Fade up on the Manor dining room, wherein Phoebe and Raige are just finishing a formal sit-down dinner with Chronic and Slampiece Buttfuck. Well, it's sit-down, at any rate. I don't know how formal it could possibly be with Buttfuck in a track suit and the gals in those flimsy camisoles they've decided to call blouses this evening. Buttfuck, by the way, seems to have no problem attending tonight's Manor affair despite his oft-cited mysterious and annoying problems with magic. Raige, meanwhile, seems to have no problem chugging on that fat glass of wine, despite her oft-cited problems with the hooch. In any event, Raige announces what a swell time she's had, then awkwardly segues, "But Phoebe actually brought us here tonight to say something -- didn't you, Phoebe?" Raige and Buttfuck smile encouragingly, silently urging her drop the bitchcraft bomb on Chronic's horribly coiffed head. Phoebe, gracelessly gathering plates while still seated, dodges the issue. Buttfuck shiftily darts his eyes around while Raige glares. Chronic, clueless, natters something about their impending trip to Paris the following morning to finalize a "French merger," but Raige won't let the issue drop, needling Phoebe in so many words to just come out with it already. Phoebe, flustered, allows her evasive responses to sputter and die, and ends up simply grinning goofily at the boyfriend. Buttfuck steps into the awkward conversational gap to offer Chronic a hearty "You must have great business karma." And if that's an example of his conversational skills in social settings, perhaps he should remain alone in Castle Montanague at all times. "I don't believe in that stuff," Chronic claims, and much as it pains me, I'm forced to agree with him. While it's nice to hope, as Chronic admits he often does, that "if somebody cuts [you] off on the road," "they're going to get what's coming to them," a belief in karma also dictates that if you find yourself suffering from, say, the heartbreak of psoriasis, you deserve it. You rotten, wretched, worthless excuse for a human being. And that? Is bullshit.
Buttfuck waxes poetic on the nature of karma just long enough for Raige to get as peeved as I've been since the beginning of this episode, and she cuts him off with "Great -- whatever," before brutally booting the Feebs in the shin beneath the table. Phoebe tiresomely makes as if to drop her bitchcraft bomb before offering a last-minute toast to Chronic's super-fabulous French merger. Raige scowls and orders Phoebe to haul her ass into the kitchen, pronto, so she can "help [Raige] with the cobbler." The gals skedaddle while Chronic cluelessly mumbles, "Uh, am I missing something?" Slampiece Buttfuck wiggles his wonky eyebrows.
Raige gesticulates with a couple of wine glasses for emphasis as she bitches and snipes her way over to the coffee pot. "You are going with him to France tomorrow!" she cries, dumping the glasses on the counter and snatching up the pot. "You've been putting this off for too long," she adds, ramming the tempered glass down on the center island with a force that should shatter it into thousands of flesh-slicing shards. "You have to tell him you're a witch." Phoebe babbles that it might be best to wait until they get to France before letting Chronic in on the big secret -- that way, Raige can orb her back to San Francisco if there's a problem. No, it doesn't make sense for her to haul her hag ass halfway around the planet when there's a very good chance Chronic will dump said ass the second he learns about the whole bitchcraft thing, but it's Phoebe we're talking about here. We should be used to such nonsense by now. "You've probably been caught almost like a million times," Raige exasperates. "You can't keep taking that risk!" Phoebe half-heartedly agrees, then shouts, "YOU KNOW, MAYBE I SHOULD WAIT TILL TOMORROW UNTIL AFTER THE BIG BANQUET SO I DON'T UPSET HIS BIG DAY," like, he's sitting ten feet away from you in the other room, you dingbat. Is he deaf on top of the dumb? Raige wrinkles her nose and announces, "I think you have a big problem avoiding conflict, and one day, missy, it is going to come back and bite you in the ass." Phoebe grimaces as Buttfuck lopes in from the dining room to announce that the Chronics are getting restless. All one of them. Raige instantly chides him for rambling endlessly about karma when he's "supposed to be making it easy" for Phoebe. Fortunately, the Dolt orbs in with some bad news before I find myself ramming my fists through the television screen in a vain attempt to throttle these nitwits. "Piper's under attack!" the Dolt gulps. "She needs your help, fast!" Phoebe and Raige shove the cobbler and coffee into his hands, instruct him to keep Chronic occupied, and orb out. Buttfuck and the Dolt return to the dining room, where a confused Chronic makes stupid noises. Buttfuck and the Dolt make stupid noises in kind, and the boys settle in for some dessert.
Meanwhile, down in Hell, perpetual Halliwell doormat Piper is doing battle with a legion of muscle-bound West Hollywood bondage queens in a torch-lit brick hallway. The problem is, every time she deploys her Hands Of Discontent to blow one up, two more appear in the vanquished queen's place. Piper, incidentally, is wearing a loose-fitting black knit poncho with white pinstripes to disguise the fact that Holly Marie Combs is, by now, a hundred and seventy-three months pregnant. One of the bondage queens hurls a Flaming Ball Of Death at her face, so she dives to the floor in a dodge that leaves her with a nasty scrape on her forehead. She flicks out an angry hand to vanquish the offending queen as Phoebe and Raige orb in and hustle her to her feet, dragging her off to a nearby alcove. As Piper explains her predicament, the gals hear two more bondage queens squiggle into the hallway, so Piper pokes her head around the corner to offer them a Hand. She misses them completely, and they retaliate by slinging a matching pair of FBODs in her general direction. The Balls go wide as Piper ducks back into the alcove. "Okay," Phoebe sings, pushing Piper aside. "Back up." Rude! Phoebe emerges into the hallway and calls out, "Hey, boys!" The bondage queens, in no way appreciative of Alyssa Milano's costly plastic surgery, whip a couple of FBODs at the Fun Bags. Phoebe, using her bizarre new power of whatever the fuck it was the boneheaded writers dumped on her in the season premiere, redirects the FBODs back into the boys' chests. The bondage queens howl and moan and blaze their merry way to Hell. Or, you know, a deeper section of Hell than the level they just occupied. Whatever. Phoebe allows herself a small, pleased smile of triumph before smugly turning to rejoin her sisters. Of course, she doesn't see the four replacement queens who squiggle in behind her. Raige and Piper hastily yank Phoebe back into the alcove, where Piper announces, "New plan: blast, then bail." The other Glamorous Ladies quickly agree.
