Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Once Upon A Time
By Demian | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.18.2000
"It's your little lawyer boyfriend," Piper snarks, and hands the phone to Phoebe. Phoebe waves the Lily drawings in Piper's face, then passes them to her as she takes the phone, countering, "He's not my boyfriend." "Who's not your boyfriend?" Cole Turner asks, sending Phoebe stuttering for a lame excuse. She mumbles out something about the mailman, and asks Cole how he is. "Well, it's a beautiful morning, and I've got a beautiful woman on the phone, so things could be worse." He winces at his own sophomoric attempt at sweet talk, and says he sounds "like Billy Appleby." Phoebe halts at this, and asks him to repeat himself. He tries to shrug it off, explaining that Billy Appleby is a character in a hokey movie he watched one too many times when he was a kid. "Kill It Before It Dies," Phoebe and Cole say in unison, and we see that Cole has a detail-laden dossier on Phoebe, including a highlighted line that notes this is her favorite film. Because I like to be thorough for you people, Phoebe's other favorites are listed as Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus," Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony." This sassy Scorpio also digs martial arts, arts and crafts, and surfing. Just so you know. Cole expresses regret that the movie's not playing at a revival house somewhere, otherwise he'd take her to see it. I pull up the search function on the Internet Movie Database, and learn this movie never played in any house -- revival or first-run -- because it doesn't exist. Phoebe pulls the phone away from her ear and mouths "I love you" into the receiver. Hee.
Cole asks her out for dinner that evening instead as he flips past Phoebe's résumé to reveal the map of the manor's attic also in his dossier, with the location of the BoS noted in the center. You little devil, Cole. Before Phoebe can accept the offer, Prue scampers down the stairs to pull Phoebe off the phone before Piper can leave the house. Phoebe begs off the evening's invitation, tells Cole she'll meet him at P3AD later, and hangs up. Cole slams his phone down, shuts the leather-bound dossier, and waves his hand over it, causing it to flare up and disappear. Menacing strings in the background as Cole knits his brows in irritation.
Cut to Piper, grabbing her car keys from the sideboard. "Comical" back-and-forth scuttling ensues as Prue and Phoebe block Piper's way as they attempt to convince her of the existence of fairies, offering the Lily drawings as proof. Piper shuts them down, insisting that the drawings were the result of one sister's overactive imagination, with the other two copying the first. Prue reveals she believes Kate is in "our kind of trouble," and Piper responds that she disagrees with that assessment. She then goes on to note that even if she did believe the other two, TPTB have caused her nothing but strife, and she's no longer inclined to help them out. In short, she's on strike. Piper muscles her way past Prue and Phoebe and pouts her way out the front door.