Ordinary Witches

Happy birthdays, Mom and Dad. Even though I know neither of you bothers to read seventeen-page-long recaps of some lousy Spelling show on the WB about badly dressed witches in San Francisco and all of the wacky hijinks they get into with the demons and the bulges and the such. Still, it's the thought that counts, right?

Previously on Charmed: Kyle's girlfriend was a stupid bitch (in D minor); Kyle himself was secretly INSANE and otherwise annoying, despite the Rammer Of Doom he's packing in his jeans; the Dolt became Avatarlicious, much to the dismay of his sometimes ex-wife and her trampy sister with the fake boobs, until the latter was touched by a Cordelia, who granted her a vision of the superfabulous world beyond good and evil that promises to exist once the Avatars take control of everything; and, unbeknownst to all of the above, The Psycho constructed a teeny little Tiny-Gay-Chris-sized rack in the basement, and is busily dislocating all of the wee pretty one's joints even as we type.

Or something like that. My copy of this episode came from CTV in Toronto, so I'll have no idea what the Previouslys are until this evening at 7. That is, if I bother watching the WB's airing of this mess then.

Currently on Charmed, we fade up quickly on the sunlit Manor facade before following the Dolt's whiny voice inside to the kitchen, where the Dolt himself is flipping what's meant to be an omelette from a frying pan onto a plate at the center island. If it really is an omelette, then Piper's concocted some fabulous new recipe for the things that evidently involves basting them in shellac. It's as immobile as a rock, and I'm surprised the plate didn't shatter instantly upon impact. Anyway, Piper and the Dolt are in the midst of some tedious discussion regarding the Avatars' true motives, or something, with the Dolt nasally wondering why Piper's still withholding her approval. "You told me yourself it sounds great," he grumps, referring to The Superwonderful Avatarlicious Future Beyond Good And Evil. "It does," she agrees mildly, focused intently on the strawberries she's carving up to garnish the greasy yellow rocks she's calling breakfast food. "So, what's the problem?" the Dolt buhs. "Burning toast," Piper cryptically replies. The Dolt's all, "Huhn?" until Piper elaborates that the toaster on the far counter is stuck. The Dolt goes, "D'oh!" and prances over to flap a hand around at the cloud of smoke rising from the appliance while gingerly removing the blackened pieces of bread.

"Now, there's a question," Piper continues, developing her initial thought. "Your Avatar friends are promising this big, bright future...um. Will there be burning toast?" The Dolt, naturally, fails to see her point, which I must admit is a good one. "Be serious," he sighs, pressing his hands on the counter. "I am!" she cries. "They say they're going to rid the world of evil," she continues, abandoning the fruit on the center island in favor of turning to address the fruit at the opposite end of the room. "What else are they gonna get rid of?" "Nothing else," the Dolt insists, adding a bit impatiently, "We've had this conversation." Yeah, well if you did, moron, the audience certainly wasn't privy to it, so would you let the poor woman get some freaking exposition in? Asshole. After a bit of blather regarding the supposed Avatar interview that followed the last episode, Piper lays it on the line: "The more I think about the whole thing, the more it worries me." The Dolt drops his jaw to pepper her with more of his newfound wisdom -- snerk -- but Piper cuts him short with, "Nah! Save the pitch." She's heard it already, and yeah, she thinks it sounds great, but... But what, Piper? Jesus Christ, would you get to the goddamned point already? I can't stand these talky openings. Finally, at long last, she explains her central issue with the whole thing: "It's one thing to save the world from evil every week. It's another thing entirely to change the world just because we can. I mean, isn't that a little cocky?" The Dolt, dismayed, argues that it's not "cocky" at all; rather, it's "a leap of faith," and one he's willing to fight for. "Not everyone has reached your level of faith yet," Piper reminds him, in tones she'd use to explain to her three-year-old Psycho why holding Tiny Gay Chris's head underwater for ten minutes at a time is perhaps not such a good idea. As the Dolt's about to unleash what I'm certain would be a witty retort, the sound of the front door slowly creaking open reaches their ears. Piper warily calls out her sisters' names, but receives no response.