Kitchen. Chronic barges into the room in search of the Feebs, but of course finds the place empty. "Where'd they go?" he demands, spinning around to confront Slampiece Buttfuck and the Dolt. "Uh, must be an emergency, or something," Buttfuck lames. "It's always some emergency," Chronic retorts. "Or some phone call, or some marathon pee break! What's going on?" Raige chooses this moment to orb back into the room with her sisters. Chronic's eyes roll back in their sockets as he drops out of the frame in a dead faint. Hee. I hope he slammed his head into the center island on his way down. Piper, whose own garish head wound has vanished since last we saw her, hoots, "Ooop!" as we collapse into the opening credits.
And there's a hole in those opening credits. A big, gay hole. This should suck. Even more than it already has, of course.
Tonight's opening travelogue is full of lovely time-lapse shots of the city at night as Sarah McLachlan croons "Fallen," and I can't remember the last time I actually enjoyed an opening travelogue. Not only is the song appropriate, but they've also managed to nail the relevant lyrics, unlike a notorious prior travelogue I could mention: "We all begin with good intent when love is raw and young -- we believe that we can change ourselves, the past can be undone. But we carry on our back the burden time always reveals in the lonely light of morning, in the wound that will not heal. It's the bitter taste of losing everything that I held so dear. I've fallen, I have sunk so low. I messed up. Better, I should know, so don't come 'round here." See, idiot sound directors? It's not that difficult to find a tune whose theme matches that of the episode. Get it right the time. And the time after that as well. What the hell are they paying you for, anyway?
In any event, as the song hits the last lyric quoted, the travelogue cross-fades to a dejected Phoebe standing on the Manor's front porch, watching as Chronic peels off in his sports car down in the street below, presumably never to return. She slowly shuts the door and heads back into the parlor, where the Dolt's applying the tingly touch to his ex-wife's continuity-destroying head wound. The Dolt discreetly exits to check on The Psycho upstairs as Phoebe crawls onto the sofa to Piper with, "I've never seen him like that. He looked at me like he had no idea who I was." "He doesn't know you," Raige reminds her from her perch on an armchair. "Not the witch you, anyway." "I can't imagine what he's feeling right now," Phoebe glums. Because she's an idiot. Because she's an empath and should therefore know precisely what Chronic is feeling at the moment. Stupid show. Raige bright-sides that at least Chronic now knows about the bitchcraft, so the two won't have any more secrets to hide from each other in the future, like, what part of Chronic storming from the Manor never to return did you not understand, you awful woman? God!
ANY-way, Slampiece Buttfuck ambles in from the hall to announce that he's finished clearing the dishes. Raige offers him a fond smile and thanks him. Buttfuck then turns to Phoebe and, barely able to meet her eyes, admits, "I feel awful. I'm sorry about what happened." "It's not your fault," Phoebe blinks. "Actually," Buttfuck reveals, "it is." "Why?" Piper eyebrows. "Did you shove [Chronic] into the kitchen?" "No," Buttfuck allows, "but my karma did." No, Buttfuck, it didn't, because your personal karma -- which I don't even believe in -- affects you and you alone. Chronic's karma might have shoved him into the kitchen, but whatever. Shut up, Buttfuck. And shut up, Stupid Show That I Hate And Yet Still Must Watch Every Goddamned Week. In any event, this is simply an opening for Slampiece Buttfuck to reveal his Issue Of The Week. Seems he's convinced he's carrying around the "burden" of his family's collective karma. The Montanagues, as you'll recall, engaged in a generations-long feud with the Callapulets. "We did so much bad with magic," Buttfuck tells them, "and now magic's doing bad to me and those I care about." "Now that is completely ridiculous," Raige asserts. No kidding. Since when did Buttfuck give a rat's ass about Chronic and Phoebe's tedious relationship? Of course, she meant the whole assily contrived karma subplot she's about to become ensnared in, but she's right there, too. See above. Buttfuck insists, over the ladies' collective protest, that karma can be inherited much like magic. Piper side-eyes him as if she's just realized her half-sister's been dating a profound retard while Phoebe insists that if anyone's karma's to blame, it's hers. "You live a double life with your boyfriend," she notes, "you end up paying the price." Piper cuts through all this "mea culpa" bullshit -- the "mea culpa" is hers, the "bullshit" is mine -- to remind everyone of the rather pressing "Swarm Demon" issue, and orders Phoebe and Raige to hit the Book of Shadows while she checks on her little dead-eyed sociopath. Phoebe begs off, as she believes it would be better for her to chase after Chronic at this juncture. Piper, who'd risen to join Raige and Buttfuck by the hall, shoots her a look that telegraphs, "I cannot believe what a selfish fucking hag you are. We're about to be overrun with FBOD-hurling WeHo bondage queens, and you want to screw your boss? Why weren't you the one who got whacked at the end of Season Three?" Of course, I could be projecting a bit. Raige quickly defuses the situation by insisting she and Piper can handle the necessary research on their own, and suggests Phoebe take off. Buttfuck lurks in the background, because the director couldn't figure out what to do with Balthazar Getty at the end of this scene.
