Cat House

A bit of advice: Never read Charmed spoilers while watching Johnny Depp's From Hell right before you go to bed, lest you, too, dream you've escorted Piper to a friendly neighborhood tavern where she does nothing but bitch about the rubbery potato skins while a psychotic serial killer lures Phoebe to her doom. And I only ordered the damn potato skins because Piper wanted them! I mean, corner bar potato skins? Ew! What was she thinking? Of course, the whole Phoebe's-Doom bit was immensely entertaining, but Piper, honey? time you invade my dreams to suck down a pitcher of mai tais on my dime, would it kill you to pretend you're having fun?

Fade up on a tiny cottage that's packed to its rafters with cats. You'll recognize the human wrangling them all for dinner as Nancy from Groundhog Day, mainly because Groundhog Day's been in heavy rotation as programming filler on TNT for the last decade. I mean, "Nancy" certainly wasn't a pivotal character in the movie, but the second I saw Marita Geraghty's face, I thought, "You make noises like a chipmunk when you're excited, right?" Then I thought, "Gobbler's Knob," and snickered for a good five minutes. On Palm Sunday, no less! If I end up spit-shining Satan's hooves after I'm dead, I'll be placing the blame for it all squarely upon Brad Kern's perverse shoulders. Jackass. Anyway, as Nancy sets down a bowl of cat slop for her frenzied felines, the unfortunate Zachary Quinto blinks into her outdoor garden to glare at her through the window. I say "unfortunate" not because of the hideous bowl assaulting his head -- though said bowl cut certainly isn't helping matters -- but rather because some idiot PA neglected to include his name in the credits for this episode. Get a good lawyer, Zack. There's a sweet breach-of-contract settlement waiting for you somewhere.

Anyway, Nancy senses Zack's eyes boring into the back of her skull, and tenses as the scattered kitties yowl and screech. Dagger in hand, Zack blinks into the room behind her, and offers Nancy a mocking "Meow." Nancy whips around and slices open a jagged series of gashes on his cheek with her fingernails. Zack retaliates by hacking at her neck with his dagger. There's a decided lack of arterial spray, but he does manage to slice through the cord of her pendant, which drops to the carpet at her feet. Marita's stunt double then somersaults over Zack's head to plant a low-heeled pump in his back, booting him into the kitchen counter. Zack takes out a couple of wicker bar stools before collapsing to the floor. "Now!" Nancy hisses as she darts from the room, and we enter the When Cats Attack! portion of tonight's festivities. Furballs fly through air to land on Zack's chest, in which they promptly embed their claws. There's one hysterical shot of a ginger-haired feline hurtling over the back of the couch like it's some sort of kittenish ninja kamikaze. After a bit of this, the cats disperse, and Zack staggers to his feet to find himself alone in the room. He spots Nancy's pendant on the rug and picks it up to examine the trinket's engraved symbol. A metallic triquatra fills the screen before

cross-fading to the embroidered triquatra on The Done One's blue blanket over at the Manor. The Percolated Infant wriggles and squirms as Raige asks Phoebe, "So, Piper was engaged before [the Dolt]?" "To a warlock," Phoebe confirms. Raige gapes. "Dan was a warlock?" No, Raige. Dan was a greasy bohunk with a preadolescent shrew masquerading as his niece. Jeremy was the warlock, and Piper was never engaged to him, but what the hell. As we shall see, they've managed to construct a clip show wherein the clips have been manipulated to screw Continuity up the ass, so why quibble about dating terms? Phoebe notes that Jeremy came along way before the Greasy Bohunk entered their lives -- "two bankers, [an unrecapped] rock climber, and a ghost" before Dan Dan The Pomade Man, to be precise. "Now that is what I'd call 'critical sisterly information,'" Raige gripes. "How can I be petty and judgmental without all the info?" Hey! Was that a slam, missy? Because if it was, let me tell you something: It's pretty damn easy to be petty and judgmental without all the info when I'm watching you get moist over a fucking midget, so shut it, okay?

Phoebe briefly waxes nostalgic for those carefree days before she had Prue whacked. Her monologue grinds to a halt, however, when the shrill sounds of Piper's incessant bitching invade the room. "That is not what happened and you know it," Piper shrieks. "That's exactly what happened," the Dolt snaps back, "and it's happened before." The Doltine Cracker rolls his wee eyes and groans. Word, Cracker. Word. Phoebe and Raige hustle into the hallway to gawp as the bickering marrieds trade acrimonious accusations and insults. Seems Piper mocked the Dolt that evening at a dinner party held by one of Piper's seldom-seen "friends." Piper denies ever having mocked at the Dolt in front of anyone. The camera angle switches as the Dolt spins around for a rebuttal, so it seems like he's sneering directly at me. "You always mock me." Damn straight, you tool. "I get no respect!" You don't deserve any, pantywaist, so shut your cakehole. This is fun! "Don't you dare walk away from me again!" Piper growls as the worthless Dolt huffs off into the Bridal Boudoir, slamming the door behind him. "I mean it!" she howls, jabbing at the air with a peevish finger. The Bridal Boudoir's wall instantly erupts into a cloud of splinters and dust in an enormous explosion. Yes! Piper's jaw drops before she snatches the offending digit back against her chest. "Whoa," breathes the Feebs as Raige arches a stunned brow. Piper nervously glances around all, "Massive structural damage! What massive structural damage?" as we blow into the opening credits. Heh.

