Episode Report Card Demian: B+ | 8 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Something Bitchy This Way Comes
By Demian | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 10.06.1998
Piper freaks the fuck out and barrels towards the front door, screeching about horror movie clichés as she goes, intending to cab it over to Jeremy's apartment. Prue races after her, insisting that she's overreacting. I think there was supposed to be a commercial break after the power went out, because the dialogue seems to indicate that a few minutes have passed. Prue claims that Phoebe's simply playing a joke on them. Piper natters something about their inability ever to open the attic door as she lunges for the phone. "Great!" she wails when she can't get a dial tone. "Now the phone doesn't work!" Prue duhs that the power's out; therefore, no cordless. ["But if the battery on the cordless were charged up, wouldn't...oh, who cares." -- Sars] "Just go with me to the basement," Prue soothes. "I need you to hold the flashlight while I check out the main circuit box." Piper frantically volunteers Phoebe for flashlight duty, but the Feebs is heading for the attic, despite her sisters' insistence that she wait until they can get a locksmith to check out the door. Prue watches Phoebe go, then spins around to head for the basement. Piper whimpers and races after her rather than be left alone in the hall in the dark.
Upstairs, Phoebe trains her flashlight on the attic door. She jiggles the knob and pushes against the door, to no avail. As she turns to retreat to the second floor, the door creaks open by itself. Phoebe cautiously enters the room and peers around at the various pieces of discarded and dusty furniture. Then -- get this -- a heavenly light streams through the bay window to land on a steamer trunk sitting off to the side all by its lonesome. Christ almighty on a stick. The trunk then begins to glow. It's like a militant faction of vegan terrorists blew up a Hickory Farms warehouse and flaming shards of holiday cheese logs spattered all over my television. Phoebe lifts the lid of the trunk and finds therein the Book of Shadows. She hoists the Book from the trunk and sits down, placing the thing in her lap. The Book looks awfully new here, despite the properties department's best efforts to dirty it up a bit. Alyssa Milano blows a layer of talcum powder from the cover and traces the now-familiar triquatra with her fingers. She opens to the title page. "The Book of Shadows," she intones, just to prove to us that she really can read. Thanks for that. Moron. She then turns to the spell she finds on the next page. Because she's possessed of all the mental acuity of your average retarded eight-year-old, she reads the spell aloud. Oh, shut it. You know that any normal adult would read the damn thing silently. Anyway, it goes a little like this: