Let's be frank. I don't want to write about this first scene. Why? Because it involves Piper and the Dolt, naked in a steamy shower, making goo-goo noises at each other before they commence with a round of soapy screwing. God, I have to go bathe after typing that sentence. Wait. "Bathe"? More like, "boil the upper three layers of my skin off of my body." Brad Kern, why have you forsaken me? Anyway, because I am so devoted to you, loyal MBTV reader, I will force myself to watch it and rewatch it and watch it once more to provide you with all of the gruesome details you've come to expect from a recap of the WB's signature Thursday night horror series. As opposed to the WB's signature horror series, which might soon become Fox's signature horror series if Jamie Kellner doesn't hand Joss Whedon two million dollars a week. I'm stalling and babbling, I realize. Trust me, what happens in this scene is far more disgusting than anything that follows in the episode. Actually, it's far more disgusting than anything I've seen on this show since Piper tried to have sex with the Dolt on the desk in her office at P3 in "Sight Unseen." I'm still stalling. Okay, then. A shot of Jack. Clench the teeth. Breathe. Here we go: Piper tells the Dolt they've finally found a place in the manor where they can be alone. Because, you know, she can't just lock the door to her goddamn bedroom when she wants to ride the skin bus to Tuna Town with her new husband. She has to tie up the bathroom for God knows how long so she can do God knows what to the feeble frat boy she inexplicably decided to saddle herself with for the rest of her life. Oh, God. I typed "saddle." The Dolt smiles, telling Piper that all they have to do is transfer all of their belongings to the bathroom, and they'll be set. Shut up, Dolt. Just as the two are about to [God help me] start having sex in the shower, Phoebe pounds on the door and enters with a hand over her eyes to search the drawers beneath the vanity for her lip-gloss. Unspeakably rude of her, I realize, but this scene is unspeakable, period, so I'll just keep plowing my way through it. Ack. I typed "plowing." "Phoebe!" Piper shouts. "I'm sorry," Phoebe replies, peeking through two of her fingers. "Were you guys in the middle of the" At the sight of the naked Dolt, Phoebe cuts herself short with "Ew." For the second time in as many weeks, I am forced to agree with her. Word, Phoebe. Lip gloss retrieved, Phoebe blindly stumbles out of the bathroom, running into the wall before skittering out the door. Piper glares as I grind up and snort a handful of Xanax. Jesus.
“ Shut up, Wonder Blob. ”
ANYway. Cut to Piper's boudoir. Piper and the Dolt stand, clad in their post-shower-sex robes, as Prue barrels in unannounced. "Hi!" Piper perks through gritted teeth. "Are you lost?" "No, but my keys are," Prue replies. "Have you seen them?" "Have you seen the door?" Piper counters. Prue realizes what she's done, apologizes, and exits. Piper sighs in frustration as the Dolt beams indulgently and reminds her that they "knew what [they] were getting into" when they agreed to remain in the manor after they married. Piper, having had more than enough, sits the Dolt on the bed and tells him she has a better idea. Back in the day, before Grams's final confinement, Prue and Piper shared a bitchin' bachelorette pad in North Beach. When it became clear Grams could no longer live on her own, the two Ps handed the apartment over to a couple of Piper's friends. Piper's kept in touch over the last three years, and the friends now want to hand the lease back over to her. The Dolt wonders if there will be "supernatural ramifications to living apart," as the three Ps did not gain their powers until all three had moved back in to the house after Grams's death. Piper's more concerned about the "marital ramifications to living together." "Everything we do is about navigating our 'charmed' lives," she whines. "When do we get to concentrate on our married life?" She urges him to treat the apartment becoming available as a "sign" that the two are meant finally to build their own life together. The Dolt smiles in silent agreement, and they kiss. Piper, irritating me to no end, ponders, "What do you think the chances are of us pulling this off before another demon attack?"