Manor, the following morning. Piper stands in her pyjamas in the upstairs hall, gazing ruefully at the wrecked Boudoir wall. Phoebe and Raige hustle her downstairs for a processing summit with the Dolt, who spent the evening on the parlor couch. I must say, Phoebe's looking lovely tonight. She's wearing a soft, sleeveless, cream-colored low-cut blouse over proper foundation garments, along with a fetching coral choker and lightly applied makeup, and she's pulled her hair back into a white snood. I'm digging the snoods, people. Something about the forties hairstyles really suits Alyssa Milano's face. In any event, the gist of the conversation is that Piper and the Dolt's marital problems have spilled over to affect Piper's powers, and thus are now negatively impacting the Power of Three. Phoebe's called in a favor from a marriage counselor she consults for her advice column, and Piper and the Dolt are to spend the afternoon in the shrink's care, hashing out whatever issues they currently have. The Dolt protests that he can't "spill his guts to a mortal," but Phoebe and Raige insist.

Piper, who's remained silent through much of this, ambles over to a never-before-seen display case of wedding paraphernalia and scans the various mementos contained therein. Her eyes linger on a bride-and-groom wedding-cake ornament placed with suspicious prominence at the front of the cabinet before she turns to agree with her sisters' plan. "Although I don't know realistically how much we're gonna accomplish in one day," she adds skeptically. "So use magic," Phoebe urges. "Don't worry about the consequences -- you've already got 'em, in spades." Say it with me, gang: This should work out well. Not. Raige reveals that Darryl's agreed to baby-sit, so there's nothing keeping Piper and the Dolt from heading into therapy. Except for the Dolt's shockingly appropriate aversion to the idea, of course. It's a wonder anyone on the writing staff remembered the character is, after all, part of a generation raised to distrust analysis. Phoebe gives the pair a little pep talk, arguing that they "owe it to [themselves]" "after all [they've] been through" to take a little time out for professional help. Piper receives this all rather mildly, but the Dolt's pouty-face is monstrous. Shut it, git.

Meanwhile, Zack's apparently spent the night ransacking Nancy's house in search of her scrying tools, which he finally discovers at the bottom of a drawer. He smears the crystal with a bit of her blood from his dagger, then waves the thing over a map of the city while muttering, "Here, kitty kitty." The crystal presently slams down on a set of unspecified coordinates that appear to be in the general area of Russian Hill Park. "Gotcha," Zack breathes.

The Bay Mirror. Raige arrives at Phoebe's office to fret about Piper and the Dolt's current predicament for a moment until Phoebe's cell phone chirps. Noting that the call's originating from the Manor, Phoebe picks up to tease, "Piper! What are you still doing at home?" "It's not Piper," Nancy replies with more than a hint of urgency in her voice. "I'm an innocent," she continues as the camera switches back over to the house to reveal Nancy frantically riffling through the bathroom cabinets. Nancy tells Phoebe to hoof it back to the Manor pronto with Piper and Raige, as she's currently at the top of some warlock's hit list. "And bring [the Dolt]," Nancy adds, lightly fingering the gash in her neck. "I need healing." Phoebe warily plays dumb, but Nancy's not having it. "Where's the disinfectant?" she demands. "Didn't it used to be kept in Prue's bathroom?" Oh, that's just uncalled for. Like Prue was in greater need of industrial-strength antibacterials than her trampy youngest sister. Whatever! Phoebe hesitantly admits that they've transferred the disinfectant to the kitchen as Raige whispers, "What's going on?" The shot switches to Cabinet Cam in time for Nancy to finish, "Hurry, please! Before he kills me!" She slams the cabinet shut just as

Phoebe's therapist acquaintance opens his office door to greet Piper and the Dolt. The therapist's played by John Rubinstein, whom most of you will know as Linwood Murrow from Angel, but the guy's got an impressive list of television, stage, film, and composing credits that stretches back thirty-five years and includes a Tony Award for Children Of A Lesser God, so I'll be respectfully referring to him as Dr. Rubinstein. Thanks for asking. Piper titters nervously as she enters the dark book-lined office with her husband. They cross to the waiting leather sofa and plant themselves on opposite ends. The body language is pretty amusing -- Piper's turned slightly away from the Dolt with arms and legs tightly crossed, while the Dolt's affected a more affable, open-to-the-possibilities slouch that's betrayed by the pinched snappishness in his tone of voice. Awkwardness ensues. Piper and the Dolt disagree when asked if they've been bickering a lot lately, but do agree that their problems have nothing to do with The Percolated Infant. "Why don't you tell me about your childhood?" Dr. Rubinstein encourages as he leans forward to pour out a glass of water. Piper heaves a tremendously put-upon sigh and flicks out a freeze, sending the Dolt into an immediate and pissy tizzy. "You can't freeze the doctor!" he yelps. "He's on the clock!" Piper pffts and rises to announce that she'll be following Phoebe's ill-conceived advice and composing a spell to hurry things along. Otherwise, she snipes, they'll be spending their few years in therapy. The Dolt protests weakly for a bit, then caves.

