Episode Report Card Owen: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT P3 H2O
By Owen | Season 2 | Episode 8 | Aired on 12.08.1999
The last recap of the year! Let's begin right away.
Sign proclaiming "Camp Skylark." I racked my brain for another nickname for the place, but since it reminds me of my favorite Johnny Mercer standard and I get so few pleasures from this show, I'll leave it alone. Pan down to a catatonic Prue "Deck the" Halliwell leaning against Piper's SUV and staring out at a dock on a lake. Prue, in a building telekinetic fury, causes the chains holding Jason underwater to break, freeing him to emerge on land at the summer camp and kill again. Actually, much to my chagrin, when I first saw the title of this episode and a brief synopsis, I expected the writers to rip off a flick like Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. But this ep unexpectedly stole right and left from another low-brow horror flick: The Bridges of Madison County. A siren starts to wail and Prue gives a constipated look in close-up. Doodle-doodle-do, doodle-doodle-do. Houston, we have black-and-white flashback. I guess the siren was a police car, because the camera weaves past an ambulance and police vehicles and towards persons unknown milling around a body bag on the dock. Offscreen voices murmur, "Is that the little girl?" "Get her away from here! She shouldn't see this!" But she does, because the camera turns out to be Wee Prue's point of view, and she comes up to the body bag just as (natch) we identify the corpse as Patty "Staying Alive -- Not!" Halliwell. An officer picks Wee Prue up and we get a close-up of her wailing, "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" Some Charmed-iana here: This must be the historic moment where Prue first got her bitch on! And some of you might be surprised that a little Asian girl is playing Wee Prue. But if you read the recent Charmed novelization as I did, you found out that when the Halliwells were young Prue really was Chinese, Piper was a Navajo Indian, and Phoebe was a small African-American boy with a medical condition that stunted his growth (but didn't hinder his ability to crack wise to his elders!). Then puberty and poor continuity set in. (Actually I think an Oriental-looking girl was cast to explain Shannen Doherty's unusual ocular features.) So Wee Prue Wan is wailing and the policeman carries her away.
Cut back to the present. Prue answers her cell phone. It's Piper "ThisClose To Choosing Herself" Halliwell. The hard Ps blather about Prue getting in stuck in traffic while driving back from an estate sale and Piper being worried, then call waiting comes on and Piper has to take the other line because it's Dan. Prue rightfully busts Piper by noting that since he only lives twenty feet away, they could use walkie-talkies or tin cans on string. Piper: "Point taken." Prue lets Piper go "to talk to [her] boy." Who does Prue think Piper is -- Sep? Prue hangs up and walks to the dock. She stands on the shore in her jeans and red midriff-baring halter as the camera pans up over her head and the score blares the dramatic alternating sounds of a choir moaning and metal being scratched. Cut to an uniformed policeman in a rowboat in the lake. Water churns beside the boat. He gapes at the churning water. From Prue's POV, we see him fall into the lake as the boat capsizes. The cop screams for help. Prue runs along the shore, but before she can go to help the guy, a grizzled, bearded older man appears and holds her back. Grizzly assures her, "It's too late!" Prue orders Grizzly to call 911 (although she's Ms. Yuppie Cell Phoner) as she looks out at the lake. Then she turns around, but Grizzly's vapor.
Credits. I've been chastised lately for not giving this show enough "credit." In the holiday spirit, here goes: Wow! Those Halliwells! They put the "We Can" back in Wiccan! They surely do!