Episode Report Card Demian: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Rebitched
By Demian | Season 8 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.22.2005
I call upon the ancient powers
To unmask us now, and in future hours:
Show us well and thoroughly --
Reveal ourselves so the world can see.
The mirror flares white, presumably from the mojo rays that erupt from their bodies (we catch the slightest glimpse of them, actually, bursting from Raige's blurry shoulder in the far left foreground of the shot), and when the mirror clears, the Manor Morons find their true reflections peering back at themselves from the glass for the first time in over a month. "It's good to be back," Phoebe smiles, adding after a moment, "although [Vex] is gonna freak. Out." Well, if he freaks himself right out of the show, that'll be perfectly fine with me, Hagula. "How are we going to explain this?" Raige wonders. Piper has a plan. Doesn't she always?
Cut to a low-angled shot of elevator doors opening somewhere else. The Glamorous Ladies, led by Piper, emerge from the car into a mindbendingly stupid slow-motion stroll through the Department of Homeland Security's San Francisco field office, and it should surprise none of you to learn that this show's ass properties staff got the department's official seal all wrong. The various agents present gape in shock and dismay, though to be frank it's difficult to determine whether said shock and dismay is directed at the simple fact of the gals' existence or at Phoebe's hideous Inverted Tequila Sunrise-themed skirt. The three at long last arrive at the desk of the bureau's receptionist, who's as visibly flabbergasted by Phoebe's grotesque appearance as everyone else. "How's it going?" Piper breezes by way of introduction, before she continues in a similarly light tone, "Is Agent Murphy in?" "Hoo...hoo...who should I say is asking?" the receptionist stammers. Mugs tosses off an obnoxious line about surprising the poor guy, and so the ladies do just that, striding into his office to blow his little mind with tales of witches and glamours and vanquished demons and such. Agent Murphy eventually manages to cover his astonishment, assures Piper he meant every word he said to her in P3's office, and wonders what the women want. The following deal, as it turns out: They'll share with him their knowledge of all things supernatural, as well as their extensive expertise in dealing with dark demonic forces sent from the flaming maw of Hell, if he in turn promises to protect their secret. "Or else what?" he challenges them. "Is that some sort of threat?" "You don't want to know," Phoebe vows. Murphy evaluates their frosty expressions for a moment before caving. "What do you want me to do?"
Hold a massive press conference, of course. "I can't talk about the specifics of the case the sisters were involved with," he lies to the hastily assembled scrum of reporters thronging the bureau's field office. "All I can say is that it involved a threat to national security, and that our agency got involved to protect them." The official story now is that the Halliwells witnessed some unspecified crime, an attempt was then made on their lives, and Homeland Security "falsified their deaths in order to flush out the perpetrators." While Agent Murphy has thus been so valiantly spewing line after line of bullshit to the annoyingly gullible representatives of the national media, the camera's pulled away from the scene through a television screen, and we find ourselves back in Vex Pexter's physically impossible garret, and BORING! Phoebe raps on his door and, if I'm remembering this correctly, I wasn't too fond of the scene that follows the first time I saw it two goddamned years ago. Phoebe enters and, long story short, glamours one last time into that flat-chested version of Amanda Peet that Vex knew so well. Vex crosses his eyes and drops out of the frame to the floor in a dead faint. Wah. Wah. Waaaaaah.