Episode Report Card Demian: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Men Suck
By Demian | Season 5 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.03.2003
Down in the main hallway, Piper and the Dolt arrange a group of lit candles in a circle on the carpet while fretting about Grams's imminent arrival. They eventually stand off to one side, and Piper recites the following from memory:
Hear these words -- hear my cry,
Spirit from the Other Side.
Come to me. I summon thee.
Cross now the Great Divide.
A swirling cloud of glowing golf balls materializes amid the candles and gradually coalesces to form a decidedly spectral Grams, who's chosen a sleek, concealing, and terribly smart deep-red outfit for this evening's festivities. She gushes and steps towards Piper. As she moves out of the circle of candles, a whitish gold flare races up her body from her spectral foot, and she corporealizes in time to give Piper a hug. Grams then proceeds to ignore the Dolt entirely. Ha! Phoebe and Raige descend the stairs to introduce The Rapidly Aging Done One to his dead great-grandmother. Grams makes with the WASPy kvelling as she gathers the kid up in her arms. "Meet Baby Wyatt!" Piper enthuses. Grams gets this delicious expression of bemused disdain on her face as she airily yet acidly repeats the name before chuckling and noting that Wyatt is "a silly name." Of course, she adds the entirely unnecessary "for a girl" to that assessment, but she could have stopped where I did and been just as right. Phoebe duhs that The Rapidly Aging Done One is of the male persuasion. "You didn't know?" Raige asks, and to tell you the truth, I've got to wonder how the kid's gender escaped Grams's notice before now. I mean, this is the woman who made an art out of interfering with her descendents' lives from beyond the grave, and we're supposed to believe so vital a piece of information somehow slipped past her? Pull the other one. "Well, no," Grams stammers. "I mean, I just assumed," she continues before trailing off. Finally, she blurts, "What went wrong?" Bwa! "I don't mean wrong wrong," she covers, not meaning a word she's saying. "It's just that we've always had…girls." Her smile faltering, Grams shoots an accusatory glare at the Dolt and a suspicious side-eye at the antic infant in her arms before passing the genetic defect off to its useless father. Hee! Jennifer Rhodes rules.
After regaining her composure, Grams elegantly changes the subject by expositing, "We've got a lot of work to do before I perform the Wiccaning. I'm going to be calling every matriarch in our family since the Witch Trials, and we've got to make sure the Manor's safe." Piper and Raige insist they've seen to all that, as they've destroyed any dark demonic force that would threaten the Glamorous Grandladies' spirits. "The Zombies, the Rigors, the [pre-credits] Creepers," Piper enumerates. "What about the Necromancer?" Grams demands. "The who?" Piper and I wonder aloud together. Phoebe rolls her eyes at this complication and bolts to go get her some Chronic at a sleazy airport hotel. Self-centered slut. Raige bails as well, for wacky hijinks with pestilential slampieces wait for no plot twist. Grams gazes after them fondly and sighs, "They'd be better off with a dog -- [they're] more loyal, and they die sooner." The Dolt is outraged. Well, as outraged as his weeny little brain allows. Grams waves her hand around dismissively and reminds him, "You know I never had very much luck with men." "But you've been married four times," the clueless Dolt responds. "Exactly," Grams lockjaws, clearly remembering each and every one of those hideous mistakes she called husbands. Whee! Also, congratulations to whomever finally got that bit of Grams's backstory straight. Grams pulls herself out of her irritated reverie to pedeconference up the stairs with Piper. "The last time [the Necromancer] attacked was at your mother's Wiccaning, and we can't take any chance on that happening again, so chop-chop!" The Dolt watches them go, then tells The Rapidly Aging Done One, "Now you know why we don't summon her more often." Blow it out your ass, Dolt.