Episode Report Card Demian: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Behold The Power Of Sleaze
By Demian | Season 6 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.11.2003
P3. Piper slumps down the stairs, heaving a beleaguered sigh while wondering if the band's already left. "Ray," the doorman, politely informs the strange, slumpy, beleaguered lady to return later that evening after the club's opened for business. When she insists she's his boss, Ray none-too-kindly recommends the bar up the road if she's as desperately in need of another cocktail as she seems. Piper gets snippy as Mange emerges from the office with the twelve-year-old. They're adjusting their clothes. I think they just did it. Do you think they just did it? 'Cause I'm pretty sure they just did it. Isn't that, like, a felony? Couldn't they sling Mange's Letourneauing ass into prison for fondling a preadolescent bartender like that? Whatever. I think they're about to do it again on the dance floor, but Mange overhears Piper's shrill shrieking and bolts to lock herself in the back room. Back at the stairs, Piper's had enough of Ray-Ray's lip and freezes him, like, way to guard against exposure after last week's hour-long lesson on the subject, you dingbat. To her credit, she unfreezes the doorman as soon as she's wriggled past him, but still. I hate this show. Piper agitates over to the post-coital preadolescent and demands he inform Ray of her identity. The post-coital preadolescent has no idea who this agitated woman is. Piper puckers in disbelief.
Speaking of agitation, Raige orbs onto the main floor of North Shore's packing plant to find Moron leading the wetbacks in a rousing chant of "Equal pay! Shorter days!" The Smurfs cheer everyone on from a discreet location atop a tower of fruit boxes. Boss-Man Of The Week arrives to inform the throng they'll be replaced with scabs if they don't immediately return to "that line." "Oh!" Moron sasses. "You mean a line with unsafe working conditions, no medical benefits, and Third World wages? I. Don't. Think. So." The wetbacks roar their approval of this defiance and resume chanting, led once again by Moron, who swings aloft a "UNION" sign like she's Norma Rae. Raige gasps in horror.
A moment, please. So sorry to hold things up, but I need to ask: What in the hell is going on here? Did some crack-addled editor accidentally delete a vital scene wherein we learn that Moron's colluding with the Mafia to snatch control of the fruit-packers' union from the desperate immigrants on the factory floor? Or is Charmed actually making a statement against unionization, against safe factory conditions, against equal access to health care, and against decent wages for workers by linking all of those goals to dark demonic forces sent from the flaming maw of Hell? The fuck? THE FUCK? Excuse the holy living crap out of me, but weren't the very writers and actors responsible for this shit willing to sabotage the entire television season two years ago over a contract dispute with the studios? And weren't the members of the various craft unions -- the very same people who constructed, decorated, costumed, lit, miked, and shot this scene -- ready to walk the picket lines with them? Again: What the FUCK is going on here?