veil of fire as he howls and wails and blazes his merry way down to Hell. Rather, it sort of dissolves from his head down to his toes in a series of sparkling yellow lights as a column of black smoke billows from the carpet to dissipate upwards into the camera lens. That was different. And kind of cool, too. I have to admit, the effects on this show have just been getting better and better as the series drags on. Pity the scripts suck so much. Big Gay Chris, annoyed, leaps to his feet to yelp, "What did you do that for? He was just starting to talk!" "He was lying!" Raige insists. "There was no witch murdered last night, and…" Presumably, she was going to finish that sentence with "good witches don't shoot fire from their hands," but she's interrupted by the noisy racket heralding her former brother-in-law's entrance on a cloud of orbs. "A witch was killed last night!" the Dolt pants as he crosses to Raige's side. Big Gay Chris's smirky "Now what was that about the lying?" reaction shot is priceless. Raige and Big Gay Chris stoop to gather the Mystical Crysticals from the carpet as they fill the Dolt in on recent events. Raige believes that a demon acting alone is quite simply incapable of killing so many women in so short a period of time. Rather, she thinks someone might be hiring demonic hit men to carry out the murders. The Dolt predictably leaps to the conclusion that someone's attempting to organize the Underworld, again, some more. Raige shoots Big Chris a look of death and snots that she's glad someone finally agrees with her. Hey, back off my husband, bitch. And might I remind you that said someone who agrees with you just happens to be named "the Dolt"? Whatever. Raige also chooses this moment to remind the world that Phoebe lacks her active powers, so Raige intends to drop off a handful of offensive potions at Phoebe's place of employment. "What should we do?" Chris asks. "Pray that she doesn't get attacked," Raige snorts before sailing out of the nonexistent room.
The shot cuts to a from-space view of the Bay Area before swooping down to the intersection of Presidio Avenue and California Street and burrowing into the earth to deposit us in the depths of the demonic television studio. Yes, that's the same effect from "Used Karma." Yes, it was more appropriate there. However, what's far more important is that our heroic idiots are three and a half blocks away from the demons of the week, and yet remain unaware of said demons' existence until forty minutes into this episode. Stupid show. Johnny Demonic from the pre-credits sequence has been joined by his partner in crime to persuade a strapping upper-level type to join their game show as a contestant. Johnny's partner is being played this evening by Elaine Hendrix, who's appeared in multiple episodes of Joan Of Arcadia this season, but whom I know best as Lisa Luder, the popular chick who turns into the vaguely lesbionic fashionista in Romy And Michele's High School Reunion. Elaine's sporting some serious Terri Nunn hair here -- bleach blonde bob with a severe line of black fringe at the ends -- that certainly takes me back. And if I have to explain who Terri Nunn is to you people, you're way too young to be reading this site. Return to Yahooligans! immediately, and don't ever come back.