Episode Report Card Demian: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby's First Sucky Episode
By Demian | Season 5 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.29.2003
Tonight's opening travelogue is stunning. No, seriously -- it's absolutely gorgeous, with the most striking shot arriving just as Eric Dane's name appears in the guest-star scroll at the bottom of the screen. Someone hauled a camera up to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge's north tower to film this massive cascade of fog rolling into the bay from the ocean, with lower Marin basking in the sunlight in the background. It's so damn pretty, I'm almost able to block out the morose alterna-testicle they've chosen as this evening's featured "artist." Almost. Over on Prescott Street, Piper shrills about the pre-credits attack as she and Raige cross through the attic to the Book of Shadows. Raige leafs through the Book, expositing that the Dolt's orbed The Done One into the care of the ever-useless Elders until the gang at the Manor settles on a vanquishing strategy. Piper bitches and whines and moans about innocence lost and wah, just as the Dolt orbs into the background with that crappy prop they've jury-rigged as a stunt double for the teeming horde of infants sharing Done One duties. Because Grace Zabriskie's name led the opening credits, I've convinced myself that the crappy prop baby is actually a log.
Piper, of course, freaks when she realizes that the ever-useless Elders have refused to baby-sit. "They want us to prove to ourselves that we can protect him," the Dolt lames. The Log chokes on this foul bit of contrivance, so Piper retrieves It from the Dolt's arms to comfort It over on the attic sofa. Raige, meanwhile, has identified the portly, bathrobe-wearing pre-credits escapee as a "Hawker Demon." And just what is a Hawker Demon, you ask? The Book says it's "a breed of demon known for hawking magical goods at The Demonic Market." Duh! How could you not know that? Piper's outraged that her precious Log would be considered a magical good. If you'd like to know why I'm outraged, kindly refer to my anti-Potter mini-rant in the last recap. "Demonic Market," my ass. Just call it Pigscabs or Swinezits or whatever the hell it went by in those goddamned movies and be done with it. Yes, I know Hogwarts was the school, and no, I don't care. "The question," the Dolt notes rather astutely for one so thick-headed, "is who would want to buy [The Log], and why?"
Smash-cut to Swinezits, and wow. Much as I detest the sudden appearance and importance of this previously unheard of marketplace, I have to admit, the production team has outdone itself setting the whole thing up. In fact, the overall production quality over the last ten or so episodes represents such a vast improvement over what's come before, I feel sorry it's all in service of the shitty, pandering-to-the-preadolescents scripts we've been forced to endure this season. In any event, various sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads, and one very righteous dude haggle over daggers and bones while Alyssa Milano's engraved with yet another belly tattoo. Sorry, my bad. That's actually just some random extra on the business end of the tattooing needle, though one does wonder why the other producers on staff chose to associate obnoxious body art with dark demonic forces sent from the flaming maw of Hell.