Dream Sorcerer

For reasons of which we are well-aware, SunMoonStar is romance and the steppes of Russia and the pants on a Roxy usher and all of the other cunning rhyming couplets from that song.

Fade up on [72virg=ins], wherein Phoebe slides through the crowd of dot-commers on her way to Prue and Piper's table, only to be accosted by a young man whose opening gambit is, "Are your parents terrorists? 'Cause, baby, you're the bomb!" I knew the new name for [qua=ke] would come in handy. Phoebe buhs and bounces off her first suitor into the arms of a second, who smarms, "Ask her if it hurt when she fell from Heaven, 'cause I know an angel when I see one," and these guys have to be whipping out these lines as part of a dare, because I refuse to believe heterosexuals are this toxic and stupid. ["Believe it, my friend." -- Sars] Phoebe blows past the tool brigade to greet Piper and Prue, who apparently have been occupying themselves by watching an obnoxious heterosexual couple making out by the bar "for the last hour." What did I say last week about investing in vibrators, you losers? Yeah, that's right. Do so. Quickly. In keeping with the hastily-established and tedious theme for the evening, a blonde cocktail waitress named "Skye" stops by the table with a glass of chardonnay for Prue. Evidently, some smitten young gentleman across the room would be most honored indeed if Prue would allow him the pleasure of getting her tanked on his dime. Skye points the gentleman out, and I swear to God, in the seconds-long shot of him raising his glass in a toast, I can tell immediately that the guy's an unnatural cross between David Johansen of The New York Dolls and Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray, and that said example of transgenic mutation goes against everything that is holy and good, like, ew. Prue is either as disgusted as I am or simply mindful of the fact she's supposedly dating a cop who could pistol-whip her faithless ass should he learn she accepted a cocktail from a stranger, so she asks Skye to return the drink with her regrets. This, I have found, is not necessarily the best thing to do in the situation. The stranger could get shirty and demand to know if he's not good enough for you, and in such cases it really is easier to accept the cocktail and then sabotage the mindless small talk with your temporary benefactor that's certain to follow for the time it takes you to finish the drink. Follow this with an offer to exchange phone numbers (no, you'll never call, and it's perfectly acceptable to give a false number of your own) while excusing yourself to go look for that "friend" of yours who's never on time, goddammit, and before you know it, you've received a free cocktail with no strings attached. As a matter of fact, if you're as skilled as I am with sabotaging small talk, chances are you'll never even reach the phone-number-plus-lying stage. Then again, I've never dated a cop who could pistol-whip my faithless ass when the mouthy gossip of a bartender tells him I've been whoring for shots. I really have to find a new bar to hang out in. Randy can be such a bitch sometimes.

Anyway, after the song about pitching lonely women off the roof and after watching the sun rise over the Golden Gate Bridge, we eventually manage to end up at the late Skye's fabulous apartment building. The deceased is artfully splayed across her bed in her nightgown. Darryl narrates the relevant particulars of her brief life and mysterious death. "The coroner says it's as if she fell off a twenty-story building," he notes, as Andy grimaces and takes it all very personally. I won't even bother asking how the coroner could make such an assessment when they haven't even moved the goddamned body off the freaking bed yet, because this isn't C.S.I. or Law & Order and I should damn well know better by now. "But we're inside an apartment, on the ground floor, and her body hasn't been moved," Andy enumerates with disbelief. For my part, I can't believe a cocktail waitress in San Francisco could afford to live in that spacious one-bedroom in that fabulous building with that stunning view of the Transamerica Pyramid through her bedroom windows, but then again, this is a show produced by Aaron Spelling about witches. What I should be doing is turning off my damn brain.