Out in the main hall, Piper and the Dolt trudge across the carpet towards the gaping front door, with Piper noting, "That's odd. Did you leave it open?" "No, I orbed in," the Dolt reminds her as the two pass out of the frame. The instant they're gone, Secretly INSANE Brody darts from around the corner to take their place, looking anguished, or something. I so don't care anymore, which means this episode is going to be one hell of a long slog for yours truly, as it's All About The Bulge. Sigh. Why are they doing this to me? And on the night of the Golden Globes, no less? Is this because I'm a lesbian? "You son of a bitch!" Brody seethes as he slings his arm back to whip his Destructive Egyptian Vial Of Tendrilly Avatar Doom at the Dolt's gigantic gargoyle head and finally, some idiot on this show has perfect aim. The shot slides into slow motion as a set of angrily excited strings hit the soundtrack. The Dolt pivots around in surprise to face the secretly INSANE one as the vial sails through the air, headed straight for his teeth. Just as Piper spins around herself, however, the entire scene grinds to a halt, save for the Dolt himself. "That was close," he breathes, goggling at the vial suspended in the air in front of his face for a bit before turning to thank Piper for her quick Hands. As he realizes she's frozen as well, a shrill whoosh trills off-screen to indicate that The Avatars Have Entered The Building, and I'm Not Candy can shortly be heard agreeing, "Too close." The Dolt swings his head back around to find I'm Not Candy and Uniqua lounging around in the center parlor. Uniqua looks just as thrilled to be here as I am. "That's the second time he's tried to kill you," I'm Not Candy reminds the Dolt. Yeah, but...oh, hell, there's no other way for me to put this: Shut the fuck up, I'm Not Candy. The first time doesn't count, because you all pressed The Great Big Reset Button In The Sky, you idiot. You also reset time without swiping Brody's Destructive Egyptian Vial Of Tendrilly Avatar Doom, so not only did you know how he was going to react once he rediscovered the Dolt's Avatarliciousness, you also biffed the opportunity to prevent it from happening again and therefore have no one to blame for this but yourselves. God, is everyone on this show a fucking retard?

Ack. Anyway, I'm Not Candy threateningly continues, "We need to do something about [the secretly INSANE government agent with the obscenely large bulge in his pants]." The Dolt, however, wants the sometimes ex-wife in on the babbling that follows, and refuses to discuss the matter until they've unfrozen her. I'm Not Candy nods his head, and Piper whirls back into action, shouting, "Watch out!" as she prepares to unleash her Hands. She snaps to a halt when she spots the Dolt's fellow Avatars, though, and, with her index finger dancing around in the air in their general direction, wonders, "What are they doing here?" "Saving his life," Uniqua drones, and I get the feeling that someone spent the holiday hiatus scarfing down all the Vicodin she could lay her hands on. Even Avatars self-medicate at Christmas time, apparently. I'm Not Candy fills Piper in on the anti-Avatar mojo Brody's vial contains, and supposes that someone must have informed the secretly INSANE one of the Dolt's fabulous Avatarocity. "[Raige]," the Dolt glums as Piper rolls her eyes and snorts, "All right, what do you want from me? I'll kill her later." Snerk. Please do, because she's been an annoying hag of Phoebe-esque proportions ever since she became Brody's private bulge jockey. I'm Not Candy insists they deal with the Brody situation immediately. "If even one of us were to die," Uniqua wearily reminds them all, "it could weaken the Collective to the point where we might not be able to implement the change." "Maybe you guys should have thought of that before you killed Brody's parents," Piper sasses. "Piper," the Dolt warns. "What?" she snaps back instantly. "That's why he views them as a threat -- that's what he thinks happened." And here's where I pretty much stopped paying attention to the blather and the exposition and the wah, because at this moment, some Enya-like ovary started wailing on the soundtrack beneath the dialogue, and it's so incredibly distracting that I was barely able to catch I'm Not Candy name-checking Zankou as another threat to The Superwonderful Avatarlicious Future Beyond Good And Evil, before he plucks the Egyptian vial from the air and claims that neither threat can be dealt with properly until Piper signs on to the whole plan. I'm Not Candy and Uniqua flare out, leaving an oddly contemplative Piper and an expectedly baffled Dolt to handle the suddenly unfrozen Brody.

"What happened?" Secretly INSANE Brody rages, advancing upon them. "WHAT DID YOU DO?" Piper and I are both, "Whoa. Dial it down a few notches, you jaghole. You're a guest in this house, remember?" Or maybe that was just me. In any event, Brody ignores the warning to howl, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND -- THAT WAS THE LAST POTION!" Piper sticks her fingers in her ears and starts chanting, "Lalalalalalalalala!" as Brody sneers, "You have no idea what you just did!" before flouncing out the front door in a huff. Once he's vanished off the front porch, Piper uncorks her ears, turns to the Dolt, and snides, "So you see why I'm having a little problem with the faith thing, right?" She waits not a moment for his answer before bellowing, "[Raige]!" at the ceiling. The bulge jockey in question immediately and obediently orbs into the main hall, toting a bag of groceries with the requisite loaf of French bread protruding from the top. "What's going on?" Raige gulps. "Oh, you know, nothing," Piper sarcastically chimes. "Your boyfriend tried to kill my husband." Raige gapes as the Dolt narrows his eyes at her judgmentally until the opening credits barge into the frame to smack that nasty, arrogant expression off his big, smug, wrinkly face.