The Prue Halliwell Memorial Bimbo Boudoir Of Paisley Tit Slings And Other Fashion Atrocities, currently occupied by The Doltine Psycho. The Dolt places his infant son in the crib and prepares to cover him with a crimson-toned Amish-style quilt as Piper shrieks her way into the room. "No, no, no!" she shouts. "What? What? What is it?" the whipped Dolt babbles, leaping a few steps back and hoisting his hands in the air as if he's under arrest. Piper indicates the blanket with disgust. "My grandmother's quilt?" the Dolt bleats, and I'll not be bothering to wonder how they got their hands on that. The Dolt died sixty-two years ago and spent the subsequent decades flitting aimlessly from place to place, generally being a nuisance to everyone he met. Well, except for that hateful stint at the Manor during which he was skeevy and gross in addition to being a general nuisance to everyone he met. My point is, there's no way in hell he'd have been able to wander into the Dolt Family Homestead down in San Dimas or Azusa or wherever the fuck he's supposed to come from and abscond with an heirloom. In short: Whatever. I hate this stupid show.
Anyway, Piper's objection is that red is "the color of anger and violence and all things bad." "Bad?" the Dolt repeats with pouty lip. "I used that quilt." Uh-huh. Exactly. Piper rather anally announces that they'll be swaddling The Psycho in a powder-blue blanket from now on, then wonders why the Dolt switched off the "Serenity Mozart CD." The Dolt averts his eyes guiltily. Piper flings the blue blanket at her worthless ex-husband's scary gargoyle head and marches over to the boom box, ranting all the while about the need to "bathe" her son in goodness and "nurture peace and serenity." "Happy things!" she bellows. "Don't you think you're overreacting?" the Dolt timidly wonders. Nope, Piper firmly replies -- they can't take any chances. But didn't she just have an epiphany not to devote her life solely to the care and feeding of the little Psycho in the crib? "That was before [Big Gay] Chris informed us our child was going to grow up to be the future of all evil," Piper snorts. By the way, my husband's absence this evening is explained when Mother Dear reminds my father-in-law that she sent him off to "suss out if there's any new threats." Which is precisely what the two of us were doing in Sidetrack the other night when we ran into Greasy Wes from Boy Meets Boy. Shhh! Also: Ew. Greasy Wes is even more disgusting in person. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose. Piper argues that she still has a life separate from The Psycho. "I have the club," she insists before adding, "I have…friends." Both allow an awkward pause to hijack the conversation, understanding that Piper hasn't had anything resembling a friend in six years. In any event, Piper's been packing a little overnight bag during this, which she now shoves into the Dolt's hands with orders to orb the brat up to Whitelighterland until the gals have dealt with the bondage queens. Piper then bustles out of the room, taking great pains to dump the Dolt Family Heirloom Quilt into the trash on her way out. Okay, not really, but she does dismissively toss the thing onto the floor by the dresser. The Dolt dolts, then orbs out with his Psycho.
Attic. Raige and Slampiece Buttfuck blither about their stupid relationship problems, with Buttfuck reminding the comatose in the audience that he's not allowed to practice magic before again insisting that he's responsible for the downfall of Chronic and Phoebe's relationship. Buttfuck wonders if Raige can help him cleanse his family's bad karma, the better to give him a fresh start in life. Raige basically eye-rolls, "Not gonna happen," and claims that "karma is the DNA of the universe." "It's what balances everything out," she continues. "If you start screwing with that, you can mess up the entire cosmic order of things." "Maybe you could help me cast a spell," Buttfuck begins, not letting it drop. "What part of 'no shortcuts' are you not getting?" Raige condescends. She notes that the Book of Shadows contains both an "aura cleanse" and a "chakra cleanse," but no corresponding spell for karma. "If it were possible to be cleansed," she insists, "it would be in there, but there's no spell. It can't be done."
Piper enters to cut this conversation short with, "Got anything?" Raige has, indeed, and indicates the Book's entry on Swarm Demons. The text is far too small and far too densely serifed for me to read it, much less transcribe it, so we'll have to take Raige at her word when she claims the bondage queens "are distant relatives of Kazis and Vampires, which means they come from a hive." "So they were drones that we were killing," Piper realizes as Buttfuck suspiciously sidles over to the gals' potion table. "No wonder they kept coming back," Piper adds. "We have to kill the king to kill the hive, which requires a Power of Three spell." Piper immediately proposes retrieving Phoebe for the vanquish, but Raige urges her to allow Phoebe and Chronic a little time to sort through their issues. Piper is so not having it, but for some reason she caves anyway. She and Raige will track down the bondage queens' king on their own to…do nothing, really. They're just going to drop in for a couple of cocktails, I suppose. Stupid show. Raige squeezes herself into a jacket while offering to orb Buttfuck home. "It's okay," he says, "I drove over." Raige promises to call him as soon as she returns and orbs out with Piper. Buttfuck, so stupidly left alone in the attic by the woman who'd been paranoid about his potential for misuse of magic ever since she met him, and with whom he just had an endless chat about unethically manipulating spells to cleanse his family's bad karma, barely lets the gals dematerialize before darting over to the Book of Shadows. He flips through the pages, searching for an appropriate spell.