We get a lovely close-up of the deceased's blank, glazed eyes, and then it's over to Halliwell Manor. Up in the sun porch, Piper's exercising along with a video while Prue slumps in a chair, examining the video's box. "I give up," Piper grunts. "Two weeks, and nothing's strengthened but my temper." Vi. Brator. "You didn't read the fine print," Prue smirks. "See, it says right here," she continues, pointing at the box. "'Nineteen ninety-five for the video and twenty grand for the plastic surgeon.'" I would love it if Alyssa Milano entered on that line, but unfortunately, she doesn't. Instead, Piper groans about how the exercise video's hostess is desired by every man in America and it's not fair because she'll never look like the woman in the video and suck it up and shut it because you're boring me, sweetie. Though the idea that this is all a veiled reference to Teen Steam does make me somewhat giddy. Prue explains that everyone wants what they can't have, which is why the Glamorous Ladies need to stop wasting their time trying to figure out what men want, and start trying to figure out what they want in their men. Um. Wait. No, I'll rewind to make sure I got that right. Yeah, that's virtually verbatim. Uh. Okay, honey, that makes no sense. If everyone wants what they can't have, that means your lists of the qualities you'd find desirable in your mates will consist of characteristics and attributes possessed by gentlemen who won't give any of you the time of day. My brain hurts. Phoebe finally enters at this point with a bowl of cereal to announce that she wants a guy who's "lots of fun [with] lots of heat and no strings attached." Slut. Whore. Slut-whore. Piper wants "romance, long kisses, late-night talks, [and] candlelight," and adds, "I'd take what Prue has in a flat second." Yeah, get in line, you whiny sow. Prue counters that all is not sweetness and light between herself and Mr. Trudeau, because of that whole lying-about-her-bitchcraft thing she constantly has to do with him. Prue and Piper gaze bleakly at each other. Phoebe shovels more shredded wheat into her maw.

Attic. Kit -- hi, Kit! -- meows and glares from his majestic perch behind some lit candles. Piper and Phoebe sit on the floor beside the low table and read each other's "Perfect Man" wish lists aloud. It's so like a game of Mystery Date that I want to vomit, but you all want to know what they're wishing for, don't you? Sigh. Piper's list reads, "I want a man who is single, smart, and employed. A man who loves sleeping in on Sunday, sunset bike rides, cuddling by a roaring fire, and late night talks. A man who loves love as much as I do." Phoebe wants "the sexy, silent type that finds you driving through town on the back of a Harley at three o'clock in the morning. A man who appreciates scented candles, body oils, and Italian sheets. He's about hunger, and lust, and danger, and even though you know all this and he will never meet your friends or share a holiday meal with your family, you can't stay away. And, he recycles." All of that was [sic], by the way. The ladies also make a joke about their supposed paramours' respective endowments. Now, because I've watched TV before in my lifetime, I know neither of the gals is going to find one man who possesses all of her specified qualities. Nope. Each is going to find an army of men, and each of those men will embody a single characteristic from the list, and every single one of these gentlemen will fall instantly, dangerously in love with the P to whom he's been assigned. And unless Connie Burge yanks some novel way of presenting this subplot out of her ass, it's all going to be so very tedious. Piper flips to the entry in question and is surprised by its contents. Phoebe giggles that, as women, they have it easy as far as the spell goes. "If we were men looking for women," she reveals, "the spell requires putting a piece of honey cake in a sweaty armpit for days." I think I've met guys who would be into that sort of thing. In any event, the gals drop a satchel containing their wish lists into a copper pot at the center of the table, link hands, and recite the following twice:

I conjure thee,
I conjure thee:
I am the queen,
You are the bee.
As I desire,
So shall it be.

As they make their collective way through the verse, a minor whirlwind springs to life within the confines of the attic to blow out the candles and whip through the ladies' hair as Kit yowls with mild irritation in the background. The whirlwind dissipates as quickly as it arose the moment the Ps finish their recitation. Phoebe and Piper hear the phone ringing downstairs and excitedly leap to their feet to answer it. Kit rolls his eyes and licks his paw all, "Stupid bitches."