A brief, ovary-free opening travelogue swings us around the Golden Gate Bridge for a couple of passes before cross-fading over to Prescott Street as a seemingly endless parade of guest-star names scrolls by at the bottom of the screen. And what does a seemingly endless parade of guest-star names mean? No money for the special effects. Yeesh. "I don't know what happened," Raige claims as she passes into the dining room to set her groceries on the table. "I told Kyle you were an Avatar at breakfast," she continues, turning to face Piper and the Dolt. "He seemed okay with it." "You should have warned us you were gonna tell him," Piper chides. "I would have if I had known what he was gonna do!" Raige protests, and, yeah. The Dolt should have revealed what happened the first time Brody learned of the Avatarliciousness now filling the Manor, but the Dolt's an idiot, so let's gloss over all that to continue with the scene, shall we? The three natter about The Trouble With Brody for a bit, and the nattering involves, of course, the familiar tale of Little Brody watching the Avatars kill his parents all those many years ago, and we've heard variations on this conversation at least ten times already this season, so let's get to the point: "In all fairness, he was only five years old," Piper reminds Raige. "Who knows what really happened?"

Cue Phoebe, for some asinine reason, for she's as clueless as the rest of them regarding the deaths of Ma and Pa Brody. As Phoebe joins the others for the mini-processing summit already in progress, Piper opines that it's a good thing The Bulging One's out of potions. "Still doesn't solve his problem," Phoebe counters. "And until somebody does," she adds, turning to Raige, "I would assume that you're not gonna go along with the Avatars, right?" "What do you have up your sleeve?" Raige eyebrows. Turns out Phoebe's cunning plan for the evening involves cribbing from "A Paige From The Past" by sending Brody back in time to find out what really happened to his parents. Raige wonders what will happen should Brody confirm the Avatars did indeed off his mother and father. "Then we'll kill the Avatars and help him move on that way," Phoebe blithely proposes. Yeah, good luck with that one, honey. "The sooner we help Kyle find out the truth," she continues, ignoring me as is her wont, "the sooner we can all move on." "'Move on' to what?" Piper suspiciously side-eyes. "The future the Avatars promised us," Phoebe replies, adding "the one I saw in my vision" for good measure. "We all didn't see that," Piper needlessly reminds her. Phoebe gets a frisky glint in her eye and coos, "Yes, but you could -- if you and I swapped powers." Oh, this should work out well for everyone involved. Not. Piper seems to agree with me, for her response is an immediate and incredulous, "What?" Phoebe babbles that the power-swap will last the briefest of moments -- only long enough for Piper to receive Phoebe's Touched By A Cordelia premonition -- and that it's no big deal. Piper, realizing that both Phoebe and the Dolt are ganging up on her, reluctantly agrees to the switch, but adds, "If the Avatars are exonerated and I see what Phoebe saw then we'll talk about it." They turn their attention to Raige, who rolls her eyes, scrunches up her nose, and snots, "Fine. I'll talk about it, too." Piper sighs as the shot cuts...

...down to Hell, where Zankou's meditating above an open-pit fire. Max Perlich -- who apparently guested on Buffy at some point in the blessedly distant past -- hesitantly approaches from behind, and I'm already bored with this scene. Just about all of the necessary exposition for this episode has already been received by this point, so all this crap about the threat the Avatars represent to the denizens of the Underworld is entirely unnecessary. Add to that the fact that the only remotely attractive demon present is Zankou himself, and I'm already lapsing into a coma by the time the sole entertaining moment -- and trust me, calling it "entertaining" is a stretch -- arrives, with Oded Fehr whacking Max Perlich all the way across the chamber into a loitering group of dark demonic forces with a mighty, backhanded pimp-smack. And even that goes by too quickly to hold my interest in this scene. Long story short, Zankou understands that fighting the Avatars directly is a losing proposition, so he intends to take out the Charmed Ones before the latter link up with the Dolt's colleagues to eliminate the demonic threat for good. Yeah, and that's not gonna work, sweetie, because it never, ever, ever does. Yawn. And...scene.

The Dolt instructs Brody to close his eyes and concentrate on the worst afternoon of his life. While Brody does just that, Raige interrupts the proceedings for a moment to wonder how, exactly, they'll return to the present. "You'll get back when he finds the truth," notes the Dolt. "Of course," Raige peeves with an aggravated roll of her eyes. Shut it, Raige. Your manic mugging annoys me. The Dolt concentrates on a far corner of the nonexistent room and flings out both hands to toss a little invisible mojo in the corner's direction. Raige and Brody swivel to follow the invisible mojo's path as the vast sucking sounds of a great, swirling vortex hit the soundtrack, and "sucking" is terribly apropos here, because remember what I said earlier about the effects budget for this episode? Yeah. Brody tensely grabs at Raige's hand as the vastly sucky portal swoops open, and, as Piper, Phoebe, and the Dolt eye the time-traveling duo from the far side of the room, glowy tendrils reach out from the vortex's center to envelop Raige and Brody and drag them from the attic into a blurry black smear through the portal, which snaps shut the second they've passed. "Now what?" Piper wonders. "Now we work on you," Phoebe's NIPPLES insist as they resume their Book abuse in search of the power-switching spell.

