Episode Report Card Demian: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Suddenly Katya!
By Demian | Season 7 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.23.2005
In any event, Piper retrieves the Book and clomps back over to the stand as Phoebe blithers on endlessly about Piper and the Dolt's differing "parenting styles," and if this really is Piper's Issue Of The Week, I can already tell which subplot I'll be ignoring for the rest of the evening. Yawn. Nina, her understandable annoyance creeping through her otherwise patient façade, silently edges over to Piper's side and whispers, "Back to the Box?" Hmmm. I know we know next to nothing about Nina, but the forces of good we've encountered on this show have pretty much universally been fawning, mealy-mouthed milquetoasts as far as the Glamorous Ladies are concerned, so might something be not quite right with unusually assertive Nina here? Piper, ignoring me again, snottily supposes, "Lemme guess: A demon took it." "No," Nina bites, "but we better find the next guardian before one does." Phoebe dimly repeats the "guardian" bit of Nina's sentence, so Nina launches into a rapid burst of exposition thusly: "Like you, we're chosen beings -- part of a magical lineage, one in which to every generation, a girl is born meant to guard Pandora's Box." So, they're Slayers. I can deal with that. Sort of. Not. EVER. GOD, I hate this show. Actually, since I'm feeling a little charitable with regard to this evening's most prominent guest star, I'll make this show a deal: I'll not question this pathetically belated Buffy rip-off if Michelle Hurd returns to my television screen at once, because the level of interest this episode has managed to drag out of me plunged the instant we returned to the damn Manor during the pre-credits sequence. Ack.
ANY-way, the problem, as Nina would have it, is that "each girl is trained by the previous guardian -- instructed carefully about the dangers and powers of the Box -- except the next one hasn't been." "I'm not following," Phoebe blurts, like, huge surprise there, you pea-brained nitwit. "When Katya, the demon, attacked me," Nina explains, "the Box, perhaps sensing the danger, disappeared on its own, moving on to its next guardian." "And you don't know who that is?" Piper guesses. "No," Nina confirms, taking a moment before admitting, "I guess I wasn't expected to survive." Hmmmmmmmm. This all seems veddy, veddy fishy to me. Phoebe next wonders what Katya wants with the Box, like, durrrr. Moron! "To open it and release the world's ills," Nina allows, far more patiently than I ever could, "sorrow, famine, plagues -- all the evil inside." "So what's to keep the new guardian from doing the same," Piper eyebrows, "especially if she doesn't know what's inside the Box?" "Nothing," Nina emphasizes, while shooting Piper a Look Fraught With Significance. Piper's expression goes all, "Oh, shit," while stupid Phoebe purses her overly glossed lips.