Manor. Zack's blinked in to pimp-smack Nancy around the parlor. Just as he pins her against the wall to O.J. her throat with his dagger, Raige orbs in from The Bay Mirror with Phoebe in tow. Phoebe promptly latches onto a brass candlestick to brain Zack with the thing, and wow. That almost looked real. And very, very painful. Raige scampers over to Nancy to orb out through the ceiling as Zack drags Phoebe into a screamy, hair-pulling girl-fight on the floor.

The Prue Halliwell Memorial Bimbo Boudoir Of Paisley Tit Slings And Other Fashion Atrocities, currently occupied by Raige. Raige orbs in and eases Nancy onto the bed. "You okay?" Raige asks. "I'm fine," Nancy replies before adding with a proud smile, "You've really got that orbing thing down, don't you?" "Who are you?" Raige squints. "Someone from your past," comes the cryptic response.

Downstairs, Phoebe and Zack roll around on the dining room table before dropping out of the frame.

Doctor John's House Of Pain. The good doctor remains frozen as Piper explains she and the Dolt "have to make [their] memories real and everything around them real or [they're] never gonna get through this." Um. Okay. We'll go with that, I guess. Piper flicks open a Zippo and recites the following from the sheet of paper she holds in her hand:

Let the truth be told,
Let our lives unfold,
So we can relive our memories
And stop being enemies.

She lights the paper, which bursts into golden, sparkly flames and proceeds to burn all the way down to her fingertips before vanishing in a light puff of smoke. Piper flicks her wrist to break the freeze. "Do you smell something?" the good doctor asks, sniffing the air. "No. Look, we were thinking we'd skip the childhood part," Piper flatly states. Heh. "Just cut to the chase and get to us?" she prompts. Dr. Rubinstein's fine with that, and settles into his wingback to suggest that Piper and the Dolt begin with their memories of the first time they met. Piper, poker-faced, glances down at her lap as the Dolt smiles fondly at the memory. Zip it, wimp.

Manor. Phoebe's managed to gain the upper hand. She yanks Zack's arm behind his back and presses the dagger against his throat just as Raige orbs down from Prue Memorial. Phoebe makes with the "Who are you, and what do you want?" noise before all three vanish in a sudden blue flare

that dumps them onto the Manor's front porch. Zack wrests his dagger from Phoebe's fist and blinks out. Raige and Phoebe splutter in confusion for a beat before the Dolt calls out from within, "There's definitely something here, Miss Halliwell." "Definitely," Piper volleys back flirtatiously. Phoebe and Raige shoot each other suspicious side-eyes, then enter the foyer. Phoebe reels back in horror from the parlor doorway to flatten herself against the hall's wall. "You are not going to believe this!" she hisses to Raige. The two peek around the corner to find Season One versions of Piper and the Feebs leering in tandem at the Dolt's massive denim-clad ass. Raige, as sickened and repulsed by this development as I am, horks a hairball into the oncoming commercials.

An aside, if you'll bear with me: Yes, this episode is not much more than a glorified clip show, and yet I must admit that they've done a great job selecting clips that flow into one another rather smoothly. What's more, this evening's original material has been tailored to match. Shocking, I realize, and entirely unlike another clip show I could mention. Anyway, because of all this, I was going to paste in the original recap text for the various flashbacks. That was when I realized just how wildly the tone of the individual recaps varies. Besides, those snippets added up to about six pages of additional text, and Sars has better things to do with her time than plow through paragraphs she already edited three years ago. For all of these reasons, I'll be relying upon links where appropriate, while noting only those instances where the flashbacks differ from the originals. Your meek and mute acceptance of this arbitrary and tyrannical decision is appreciated.

Back from the break, Phoebe and Raige peek around the corner once more to eavesdrop on the flashback, and appear at the far side of the frame behind Season One Feebs. Applaud the effects staff for this one -- Phoebe and Raige's digitally inserted images have been blurred so that the two appear to be in the flashback's actual background. When S1 Feebs instructs the Dolt to think of Piper as his mother, what with the smothering offers of food and such, Raige shoots Phoebe a scorching side-eye that by all rights should boil the saline right out of her implants. Heh. As the flashback plays out, Phoebe and Raige tiptoe down the hallway, with Raige berating Phoebe for hitting on the Dolt way back in the day. Phoebe wrinkles her own nose in disgust at the memory -- HA! -- and suggests she and Raige abuse the Book of Shadows in hopes of figuring out an escape plan. They cower behind a plant as S1 Feebs and S1 Piper amble towards the stairs.

Over in the House Of Pain, Dr. Rubinstein's impressed with Piper and the Dolt's detailed recall of events five years in the past. The marrieds hem and haw and lame an excuse for their unusually impressive memories, then dissolve into another round of bickering when the Dolt claims Piper has "a bit of a temper." "I DO NOT!" Piper screams. "Oh no?" perks the Dolt.