All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me. Chronic stands alone in his darkened office, nibbling distractedly on his thumb. He senses some off-camera presence and lifts his head to find Phoebe standing in the gloom of the doorway, silently watching him. "You stay away!" he blurts, crossing to hide behind his desk. "We have to talk," she begins, entering the room, but Chronic cuts her off with a bit of spluttering before finally babbling, "This is so far beyond my reality, I'm just still trying to figure out how you could…" He trails off before howling an accusatory, "Fifteen months, I didn't know!" Not hardly, Chronic. Try again. Douche. Phoebe insists she wanted to tell him, but couldn't. "But you know now," she pleads, "so could we just talk about this?" Fine, Chronic sneers, snatching up an old newspaper from his desk. "What about this?" he demands, waving the thing in her face. "The Godiva Girls -- was this magic?" No. It was ass. But I suppose that's not the point here. "What about that funny looking cousin of yours -- Cousin Seamus? Was he one of the Seven Dwarves?" Not so much, Phoebe admits, informing Chronic that the stoopid magikal kreature in question was actually a leprechaun. Wow. Chronic's been around for some really shitty episodes, hasn't he? Maybe that's why I hate him so much. Not. "I know how you feel," Phoebe murmurs. "How do I feel, Phoebe?" he spits. "Tell me, because I don't know, and you always seem to know, so tell me -- how's it gonna feel when I crash? 'Cause I see one coming. Is it gonna feel like when you said, 'I love you, too'? Because that was magic, wasn't it?" "But I do love you," Phoebe whispers, her voice cracking and tears welling up in her eyes. "I didn't want you to find out like this," she vows, coming perilously close to weeping openly. "Believe me." Chronic ignores this to natter something about his speech to the French shareholders the day before brushing past her to flee the building. Phoebe bites her lower lip, wrecked.
Bondage A Go-Go. Raige and Piper roam through the hallways, completely lost, until they realize they've been going around in circles. Raige sighs and suggests they just orb back to the Manor already. "Why are you in such a rush to go home all of a sudden?" Piper smirks. "It's [Buttfuck]," Raige admits a bit impatiently. "Anytime he's alone for too long, bad things start to happen." Which is why you abandoned him in the attic with all of your potions and the Book of Shadows, right? Stupid show. A legion of bondage queens prances into the general area, so Raige and Piper duck into another alcove to spy on the column of clones as it passes by. "Should we follow them?" Raige asks, unsure of herself. Piper shrugs her assent. The gals head into the main hallway, only to be surprised by another parade of clones. Piper deploys her Hands, destroying all eight or nine of them in one go. The screams of the vanquished escort us…
…back up to the Manor, where Slampiece Buttfuck has found the Aura Cleanse in the Book of Shadows. He copies it onto a sheet of notebook paper and silently musters his courage with a few deep breaths. He then gathers a pinch of salt from a handy urn, which he sprinkles onto the carpet at the center of an array of blue candles arranged on stands in the form of a pentacle. Inhaling deeply once more, he composes himself before reciting the following:
I call to thee, pure witch's fire --
Through vortex flow the heavenly mire:
Cleanse brackish karma of debris,
From dark to light, sweep history.
The five candles spew gouts of flame three feet into the air as the shot abruptly cuts to a view of the earth from outer space. White wisps of the cosmic order with which Buttfuck's heedlessly screwing erupt from various locations around the world and writhe around the planet before diving down towards the West Coast, which shoots towards the camera in what has to be the best effects shot this show has ever seen. As the camera flies down towards the Bay Area, the Presidio looms into view at the top of the screen. The karmic wisps shoot straight down to the Manor -- which for the purposes of this sequence rests on a block of Washington Street between Walnut and Presidio -- and the camera cuts at the last second to an overhead of Buttfuck gaping up at the rapidly approaching swirl. The karmic plasma corkscrews down to his head, then widens to form a rapidly spinning, ethereal sphere around his body while the pentacle of candles flames higher.
Meanwhile, Phoebe enters the shadowy Manor through the front door and places her handbag and coat on the entry table.
Up in the attic, the plasma swirls around Buttfuck for a bit, then dives down through the floor.
Down in the hall, the plasma streams through the ceiling and plunges into the Fun Bags, hurling Phoebe into a post-monition. A World War One-era French infantry brigade readies, aims, and fires as a disembodied female voice screams at them in tones of defiance mixed with panic. When the shots ring out in the post-monition, we cut back to the Manor, where Phoebe absorbs the blast of the phantom bullets and hurtles violently backwards through the air to smash a vase halfway down the hall with her ass before sliding on said ass along the floor to the dining room doorway. Phoebe clutches at her unharmed stomach for a moment before darting her eyes around and wondering aloud, "Qu'est-que c'est?" D'oh!
