Episode Report Card Demian: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Pain In My Ass
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.16.2002
A generic "Funky Walker, Dirty Talker" low-down wocka-wocka guitar riff opens the evening as the camera pans past a brick wall of a cop to a line of bums seated on a receiving bench in a random precinct house. But, oops! One of the bums isn't a bum at all. Cole, appearing to be as irritated with the guitar riff as I am, glowers at the bum to his left for a moment, then fixes his gaze elsewhere. Oh, and oops! It's not a random precinct house. It's The Only Precinct House In San Francisco, as we discover when Detective Darryl strides into the room to tower above Cole. Cole greets him with the snitty "Is this the way you treat every driver with a busted headlight?" To the contrary, Darryl claims. This is the way the San Francisco Police Department treats everyone driving without a license. Not to worry, though. Darryl's convinced his off-camera Latino colleague "Lopez" not to cite Cole for the offense. Cole stands to leave, but rather than thanking Darryl for the intervention on his behalf, he starts bitching up a storm about the inconvenience. Darryl quite naturally takes offense at Cole's shirtiness, and starts bitching up a small squall of his own. Stomping over to the precinct's assignment board, Darryl Vanna-Whites his hand up and down over the neglected "open cases [he] should be working on" instead of "cleaning up [Cole's] mess." Cole protests he's as unhappy with the situation as Darryl is, whining about being human without proper ID and not having a job and not being able to pick up a gallon of milk without getting arrested and wah while Darryl blithers about how lying to his superiors for The Glamorous Ladies Of Halliwell Manor is bad enough and now he has to worry about Cole as well and no one ever thinks to thank him and blah and the two end their individual rants with the meta-statement, "It just sucks!" The gentlemen pause for a moment to recover from this moment of mutual vehemence before tossing off the following exchange:
Cole: You good?
Darryl: Yeah.
Cole: Me, too.
Darryl: Okay.
And then they kiss. All right, they don't. It's going to be a long evening.
Piper and Raige enter the station house at that moment and sweet Jesus, what the hell is Raige wearing? It appears to be a white vinyl zip-front jacket with silver appliqués, which would be bad enough on its own but is made that much more hideous by a foot-wide white feathered collar piece flaring from Raige's eminently snappable neck. The collar looks like it was carved out of a swan's ass. Piper gasps in a voice dripping with concern, "Oh my God, Cole." She follows this immediately with, "How's my car?" Of course. Of course she does. Cole shoves his hands into his pockets and mildly replies, "It's fine." "That was the first and the last time you borrow my car," Piper sneers. "Got it? Good. Let's go." Piper spins on her heel to exit as Cole and Darryl wiggle their eyebrows at each other in that "women -- they so crazy" way that tells us all this scene was comedy gold. It also tells us that Cole and Darryl are going to hook up later for "a couple of beers." Cole follows the gals out as Darryl checks out Cole's ass from behind. Fine. Not really, but we're only a minute and a half into this episode and I'm already near-comatose from the boredom, so just go with it, okay?
Out on the sidewalk, Cole engages in a torrid round of tonsil hockey with the cheap and easy exposition as he complains that "being [human] was supposed to make [his] life easier," but instead his life is "getting worse by the minute" and that "Phoebe was closer to marrying [him] when [he] was still a demon." Piper opines that "getting busted by the cops is not the best way to win [Phoebe] over." Yeah, and slipping the tongue to any old literary convention that wanders into his path isn't a terribly effective way for him to woo his supposed beloved either. And let's not even get started on the Darryl thing. Raige chides Piper for making Cole feel like even more of a loser than he already is. Before Cole can smack her for such a backhanded defense coming from a woman as tawdrily-dressed as she, a car horn blares, followed by metallic crunching noises and a scream. The three stop dead in their tracks and gape at the street. Piper eventually breathes, "Oh, God," and the three dart out of the frame.