Episode Report Card Demian: B | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Hell hath no fury like a Piper bitching.
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.10.2001
Some ovary whines, "Who am I?" under the opening San Francisco travelogue, so you know we're bound to end up at SOUTH BAY SOCIAL SERVICES sooner or later, sooner being the case this evening. In her cubicle, Rose, rather than actually working, reads in a voice-over from a paperback entitled Witches & Witchcraft. "Throughout history, witches have been misunderstood, persecuted, and destroyed. The public hanging, drowning, and burning of women suspected of witchcraft is a far more recent chapter of our history than most people realize." And thank you for that, Stoopy McMoron. You never read The Crucible or something? She's interrupted by her boss, who wants to know, "What's the hold-up on the O'Brien application?" Rose blathers an excuse that really isn't, and he demands that she have it on his desk "by noon." They really need to knock it off with the whole noting specific hours of the day and deadlines thing in these scripts, because it always ends in tears. My tears of frustration at the resulting inaccuracies in the time frame, mind you, but tears nonetheless. Rose swivels in her seat to hiss at a co-worker. "Lila! What's the O'Brien application?" Lila, a grunge chick ten years after the fact, clues Rose in on "Adam O'Brien -- the foster kid [they're] trying to get into boarding school." The deadline for the application is close of business that very day. Rose curses her stupidity. No comment. Yet.
The mailboy, a retiring lad with a marked overbite and severe acne, arrives at that moment to toss a couple of letters onto Rose's desk. "Aw, Billy, I told you to throw anything from creditors into the trash." Billy the Acned shoots a series of snorting goofball guffaws through his nose. Yet another co-worker of Rose's approaches to slime, "Hey, Pizzaface?" Billy the Acned stops snorting. "Look, I know it's difficult to tear yourself away from the cleavage in this section," this miscreant in a two-piece suit continues, pausing to toss a withering leer Rose's way, "but I need my mail some time today, 'kay?" Billy dejectedly plods off. The creep leers once more at Rose -- who, in her defense, is wearing a high-necked blouse in this sequence -- then oozes his way over to the Xerox machine. Rose watches him go with a look of disgust in her eyes. "Nice rug," she mutters to herself. Said rug immediately orbs off of the bastard's head into her hand. Rose gasps! "What the hell?" shouts the smug bastard. Should I? Okay: Yes, Smug Bastard. Exactly. Rose hastily disposes of the hairpiece in her wastebasket; the smug bastard scuttles back to his office in shame amid the derisive hoots of various bleach-blonde secretarial types.
Manor. Up in the attic, Piper uses a red Sharpie to draw a thick X in the Book of Shadows over the image of the meanie from the pre-credits sequence. Phoebe watches in slack-jawed horror, then pouts, "Oh, I know that you're happy we got him, Piper, but is it totally necessary to disfigure the Book?" First off, O Feeble One, you did the same damn thing last season with your addenda to the Colethazor's entry, and secondly, where the hell is my check for that line? You totally ripped it off from my recap for "Look Who's Barking." Bitch. Well, at the very least, you ripped off the sense of outrage underpinning the line from my recap. Oh, hell, I'll just take it as a complete shout-out to me and the site and call it a day. Piper ignores both Phoebe and me to note, "This one could incinerate human flesh with his eyes. That must sting." Cole fails to see the humor in the situation. Piper could have gotten herself killed. She could have endangered Phoebe. She could have exposed Cole. "There's a legion of bounty hunters on my [tantalizing] ass," he reminds her as I scream along with the Globey and Chairy and the rest of the furniture. He should be "laying low" because of this, but can't. "If you insist on taking these suicide missions," he continues, his voice rising in anger, "you force me to be there because there is no way in hell I'm going to let Phoebe lose another sister!" Phoebe darts to his side and, in an attempt to defuse the situation, asks him to answer the doorbell, which has rung in the background during his rant. "If it's The Source," he snarks as he turns on his heel, "I'll just ask him to come back later." He leaves, shutting the door behind him.