Episode Report Card Demian: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Prat House
By Demian | Season 5 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.12.2003
Downstairs, Phoebe and Zack roll around on the dining room table before dropping out of the frame.
Doctor John's House Of Pain. The good doctor remains frozen as Piper explains she and the Dolt "have to make [their] memories real and everything around them real or [they're] never gonna get through this." Um. Okay. We'll go with that, I guess. Piper flicks open a Zippo and recites the following from the sheet of paper she holds in her hand:
Let the truth be told,
Let our lives unfold,
So we can relive our memories
And stop being enemies.
She lights the paper, which bursts into golden, sparkly flames and proceeds to burn all the way down to her fingertips before vanishing in a light puff of smoke. Piper flicks her wrist to break the freeze. "Do you smell something?" the good doctor asks, sniffing the air. "No. Look, we were thinking we'd skip the childhood part," Piper flatly states. Heh. "Just cut to the chase and get to us?" she prompts. Dr. Rubinstein's fine with that, and settles into his wingback to suggest that Piper and the Dolt begin with their memories of the first time they met. Piper, poker-faced, glances down at her lap as the Dolt smiles fondly at the memory. Zip it, wimp.
Manor. Phoebe's managed to gain the upper hand. She yanks Zack's arm behind his back and presses the dagger against his throat just as Raige orbs down from Prue Memorial. Phoebe makes with the "Who are you, and what do you want?" noise before all three vanish in a sudden blue flare…
…that dumps them onto the Manor's front porch. Zack wrests his dagger from Phoebe's fist and blinks out. Raige and Phoebe splutter in confusion for a beat before the Dolt calls out from within, "There's definitely something here, Miss Halliwell." "Definitely," Piper volleys back flirtatiously. Phoebe and Raige shoot each other suspicious side-eyes, then enter the foyer. Phoebe reels back in horror from the parlor doorway to flatten herself against the hall's wall. "You are not going to believe this!" she hisses to Raige. The two peek around the corner to find Season One versions of Piper and the Feebs leering in tandem at the Dolt's massive denim-clad ass. Raige, as sickened and repulsed by this development as I am, horks a hairball into the oncoming commercials.
An aside, if you'll bear with me: Yes, this episode is not much more than a glorified clip show, and yet I must admit that they've done a great job selecting clips that flow into one another rather smoothly. What's more, this evening's original material has been tailored to match. Shocking, I realize, and entirely unlike another clip show I could mention. Anyway, because of all this, I was going to paste in the original recap text for the various flashbacks. That was when I realized just how wildly the tone of the individual recaps varies. Besides, those snippets added up to about six pages of additional text, and Sars has better things to do with her time than plow through paragraphs she already edited three years ago. For all of these reasons, I'll be relying upon links where appropriate, while noting only those instances where the flashbacks differ from the originals. Your meek and mute acceptance of this arbitrary and tyrannical decision is appreciated.