Down in the main hallway, Prue lifts the receiver to find Sugar Johansen on the other end of the line. Oh, God. Spare me. For his delivery of these lines, the actor playing the cripple has adopted a nasal Nicholson whine that was grating even when Christian Slater used it in Heathers, and Christian Slater had the benefit of using the Nicholson Nasal for parodic purposes. Here? Not so much. Hell -- not at all. Bad cripple! Bad! Long story short, Sugar asks Prue out on a date, Prue tells Sugar to blow his date and his line readings out of his ass, and Sugar hangs up on her in a snit. Phoebe breezes to the front door, intending to head off to [72virg=ins] to see if her spell worked. Slut. Whore. Slut-whore. She invites the others to join her, but both Prue and Piper beg off, with Prue calling Phoebe "Missy May" as she does so. I have no idea where that came from, but it's sort of amusing. Once the raging hosebeast has left, Prue announces she's headed upstairs for a nice long soak in the tub.

Bathroom. Tub. Candles. Prue, soaking. Shannen Doherty, thankfully covered completely from the neck down by bubbles. Prue closes her eyes, and the lighting slides from the yellowish glimmer of the lit candles to...

...a rich, violet, cinematic glow as the black-gloved hand of Sugar enters the frame. He rouses her and makes with the threats. She screams for Piper, then gasps at him in horror when she realizes he joined her word-for-word in his own mocking tone of voice. He reveals that he's wormed his way into her subconscious, and is thus privy to all of her thoughts, all of her dreams, and all of her fears. The scene abruptly shifts so that while Prue is still in the tub, the tub itself is now in the center of The Soundstage Of It's Not The Fall That Kills You -- It's The Sudden Stop. "You are not real!" Prue seethes at Sugar. "You don't exist!" "That's what your mother used to say, isn't it?" Sugar smiles, suddenly on the opposite side of the tub. He rises and latches on to a loofah as he stalks around her and continues, "Before you went to sleep as she tucked you in she'd say if you saw any monsters to tell yourself they weren't real -- they didn't exist?" Prue's been repeating her last line like a mantra the entire time, then realizes she's paralyzed in the water and shrieks, "Why can't I move?" "Because I'm going to love you to death," is Sugar's psychotic reply as he slides a loofah down her back. As he's now controlling the horizontal and the vertical, the loofah gouges the flesh in her back, drawing blood that mingles with the water and the suds to stain her skin. Prue pants and shrieks and thrashes about as lightning flashes and Sugar forces her head beneath the water. He grimaces at the effort required to subdue her, then whips his head around when he hears someone thumping at the bathroom door and...

...Prue heaves herself up out of the water, gasping for air. Piper pokes her head in to see if everything's okay. "You were yelling," she notes. "Yeah, uh, I had a...I had a really bad...thing," Prue shakily replies. "A thing?" Piper asks. "A bad dream," Prue stammers. "I'm okay now," she continues, distractedly wiping suds from her hair and face. "Go back to bed." Piper shrugs and shuts the door behind her as she leaves. The camera stays on the door, then slowly pans across the wall to the mirror above the sink as we hear Prue rising from the tub. By the time the mirror swings into the frame, Prue's pulled a towel around her body and swivels to examine her back in the reflection. The gouges left by Sugar's loofah gape over her shoulder blade. Prue winces and gasps as we head into the commercial break.

Manor, the following morning. Prue fills Piper in on Sugar's invasion of her subconscious the evening, adding that while the marks on her back disappeared overnight, she knows she saw them when she got out of the tub. Piper gently suggests that Prue's simply suffering from the effects of overwork. Prue's been at the office at least seventy hours already this week, and she's heading back in on a Saturday to pull what promises to be another twelve-hour shift, so it's no wonder she's having nightmares. Prue's torn between what she thinks happened to her and Piper's far more reasonable explanation of those events. Soon, none of this matters, because a gay porn star the closed captioning identifies as "Hans" ambles shirtlessly through the kitchen with a bright "Good morning!" for the Glamorous Ladies. Okay, fine. I have no idea if this guy's ever done gay porn, but he sure as hell looks the type. He's one of those zero-percent-body-fat steroid-enhanced gym-bunny nipple ponies that look like blow-up dolls. And to aggravate the situation, he crosses to the refrigerator to suck milk directly from the bottle, and of course -- of course -- several rivulets of milk trickle down his chin and neck to meander around on his chest, and it's all very sick and wrong, and worse, it's tawdry. Phoebe jiggles into the kitchen with Hans's shirt, which he dons after slinging the milk bottle into the recycling bin. He smooches on Phoebe and promises to meet her later that day for brunch and, I don't know, some window-shopping at the Prada boutique. He leaves as Piper makes "Can you believe the bimbo we have living in our house?" faces at Prue. "Don't worry," perks the Feebs. "We had safe sex." Well, if you're screwing a guy whose oeuvre includes Sexpack Seven -- Pigs In Heaven and Butt Munch II: Back In The Crack, you would be advised to use a condom, and I think I'll leave it at that. Prue snorts derisively. Piper says it all for me: "Ew."

