Episode Report Card Demian: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sex And The Single Dolt
By Demian | Season 6 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.21.2004
The shot cuts to take in the Bay Bridge at dusk, brightly lit and laden with evening rush-hour traffic as the lights of Oakland twinkle in the distance. Suddenly, everything winks out as we return to The Ghastly Plane, and the now-deserted bridge looms ominously in the growing darkness. That was pretty cool. Elsewhere, Piper and the Dolt huddle together on a gloomy rooftop, hiding from me while the Dolt tends to Piper's wound. The Dolt strips off his shirt and "manfully" shreds it with his bare hands to fashion a bandage for Piper's arm. "Wow," she breathes. "Impressed?" he laughs. "Very," she replies. They exchange A Look Fraught With Significance before Piper breaks the staring contest to note that she imagined the afterworld would include "meadows [and] waterfalls, maybe even a harp." The Dolt grins and explains that The Ghastly Plane isn't really the afterworld -- "it's a place before that to ease the transition," and I'm not sure how comforting that would be to, say, someone who met his end in a Nazi gas chamber. Or a California gas chamber, for that matter. Or inside the hull of the Arizona. Or trapped in the elevator on the Lusitania twenty miles off the Irish coast, or crushed beneath a slag heap in Wales, or in any one of the millions of horrible places where people have died over the centuries. Bad, bad Brad Kern. Think these things through before you put them in the script, 'kay?
Needless to say, such unpleasant thoughts do not trouble Piper's mind, because she's apparently had a lobotomy especially for this episode, and so the two reminisce about their relationship, flirting subtly with each other the entire time. During all of the eye-fucking, they guess that I opened a portal masked by the fake vanquish, and that's how I knocked them into The Ghastly Plane. They also realize that someone must be helping me, because Darklighters don't have the sort of power necessary to manipulate the various planes of existence. Or do I? Mua ha ha ha ha ha. Piper wonders if the portal's still back in the alleyway. The Dolt supposes it is, but the real question is, how do they access it without their powers? "By making Phoebe and [Raige] use theirs," Piper duhs. "Why can't we haunt them, you know? Make contact like other ghosts do?" The Dolt stammers an explanation that isn't, involving the difficulty most ghosts have in making the necessary connections with the living, so Piper cuts through the crap by claiming that her sisterly bond should make things much easier. The Dolt concedes her point, and the two rise to head back to The Ghastly Manor, as Phoebe and Raige are likely abusing the Book of Shadows at that very minute. "That's probably where the Darklighter will be waiting for us," the Dolt cautions. "He knows us. He's studied us." Well, I know you, but there was little study involved. Just ninety-one recaps. And counting. By the way, thanks for making me look, you bastard.
And sure enough, there I am waiting for them, perched with my crossbow on the gabled roof of the death house across Prescott from The Ghastly Manor, eyeing the darkened attic windows on the other side of the street. Or rather, I would be eyeing the darkened attic windows on the other side of the street if the house they use for the exteriors matched up with the sets they constructed for the show. There's no attic atop the house on Carroll Avenue near Echo Park. No, seriously. Go back and look. You've got the second floor with the window to Piper's supposed bedroom facing the street, and then immediately above it, the roof. I'm ashamed of myself for never noticing that before. Stupid fucking show. By the way, some smartass in the set decoration department has placed a weathervane topped by a large cast-iron cat on the roof just over my right shoulder. Get it? A black cat? No, do you get it, because I don't mind -- I can wait right here until you do. Or, you know, wait right here until the script tells me I have to fire off the shot that shatters through the non-existent attic window to kill the Dolt. Whichever comes first.