Episode Report Card Demian: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Head Games
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.07.2001
As the clock chimes the hour, Cole instructs Piper to freeze the entire parlor, then unfreeze only him. She rolls her eyes but complies, and the clock stops in mid-chime. Cole tells them that "a chameleon" is lurking somewhere within the Manor. Phoebe asks Cole why he's worried about a lizard, like, God, you're a dimwit, Feebs. Cole reveals that the chameleon is "a demon that can transform into any object just to spy" on the Glamorous Ladies. He pounces upon an innocent chair. "You trying to tell me the Manor is supernaturally bugged?" Piper asks. Cole confirms this. The Source has not physically interfered with the Glamorous Ladies as of late, choosing instead to deploy a cadre of chameleon demons to gather information unobserved, in order to formulate his next plan of attack. Cole warns the Ps to ensure that the objects surrounding them belong there. Piper hmmms slyly and spies a low-slung bentwood chair with garish cushions in the sun porch. She blows up the chair. Foam rubber and upholstery rain down to the floor. "Piper, I think that was [Raige's] chair," Phoebe whispers. "Yeah, I know. It was ugly," Piper snorts back. Way to take Cole's warning seriously, git. Oops. Sorry, I momentarily forgot that this evening would be all about Piper refusing to take her responsibilities seriously. Let's carry on then, shall we?
The clock recommences with its chiming. "Uh, the room just unfroze," Cole notes. A stout, squat floor lamp behind the girls expands into Spalding Gray. Actually, the actor's name is Alastair Duncan, but the resemblance is there. Pity it's not Spalding. I get the feeling he'd be terribly amusing on this program, but I get a stronger feeling that his standards are too high to deign to appear. Spalding pimp-slaps the Ps over a sofa. Cole hurls a Flaming Ball Of Death that turns Spalding's pimp-slapping right arm into a green goop that splatters across the baby shower favors. The stump that remains quickly regenerates a full arm. Someone should show this scene to the hacks over at Dark Angel so they know what "regenerative" means. Spalding turns to menace Cole as Piper shouts out a warning from behind the couch. Piper flings out her hand. Spalding, having swung his head around to glare at the sisters, ducks. The grandfather clock dissolves into shards of glass and wood. "Dammit!" Piper pants. "We just got that thing fixed!" Snerk. Spalding takes off through the lower floor as a be-Walkmanned Raige blithely descends the staircase in a pink satin baby-doll nightie with a basket of dirty laundry. Cole whips another FBOD. Spalding cartwheels past it, leaving it to send Raige's filthy unmentionables blazing on their merry way down to Hell. Raige is unscathed, as she orbed out just before the FBOD slammed into her basket. Something to ponder: While we already knew Raige's clothes orbed out and in with her, in this instance her Walkman orbed out and in as well. This isn't Cinemax, so we have to cut them some slack about the clothes. However, if the objects she holds in her hands also orb out and in, why was her laundry left vulnerable to attack when her Walkman came through the experience with nary a scratch? On a more mundane note, I suppose we are now to assume that some part of Raige's subconscious is constantly scanning the area for dangers of which her conscious mind is unaware. Thus the orbing out despite Raige knowing nothing of incoming fire, friendly or otherwise. Then again, I might be doing the writers' work for them, so draw your own conclusions. Spalding glances around, realizes he's thoroughly outnumbered, and squiggles out. Raige wails, "What the hell happened?" "The freaking furniture just attacked!" is the reply. The four goggle as we cut to the credits.