Episode Report Card Owen: D | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Morality Bites
By Owen | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.06.1999
Underground witch hideout. It's dirty and urban: there's graffiti sprayed on the outside of the building! Leo explains to the Ps that the extras lounging about on cots are "in danger because of the witch trials Phoebe started." Piper convinces Leo that she's from the past by grabbing his face and planting a wet one on him. Prue tries hard not to look like a fifth wheel. Leo believes the Ps are from 1999, because Piper hadn't kissed him like that since that time period. Huh? So how was Melinda conceived anyway? And maybe I should take this up with the alt.obsessive.charmed newsgroup: when did Leo become mortal enough to procreate? No answer in this scene. Instead, Leo proceeds to explain that he was the one who pointed them toward the future spell blah blah people accused of witchcraft unjustly blah blah Phoebe killed a man because he brutally murdered someone she cared about blah blah a technicality set him free blah blah Phoebe's power passive no longer blah blah now she can kill blah blah blah. Hmm -- a sports figure who's a brutal murderer getting set free despite a public clamoring for justice? Didn't I read something similar in the local California papers a few years back? Prue says that they need to get to Phoebe and fill her in on what's happened. Leo hears another organ chord page and says he'll "orb in" to visit Phoebe instead of the Ps. Prue and Piper are safe at the moment because Pratt checked them out and didn't suspect them. Prue tells him they'll get the "return to the past" spell from the BoS and meet him back at the manor.
Buckland's Auction House. Menials swarm around Prue. A redheaded Amazon assistant woman tells them to give her "air." They walk into Prue's office. Piper follows, but the assistant shuts the door in her face. Hey, nice! Piper enters the room and tells the assistant -- who introduces herself as Anne -- that she's with Prue. Anne has never met her boss's sister, and says quite tactlessly that she "forgot Prue had another one." Wah wah business talk wah wah Prue's a ruthless businesswoman wah wah "to hell with the little people" wah wah Prue asks about her husband wah wah Anne tells Prue "like she has the time" wah wah, wah wah, wah wah. Prue shoos Anne out of the office. Finally. Prue bemoans her future life: "Look at me. All I do is work. Cause layoffs with the flick of a pen. No man to speak of." Yes, she really said that last part -- all that success, but no man around. Why don't the writers just pen an episode where Prue has to go into the past to give herself a copy of The Rules? Ugh. Moving on. Prue decides not to dwell on "the nightmare that's [her] life." She uses the key to open her safe. She pulls out the BoS. She hikes up the front of her halter so her boobs don't pop out. Hey, pretty lady! Shannen, two choices: Either have a stern talk with wardrobe, or adjust yourself before the cameras start to roll. Prue looks at the BoS for the "return" spell, but it's gone. Their future selves already used it up.
A sidebar on the driven, nightmarish businesswoman with black-rooted blonde hair dressed in hooker wear as corporate attire. I sense an attempt at satire on the part of the writers here, but didn't the Amanda Woodward monster escape from Aaron Spelling's lab in the first place?