Manor, a few hours later. Raige orbs into the hallway with Piper, and the two wearily trudge towards the stairs while recapping their adventures at Bondage A Go-Go. As they've located the king, Piper wants to collect Phoebe and return immediately for a vanquish. Raige, yawning, insists on "a hot bath and a warm bed" instead -- after she's checked in with Slampiece Buttfuck, of course. Piper spots the shattered remnants of the vase and wonders, "What happened here?" "Bonjour!" Phoebe calls as she wafts down the stairs in a hideous bra-and-micro-mini set stitched together from swatches of cherry-red sateen, accented with vast swaths of sheer pink and tangerine chiffon. It's deeply hateful. What's even more deeply hateful is that she apparently had this thing hanging in her closet on the off chance she'd ever need clothing appropriate for possession by a long-dead Jazz-Age Eurotrash whore. "What the heck are you wearing?" Piper growls. "Just a little something to help me get my boyfriend back," Phoebe replies. "Showing a little skin never hurt." Millions of viewers at home beg to differ, skank. Piper supposes this means things didn't go well with Chronic the evening. "No," Phoebe admits before adding, "Je ne sais pas pourquoi." But instead of pronouncing it "Zhunsaypa," the dumbass goes, "Zhuh-na-say-pas," because Phoebe's a fucking moron, even when she's been possessed by a long-dead Jazz-Age Eurotrash whore. "Since when do you speak Freedom Fry?" Raige smirks. "I don't know," Phoebe airily replies, "and it's kind of weird, actually, considering I hate the French." "No you don't," Piper protests. "You love everything about France." Phoebe seems surprised to hear this, and this is the point where I'd expect both Piper and Raige to realize that something's dreadfully wrong with their sister, but they don't, because they're idiots, and this show sucks. Piper reminds Phoebe that they have a Power of Three vanquish scheduled down at Bondage A Go-Go, but Phoebe just breathes, "I'm sorry, I can't," before floating through the front door to find Chronic. Who's supposed to be on a goddamned plane bound for France right about now. Rrrgh. Piper and Raige rather blankly watch her go. "Please tell me she didn't…" Piper begins. "Cast a spell on herself?" Raige finishes. "I think she did."
Bondage A Go-Go. Yawn. We meet the Swarm King, and while I must admit that the actor has a fine screen presence, none of this matters, because he'll be dead by the end of the hour. For what it's worth, he rallies his battered and decimated clones by promising to bring the fight to the Charmed Ones. Whatever.
Attic. Piper and Raige stand at the Book, shooting a pair of wary side-eyes at the Aura Cleanse. "I'm confused," Piper confesses. "How does cleansing her aura get [Chronic] back?" "Phoebe didn't cast the spell," Raige duhs. "[Buttfuck] did." "[Buttfuck] wants [Chronic] back?" Piper puzzles. Heh. Raige babbles her way through an explanation of Buttfuck's intentions, all the while understanding that whatever he ended up doing backfired to disastrous effect. "There's all this unfinished karma just floating around out there waiting to complete its cycle," she explains. Piper rolls her eyes and plants her head on her hand to sigh, "What the hell are you talking about?" "I'm talking about [Buttfuck] screwing with the karmic wheel and Phoebe getting smacked down by it," Raige grunts, guessing that Phoebe's double life and lies to Chronic likely acted as a magnet for bad karma. "Someone's unfinished bad karma?" Piper prompts, with both bone-aching weariness and "Christ on a stick, it's happening again?" levels of disbelief coloring her tone. "But whose?" Raige nods. Piper deadpans, "I'd guess a French hooker, by the way she's been acting." Hee. Raige orders Piper to retrieve Phoebe while she goes in search of Buttfuck. "But what if he's infected too?" Piper sniffs. "Well," Raige calls over her shoulder as she sails out of the attic, "I'll save him, and then I'll kill him." Piper arches a brow.
Castle Montanague. Raige enters to find Buttfuck huddled over reams of parchment on the desk in his dead father's study. She clomps into the room and snots, "Cast any spells lately?" Buttfuck jumps to his feet in denial for a lengthy moment before copping to that morning's special effects sequence in the attic. "I was cleansing my soul," he protests. "Yeah, yeah," Raige peeves. "Cut down to the bottom: What happened when you said the spell, exactly?" Buttfuck describes the swirling cloud of karmic plasma, but insists that nothing came of it. "It hit Phoebe," Raige flatly states. "I was there alone!" he counters. "Then how do you explain my sister walking around like she's in the nudie version of Les Miz?" Raige spits. "What were you thinking?" "I was thinking about us," he protests. "I don't want my past to hurt you." Raige softens a bit at this, and I almost start to care about this scene, but then they launch into this tedious and long-winded discussion regarding Buttfuck's mysterious and annoying problems with magic, and I tune them both out until they finally get to the frigging point: Buttfuck will whip up a potion that's certain to cure Phoebe, but Raige insists that he not make a bad situation worse by messing with magic again. She flounces on out of there while Buttfuck gazes sadly after her.
A short time later, Buttfuck lopes into his brother's office. Benvolio has cut his hair since last we saw him, and is now doing pro bono work for various criminal defendants as a way of atoning for his past sins. Incidentally, those scabrous lesions that covered his face are gone as well. He still doesn't do it for me, though. Buttfuck too-casually mentions that he's been riffling through the family's old lists of potions, but couldn't find the one their father used to banish spirits -- would Benvolio know where to find it? Benvolio guilt-trips Buttfuck about using magic, but Buttfuck tells him to cram it. He needs that potion and he needs it now, so would Ben just tell him where it is already? Ben shoots Buttfuck A Look, but we get the feeling he's going to help him out -- I would imagine out of guilt for wasting Buttfuck's fiancée. Now that I'm reminded of that, why, exactly, are these two even speaking to each other? Stupid show.