Cut to the Paramount backlot, which is now at long last portraying the city it was always meant to represent. The camera peers down through a railing into a subway entrance from the "snow"-glazed sidewalk above; the vortex opens in the graffiti-scarred hallway below to disgorge Raige and The Bulge That Won't Go Away. Raige, entirely unaffected by the journey, practically has to drag the gagging and doubled-over Brody up the steps, with the latter insisting despite all evidence to the contrary that he's fine. "Oh, my God," he breathes as they mount the remaining stairs to the sidewalk and he gets his first look at the streetscape around them. Which, you know, is the exact same streetscape he last saw in "Charmed Noir," only this time it's in color, with festive Christmas decorations replacing all those tommy-gun-toting sociopaths. So I guess I can understand his apparent confusion. Christ, I hate this show. "Wait a minute," he gulps suddenly before darting heedlessly into the street. "Something's not right!" "What's not right?" Raige calls after him as he's nearly run down by a Cadillac with -- props to the props people -- a period-appropriate orange-and-blue New York State license plate affixed to the front bumper. God, those things were ugly. As Brody and the Cadillac driver exchange a few choice words, Raige yells, "Where are you going?" Brody stomps the rest of the way across the street and hustles over to a newsstand, where he hoists a copy of that day's New York Monitor. Which, for some strange reason, features The New York Times's "All The News That's Fit To Print" motto on its upper-left-hand corner. Whatever. I was supposed to be paying attention to that "President Reagan Announces Sanctions Against USSR" headline, anyway, which I'm going to pretend I didn't see, because acknowledging it would mean I'd be forced to check if any such thing happened on or about December 28, 1981, which is when the events of this subplot are taking place. Then again, I think Reagan was announcing sanctions against the Soviet Union every damn day for eight years, so researching the accuracy of the headline is probably unnecessary.

In any event, Raige confirms that the afternoon of December 28, 1981, was indeed the worst of Brody's entire life, but that's not the problem. The problem is, they've landed outside Columbia University where his parents taught, and not in the "warehouse near J.F.K." where they died "at 7:52 at night." "Maybe we're starting here for some other reason," Raige wisely suggests. "Yeah," Brody impudently snaps, "because the Avatars want me to miss seeing it." "Not gonna happen," he snorts, dodging passersby to the curb to hail a taxi to the airport. In a crappily overdubbed insert, Raige, spotting the badly CGI'd ad atop the not-stopping cab, croons, "Cool. Raiders of the Lost Ark. I always wanted to see that." Brody grimaces in disgust and darts off down the sidewalk, for he, as we shall presently learn, is an Indiana Jones aficionado, and cannot mask his contempt for someone who has somehow missed catching Raiders once ever in her life. I grimace in disgust and dart...nowhere, actually, but that's not the point. The point is, Raiders was released in June of 1981, so it's extremely unlikely a cab in New York would still be advertising that movie in December of that year. Then again, they've screwed up movie release dates before, so I don't know what I was expecting.

Now, where was? Oh, yeah: Raige, undeterred, scampers after The Bulging One with some jaunty burbling about Christmas in New York, which somehow leads to a discussion of what Brody received in 1981, which, conveniently enough, is the first Christmas he can remember. His soon-to-be-dead parentals, it turns out, gifted him with books, a snow globe, and a Rubik's Cube. They must have hated him as much as I do. Brody spots a soon-to-be-vacated cab pulling up to the opposite curb and races to catch it, with Raige skittering along behind. They reach the taxi just as an ash-blonde thirtysomething emerges, and Brody stops short in shock. "Come on," the woman calls to someone inside the cab before she straightens up, gawps at The Bulging One, and promptly drops into a dead faint. Brody lunges and manages to catch the woman before she cracks her skull open on the pavement. The someone in the cab turns out to be a dark-haired little troll with a nasty bowl cut and an even nastier horizontally-striped rust-and-brown sweater. The Bulging One assures the cab troll that his mother's going to be all right and, absently instructing the cab troll to fetch his jacket, turns to gaze down at the blonde woman's unconscious face. "Do you know who she is?" Raige whispers. "Yeah, it's my mom," Brody breathes, to the surprise of absolutely no one in this show's rapidly dwindling audience. "Which makes him..." he begins, glancing up at the cab troll. "You," Raige realizes. No, really? And all this time I thought the cab troll was Adam Rich with a shitty dye job. Thanks for clearing that up, guys! Brody gulps hard as the cab troll stares blankly into the camera. God, I hate kids on TV.

