Episode Report Card Owen: D | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Morality Bites
By Owen | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.06.1999
Piper joins Prue in the car. Piper checks herself out in the mirror, wiping away tears and trying to compose herself. Prue: "I can't even imagine what a difficult thing you had to do, saying goodbye to your husband and child like that." Yeah, right. What really happens: Piper inexplicably asks Prue what's wrong. Prue makes it all about her: "I have no one to say goodbye to! No life. They didn't even know who you were at the office. My own sister. If we die tonight, my tombstone will read, 'Here lies Prue, she worked hard.'" No, I'd chip in to mark her grave with a nine-foot marble stepladder so she can get over her dead, rampantly self-absorbed self. Piper assures Prue that they're not going to die -- that they'll all survive and somehow go back to the past so they can improve their future. Prue agrees, finally starts the car, and they're off.
Two girls dressed as Susan Anton and Jaclyn Smith for Halloween walking along a huge concrete wall -- I mean Prue and Piper trying to find a way in to Phoebe's prison. Piper: "Don't people normally break out of prison? Heh. Prue: "Nothing about this is normal." Word. They use the "create a door" spell.
Inside the prison. Guards come for Phoebe. AM looks very tiny-bodied and big-headed in that jumpsuit.
A stormtrooper-ish guard stops the hard Ps and tells them to "Freeze!" Piper freezes him instead. Guffaw. They find Phoebe's cell, but it's empty.
Phoebe on her way to execution. We're thankfully spared the cheese of some guard yelling, "Dead witch walking!" Of note is the particularly bad makeup on AM in these scenes. I guess she's supposed to look extremely tired and worried, so they've given her circles as big as Olympic running tracks around the eyes. Oh, and they have somebody revving up the flame machine as she approaches the chamber. Yeah, right. As if.
If you use Finesse shampoo, you can remove your man's stigmas about buying tampons and asking for directions! Sexist blather, rinse, repeat.
Phoebe's shackled to the pyre apparatus. Pratt is there, exclaiming, "I love the smell of burnt witch in the morning." If you think that pop cult ref sounds tired in 1999, imagine hearing it ten years later. Phoebe addresses him in a Tori Spelling-esque Dramatic Whisper: "At least I'm paying for my crime. There'll come a day when you have to pay for yours too." Pratt blows her off to address the viewing gallery with the same sound bites we heard earlier. The hard Ps enter the chamber. Prue orders Piper to freeze Pratt. She does. Piper tells Phoebe they're getting her out of there, and unshackles her. Phoebe tells them that they can't, because she deserves to die, or rather her future self does. Prue reasons that Phoebe "killed a killer" and if anyone should be punished, it should be Pratt. Prue does that weird "looking at her hand while considering throwing attitude" gesture from last episode. Phoebe stops her, telling her not to become a murderer, like her. Prepare yourself for Pheeb's delivery of this ep's thesis statement: "The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing. Our job is to protect the innocent, not punish the guilty." Prue says that they were sent to the future for a reason, and the hard P's aren't leaving without her. Phoebe says the reason was "to understand why this has to happen -- why you have to let it happen. I don't want to die, but I don't want you to..." She says something else, and I rewound the tape several times to make it out, but AM is sobbing and wailing so much at this point only dogs could have heard her (tm Chandler Bing). The sisters embrace. I believe that Alyssa Milano is really crying, and Holly Marie Combs is all red-eyed and truly sobbing. Then they cut to Shannen Doherty with glycerin smeared on her face, trying to fit in. Pheebs kisses the hard Ps and says she loves them. She walks back up to the pyre and waits. Phoebe nods at Piper to unfreeze the scene, which is tantamount to Piper "pulling the plug" on her sister herself, and I can only imagine the trauma involved. Phoebe is engulfed in flames while Piper and Prue watch, holding each other and crying. Not a bad scene, that.
Halliwell Manor. More sped-up time-lapse F/X. Oh god. The forecast for the final five minutes of this show calls for anvil showers mixed with iron skillets, floor safes, and baby grand pianos. It's 1999 again. Prue and Piper are hugging in the living room. Piper asks what they're doing there. They call out for Phoebe. After a dramatic pause, she enters the room. Big hug! I know. Good lord, these girls embrace more than Teletubbies on Ecstasy. The hard 's thought they "lost" Pheebs. Phoebe says: "You did. I could feel the flames on my skin." They sit on the sofa, and turn on the TV to find out what time period they're in. A newscaster reports something about Cal Greene. Phoebe figures out that they're back on the "very same day they cast the [future] spell." She wonders why. Prue thinks they were sent to the future to stop Cal Greene's murder from occurring. Piper, quite intelligently, concludes that would have entailed them being sent back to the day Phoebe killed Cal Greene instead. Suddenly, a dog barks! The sisters rush to the window. We get to see more Rottweiler butt. Prue: "Not again!" Word! Piper and Prue open the window to stir up the shit, as it were, because "he still hasn't learned his lesson." The newly minted righteous Phoebe declares that the sisters haven't learned their lesson, either. They were sent back to that day -- all together now -- "where it all started. The first time we used our magic for revenge." Piper argues that the shit trick is "just a little thing." Phoebe wah wah break the small rules wah wah leads to big rules wah wah, wah wah, wah wah. The Simpsons ep where Homer time travels and kills the bug = much more succinct. Prue then repeats Phoebe's thesis statement from the last scene word for word. Ouch! If you producers want to pad the running time of the show, y'all could just add more establishing shots of San Francisco at the beginning. Not that the thought hasn't occurred to y'all before.