Meanwhile, in a part of the world that most definitely is not France and in fact is indeed a section of Los Angeles masquerading as San Francisco, Chronic arrives for his shareholders' meeting -- in a mode of transport that most definitely is not an airplane and in fact is indeed a limousine -- to find Phoebe waiting for him at the curb. I hate this show. I do, however, appreciate the pair of passing extras who eye Phoebe with massive amounts of open contempt. Chronic goggles a bit at Phoebe's "attire" before attempting to push past her. Phoebe strips off one of her scarves and wraps it around his neck, snaring him so she can Fatal Attraction his ass. Chronic tells her to buzz the fuck off. "Are you saying you don't want me?" she simpers. "Not right now," he confirms, pushing himself away from her. Phoebe spews a few loud insults in badly accented French, including "cochon" and what the captioning tells me is "fils de pute." "You're crazy," Chronic gawps, finally breaking away from her to enter the hotel. "You think you can just walk away from me?" she seethes. "You think I'm crazy -- you think this is crazy?" Chronic vanishes with neither a word nor a glance back. "Just wait," Phoebe promises. The doorman leers at the slut on the sidewalk.
Oh, this is just silly. From the hotel's tackily decorated ballroom stage, Chronic addresses a group of champagne-swilling business types, delivering ceaseless yuppie boilerplate regarding emerging markets and bilateral trade and whatnot until the high-pitched whine of microphone feedback heralds the arrival -- at long last -- of Mata Whori. The throng of business types magically parts as the camera tracks through the resulting human aisle to land on the Feebs, who strikes a pose as she's struck by a spotlight. No, the lighting fixture in question does not drop from the ceiling to splatter her addled brains on the carpet. Would that it had. Mata Whori basks in the extremely unlikely glow of her very own key light for a moment before working the gentlemen in the crowd, stripping off scarves and winding them around the gentlemen's necks as she Norma Desmonds her way up to Chronic on the stage. "What are you doing?" he hisses. "You turned on me," Mata Whori croons as she swivels around him. "You rejected me, and I'd say you'd live to regret it, but you won't." The overexcited press corps fires off shots of the ludicrously garbed tramp as Chronic insists, "This isn't a game!" He whips off his jacket and wraps it around her nearly naked torso. Phoebe pushes herself out of his embrace and takes a step towards the crowd. With a grand flourish, she announces, "Curses on this merger!" and tosses a scarf above the assembled throng's heads, beaming at the resulting scrum amongst the business types to snatch the thing out of the air. Champagne bottles explode of their own accord. The escargot, frog's legs, and squab artfully arranged on various platters suddenly flare white and revert to actual snails, frogs, and pigeons. As is their wont, the frogs hop to the floor while the pigeons head to the ceiling. Meanwhile, the snails and I roll our eye stalks around and light a round of cigarettes. Kidding. Despite what you may have heard, there are no tentacles protruding from my forehead.
Mayhem erupts as the business types, doused in champagne, proceed to slip on the now-underfoot amphibians. Chronic grabs for Phoebe's arm, but she pushes him backwards with such force that he loses his balance and crashes to the floor. "Are you trying to ruin me?" he yowls above the roar of the ballroom. "That's just the hors d'oeuvre," Mata Whori promises. "Wait until you see the entrée -- it's to die for." Oy. Mata Whori lunges for Chronic's neck with both hands outstretched, but suddenly freezes along with everything else in the room. We're gifted with an entirely unnecessary close-up of Chronic's frozen face before the camera cuts to Piper's hands. The camera pans around and up to take in her "oh, shit" expression before it tracks along with her in one long shot as she squeezes through the frozen throng, ducking beneath arms and skirting various remarkably still extras as she makes her way to the stage. It's actually a pretty cool sequence, especially because the last time they attempted a scene like this with a crowd so large, several of the extras fucked up and broke the freeze. Anyway, once Piper's reached the stage, she summons the thoroughly whipped Dolt, who orbs in immediately. "Whoa," he offers, glancing around the room. "Wh-why is Phoebe frozen?" he stutters. "That's not Phoebe," Piper duhs. "Long story. Let's get out of here." Piper and the Dolt latch onto The Whoresicle and orb up through the ceiling. The instant Piper dematerializes, her freeze breaks, and the general mayhem resumes. Chronic slowly rises to his feet, making "the hell?" noises once he realizes Phoebe's vanished. He gapes at the frenzy in the hall before glancing over at an ice sculpture of the Eiffel Tower, which has decided to end it all by leaping from its perch on the buffet table to smash itself into a thousand glittering pieces at the rocky bottom of the commercial break.
Manor sun porch. Piper shoves Mata Whori into one of the wicker armchairs and flings a blanket over her nearly naked form. Over at the table, Raige has been delving through French history books in an attempt to figure out who Phoebe's supposed to be. "Napoleon?" Raige offers. Piper eyes the slutwear and snorts, "Probably not." "Phoebe's not our only problem," the Dolt reminds them. "That entire auditorium saw her use magic." "We'll fix Phoebe first," Piper determines, "then we'll take care of the Swarm King, and if we're still alive after that, we'll worry about it then." To get the ex out of the way, Piper suggests in tones that will brook no dissent that the Dolt head to Whitelighterland to check on the littlest Psycho. After a bit of feeble protest, the thoroughly whipped Dolt complies. Piper crosses to the Book of Shadows to work on a reversal spell while Raige tosses out a few more guesses: "Marie Antoinette? Queen Isabella? The She-Wolf of France?" "Now you insult me," Mata Whori pouts, stroking her arm hair. "I can't stand France." "Vital clue there," Piper notes, side-eyeing Raige as if to tack "you dumb-ass" onto the end of her sentence. Raige suddenly remembers something she noticed under the headline "Famous Female Spies" and realizes that Phoebe's been possessed by Mata Hari, whom Raige describes as "an exotic stripper in Paris, Dutch-born, double agent for Germany during World War One." Yeah, we'll go with that characterization, but only because I know better than to spot-check the boneheaded writing staff's "research."