Nonexistent attic. The Fun Bags flip past the entry for Celerity Demons -- cunning, that -- before landing on the spell their host had been seeking. "You ready?" Phoebe asks, turning to address Piper, who frets silently in the background before stepping forward to give voice to her doubts. "What if Zankou shows up?" she wonders. "I mean, what are we gonna do then?" "Well, then I blow him up," Phoebe duhs, needlessly explaining that they'll still have their powers, just in different bodies. Piper hems and haws and blathers about the Power of Three until Phoebe cuts through the crap, demanding to know why Piper's "procrastinating." Long story short, Piper's still having big problems with the whole "remake the world in our image" thing the Avatars are proposing. Phoebe again assures Piper that all her doubts will disappear once she, too, has experienced Phoebe's Touched By A Cordelia premonition. Piper places her hands on her hips and sighs, but turns her head to read the following aloud with Phoebe:

What's mine is yours,
What's yours is mine:
I offer up my gift to share --
Switch our powers through the air.

Swirling clouds of glowing golf balls erupt from their bodies and hover above their heads for a suspiciously long moment, allowing Zankou just enough time to blaze into the nonexistent room from the fiery depths of Hell and unleash a couple of Flaming Balls Of This Stupid Idea Of Phoebe's Will Now Result In Wacky Hijinks in the gals' general direction. Phoebe and Piper shriek and duck behind Aunt Pearl's sofa, leaving the FBOTSIOPWNRIWH to plow into the swirling golf ball clouds instead. This, of course, sets off a minor explosion that propels the golf balls through the nonexistent attic's front windows. Phoebe and Piper gasp and gape in dismay as the camera cuts outside to follow the hijinks already in progress. The first of the clouds plows into a blue-collar type who's mid-munch on a sandwich in a pickup parked across the street. He shudders violently as his body glows white, and in the process dumps a full cup of coffee into his lap. Yow. The other cloud, meanwhile, zips straight into the bazooms of a frail-looking neighbor lady conveniently standing on the porch of 1324 Prescott. She flares white, goes, "Ooof!" and collapses onto her back. As the neighbor lady, stunned speechless, slowly pushes herself up onto her elbows, the shot cuts back to the attic, where Piper and Phoebe continue to cower as Zankou casually lopes around on the carpet, idly wondering, "Where's the third one?" Um, if you actually, as we shall shortly learn, had a premonition that Piper and Phoebe would be powerless and vulnerable at this juncture, wouldn't you also know Raige was back in Old-Timey New York? Idiot. Phoebe babbles a lame comeback as Zankou conjures another FBOD. Unfortunately for the demon, the Dolt orbs in behind him and immediately unleashes a massive spray of sporking electricity into Zankou's back. Zankou howls and wails and demolishes a priceless antique table with his chest. From the floor, he glowers at the Manor-bound Glamorous Ladies for a moment before blazing out of the room. Once he's gone, the Dolt buhs, "What happened? Why didn't you fire back?" "Go ahead, tell him," Piper snorts as The Flatulent Oboe Of Boy, Is Phoebe A Dumbass Or What? blats on the soundtrack. "We sort of lost our powers?" Phoebe winces. Piper silently conveys her full intent to throttle Phoebe with the latter's own large intestine before all three of the Manor Morons vanish into the commercial break.

...the present, where an "Ask Phoebe"-emblazoned cable car trundles through the frame, its own bell announcing the "Van Ness" stop. Better than the call-and-response transitions they normally pull on this show, but, you know. Feh. And it's still better than the supposedly comic scene that follows, in which the blue-collar gent currently possessed of Phoebe's powers pleads with his two-timing hussy of a wife from the sidewalk in front of the "San Francisco ARMS APARTMENTS" while the two-timing hussy furiously tosses his belongings at him from the balcony above. Seems Phoebe's power of premonition has resulted in a string of unwanted, sepia-toned visions of the guy's wife boning a parade of this loser's far-hotter friends, and if she really was screwing all of those guys, I find it extremely difficult to believe word of it wouldn't have reached this loser long before now. Whatever. Phoebe, having mercifully re-donned her knit wrap for this sequence, juggles the Fun Bags up behind the loser to trumpet the following introduction in front of the thick crowd that has gathered to snicker at the loser's humiliation: "I'M A WITCH AND YOU HAVE MY POWER OF PREMONITION AND IF YOU DON'T COME WITH ME YOU'RE PROBABLY GONNA GET KILLED BY A DEMON. GOT IT?" Then the Cleaners arrive and banish her stupid, mouthy ass into a permanent Time Loop on a parallel plane far, far from our own.

Or not.

