Episode Report Card Demian: C | 275 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Dolt, Be Not Proud
By Demian | Season 8 | Episode 10 | Aired on 2005.11.27
The shot cuts to the Manor exterior for a bizarrely placed time-lapse of the clouds shooting through the sky above the façade before heading back in to the sun porch, where an Avatar we've never seen before materializes almost simultaneously with a heretofore unknown ever-useless Elder. They glare at each other until the ever-useless Elder spits, "What are you trying to do?" in Piper's direction. "I'm trying to save my husband," she simmers, turning slowly to face him before carefully enunciating, "Any way I can." The camera lingers on her stony expression before dropping into the next commercial break.
Back from the break, the Avatar and the ever-useless Elder sneer and snipe at each other over past slights for a very lengthy period of time before Piper cuts through all of the crap to get to the point. Both the Avatars and their rivals in Whitelighterland "owe" the Dolt, so one or the other is going to save him, or else. There's a long pause in which the Avatar and the Elder keep shooting guilty side-eyes at each other until Piper finally snaps, "Well, somebody say something!" The ever-useless Elder eventually allows that it's not so much that they won't heal the Dolt; it's that they can't. The strangely delicate Avatar hastens to agree, informing Piper, "Using our powers to save [Frankendolt] is a path that neither Elder nor Avatar can travel." "Hang on a second," Piper peeves. "Are you telling me that the first time you two agree on anything is when you decide to let my husband die?" The Avatar and the ever-useless Elder are all, "Pretty much, yeah." Piper excuses herself for a moment and heads down into the Manor basement, where she rummages through the boxes and shelves for about fifteen minutes until she finally locates Prue's Enormous Bitch, which for some silly reason or another she'd misplaced for the last three years. After straining through the effort of strapping it on all by her lonesome, Piper then lumbers back up the rickety stairs, through the kitchen, and onto the sun porch -- careful not to topple any of Grams's priceless antiques with the thing along the way -- and gets all up in the ever-useless Elder's face to howl, "YOU LISTEN TO ME! Leo at one point in his life believed in both of your causes -- he devoted his life at the expense of his family to those beliefs -- and you're telling me that you won't save that life? Why the hell can't you tell me what's going on? What is your big secret?" More guilty stares from the higher-ranking magical entities on the sun porch before the ever-useless Elder, choosing his words carefully, admits, "We don't have the...authority to share that information." Piper's all, "Fine, you worthless loser, so who does?" "You might want to think twice before going there," the strangely delicate Avatar eyebrows. Piper whips Prue's Enormous Bitch around to bark, "Going where?" Some otherworldly choir joins the tense strings on the soundtrack as the ever-useless Elder counsels, "You're going to need your sisters." Several on the forums got quite excited at this moment, because it does seem like the gals are being directed straight to this show's version of God, or whomever. However, I never thought they'd touch the very idea of a singular deity with a bargepole on this garbage, and it turns out I was right. Not that I'm happy about that at all. Seriously. Piper's awfully tense about the whole thing, though, isn't she? Seems Prue's Enormous Bitch will be of no use to her during the trials to come, alas. Just when I was getting used to its glorious return to the small screen, too. And where are those wacky sisters of hers, anyway?