Not terribly good, as if you couldn't guess. Cut to a shot of the waxing crescent moon. Remember that. In a random apartment in the city, I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria Reuben! kneels in a circle of candles, chanting gibberish. The candles around her levitate. The StalkerCam kicks in at floor level as an unseen presence approaches. Turns out it's a black cat, which jumps into I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria's lap. The candles drop back to the floor as she affectionately chides the cat -- "Shadow" -- for interrupting her "during ritual." She shoos Shadow away and begins to chant again. Shadow leaps onto a table behind her and bats a crystal jar to the floor. The jar shatters, spilling an amber liquid across the floorboards. I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria turns to yell at her cat, but stops short when she realizes Shadow just might have some sinister motive. The cat bats a smaller bottle of pink liquid onto the floor, then hisses and spits at I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria. "Don't do this," she pleads as she rises slowly to her feet. Shadow bats another glass bottle onto the floor as I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria begs, "No!" You know, if she'd been using plastic containers to hold her potions, none of this would be happening. Then again, what the hell do I know about the proper methods for storing such things? The cat leaps down into the messy mix of potions on the floor, and an opaque mist rises around it. Shadow morphs up into a fat man clad in a fugly brown velour top under a black leather vest. How Shadow managed to conjure the hideous clothing, I'll never know; I'm just thankful I don't have to witness the even more hideous sight of the fat man naked. I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria gapes in horror as Shadow the Wonder Blob sneers, "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" Shut up, Wonder Blob. The mist swirls around I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria, who screams and ineffectually crosses her arms in front of her face against the fog. She screams once more, then is sucked into oblivion as Shadow the Wonder Blob smirks some more. Credits.
Manor kitchen, the morning. Phoebe, Prue, and the Dolt hide behind various sections of the newspaper, barking out requests to each other for corn flakes and croissants and BART schedules and whatnot. Phoebe intends to spend the morning shopping for shoes. Prue snipes that Phoebe shouldn't be spending money she doesn't have. Piper eyes them all nervously, then announces, "Leo and I are moving." The others flip their newspapers below their faces as Piper brightly offers, "Milk?" That's the second cat reference, for those of you playing along at home. Unfortunately, there will be more. "Wait a minute," Phoebe tells her. "Life-altering plans cannot be squeezed between 'Pass the newspaper' and 'Who ate the Special K?'" Piper reminds her sisters that they all knew their current living arrangement would not last forever. She's tired of sleeping in her childhood bedroom, she's annoyed with the interruptions while having sex in the shower, and even the "family breakfasts" are pirouetting on her last nerve. Prue's not having it. She reminds Piper that the sisters occupy the manor together because the manor is where they are "at their strongest." Piper again attempts to reason her way out of this mess, noting that she has been away from Prue and Phoebe before and "everything was fine." "Everything was not fine," Prue asserts. "We cannot ignore the responsibility we inherited from our family." Piper hesitantly lays it on the line: "You guys have to understand. I have two families now." She glances at the Dolt, who lowers his eyes to gaze at his cereal. Piper tries to draw her younger sister into it, reminding everyone that Phoebe ditched the family in favor of New York City three years ago. Phoebe shuts down this line of attack by expositing that her time in New York doesn't count, as the sisters did not receive their powers until after she had returned "six months after Grams died." Speaking of Grams, what would she think of Piper's plan to leave the manor?
Swirling cut to the spring of 1998. Grams storms through the kitchen door, bellowing, "Morons!" Snerk. We love Grams. "Why does that pre-pubescent have to throw the paper in the shrubbery?" she spits, crossing past Prue to brew some coffee. Prue -- on the phone with a wedding planner, evidently -- announces that Roger (remember him?) "forgot a whole forest of his family tree [sic]," and that they must now find room for additional people at the ceremony. Piper joins the fracas in the kitchen, loudly reminding Grams that her doctor forbade caffeine. She offers Grams some herbal tea instead. Prue grunts an excuse for the noise, confides things will be "a lot easier when [she] moves out," tells the planner she'll call back, and hangs up as Piper demands the paper. Prue and Piper have series-premiere hair and clothing. Prue's bob reaches just below her ears, and she appears to be strapped firmly into appropriate foundation garments beneath her high-necked sleeveless pink top. Piper's far more dowdy. Her hair's about as long as it is now, but she has a nasty case of the bangs. She's also dressed to work the counter at Budget Rent-a-Car, complete with a little gold nametag on her jacket lapel. The scenes set in the past have been filmed in a tone that should say "sepia-tinged" but comes across more as "washed-out."