High atop the Golden Gate Bridge, the Zankou-related tedium continues. He's summoned two Elders -- Elizabeth Dennehy and some guy who looks like the decrepit husk of a man the Professor from Gilligan's Island has become -- and after, like, licking their protective shield, drags out his major revelation regarding the Dolt for fifteen thousand years. Eventually, the tertiary character with the secret drops the Dolt bomb on the tertiary characters who want the information, and there's shock and disbelief and smugness and dismay and dawning realization and come on! None of these people matter, so why are you wasting so much time on them?

And look at that. While I've been otherwise occupied chiding the crack monkeys who type for this wretched, horrible show, the camera's cut back over to the nonexistent attic, where Mousy Neighbor Lady is appropriately horrified to discover that demons and witches and Stoopid Magikal Kreatures really exist. Try recapping them all, bitch. "Denise" also manages to demolish a few priceless antiques with Piper's borrowed and currently out-of-control Hands Of Discontent. "Why does that keep happening?" Mousy Denise wails after she detonates another vase. Piper assures her temporary houseguest that, if she just calms down a bit, she'll stop blowing things up. "Wait," Mousy Denise interrupts. "You guys fight demons here all the time, right?" "Pretty much," Piper confirms with an amazing amount of patience coming from someone who is so, well, Piper. "See, I just thought you always threw a bunch of wild parties," Mousy Denise confesses, "with, you know, things breaking and people screaming. I had no idea." Because you're an idiot, Denise. You and every other goddamned resident of Prescott Street, apparently. I mean, Big Gay Chris blowing up the worthless Dolt on the front lawn in broad daylight should have clued you all in two years ago at the very least, but did it? No. Morons. In any event, Phoebe picks this moment to barge in with the loser, with no warning whatsoever. A startled Mousy Denise, taking a page from first-season Piper's book, flaps her hands around while shrieking in surprise, freezing the new arrivals in the process. Yes, either Phoebe or the loser should have remained unaffected by the freezing mojo because of that "Good Witches" rule, but I am so beyond caring at this point. This bit exists only so Piper can get in another supposedly comic bit wherein she gingerly manipulates Mousy Denise's hands to unfreeze the new arrivals without "blowing up the sister." Though Lord knows Mousy Denise could blow Phoebe up again and again and again and this assy show's rapidly dwindling audience would most likely cheer her on.

Ronnie's an idiot, though, for the shot captures Phoebe leading him into an unoccupied service hallway, with Piper and Mousy Debbie trailing along behind. I'm not even going to bother with a blow-by-blow of what follows, because you know what happens? Phoebe ends up showing him her future -- you know, the one where she's in the wretched Alanis wig, cooing at her ugly daughter on the sun-dappled lawn of an elementary school? Now, I would understand all of this if the Touched By A Cordelia premonition could somehow be altered to incorporate Ronnie's personal stakes in The Superwonderful Avatarlicious Future Beyond Good And Evil, but as it is, why the hell should this guy give a flying rat's ass about what happens to her? Over it! I AM OVER THIS SHOW! Gah! Long story short, Ronnie The Loser lives up to his nickname by beaming beatifically at the vision of Phalanis's joyful future and ugly daughter, and he immediately agrees to switch back the powers. Douche. Piper's apparently as annoyed that this worked as I am.

High atop the Golden Gate Bridge, the Dolt stares down a posse of ever-useless Elders before smugly confessing to his fabulous Avatarliciousness. The ever-useless Elders are shocked and appalled. Even more shocked is the Dolt, once the Elders as a group unleash massive sporks of electricity from their hands into his chest. Unfortunately, he doesn't dissolve into a spray of dust the way Stupid Uncle Phil did all those many episodes ago. The assembled Elders gape in dismay. "Face it," the somewhat crispy Dolt sneers, "the fate of the world is no longer in your hands." Pffft. Like it ever was in the first place, Dolt. These imbeciles could never handle your damn wife and her selfish, shrewish sisters. Forget about the fate of an entire planet. The ever-useless Elder posse pouts for a bit before orbing upwards as a group. Once they've disappeared, the somewhat crispy Dolt leans heavily against the tower, gasping for breath. Oh, I get it! He was being all manly, bluffing through his pain and stuff! Awwwww! Not. Drop dead, Dolt.

Manor. Piper, Mousy Debbie, Phoebe, and Ronnie The Loser arrive and head for the stairs, only to stop short in terror as Zankou lopes out of the front parlor to greet them with some sneers and taunts. He actually sneers at and taunts them long enough for Piper to call for the Dolt, which allows Zankou to...sneer and taunt at them some more. "Something tells me he's not coming to your rescue this time," Zankou smirks. There's an endless reaction shot to this news from the Manor Morons and their temporary houseguests until Zankou conjures a Flaming Ball Of Death that he bounces on his palm a couple of times before hurling it directly into the commercial break.

