My condolences to Rose McGowan for the absolutely dismal reviews she's collecting for her performance as Ann-Margret in this weekend's Elvis movie. You know, comments like, "With her squashed-pudding face, lisping delivery, and appalling lack of sex appeal, McGowan is at best a debased Tina Louise." See, darling? It isn't just me. Previously on And The Worms Ate Into My Brain, everything that ever happened to Pepper Anderson, everything that ever happened to Zankou, everything that happened two weeks ago to the Dolt, and everything that happened last week to Raige. Seriously. Everything.
Currently on It Burns! Oh, God, How It Burns!, we fade up on the Manor faade for a brief swing through the front yard before heading inside to the kitchen, where we find the Dolt on his hands and knees, sopping up the dismembered remains of various once-frisky garden mammals from the floor beneath the Psycho's high chair with a small towel. Or maybe it's scrambled eggs. It's never easy to tell when the Psycho's involved. Raige storms in from the dining room behind her brother-in-law and spits the following at his bowed back: "[Dolt]! I need your help. The [ever-useless] Elders have assigned me a charge!" And I'll be taking bets on that charge's time of death...now. The Dolt, much as one would expect, greets this news with a maniacally chipper level of enthusiasm. Raige, much as one would expect, is not nearly as thrilled. "I'm a chick in her twenties who'd like to have a life!" she shrews. "I don't have time for this!" The sage Dolt, who putters ceaselessly about the room on his single-minded mission of post-breakfast sanitation during what follows, sees quickly through the lippy bastard's rampant bitchery and diagnoses a case of nerves and self-doubt. The proposed remedy? "Toast and venting." Which translates into Raige babbling and shrilling her way through an endless monologue with her mouth full, all the while spraying random bursts of bread crumbs at the camera. Shut up, Dolt. You too, Tina. Raige, having so processed through her Issues for the moment, heaves a sigh and orbs out through the ceiling. The Dolt violates a loaf of Roman Meal.
Elsewhere on the Paramount backlot (I believe we're quite close to "Columbia" "University," in fact), a rather fetching blue-collar type (literally blue collar, as he's clad in a light-blue uniform shirt beneath a darker blue windbreaker) buys a hot dog from a vendor with a cart (which, as everyone knows, are everywhere in San Francisco) as Raige orbs in discreetly behind a nearby newsstand (and I'm just going to pretend she orbed from the kitchen to her bedroom to fetch that pink jacket she's now wearing before orbing to her current location, because she sure as hell wasn't sporting that thing in the last scene). And I've just spent more time (parenthetically) establishing things than the subsequent bits of dialogue take to play out. Raige Valley Girls her way through a horribly overdubbed introduction that includes a patently insincere and canned pep-talk, which the fetching blue-collar type dismisses instantly, to his eternal credit. But not before Raige's unnaturally affected inflections and mannerisms put the poor man off his lunch, unfortunately. "Mitchell Haines" tosses his hot dog into the trash, lobs a few choice remarks of the "fuck off and die" variety in Raige's direction, and stalks off the screen. I think I'm in love. Raige, meanwhile, gapes in dismay.
P3. The infernal racket that generally accompanies a demonic attack actually spills into the vacant parking lot before the camera scurries us inside where, down near the bar, Piper makes quick work of some black-clad intruder with her mighty Hands Of Discontent. One of the just-vanquished's colleagues lopes around the corner of the bar to hurl a Flaming Ball Of Death at Piper's head, but she naturally manages a dodge that results in the FBOD fizzling harmlessly against a far wall. "New rule!" she lectures, wagging an aggravated index finger in the air. "I will not tolerate demon activity in my house or in my club!" She then rather stupidly nullifies whatever effect this lecture might have had by blowing its recipient to bits. As the hapless demon's body vanishes in a ball of fire that dissipates almost as quickly as it appears, Raige orbs into the room just as yet another demon, um, grows in beside her. Seriously. The guy initially appears as small, shapeless, black blob suspended in mid-air before slowly morphing out into his full demonic form. We never see this effect again this evening, so I have no idea why they bothered with it here. Stupid show. Raige, predictably enough, is more than a bit thrown to find herself standing to an agent of Hell, but quickly recovers to bean the guy with a barstool via her orbing telekinesis. The demon crashes to the floor, where he squiggles out just as Piper flicks her wrist at him. "You okay?" Raige fusses as she crosses to Piper's side. Piper confirms that she's fine while Raige goes on to wonder what the hell the demons wanted. Piper hasn't a clue, but that's not particularly important at the moment, for she's just noticed an unconscious and apparently grievously injured deliveryman sprawled on the floor in the club's back hall. Piper frowns as Muggy McGowan widens her eyes and stretches her lips out all the way into the opening credits.
