Episode Report Card Demian: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT We All Scream For Ice Cream
By Demian | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.17.2001
As Prue, humming the insistent tune to herself, maneuvers her way through the gyrating white yuppies, we cut to a shot of an ice-cream truck that is piping out the same sequence of notes. The truck parks in a dark, forbidding alley -- as if there is any other kind of alley on this show -- and an Aryan tot approaches the windows. "Would you like some ice cream, little one?" the man inside asks, managing to sound like the stereotypical nightmare of a demonic child molester from Hell we're all supposed to think he is. The Hitler Jugend replies in the affirmative. The shaved head of the Ice-Cream Molester emerges from a haze of dry-ice fog to reply, "You didn't say, 'Please.'" The camera pulls into distorted close-up of the Nazi's screaming face, and we cut to the opening credits.
Back from the commercials, we're treated to another endless series of establishing shots, this time of the San Francisco skyline making the transition from night to dawn as "Tonight and the Rest of My Life" by Nina Gordon plays. If anyone can convincingly explain to me what relevance that song has to this episode, I'll send you the calendar of scantily-clad "starlets" that came with the Alyssa Milano edition of For Him Magazine. You know you want it -- Shannen Doherty is Miss November. Cut to the Halliwell manor. Upstairs, a distressingly sweaty Prue lies in her bed, grunting her way through a nightmare we see and hear in a series of sepia-toned flashes. A playground, shrouded in snow. Children squealing in fright. A small dark-haired girl running into the protective arms of a father type. The digital alarm on Prue's nightstand blares at that moment, and Prue bolts upright, panting. She slams her hand down on the snooze button, and sweatily pants some more. Not an image I ever needed to see.
Cut to the manor porch. Prue bends to retrieve the morning paper, then rises, warily eyeing the empty sunlit street as the Ice-Cream Molester's theme song tinkles in the background. Prue has slung her tits into a backless, braless, string-tied paisley atrocity that she apparently intends to wear to the office. We have rules about such attire where I work. As in, showing up in such attire gets you canned. Prue turns and reenters the manor, slamming the door shut behind her.
Cut to the kitchen, where Phoebe sits at the table with her Macintosh laptop, studying the little fact sheet she's compiled on Cole. It's nothing we haven't heard, though it does remind us that his parents' names are Benjamin and Elizabeth. One is listed as a member of the state assembly, while the other is a demon. I'd make a joke about not being able to tell one from the other, but we already know which is which. Phoebe mutters under her breath, "Come on, Cole. Talk to me." Prue enters, makes note of the dregs sloshing around in the bottom of the coffeepot, and asks Phoebe if she pulled "another all-nighter." Phoebe has, and notes her "subject matter has been elusive." As Phoebe shuts Cole's fact sheet, an instant message from "An Old Friend" pops up on screen. Prue, hearing the IM notification sound, wonders who's contacting Phoebe. Phoebe replies that it's "nothing," and eases the laptop shut. Prue teasingly interprets "nothing" as "something, and something usually means a boy." Prue sits down at the table next to Phoebe, the mildly-taunting grin on her mug making her look like a toad.