Hallway. Immediate aftermath. "We're gonna die!" Mousy Debbie screams as Piper shoves her out of the way, onto the stairs. Phoebe, meanwhile, has disappeared around a corner with Ronnie The Loser, allowing Zankou's Flaming Ball Of Death to pass harmlessly through the dining room until it smashes into what sounds like an entire set of dinnerware. Piper offers the hyperventilating Mousy Debbie a few quick words of advice before Zankou's FBOD takes out the boxy post cap at the foot of the stairs. Piper scampers upwards as Mousy Debbie lurches towards the center parlor, just managing to place a lamp between herself and another FBOD. As she vanishes towards the sun porch, Phoebe and Ronnie The Loser have a hushed conversation of their own in their dining room hiding place before Ronnie correctly predicts the path of the FBOD and drags Phoebe to the floor. The FBOD in question explodes above their heads. As Phoebe congratulates Ronnie on a job well done, Zankou stalks towards Piper with yet another FBOD that he prepares to sling in her direction. At the last instant, however, Mousy Debbie gains control of the Hands Of Discontent and pops up to slam Zankou into a wall. "Did I kill him?" she gasps. "Not quite, but we'll take what we can get," Piper smirks, eyeing the somewhat wounded demon from the stairwell above. She calls once more for the Dolt, and apparently, this time Zankou can sense that the sometimes ex-husband is still alive. He seethes something vaguely threatening about the Avatars being "a threat to us all" before blazing on out of there.

Just as the demon vanishes, the somewhat crispy Dolt orbs in, all, "You okay?" Piper's more interested in discovering why the Dolt's so sooty. "I thought you went to see the [ever-useless] Elders?" she wonders. "I did," he mutters, before adding darkly, "We need to talk." DUN!

Warehouse Of They Can't Kill These People Fast Enough For Me. Secretly INSANE Brody, anguished, watches his oblivious Pa and Ma paw through various artifacts as the clock above their heads hits 7:52. "It's time," he whispers to Raige, who steels herself for what follows. One of the Customs agents takes the box of vials from Pa Brody and begins to walk it elsewhere when he's suddenly struck from behind by a Flaming Ball Of Death. As he howls and erupts in a fireball, the unsecured box flips through the air, spilling its contents to the warehouse floor, where they shatter on the concrete. In this evening's only cool effects shot, the smoky tendrils of anti-Avatar mojo instantly whip up into the air from the broken vials, sightlessly searching for something to kill. Finding the warehouse entirely devoid of Avatars at the moment, the tendrils quickly collapse back upon themselves and vanish. In slow motion, Pa Brody pivots to find Riff-Raff, here again playing the lead Celerity Demon, glaring at him from the open loading dock doors. Two other celerity demons explode into the doorway on either side of Riff as Secretly INSANE Brody gasps, "Demons!" And ones with whom he's intimately familiar, no less. What are the odds? By the way, Raige and Brody remain in normal time throughout this scene, so I'm guessing the Avatars flipped the slaughter into slow-motion so the Celerity Demons could be properly identified by the time-tripping humans present. Anyway, back to the massacre: Ma Brody spins from the other Customs agent's side to flee, but one of Riff's henchdemons explodes over to shish-kebab her with his claw. And that was such a lovely sweater she had on. "Ruth!" Pa Brody screams, darting over to her as she drops slowly to her knees. Secretly INSANE Brody is in tears. Suffer, bitch. Riff's other henchdemon explodes in beside Pa Brody, latches onto his shoulder, and pushes his claw through Pa Brody's chest from behind. Tasty! Meanwhile, the remaining Customs agent squeezes off a couple of rounds in Riff-Raff's direction. The first ricochets off...something, so it can quite neatly dart back across the room and shatter the clock, stopping it at the precise moment Ma and Pa Brody died. The second bullet goes wide as Riff flips another FBOD at the remaining agent, who dissolves in a gout of flame just as Pa Brody collapses, dead. Riff picks his way across the warehouse floor to glare disgustedly at the shattered Avatar-killing vials scattered around Pa Brody's head. Presently, his henchdemons explode into place on either side of him. "We needed those potions," Riff-Raff growls. "I told you we should have waited," the leftmost henchdemon sneers. "How will we protect ourselves?" the rightmost henchdemon wonders, and it's SAG cards for everyone! Hooray! In answer to that last question, Riff heaves a terribly put-upon sigh and glums, "We won't." With that, he and the henchdemons explode on out of there.

