Episode Report Card Demian: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Smells Like Fish, Tastes Like Chicken (Parte Deux)
By Demian | Season 5 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.21.2002
So, whatever. Teeth!, babe, nice to see you. Don't be a stranger. Piper? Glad that your addled, oxygen-deprived hallucination of your dead mother gave you the strength to conquer your fear or whatever the hell just happened here, but get a better character arc for the rest of the season, okay, honey?
Oh, and you know what really bites? I now look like a total freak for knowing enough about this fucking show to write the above rantlet. I believe this is what is known as "fan-wanking," is it not? Is it? IS IT? I hope you're all pleased with yourselves. I begged you people to kill me at the very beginning of this double recap, but did you listen to me? Noooooo.
So, Teeth! vanishes, and it's revealed that Phoebe's the one who yanks Piper from the briny deep, not Piper's Finola hallucination. They stretch Piper out on the rock, and the Dolt makes with the tingly touch, but what's this? Piper's stomach heals all by itself! How could this happen? Calm the fuck down. Seems the percolating infant already has its powers. After a bit of the joy at this stoopid development, Piper fills the others in on her hallucination. Phoebe quietly slips away.
The Beach. Cole, with his arms upraised in a Resurrection/Ascension pose, sends his bizarre new mojo far and wide to teleport Phoebe from wherever the hell she was over to the sand at his feet. The subsequent conversation is the same old, same old: They mack and make up. What's that, you say? Phoebe claims, "It's over between us"? Yeah, right. Phoebe's pasties and tail vanish. Cole wraps her in his jacket, and they stare at each other as the camera pans out to the ocean. All of the dialogue was overdubbed in the studio subsequent to filming the scene outdoors, by the way, and they neglected to match the levels between the actors' voices. Gimme a T! Gimme an A! Gimme a...screw it.
THE BLACK HOLE OF SOCIAL SERVICES. Raige resigns. Raige cleans out her desk. Raige promises Mr. Boss Man that despite her resignation from THE BLACK HOLE, she'll continue to help people.
Closing ovary montage -- now with twice the wailing! Raige broods at THE BLACK HOLE, then continues to pack up her belongings. Phoebe broods in the Manor kitchen, then signs away her marriage in a "default divorce" uncontested by Cole. Piper broods in her tastefully-appointed boudoir. She takes the photo of Teeth! and the moppet they hired to portray Piper at age five for background photos such as this one, and pastes it onto the front page of the baby book she's creating for the percolating infant. And then, just as she did at the end of that episode where Prue nearly drowned, The Invisible Spectral Presence Of Teeth! sends a little fairy light down to the book in Piper's lap to inscribe something in the ISP of Teeth!'s very own hand: "Grandma and Mommy." Piper gets misty. I might have as well, if I hadn't already seen the exact same fucking scene the other day on TNT.