Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Have A Feeling We're Not In Toto Anymore, Kansas
By Demian | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.25.2000
A weird fold-in-fold-out cut to the present-day Manor hallway, where the Festers remain frozen. Tiresome nattering between Darryl and Leo follows. Darryl again asks, "Who are you?" of Leo, and gets no answer. Leo wants to get Darryl out of the house, Darryl insists he stay to help the Halliwells because "they're like sisters" to him, the Festers unfreeze and chase the boys in uniform up the stairs. Darryl, who for some reason accessorized his Halloween costume with a loaded automatic, fires off six or seven shots into the Festers' chests, which momentarily disables them. Leo drags Darryl up to the attic, leaving the Festers to plot on the floor. Whatever.
Wipe-cut to the past, where the sisters are unbagged in a candlelit cave. A woman in period garb turns her attention from the pot she's been stirring to the three. Genuflecting in front of them, she intones, "Blessed be," to the quizzical looks of the Halliwells. The woman introduces herself as "Ava, a midwife and a witch, and a free citizen of the colony of Virginia," and expositions the sisters have been called back to the year 1670 to help save a child who is to be born that evening -- a "magical baby," whose mother has been kidnapped by a "dark practitioner" who wishes to raise the child in evil. If they fail, "good magic will never flourish in the New World." Piper and Prue wonder why, if the seventeenth-century coven had the power to pull the three back through time, they don't have the power to save the child themselves. Ava Exposition tells them the power of All Hallows' Eve -- "the witches' most sacred day" -- is what drew the sisters back, and I'm sure TPTB consider smiting her for that bit of ignorant insolence. Ava blathers on about the importance of All Hallows' Eve, then wonders why the sisters don't know of this already. Halloween "isn't what it used to be," Phoebe weakly explains. Piper wants to know if the coven can send them back to 2000 once they've completed their task, Ava states the coven thought the sisters would know how to do this, Piper bitches, and Prue pulls Phoebe and Piper aside to regroup. Prue surmises that "They" sent the Halliwells back, and Piper snarks, "Leave it to 'Them' to zap first and explain never." Prue tells her to knock it off, and figures "They" will return the sisters to their own time after they've saved the baby, which they must accomplish by midnight, giving them less than ten hours, according to Piper's watch. Prue asks Ava if the coven had come up with a plan of its own. Ava hands her a vial containing a potion to put the guards holding the expecting mother to sleep, then announces that the coven figured the sisters would take it from there. D'ohs all around.