The Loneliest Precinct House In The World. Andy's unearthed FBI files on three young, unrelated women who all died the same way as Skye. Darryl pshaws, because he's lazy. Andy mainlines caffeine and announces, "We have the M.O. of a serial killer!"

[72virg=ins]. Phoebe tags along after Piper, enthusing over the wonders their little spell worked. She bubbles that Hans doesn't hang around in bars (that aren't on Folsom Street), and he wouldn't be caught dead at [72virg=ins] (because it's not gay-owned and -operated), but last night, "while he was on his way home from his acting class -- BAM!" Piper picks up on the "acting class" bit and nearly barks up a lung. Hee! Phoebe ignores this, revealing that Hans got a flat right outside the restaurant, came inside to call AAA, and the rest was kismet, or something. "Phoebe," Piper begins dryly, "you threw his clothes all over the house. That's not a spell working. That's hormones." Piper, he's gay, and he was on his way home from an arduous day-long shoot on the Falcon lot for Chi Chi LaRue. That's a freaking spell. "It's not like that," Phoebe protests. "I really like Hans." She pauses a bit, then waves her hands around in the air in triumph: "And he likes me too!" She dances over to the bar, where Hans sits in his white t-shirt, his faded blue jeans, and his yellow construction boots. Fag! God! I mean, really. Fag!

As Phoebe exits with the man she converted with an assist from the wicked, evil, vile, Satanic, Falwell- and Family-Research-Council-approved Book of Shadows, Piper rolls her eyes and turns to deliver a lunch plate to her particular regular. For what is evidently the very first time, he looks up from his work and asks Piper to call him Jack. Then he hits on her, asking her out for dinner. Piper stares blankly at him for the smallest of moments, then excuses herself to book over to the bar. Once there, she phones Prue at the office as another businessman (and what's with all the businessmen in [72virg=ins] on a Saturday afternoon?) invites her to fly to Paris with him. Piper grunts and tells the Buckland's receptionist that it's an emergency.

Buckland's. Prue multitasks as she asks Piper if she's seriously considering Jack's offer. We never get to hear Piper's response, because Rex Buckland enters Prue's office at that moment with about a dozen boxes of "the letters of Ernest Hemingway" for Prue to sort through for Monday's auction after she's done with "the Rembrandt sketches" and "the Cromwell miniatures." Prue sighs and tells Piper that a ludicrous contrivance of monumental proportions just crashed into her office, so she'll have to call back later.

Manor, that evening. Phoebe laces up some vicious-looking pumps as she and Piper chatter about their impending dates. Piper did decide to take Jack up on his offer after he "talked [her] ear off and had [her] laughing at all of his jokes the entire lunch hour." Phoebe and Hans, meanwhile, are heading to a nightclub called "Rave" so all of Hans's escort friends can make bitchy comments behind his back about the fish he's got strapped to his arm. "This has worked out so great, hasn't it?" Phoebe grins as she crosses to the door. Piper gives a halfhearted "yeah" by way of response, then dejectedly mumbles "great" to herself after Phoebe has drifted out the door. Poor Piper. Sure, Jack's a nice guy, but there's something wrong with him, right, honey? Let's see. What could it be? Oh, yeah -- he's not dead. Sigh. A good corpse is hard to find.