Meanwhile, Mata Whori has spent this entire time muttering darkly to herself about freedom and revenge. Piper wonders what Phoebe could possibly have in common with the dead spy in question. "Duplicitous?" Raige suggests. "Living a double life? Ring any bells?" Not really, Raige, but I'll toss out a few words that do: Hussy. Trollop. Strumpet. Jezebel. Harlot. Bimbo. See? If you had chosen a couple of those, I'm sure Piper would have figured it all out immediately. Mata Whori decides she's had enough of this and flees the sun porch for the stairs. Piper grimaces and tosses out a casual freeze. She and Raige then cross into the hall and plant themselves in front of The Whoresicle. Piper unfreezes The Whoresicle, but before she can launch a bitchy tirade in her errant sister's direction, two of the bondage clones squiggle onto the sun porch and conjure a pair of Flaming Balls Of Death. Raige snipers behind the couch with Mata Whori as Piper dodges the FBODs before vanquishing the offending queens with a pair of Hands. "Why am I always the one getting hit?" she howls as she examines the slight gouge an FBOD left in her shoulder. Three more bondage queens squiggle onto the sun porch with their backs to Piper. "Behind you!" Mata Whori calls. Wench. Piper scowls at Mata Whori before demolishing the middle of the new arrivals. The other two lunge in opposite directions as Raige watches helplessly. Yet another bondage queen squiggles into the Manor and calls out, "Take her!" One of the clones snags Mata Whori's arm as the other scorches Raige's shoulder with an FBOD before they all squiggle away with Mata Whori in tow. Raige and Piper regroup to examine their respective wounds. "Am I crazy," Raige wonders, "or was she trying to save them from us?" "Pfft," Piper offers by way of reply. My sentiments exactly.
Bondage A Go-Go. Long story short, Mata Whori proposes an alliance with the Swarm King. The Glamorous Ladies have "centuries" of good karma protecting them from the dark demonic forces such as His Majesty. Mata Whori figures that if the Swarm King slaughters an innocent on her behalf, said innocent's death might throw a wrench into the whole karmic system. The bondage clones might then be able to vanquish both Piper and Raige, and along with them the Power of Three and the Charmed Ones' collective destiny and yadda yadda yadda. Whatever. Not gonna happen. The Swarm King ignores me to see if Mata Whori had a particular innocent in mind.
Cut to Chronic, moping in his office at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me. Slampiece Buttfuck raps on the door, looking for the Feebs. Chronic attempts to commiserate with Buttfuck over their witchy girlfriends, but the bonding session quickly ends when Buttfuck drops a bitchcraft bomb of his own on Chronic's horribly coiffed head. Buttfuck then presents Chronic with a vial that contains some of dear dead Dad's spirit-banishing potion. All Chronic needs to do is wing it at Phoebe the time he sees her, and everything will revert to its normal state. Chronic just gapes during all of this, so Buttfuck slips the vial into Chronic's shirt pocket, begging him to follow his instructions. Chronic finally shakes his head, and with a simple "I gotta go," brushes past Buttfuck to exit. Buttfuck looks guilty.
Manor sun porch. Piper and Raige dab at each other's wounds while conducting a processing summit on the wicker love seat. Piper eventually realizes that Mata Whori -- having spent her life pleasing men, only to wind up betrayed by them in the end -- "wants to return the favor." Raige looks concerned. Or annoyed. Or, you know, vacant. I can't tell anymore.
Out on the street, Raige orbs in behind a truck with Piper; off-camera reporters shout questions at Chronic as he wends his way to his limousine. Distracted by the journalists, Chronic doesn't notice that Mata Whori's waiting for him in the back seat of the car. Raige and Piper, though, spot her immediately and frown. Chronic eases into the back of the car and shuts the door before noticing his erstwhile and demonically possessed girlfriend. "Phoebe," he begins, "I've had enough." "Shhh!" she orders as two bondage clones squiggle in on either side of Chronic. Chronic looks like, well, exactly what any normal person would look like if they found themselves suddenly surrounded by squiggling bondage queens. "I always get my man," Mata Whori murmurs. Chronic's subsequent protests cut off abruptly just as Raige and Piper arrive at the limousine. They yank open the door to find the entire back end empty. The gals roll their eyes all the way into the final commercial break.
Bondage A Go-Go. Piper and Raige amble through the various hallways, searching for Mata Whori while chattering about Chronic and Buttfuck. Meanwhile, over in the Swarm's main chamber, Mata Whori delivers a dull little speech about betrayal and the importance of looking one's killer in the eye as Chronic slowly comes to understand that Buttfuck was not, in fact, temporarily insane when he barged into the newspaper's offices with a potion vial. The Swarm King eventually tells Mata Whori to knock it off with the yammering already and get to the point. Mata Whori compliantly steps off to one side and calls out, "Ready!" A firing line of bondage queens conjures about a dozen Flaming Balls Of Death. Looks like it's curtains for Chronic, who frantically pats himself down in search of Buttfuck's vial. "Aim!" Mata Whori coolly orders. The clones whip their arms back as Chronic discovers the vial in his jacket pocket. He rather limp-wristedly flips the thing at Mata Whori's feet, where it shatters to release a puff of white smoke that travels up her body. Mata Hari's karmic plasma instantly emerges from the Fun Bags and disappears through the ceiling of the chamber. Phoebe snaps out of it, eyes the demonic firing squad, shoots Chronic a panicked look, and shouts, "No!" Out in the endless maze of hallways, Piper and Raige either hear her or sense her de-possessed presence elsewhere in the A Go-Go. Back in the chamber, the Swarm King orders his underlings to fry Chronic's ass, but Phoebe leaps in front of the boyfriend to redirect the FBODs back into the firing squad with her bizarre new power of whatever the fuck it was the boneheaded writers dumped on her in the season premiere. Several of the bondage queens go up in flames as the others scatter and Phoebe darts behind an outcropping of rock with Chronic. Piper and Raige orb in to join them, confirm that Phoebe is back to her good old dimwitted self, and proceed to recite the following off a slip of paper Piper pulls from her jeans:
Demon Swarm that serves as one:
Vanquish him from which they come.
