Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Phantom Of The Maggot Neck Is Here
By Demian | Season 8 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.29.2005
Previously on Charmed, last week.
Currently on Charmed, the camera fades up on the sunnily lit kitchen table, covered with newspaper upon which lie the guts of the pumpkin Piper's busily and quite violently carving into a jack-o'-lantern. Believe it or not, this is only the second Halloween-themed episode this show's aired in eight years. I don't think I'm spoiling anything at this point when I note that the last one, even with the horror that was Cole's Peter Frampton wig, was much, much better. In any event, one of the pieces of newsprint conveniently happens to be the front page of that morning's All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me, which is emblazoned with the headline "What's The Big Secret?" above a blurry black and white photograph of the gals from last week's slow-motion strut through the Homeland Security department's San Francisco bureau. "Dang!" Muggy McGowan exclaims after she's entered from the dining room beyond, placed her hands on her hips, widened her eyes, and tugged the corners of her overly rouged lips into a hideous grimace. "What'd that pumpkin ever do to you?" "Nothing!" Piper barks back at her by way of response. "I'm venting!" Before Raige can question Piper on this, the cordless starts bleating on the center island. Raige crosses to answer, but Piper snaps at her lippy bastard of a half-sister to let the thing drop into voicemail. "Oprah's people," you see, have been calling the Manor incessantly, attempting to browbeat the morons therein into appearing on a special La Winfrey's preparing on "lady spies." I can tell you from firsthand experience that La Winfrey's people can be quite persistent, and Piper might possibly be taking her life in her own hands by refusing to return their calls. Pretend you didn't hear that from me, though. Oprah Winfrey scares me more than the dead-eyed Psycho does.
Anyway, Piper's not interested in the offer, nor is she interested in the one from some movie producer who's been trying to buy the rights to the gals' story for a feature film. The Retarded Bimbo lopes into the room at this point to annoy Piper, Raige, and the general audience with her egregious stupidity, lisping line deliveries, and maggot neck. (By the way, no thanks to payndz on the forum boards for pointing said maggot neck out to me. You're banned, dude. Yeesh.) Piper and Raige, however, have the option of ignoring The Retard, an option they enthusiastically embrace to blather around the bleach blonde black hole of suck about the ongoing media scrum resulting from Agent Murphy's press conference. Piper, mindful of what happened the last time the media intruded on their lives, name-checks The Late Lamented while Raige attempts to assure Piper that everything will blow over once the reporters besieging the Manor finally realize there's no real story to be had. Piper's not having that, though, so Raige promises to deal with the reporter problem herself. That should work out well for everyone involved. Not. Idiot.
The Retarded Bimbo chooses this moment to reinsert herself in the conversation by shrieking something about the dark demonic force she'd been "tracking." Seems he's been slaughtering his fellow Hell-sent brethren in order to absorb their powers, and how The Retard would be aware of that detail is beyond my ability to comprehend, so it's fortunate her entire storyline has nothing to do with the main Issues Of The Week and I can skip over every single one of her scenes from now until the end of the hour. Yes, I realize her name appears in the episode title, which would normally indicate that her subplot is the evening's most important, but trust me: It's not. At all. Useless waste of air. At some point during all of this, the doorbell rings. "Trick-or-treaters?" Raige eyebrows. "A day early?" Piper snorts. The ladies rise from the table, and the next thing we see is Piper edging warily towards the front door. The instant she's opened it, she's beset by the mob of reporters on the front porch, particularly Seth Parra, the online research guru of All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me, who opens by shoving a tape recorder into Piper's face and reciting his paper's front-page headline. Piper, showing remarkable amounts of restraint by not blowing this nosy and tedious fucker up, pushes the door shut in the guy's face before gritting through clenched teeth, "We're screwed." She gnaws on her lower lip for a moment before vanishing into the opening credits.