Manor attic. Prue and Phoebe consult the Book of Shadows while Feebs singsongs, "I've been working on a vanquish/All the live-long day." The Invisible Spectral Presence of Grams tells her to shut up for me by flipping the pages of the BoS to an entry on conducting sances "to contact the dead." Like there's another kind of sance. The Ps agree Grams must be "confused" as the Blob "can't be killed." Prue shuts the BoS, but the ISP of Grams slams the book open again at the same entry. Phoebe runs down the list of items required for the ceremony and instructs Piper to "grab the white cloth" from the trunk. "This trunk would look great at the foot of my bed," Piper decides. Prue: "Yeah, and my foot would look great on your butt." In other words, the trunk stays in the attic. Piper relents on the issue of the trunk itself, but claims a brown glass jar she finds inside. Prue basically says, "Fine. Now get your ass over here for the ritual." The three light the candles and recite, "Beloved unknown spirit, we seek your guidance. We ask that you commune with us and move among us." Swirling glowing golf balls, and the ghost of I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria Reuben! appears. Introductions are made, which makes me wonder why the witches of San Francisco haven't formed some sort of professional association already so they can keep tabs on each other. A round of twenty questions follows, with I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria's Ghost eventually filling the Ps in on her cat's recent transformation into the Wonder Blob. Wonder Blobs are what result when a witch's "familiar" gives in to the Dark Side. Because the Wonder Blob was a cat, he has to get rid of his nine lives by the new moon in order to become an immortal warlock. If he fails, he'll revert to feline status for all eternity. Don't ask questions. Just go with it. Phoebe guesses that the solution to their current problem is simply to avoid killing the Wonder Blob five more times before the new moon, which Piper announces is in "two days." Not according to that shot of the waxing crescent we had in the pre-credits sequence, hon. Try twenty-five days. Prue apologizes to I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria's Ghost, telling her (it?) that the sisters shouldn't be using someone so freshly dead as an information service. I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria's Ghost says it's cool; she's "at peace now," and she worries only about the people she left behind. I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria's Ghost lays it on thick with the themes of tonight's episode, telling the sisters, "When someone is taken from you suddenly, there are no goodbyes. Evil exists only to spread loss. Be careful not to lose each other." Oh, cram it. I Can't Believe It's Not Gloria's Ghost tosses off a "blessed be" and disappears into the swirling glowing golf balls.
Piper thinks real hard about all that for a moment, then turns her head to blow out one of the candles. Cut to a flashback set in the attic, where the lace curtains flutter from a gust of wind. "Damn wind keeps blowing out my candles," Grams bitches, and calls out an apology to the as-yet-unseen Finola Hughes for being "cut off." Grams relights the candle, and Finola swirls in with the glowing golf balls. Oooh. Pretty hair. Lenny wants to pet the pretty lady's pretty hair. Grams continues with their interrupted conversation, telling Finola she's concerned about the Ps' fractured relationship. Finola reassures her. Prue, Piper, and Phoebe "will come together" once their witchy nature has been revealed to them. Grams frets that a united Halliwell front may not come to pass. Should the sisters not set aside their differences, they mightshe never finishes the sentence, but I believe the implication is they'll die. Grams decides to prepare for the worst, just in case. How she will do this, again, she does not say. She says, "Goodnight," to Finola and blows out the candle, plunging the screen into darkness.
Sorry about that. Had to wipe the vomit off the keyboard. I'm surprised they didn't include a little scene where a 2K-2 Colethazor tempts Phoebe into a life of shiftless shoplifting. Anyway, let's continue, shall we?