Imposing glass-walled edifice. I'm sorry. Did I say "imposing"? I meant "ugly." "So, this is a dream lab?" Darryl snarks as he and Andy stride through a reception area with a researcher in a lab coat. "You actually pay people to sleep?" Darryl, I realize you've been slotted into a well-established role here, but even Scully would agree on the value of sleep research. The gent in the white coat leaves the two alone to fetch a "Mr. Berman," who evidently dated the first of the mysteriously-slaughtered victims, one Julie Derickson. Andy gives Darryl the bullet on the office building; "it's a privately-funded research facility," and both Berman and Derickson "were working on some sort of experimental project." Just then, Sugar motors on over in his wheelchair. He's wearing a white mock turtleneck and is filmed from a low angle that together make him look like a crazed dentist. Or Cecil B. Demented. Oh, and his real name is "Whitaker Berman," but I'll be sticking to Sugar for the remainder of the recap. And good goddamn, but he's a crappy actor. I believe he's aiming for "quietly insane," but he's ending up somewhere between "bong monkey" and "comatose." I suppose he could be going for "the steel plate in my head is picking up AM signals from Honduras, and it really is quite difficult to concentrate on the questions you fine gentlemen are asking me while some disk jockey in Tegucigalpa recites the farm report in Spanish," but I don't think this guy's intelligent enough to come up with that particular choice on his own. Andy and Darryl make with the interrogation, and it's dull because Sugar The Comatose Bong Monkey has the perfect alibi -- he was conducting experiments on himself on the night in question right there in the lab, in the presence of several assistants who can confirm his story. Darryl and Andy thank him for his time and leave.

[72virg=ins]. Piper is following my earlier advice and attempting to sabotage the small talk with Jack. Unfortunately, because of the spell, nothing she brings up -- not her susceptibility for hives, not her numerous ulcers, not her naughty tattoo -- deters him. I shall offer another tip to you, gentle reader, this one on appropriate topics of conversation for the purposes of sabotaging small talk: Cultivate a keen interest in either serial killers or disasters, both natural and man-made. At an opportune moment, discuss a pet topic at length: "So, you've got hundreds of people in full evening dress scrambling full-tilt at only three exits, two of which open inward for Christ's sake, and one of which is a revolving door, of all things, and, well, you can imagine. I mean, the revolving door immediately jammed, with some of the people losing their hands in the damn thing before either smoke inhalation or a blowtorch of flame from the lower level took them out and meanwhile, you've got hundreds of people at the other two doors, clawing their way over each other to the point where scores of people towards the bottoms of the piles were simply crushed to death while scores more vaulting themselves to the top were burned beyond recognition. I mean, do you know the sort of product women put in their hair back then? Not to mention the men. Human. Torches. No, it's true!"

Jack leans across the table and kisses her. Piper titters nervously. She then notices three or four other men flirting with her from various stations around the restaurant and bar area. Piper begins to wig.

The Laboratory Of It's Not The Fall That Blah Blah Splat. Sugar The Comatose Bong Monkey hoists himself out of his wheelchair onto a bed and starts ordering about his lackeys with nonsensical technobabble, all "thirty cc's of" this and "dream inducement level to" that. One of the flunkies has the unmitigated gall to question him, but Sugar smacks him down all, "Set the machine and give me the shot, dammit!" The lackeys obey.

Buckland's. Prue, exhausted, nods off at her desk, and...

...lifts her head to find Sugar grinning at her as the lighting becomes more saturated in golds and blues. She snatches up a letter opener and screams for help as Sugar morphs the scene around them from her office to the The Soundstage Of It's Not The Fall That...Splat. He icily asks her what she's hiding from, what with the long hours at a thankless job and everything. "I'm not hiding from innything!" she spits as the realization that she is once again paralyzed leads her to thrash about helplessly. Sugar stalks around the desk and grips the arms of her chair, pushing her around the stage so that the chair's casters flip about in the mist that rises from the floor. Nice touch. He sneers that she's powerless, and threatens to go after Piper and Phoebe "and any number of young, single women" after he's through with her, calling himself "The Dream Sorcerer" and rolling her closer to the edge. Drawing upon every bit of strength in her body, Prue launches her right leg into the air, grinding her knee into his crotch as she impales his hand with the letter opener. Sugar roars and yanks himself away from her as the phone chirps, cutting through their screams, and...

