Episode Report Card Demian: B+ | 93 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Crappily Ever After
By Demian | Season 5 | Episode 3 | Aired on 2002.09.29
Grampy totters over to his very own Big Book Of Fairy Tales while babbling about how the "power of every fairy tale emanates" from the artifacts in their care, and that the objects' collective magic influences "every child born, even to this day." Uh-huh. All those dewy-eyed toddlers in Abidjan and Jos and Jalalabad and Yangon? Totally want to be Goldilocks. Go ahead. Ask them. Of course, they're probably too busy scavenging insects and tree bark for dinner to answer you, but don't let that stop you. During all of this, the jostled mirror continues to sway, wriggling the nail from which it hangs out of the mortar anchoring it to the wall. Cloris grins maliciously as the nail finally gives and the mirror drops to the floor. Grampy keens as the glass shatters to release a golden, glowy smear that spills across the floor before rising up into a pillar that morphs into Cloris Incarnate. She whirls about on her heel and snatches at Grampy's throat with her plum-tinted Press-On nails, drawing blood. Snapping Grampy's neck and flinging his corpse to the floor, she claims, "This is the way to begin a story." I hate to admit it, but she sort of has a point there. Not that I approve of snapping the brittle necks of the elderly for sport or anything, but you know what I mean. The apprentice -- who looks far too much like Christopher Moltisanti for his own good, like, back away from the Lucite pumps and start shooting smack between your toes before David Chase has you whacked, buddy -- stutters and stammers and wonders who she is. She acidly notes that he's "a little rusty" on his fairy tales, and gets up in his face to recite the following:
Freedom's loss must be unwitting --
Into the glass to do my bidding.
Excuse me? Evil lady person? Ma'am? Yeah, over here. The only way that couplet makes any sense whatsoever is if the apprentice's name is Freedom and...never mind. Call him whatever you want -- I'm going with Little Rusty for the duration. Little Rusty dissolves into a golden, glowy smear that pours into the broken mirror. Once it's absorbed the Rusty smear, the mirror both repairs itself and remounts itself upon the wall. Cloris smiles and approaches the glass to amuse herself at Rusty's expense. By the way, during these Cloris-and-Rusty conversations, the camera focuses simultaneously on Cloris's reflection in the glass and the actual side-lit Rusty himself. It looks like they've rigged a two-way mirror for these shots, and the effect is oddly theatrical, as if Rusty were standing behind a fabric scrim with a strangely reflective surface. Of course, the alternative -- a crappy CGI Rusty inserted into the mirror's frame -- would suck like nothing has sucked since, well, the crappy CGI Dolt poking his head out of that octagon last week, so, uh, good for them and their tricky two-way mirrors, I guess. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: Cloris asks, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall -- who is the most powerful witch of all?" Rusty dutifully replies, "You're much stronger than most witches I see, yet truth be told, there are three more powerful than thee." Now they start in with the crappy CGI, overlaying Rusty with the images of Piper reading in the attic, the Feebs pecking away at her computer in her office, and Raige futzing with potion ingredients in the kitchen. Cloris draws herself up into a right royal snit and pouts, "We'll see about that." That's a miserable excuse for a threat, Cloris. Really. I expect more from you.