The Swarm King vanishes in a veil of fire, followed presently by all of his remaining underlings. Chronic, who'd been anxiously twiddling his thumbs in the background, now slides his hands into his pants to affect his typical air of casual indifference as Phoebe apologizes profusely for dragging him down to Hell. "How did you get rid of Mata Hari's karma?" Raige wonders. "Who?" Chronic asks. "Don't ask," Piper snaps. Heh. Chronic reveals that Buttfuck gave him the potion with which he freed the Feebs. "[Buttfuck]?" Raige chimes as Piper and Phoebe pivot to glare at her.
Castle Montanague. The camera glides through the main floor until it finds Buttfuck himself, easing open the secret panel to his family's potion closet. He switches on the light and sweatily eyes the various ingredients as the camera goes a-kilter by several degrees. He grins and closes the secret panel as bolts of lightning from a suddenly appearing storm flicker outside.
Manor. Up in the Bridal Boudoir, Piper places the Doltine Psycho in his product-placed playpen while the Dolt putters around with some of the kid's clothes in the once and future Patricia Campbell Hearst Commemorative Child-Care Nook. Hey, they've got to put the real Tiny Gay Chris somewhere once Piper finally pops him out. Why not the closet? Piper frets about her little sociopath's wicked future. The Dolt opines that, now that they've finally learned the truth about said future, they can take any such steps as are necessary to prevent it. "After all," he grins, "well aware is half there." Piper smirks, "Did Phoebe feed you that psychobabble?" Shout-out? You decide. "I just don't understand how someone so sweet could possibly turn out so bad," Piper sighs, gazing down at The Psycho. The Dolt promises her that won't be happening before wondering what his nitwit of an ex-sister-in-law is up to now.
Cut to The Only Hotel In San Francisco, Which Is Most Definitely Not In France, Which Is Where Chronic Would Have Been All Day Today If This Show Didn't Suck Like A Hoover. Chronic's limousine pulls up to the entrance, where the doorman obsequiously greets him with an open umbrella to protect his hideously coiffed head from the sudden downpour. Just as Chronic reaches the door, Phoebe bounds up to the entrance through the rain, calling his name. In sharp contrast to her earlier outfit, the damp evening finds her sporting a sleek, knee-length white raincoat over dark jeans, with a long, knit scarf wrapped snugly around her neck. "I want to talk to the press," she insists, virtually before he's had a chance to greet her. "I want to tell them everything." Chronic smirks something about the headlines they'll be seeing after Phoebe announces to the world that she's a witch. Phoebe nervously runs her fingers through her wet hair while admitting she hadn't actually considered what she would tell the assembled journalists -- she just knows she "can't let [Chronic] take the fall for this." "I'm so sorry," she breathes, tears again welling up in her eyes. "For everything -- the lies --" "Hey, don't," he tells her gently. "Remember, you saved me." "But that was after I tried to kill you," Phoebe whimpers. "Yeah, there was that," he shrugs affably enough in agreement. "If I could do it all over again," Phoebe swears, "I would tell you the truth." Chronic gallantly places most of the blame for the situation on himself, because that's what they do on this show whenever everyone knows it's really Phoebe who's at fault. He claims that he was so wrapped up in his career that he never gave Phoebe a chance to explain herself. "So what do we do now?" she warbles with moist eyes. "Maybe we should both just take some time," he whispers. After a pause laden with mutual regret, he nods towards the door and notes, "They're waiting for me." Phoebe ducks her head guiltily and pleads, "I wish you'd let me talk to them." Chronic's response is immediate and firm: "No. What you and your sisters do -- with what I saw you do -- it put some perspective on my work. I want to protect that." "You might lose the merger," she counters, real tears standing in her eyes. "I've lost worse," he admits. Chronic leans in to kiss her, and she allows herself to melt into it for a bit before opening her eyes and pulling away after a moment of thoughtful hesitation. She bows her head and leaves his side to cross back into the storm. When she reaches the curb, she turns one last time to find Chronic gazing ruefully after her. He allows a beat, then turns to enter the hotel. Phoebe watches until he's vanished inside the door, then turns again to walk home alone in the rain as we fade to black.
week, the WB places a three-hour marathon of Surreal Life reruns upon the sacrificial altar of the Super Bowl. When Charmed returns on February 8th, the Headless Horseman appears for a round of Block That Fetus!, wherein he detaches Piper's head from her body to disguise the fact that Holly Marie Combs will be, by then, one hundred and ninety-four weeks pregnant. Also, Big Gay Chris comes out of the closet, and it's about goddamned time, don't you think?