Once Piper finally looks away, the Dolt orbs out up over the trees. The camera follows, and the scene shifts again to the present. The camera pulls down from the sky to reveal the Ps relaxing over coffee in an outdoor caf, the morning following the last 2K1 scene. Piper tells her sisters she doesn't want to become "one of those married lepers that nobody thinks is fun anymore." Prue: "You have never been fun, Piper." Snicker. Piper begs to differ, calling herself "Mrs. Fun." Shut up, Piper. More blather about the supernatural ramifications of the sisters splitting up, interrupted by the Blob materializing in a chair behind them. The Blob snarks that the Ps "are getting hard to find," and that he was beginning to think [they] were trying to avoid [him]." Prue snarks back, "Wow. Thinking. That's a pretty big task for a warlock." She continues, "I'm sorry. That was awfully catty of me." I'm getting pretty tired of telling these people to shut up. By the way, cat reference the fourth. Blah bling Blobthreats. Piper coolly informs him that the sisters will no longer be offering their services as Blob killers. The Blob grabs a passing woman and natters something about how the Ps shouldn't dance if they don't know the steps. No, it didn't make any sense to me, either. The Blob stabs the woman. Piper freezes the entire caf. Phoebe jams a bagel knife into the Blob's chest. Black Blob Spray. Piper unfreezes everyone, and the woman falls to the ground. Prue hollers out an order to call 911, and we cut to commercial.
Manor kitchen. The three Ps process through the death of the random woman in the caf. They do not, however, offer any explanation of how they talked their way out of that situation. Piper stands at the stove, randomly tossing ingredients into a simmering pot. Prue wonders if she's working on a potion. Piper admits that she "wouldn't know where to begin." "I'm just keeping my hands busy," she says. "It's something Grams taught me. How to improvise." And Prue and Phoebe would not have known about this habit earlier because? No answer. Piper's improvised potion is a porridgy sludge. Phoebe and Prue try to come up with a strategy to vanquish the Blob for good as Piper lifts a white rose above the pot.
Grams randomly flicks through the pages of the BoS with her TK as Finola asks from off-screen, "Why now, Mother?" Grams, her blue blood boiling, asserts that she knows she's going to die soon. The bickering Ps aren't ready to assume the mantle of the Charmed Ones, and Grams will do anything in her power to prevent the sisters from gaining theirs after her death. Finola argues that it's not for Grams to decide whether the Ps are ready or not. Grams growls out her dissent, then clutches her chest in pain. She recovers quickly, however, and again tells Finola that the sisters "aren't ready," and that she "can't place them directly in harm's way." She bids Finola goodnight, and puts out the light. Finola and the glowing golf balls swirl on out of there. Grams TKs the BoS shut, then sends it gliding into the trunk where Phoebe will find it six months later. Oops. Am I getting ahead of myself? Sorry. She steels herself for what she must do , and lifts the brown jar from the table. What she's planning to do is never really made clear, but I think I'm jumping the gun here as well. She leaves the attic, locking the door shut behind her, and steps out onto the landing. Grams suffers her final heart attack on the landing, and Jennifer Rhodes's stunt double takes a header down the stairs. The brown jar falls harmlessly to the carpet. Bad Bangs Mondo-Ass Piper and Her Hideous Knit Set rush in from the hallway. She calls for Prue and Phoebe, both of whom come to her aid, despite the fact that Phoebe is supposed to be gone for the evening. Wailing. Rending of clothes. Tearing of hair. Gnashing of teeth. And then Energizer tries to sell me batteries.
The first shot after the break is of the Blob's screaming mouth. Ew. The camera pulls back to give me a lovely view up his nostrils, then pulls back further to reveal that he's sporting a cane stuck through his chest. Black Blob Spray in the attic. Cut to the three Ps lined up according to age, gazing impassively at the spot the Blob had occupied. "Well, that's number eight," Prue sighs. Phoebe bitches that "it's not fair" for the Blob to cheat death nine times, when death is permanent for everyone else on the planet. She proposes that they try to capture the Blob at the moment of his death and multiply the pain of that by nine. After a brief discussion, the three decide they have a workable plan of action, and head off to prepare for it.