You'd think Raige and Secretly INSANE Brody would explode on out of there as well at this point, seeing as how Kyle now knows the truth. And you'd be wrong. Why? Because we need a nice, long, weepy scene wherein Brody Realizes The Error Of His Ways, Sort Of. Oh, and look at that! It comes complete with Rotten So-Called Emoting From Tonight's Troll-Like Child Guest Star! The Cab Troll wanders onto the scene with his styrofoam cup of soda, which he promptly drops so he can race to his dead father's side and sniffle -- get this -- exactly twice. No uncontrollable blubbering. No weeping freely from the eyes. Just two perfectly exaggerated sniffles. Banish all children from television! Immediately! The Cab Troll does, however, retrieve one unshattered vial from his father's rapidly cooling hand, and this, we're meant to assume, is the same Destructive Egyptian Vial Of Tendrilly Avatar Doom he flipped at the Dolt twenty-three or so years later at the top of this episode. Secretly INSANE Brody kneels down at his smaller self's side to offer a few remarks of the "buck up, little camper" variety before you all learn what I meant by that "Sort Of" earlier in this paragraph. As Raige softly whispers, "We have to go," Secretly INSANE Brody spots one more unshattered vial hidden in the shadows beneath a nearby crate. We know that This Is Significant thanks to The Ominous Musical Cue as the camera pans in on the vial. And by The Darkly Murderous Expression on Secretly INSANE Brody's face. And by The Lengthy Amount Of Time It Takes The Stupid Cameraman To Pan In On The Darkly Murderous Expression On Secretly INSANE Brody's Face As The Ominous Musical Cue Continues Beneath. End this scene! Now!

Oh, hello, Mr. Chrysler Building. And Mr. Empire State. We've cross-faded, you see, to a twilit shot of the Manhattan skyline looking south from midtown. The Trade Center towers are, indeed, visible at the far end of the island, but the editors, perhaps wary of offending the viewing audience's delicate sensibilities, have chosen stock footage in which the towers are almost entirely obscured by massive amounts of low-lying smog. The camera lingers on Koch-era Manhattan for a bit before the screen flashes white and...

...we're rather unceremoniously dumped back into a more typical closing travelogue before we finally return to the Manor, where Piper successfully tests her freshly reacquired Hands on a lamp she claims always to have hated. Get this: Pack-Mule Piper's lounging around the center parlor while Phoebe sweeps up the hallway behind her. They really are trying their best to rehabilitate the character, aren't they? Bless their little hearts. It's not happening. Piper absently wonders what good their restored powers will do them, as Zankou's obviously immune to said powers' effects. "'Zankou,'" Phoebe wonderingly repeats in mid-sweep. "How do they come up with these names?" Not funny. Shut up, Phoebe. And get back to work, you lazy cow. "After all these years, you're gonna ask now?" Piper mugs. Even less funny. Shut up, Piper. And blow up Phoebe while you're at it. In the babble that follows, we learn that the Dolt used his Magikal Fairy Dust on Mousy Debbie and Ronnie The Loser to ensure they'll remain silent forever regarding their late adventure with the Manor Morons. Piper also notes that, having witnessed Ronnie's beatific reaction to Phoebe's Touched By A Cordelia Premonition Of The Superwonderful Avatarlicious Future Beyond Good And Evil That Is Quickly Driving Me Insane With Its Abject Stupidity, she no longer needs to get the vision herself, and is quite content to go along with the Avatars' plan now that she knows they didn't off Ma and Pa Brody.

On cue, Raige arrives on the stairwell landing from above to announce that she's good to go with the whole Avatar thing as well. What Raige does not do is recite the Object Of Objection spell to restore the ruined hallway. I'd normally have a problem with that, but since Phoebe's finally doing some damn work around the house, I'll let it slide. Phoebe politely inquires as to Secretly INSANE Brody's current state of mind. Still whacko, Feebs. Check the nickname before you ask stupid questions like that. "I think eventually he'll be okay," Raige guesses. Incorrectly. But that's not important. What is important is that she too-brightly adds, "I mean, he'll have to be -- it's Utopia, right?" I take back my earlier DUN! and shall instead apply it to this moment. Leave it to Kerr Smith to fuck up Utopia for everyone.

And look at that. Back over in Straight Estates, Secretly INSANE Brody unlatches the padded case that once held the vial his younger self plucked from his father's cold, dead hand. He then digs around in his jacket pocket to retrieve the other vial he somehow managed to snatch from his journey to the past. I'll leave it to the gang on the boards to debate the deeper meaning of this -- you know, questions like, "So, was he always meant to travel into the past to retrieve the second vial, or was it a happy accident?" Instead, I'll simply note that Secretly INSANE Brody carefully places the new vial into the case, which he then just as carefully locks as the camera pulls in on his determined expression, and we, at long last, fade to black.

I trust you can all see the predetermined end of this tiresome Avatar storyline now, correct? Good.

week: "Extreme Makeover World Edition," and they mean it. Pity Home Edition's still going to suck up the entire available audience and trounce them in the Nielsens. Have fun!