...Prue snaps awake, drool no doubt pooling on the various files on her desk. She picks up the receiver to find Andy on the other end. He "just wanted to hear [her] voice." She groggily thanks him for calling and hangs up. Still clutching the opener, she wheels about in her chair with the thing raised when Rex startles her from behind. "Bloody hell!" he shouts, which is pretty accurate. The opener is smeared with gore from Sugar's hand. Prue gazes at it in horror as she lowers it to her desk. The camera tracks in on it as we fade out into commercial.

The Loneliest Precinct House In The World, and I'm going to start calling it Andy's House Of Beef or something, because that other name has become a pain in the ass to type. Darryl ruthlessly deconstructs Andy's suspicions regarding Sugar. Andy in turn gets hot and heavy with the exposition, explaining that Sugar's research concerns "dream leaping" (which is exactly what you think it is) while noting that the breaking-off of his relationship with the first victim was what led to the car accident that left him a crippled and embittered bong monkey. He was so distraught, you see, that he wrecked his car, so he leapt into Derickson's subconscious and threw her off a roof. Just go with it. After all, Darryl is. The two grab their jackets and saunter out of the precinct.

Manor. Phoebe arrives to find scores of floral arrangements littered throughout the hallway, dining room, and kitchen. Piper peers out from behind some of the bunches in the kitchen, sipping tea. She explains that she found the flowers waiting for her on the front porch when she returned. Some are from men she barely knows, some are from men she doesn't know, and the rest are for Phoebe. Phoebe guesses that her Big Gay Boyfriend chose not to send her anything, as their date was a disaster. Duh. He's gay. Steroid-chomping, gym-ratting, construction-boot-wearing, gay-porn gay. Bonehead. Piper decides that they should -- wait for it -- reverse the spell. "Love is a magic between two people that cannot be conjured," she insists. Kit yowls and scampers into Phoebe's lap to hork up a spiky hairball in Piper's direction. Oh, I'm sorry. Kit's actually just complaining, because he appears to have been affected by the spell as well. Phoebe glances at the windows, which are full of horny kitties hungry for a little Kit action, like, stick a pencil in it, ladies. Phoebe hollers at the "tomcats" to scram. Oops. I suppose Kit was still supposed to be female at this point. I can't remember when Kit finally managed to scrape together the cash to head over to Denmark for the reassignment surgery, but I know he was a boy cat by the time "Pre-Witched" rolled around. Oh, I get it! Maybe Kit's been a boy all along, and he's the regular character who's been representing the San Francisco gay community from the start! That makes total sense. Damn, the tangents are just thick on the ground tonight, aren't they?

So, Piper and Phoebe agree to reverse the spell, and just then the phone rings. Piper answers to find Prue, frantic, on the other end. She tells Piper that Sugar popped into her head again, and orders Piper and Phoebe to research Dream Sorcerers in the Book of Shadows. Piper suggests that Prue remain at Buckland's until she and Phoebe can head over in the Cherokee to pick her up, but Prue's not having it. She wants out of the office, and she wants out of there now. Well, that can't be a good idea. Prue tells Piper to hurry and hangs up the phone.

Attic. Phoebe and Piper pace in frustration, for the Book contains no information on the type of demon Prue's described. Phoebe speculates that Sugar might be human. If he is, Piper remarks, "then he's got one hell of a power." The gals glum about for a bit before the phone rings downstairs. Phoebe and Piper race to catch it as the scene cuts over to Prue in her car, begging them to answer. Piper reaches the phone first, and admits to Prue that their research was for naught. Prue mumbles that they'll think of something, and urges Piper to continue talking to her so that Prue remains awake. Piper passes the receiver to Phoebe, who immediately starts prattling at piercing volume in Prue's ear. Rather inconveniently, Phoebe's Big Gay Porn Star chooses this moment to bang on the front door. Rather stupidly, Phoebe drops the phone to deal with him. He forces his way through the door to piss and whine and moan. Meanwhile, Prue's nodding off at the wheel. This situation, I really shouldn't snicker at, but please. It's Shannen Doherty on the verge of totaling a car, for Christ's sake. Sweet. Prue breathes, "Phoebe," and...