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
Fade up on the Manor façade. Up in the dining room, Piper sits in front of a mountain of candy she's rather anally separating into bowls by type. Something about avoiding inadvertent allergic reactions amongst the aggravating brats set to receive the stuff the following evening. Don't ask. Raige bounces into the main hall from above to announce she's figured out a way "to get the press off of [their] broomsticks." Before she can reveal the specifics, however, she shrieks and dances around a bit at the sight of three suspiciously clean-looking rats darting along the wainscoting. The stench of the wacky Wiccan hijinks that permeates the dining room at this moment is so great, even a twitchy dimwit like Raige can pick up on it, and so she demands, "Where did they come from?" "The San Francisco Chronicle," Piper too casually enumerates, "the Daily News, and the Enquirer," and I find myself wondering what the Chronicle ever did to Brad Kern to get itself thrown in with the latter two tabloids. We know he prides himself on his vindictiveness, after all. In any event, off Raige's horrified expression, Piper shrugs, "I found them nosing around the garbage." "So you turned them into rodents?" Raige cries. "Well, I could have blown them up!" Piper counters. Raige eventually drops the matter to perch on one of the chairs and fill Piper in on the details of her cunning plan: Phoebe's to convince Seth that the Manor Morons' lives are deathly dull. That shouldn't be too difficult. Even for an imbecile like Phoebe. Once Seth realizes there's no story to be found, he'll "hopefully go away and take all of the lemming reporters with him." Because the Chronicle, the Daily News, and the Enquirer all take their cues from some hack at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me. Brilliant plan, Raige. The idiot makes some tiresome remark about being "the Pied Piper of Prescott Street" before ordering Piper to restore the reporter rats to their natural forms. "You're no fun," Piper growls, but she does rise from the table to comply. She shoos the vermin through the sun porch and into the side garden before flipping a green potion vial after them. The rats flash back into their human selves -- off-screen, of course, because of this show's drastically reduced effects budget -- before the camera catches their visible confusion. Piper shrilly berates them for trespassing.
As Piper turns to reenter the dining room, the frantic Dolt pushes himself through the mob at the front door to enter the foyer with a brown paper grocery sack and a panicked expression on his face. Why no one in the house calls the police to have the reporters removed from the property is beyond me. Hell, why no one from the neighborhood association's bitched up one side of City Hall and down the other about the media's incursion onto Prescott Street is beyond me. At the very least, you'd think the redoubtable Mrs. Noble, who actually had Phoebe shot in the tits over a parking space, would have been all over this whole goddamned thing days ago. Whatever. I'm so over it at this point. In any event, the Dolt splutters something outraged about the reporters as a blithe Raige, on her way out the door, assures him she has the problem well in hand. Once she's disappeared into the scrum, the Dolt joins Piper in the dining room to mope that the wretched bitches at The Psycho's Preschool Of The Damned are treating the Dolt like a leper because they all think he's married to a spy, which makes as little sense as the continued presence of a hundred and eighty-seven reporters blocking the Manor's front door, so we'll move on to the point where Piper shrews at him for buying candy corn, which, she asserts, "no one likes." Point to the shrew. That shit is disgusting, Dolt. ["True, but I can still eat it by the pound. Mmm, candy corn." -- Sars] He ignores me to moan that the store had sold out of every other option. Piper instantly orders him "somewhere else" to get more. "More?" the Dolt pouts. "We have twelve bags! That's more than we gave out all last year!" Considering the fact that at this time last year you were all far too busy jumping into Bizarro World while the Snidelys were trying to off The Psychos -- not to mention Big Gay Chris getting stabbed while Piper nearly bled to death giving birth to his tiny gay self -- I'm surprised any of you had time to worry about Halloween at all, Dolt, but maybe that's just me being far too aware of when things are actually supposed to be happening on this dreadful piece of garbage. After all, the events of last season's finale were to have taken place the day after Tiny Gay Chris's aborted first birthday party, which means we should be in late December at this point, but whatever, because this show sucks, and I want to die.
ANYWAY, Piper shrills something about ensuring that her kids have a normal Halloween if it's the last thing she does, which leads the Dolt to protest that the kids are less than three years old, which means they won't remember it anyway. "You know what?" Piper shoots back. "I will." Hmmm. Don't I remember Piper arguing the Dolt's point when they cancelled poor, neglected, and doomed Tiny Gay Chris's party in the wake of the Timbie's vengeful return from beyond the grave? Yeah. I do remember that. Shut the fuck up, Piper. She ignores me. They always ignore me. Piper shrews some more at her Dolt of a husband, just so we can set up their ridiculous fight later in the episode, and the long-suffering Dolt slouches out of the frame.