Episode Report Card Demian: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT In the Arms of the Phoebeast
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 19 | Aired on 04.24.2002
Hell. Yes, the evening starts out in Hell, and I have horrible feeling things only go downhill from here. A dark demonic high priest, sent from the flaming maw of the next chamber over, leads The Sole into a room bordered on each side with a blazing rack of votives beneath spiky rods that resemble widely-spaced organ pipes. If there's organ music in this episode, I am never watching this show again. The high priest looks vaguely ecclesiastical in the manner of Cardinal Law, if the cardinal finally gave into overwhelming temptation and commissioned Bob Mackie to design his vestments in dark peach satin and burnt-orange velour. This ecclesiastic effect is somewhat offset by the priest's 1984-vintage "Rebel Yell" hair over his 2017-vintage Billy Idol face. The two are accompanied by a passel of Mongol horde wannabes in outfits lifted from a truck-and-bus production of Rashomon. The priest explains the blocking for a ceremony to take place that evening as he crosses to a hefty book on a podium centered above a pentagram on the floor. The Sole casually remarks, "It's been a while, hasn't it?" "Five hundred years," replies the priest. "Give or take a decade." The priest flips the book open to an entry entitled "Votum Sanguinis." The page is black with garishly luminescent lettering and details some sort of spell in mock Latin. Apparently, once The Sole has recited the crap Latin later that evening, he "will be given the full powers of the Underworld." This episode is going to give me a migraine. On the one hand, this line lends credence to my earlier theory that The Source has the combined powers of all his demonic underlings. On the other hand, what the hell entered Cole's body six episodes ago? The piddling wherewithal to conjure up a nifty means of transportation and a few Flaming Balls Of Death? Lame. And then it occurs to me that I know way too much about this goddamned show. The Sole looks plaintive and desperately attractive in that wistful, little-boy-lost way of his when he asks if the ceremony will make him feel better. That ache in his heart for his bride is a-throbbing away and all. The priest reveals that previous Source candidates described feeling "completed" by the ceremony, but none of them had ever been half-human, so who knows? They'll just have to see what happens at midnight. The priest orders the Mongoloids to escort The Sole to the "vestibule," where they will assist in preparing him for the ceremony. The Sole and the priest nod at each other before The Sole exits with the guards.