Episode Report Card Demian: B+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT That Plot Hole Episode
By Demian | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 04.06.1999
Once they've bolted themselves in, the three crowd around the Book of Shadows. Phoebe flips through the pages and lands upon what she deems an appropriate spell simply by glancing at its title, which reads "To Unbind A Bond." Meanwhile, Nazi Nicky's recovered from his spill down in the main hall and leaps screaming to his feet to give chase. Back in the attic, Phoebe recites the following while her sisters huddle close on either side of her:
The bond which was not to be done --
Give us the power to see it undone,
And turn back time to whence it was begun.
A swirling cloud of glowing golf balls engulfs the Glamorous Ladies to whisk them away and...deposit them right back where they started out. Piper flicks a frustrated jazz hand by her face all, "Is that all there is to an unbinding spell?" while Prue snorts, "Nothing happened!" Down in the Manor proper, a phone rings. The gals hesitantly edge to the door and ease it open. They expect a raging Nazi warlock to greet them on the other side, but they find nothing more than air. Below, a woman answers the ringing phone. The Ps glance suspiciously at each other before Piper pushes Prue through the door for some reconnaissance.
Prue tiptoes onto the landing, gazes down the stairwell into the main hallway, and finds herself staring at Grams, who's clad in one of her trademark caftans with the receiver glued to her ear. There's a lava lamp on the telephone stand. "Well, Donna," Grams airily lockjaws into the phone, "I'm just hurt that you'd suspect my little angels of doing such a thing!" Heh. Two sprogs dart past on their way to the sun porch. Grams pauses in her conversation with this Donna woman to warn Wee Prue and Wee Piper not to run in the house. Prue wigs and darts back into the attic. "What'd you see?" Piper whispers. "Us," Prue replies. Piper and Phoebe's eyes bulge all the way into the opening credits.
Opening Time Travelogue, accompanied by a Me Generation ovary wailing "Don't Wanna Let You Go." Given tonight's Little Orphan Phoebe shtick, the song's title is decidedly anvilicious, but the song's content, involving as it does a woman and her wayward lover, seems more than a bit strange and off-putting. The only anachronism I spot among the shots of oil embargo angst, ankle-strapped cork-soled pumps, and Mod Squad reruns on console televisions is a CGI'd theater marquee advertising Jaws -- a movie that wouldn't open for another four months from the date featured in this episode. Over on Prescott Street, a variety of hideous mid-seventies station wagons lines the road. Up in the attic, our intrepid gals process through the implications of a live Grams and a pair of wee Ps in the parlor below. Piper refuses to believe they've landed in the past, instead supposing they "brought the past to [them] accidentally." Prue tells her to get real. The attic contains a few bargain-basement cultural artifacts from the 1970s -- a boxed-up black light, a manual Royal typewriter, a couple of battered eight-track cassettes, and a "pet rock" -- that the Glamorous Ladies threw out years ago. Pity the props department didn't have the budget to dredge up some truly depressing mid-seventies trash for the attic, like Betty Ford. Piper shoots Prue a disbelieving side-eye, then grunts, "I'm getting a migraine." Phoebe snarks something about living in a pre-Advil world before noting that the spell she just recited is nowhere to be found in the Book of Shadows. Wherever -- or, more accurately, whenever -- they are, it's before the spell was written. They also have no Book-approved method of returning to their own time, so Phoebe would like to be the first to announce that the Glamorous Ladies are screwed. Prue makes an unfunny regarding her crappy grammar, particularly as it relates to time travel and verb tenses, and suggests that they head downstairs to explain the situation to Grams. Phoebe warns against this, claiming that Grams would likely have enormous problems accepting a trio of time-traveling descendants. Oh, she would, would she? Given her abilities and experience, don't you think Grams would be the perfect person to rely upon regarding...oh, you know what? Screw it. Just go with it. Piper presents a better argument against invading the Manor's lower reaches: Grams's heart condition. The implication is, of course, that should Grams see how badly her grandchildren turned out, the shock would strike her dead where she stands. Or something like that. Prue pffts and announces that they'll fabricate some other plan once they've escaped the house.