Episode Report Card Demian: C- | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Charmed Again, Part The First
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on 10.03.2001
Hell. The Source blazes in to ask the Smoked Bint if she's found any new information on Cole's whereabouts. She hasn't, but she's drawn a bead on Rose. "Her future has become much more clear," the Bint promises. "And short-lived." She flaps her hand over the Ball of Perversion, and an arrhythmically jerking Janet Reno appears therein. The shot widens, and Janet's joined by Michael J. Fox on the dance floor at P3. Okay, fine. It's Rose and her current boy toy, and no, they don't have Parkinson's Disease. It's just they way they move. Unfortunately. Halloween comes early for Demian, as there is quite seriously a full minute of this horror before the music mercifully cuts itself short. The pair heads over to a nearby table for some hasty character exposition trussed up as "romantic" "banter." Despite the fact Rose and the boy toy have been dating a mere month, he claims to know "everything" about her. A Convenient Waitress appears to prove him wrong. She asks for their order, and he asks for "two long necks." Strike two against the boy toy. Strike one was, needless to say, the "dancing." Rose switches her order to a product-placed Perrier, telling the boy toy, basically, that if he didn't know she was a recovering alcoholic, he doesn't really know her all that well. Mmmm. Alcohol.
Anyway, the boy toy, whose name is Shane, quickly apologizes and asks if she'd like to move the party to a juice bar or something. She says it's fine; she appreciates the atmosphere at P3, and has ever since she started going there a year ago. "After," she begins, then thinks the better of continuing. Shane pries. Rose caves. She's so easy. She's adopted -- but that's not the bad part. She loved her adoptive parents very much, but now they're dead. And now I can't get the sound of Brenda Blethyn screeching "SWEEE'AAHHT!" in Secrets and Lies out of my head. Thanks for nothing, Rose. Anyway, after Rose buried them, she embarked on a search for her birth mother that led her to the church in which her abandoned baby behind was found by some random nun. At one point, she thought she might be related to the Glamorous Ladies of Halliwell Manor, but she ended that line of inquiry once she learned that the sisters were orphans as well. She still feels "connected" to them, however. Rose has been absently doodling on a cocktail napkin during this, and the penciled shape thus far is a circle. Shane, who's sort of dishy in an eager-little-puppy-dog way that you know means he won't age well, presses for more details. Rose admits that her continuing sense of connection with the sisters compelled her to attend that morning's funeral. This line of thinking trails off into the embarrassed confusion of an overshare overshared. "Okay, you sound like a total freak," she mutters. "Good job, Paige. Way to go." Shane cuts her short with a kiss. She eases away from it. "Don't hurt me, okay?" she pleads softly with an appealing touch of vulnerability. "I can't handle any more right now," she continues. Shane makes with the liquid brown puppy-dog eyes you totally want to hate him for but can't. He kisses her again. Rose caves again. She "wants to show [him] something," and rises from her stool with her jacket. He hastily pulls a couple of bills from his pocket and tosses them onto the table. The camera follows the money, and Rose's absent-minded doodle is revealed to be a triquatra.