Episode Report Card Demian: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT This/Sucks
By Demian | Season 7 | Episode 16 | Aired on 04.09.2005
In any event, the Dolt gets shirty, and threatens to "fall from grace" should the ever-useless Elders rob him of his family. Elder Q, clutching his pearls, gasps, "No Elder has ever done that before!" No, but Nicolas Cage did do it in City Of Angels, so this posturing by the Dolt also has an entirely predictable outcome, and snore. Though if Piper slams face-first into a truck on her bike, I might get a little irritated. Depending upon how shrewish she's being at the moment, of course. Elizabeth Dennehy vows the Elders will stick strictly to the terms of the deal as outlined above, and expect the Dolt to do the same. Remember that bit. The Dolt's all, "Okay, fine, whatever, but I'm going to say goodbye to the wife first." "No," Elder Q corrects, stalking up to the Dolt with a peevish expression on his face, "the test begins now!" And with that, Elder Q shoves the Dolt backwards into an orb cloud that rapidly expands to fill the screen, and soon cross-fades to become...
...a cloud of dust kicked up by a passing semi that dissipates to reveal an even more befuddled and flannel-clad Dolt, standing on the center line of some rural highway lined with desiccated clumps of sagebrush. The camera slowly pans backwards, and we can see from the handy and pot-shot highway marker behind the Dolt's scarily gargantuan gargoyle head that he's actually been dropped down upon Texas State Route 69. No, I will not be making a joke about that, because the very thought of the Dolt in conjunction with that number and all of its juvenile implications is enough to make me spew blood. Through my eyes. A twangy, Stand-like steel guitar chord hits the soundtrack as the stupid Dolt bumbles around in the middle of the road. The driver of a speeding pickup truck headed directly for the Dolt's massive ass blasts his horn a few desperate times before wrenching his steering wheel to the left. The truck veers and skids up the opposite embankment before flipping over a couple of times, coming to rest on its side. The Dolt instinctively races over to drag the somewhat injured driver from the wreck through the window, and as they lurch a few feet away, the truck -- of course -- explodes behind them. How very Smallville of them. And by that I mean "stupid." The driver -- who, incidentally, portrayed one of The Pretty's many, many victims in the indie true crime flick Vampire Clan -- collapses to the dirt, clutching at the right side of his chest. The Dolt eyes him for a moment before squinting back at the flames improbably erupting from the pickup's cab, and it's time for a flashback! Yep, the addled Dolt, supposedly stripped of his memory, for some asinine reason recalls a snippet of the various explosions on Guadalcanal from "Saving Private Dolt." No, it doesn't make any sense, but this episode is so boring and useless, it's not even worth bitching about. Back in the present, the Dolt snaps into medic mode, ordering the truck's driver to bite down on a handy and dirt-encrusted stick while the Dolt forces the guy's dislocated shoulder back into its socket. He then tends to the gash on the driver's thigh as the driver laughs, "Finally got lucky for once, almost running over a doctor." And that would mean he...makes a habit of almost running people over on rural highways? What? Fuck it. I hate this show. Spotting the Dolt's confused expression, the driver asks, "You are a doctor, right?" "I don't know," the Dolt mumbles. DUN! That was this evening's DUN! moment, wasn't it? Even though we were expecting him to say something along those lines for a good five or six minutes now? Fuck it. It's a DUN! now.
"Whaddya mean you don't know?" Phoebe blares, right before the shot cuts back to the Manor, where she's just returned from an Alpine picnic with Drake, and I hate call-and-response scene transitions, and shut up, Phoebe. Raige explains that the Dolt left for a meeting with the Elders hours ago, and they haven't heard from him since. "How long does it take to hand down a sentence?" Phoebe shrews, stripping off her mittens. "Well, in defense of the Elders," Drake offers mildly enough, "when you live for an eternity, time does get a little skewed." Point to Drake. The charismatic dork. "Yeah, well, we're human, so this is torture," Piper snips while nervously arranging roses in a vase at the dining room table. "This is ridiculous," Phoebe insists before bellowing Elder-directed demands at the ceiling. Despite the fact that Piper and Raige's earlier Elder-directed demands went unanswered, Elizabeth Dennehy orbs into the center parlor at Phoebe's order nearly at once, and I want to believe it's because the Elders themselves find her so annoying that they'll violate their own rules just to get her to shut the fuck up, but you know that's not the case. Sigh. The instant Elizabeth's heels hit the carpet, she launches into an explanation of what happened to the Dolt. Piper, predictably, is outraged. Elizabeth, maintaining her composure during Piper's blistering tirade, urges Piper to "find comfort" in the fact that the Dolt was neither killed nor recycled. Piper starts wagging her index finger around in the air all, "Oh NO, she di'in't!" as she storms around the dining room table to get all up in Elizabeth Dennehy's grill for the smackdown. "I'm sorry," she seethes, "but you just lobotomized the love of my life, and you want me to take comfort in what? You've got a lot of nerve, lady. Now, I don't want to see you again, or any of your kind ever again. We're done with all of you -- now, please!" And here she pauses in her fury for emphasis as Elizabeth Dennehy wrinkles her brow slightly in concern. "GO," Piper demands. "Don't give up hope," Elizabeth soothes. "You really need to stop talking right now," Piper ices. "Now please get out of my house." Elizabeth Dennehy eyes Piper warily for a moment before complying. Nice work there from both actresses, particularly Holly Marie Combs, but I have to say this again: The stakes are nonexistent tonight, because we all know how this is going to end. There's no urgency. There's no drama. And I can't even get all riled up about it, because it's just...meh. Stupid show.