Endless -- endless -- opening travelogue, with utterly unintelligible ovary. It was at this point that I realized how much of a filler episode tonight's presentation would be, as this travelogue drags on forever. In fact, after the first run finished airing, I went back and timed the previouslys, credits, and travelogue -- because this show has finally driven me insane like that -- and discovered they eat up a combined three minutes of an episode that only lasts a total of forty-one. I shouldn't complain, but really: Hacks. Incidentally, the footage they're using of the Bay Bridge is years old at this point, as the city's in the middle of constructing, right to the current one, a hideously expensive replacement that is nowhere visible in any of these shots. Anyway, back at P3, paramedics wheel the injured deliveryman towards the door as Raige and Piper chat with a uniformed cop mid-bar about what the deliveryman recalls of the attack, which isn't much, as the guy was hit from behind and remembers nothing after that. The cop warns the two ladies to stick around, as "the detective" will want to follow-up with a few more questions, and he steps aside to allow the gals an opportunity to grumble and complain about their miserable lot in life. Well, pretty much. "That's the last time I call 911," Piper grunts as she and Raige amble past the bar's empty stage. "Sadly," Raige reminds her, "now that [the Dolt] can't heal us, I think we're going to be calling that number a lot more." Not if this show gets cancelled after the three episodes, honey. HA! And would it kill the fucking Elders to grant you the power to heal? I mean, why are they giving you charges if you can't knit up the wou-- never mind. I got halfway through that question before realizing the answer would of course be, "Because the Elders are fucking idiots just like everyone else on this goddamned show, and I hate it, and someone really needs to CANCEL THIS. NOW." Gah.
“ Muggy McGowan rolls her eyes so far back in her skull, she looks like she's been temporarily possessed by Patrick Bauchau's character on Carnivle. Hey! Now that I think about it, between Raige's moustache and Lila's beard, those two ladies would make a pretty sweet couple. ”
Innyway, Piper takes this opportunity to growl, "I can't believe this -- they attack me at work now? What, is no place sacred?" Rrrrgh. I'll just note that dark demonic forces sent from the flaming maw of Hell have been attacking Piper and her sisters at her various places of employment since the first goddamned season and leave it at that, because I have neither the time nor the patience to scrounge up the links to each specific instance. I hate this show. Raige attempts to get Piper interested in her Mitchell-related Issue Of The Week, but Piper, God love her, already got a whiff of that crappy subplot and none-too-subtly suggests Raige leave her out of it just as Pepper Anderson, The Best Policewoman In The History Of Forever, ambles over with a friendly smile on her face. She's still under the influence of Dead Bulging Brody's special Whitelightery fairy dust, you see, and has no recollection of meeting Piper and Raige in the past. After making with the affable enough introductions, Pepper Anderson gets down to business, crossing her arms and asking for a description of the morning's attackers while prompting, "Tall? Short? White? Black?" "Didn't really get a good look at them," Raige lies. Badly. With much over-exaggerated rolling of the eyes and shrugging of the shoulders and puckering of the lips and nodding of the head. Pepper Anderson peers at the obvious epileptic with cautiously cocked brow, no doubt wondering if she should summon those paramedics for an intervention. Piper follows up with some poorly delivered tale of how they were in the back when they heard a commotion, but by the time she and Raige emerged into the bar proper, the attackers were gone. "What I don't understand," Pepper Anderson wonders, momentarily shaking off her suspicions regarding Piper and Raige's hardly believable version of events, "is why they would rob the place in the middle of the day, before you even opened?" She wonders this because Pepper Anderson, despite being The Best Policewoman In The History Of Forever, is just as fucking stupid as everyone else on this godforsaken show, and obviously does not realize that a club as wildly popular as P3 will have thousands of dollars' worth of last night's receipts sitting in the back office prior to that day's bank run. HATE.
ANY-way, Raige lies badly again -- because she must, because the script compels her to do so in order to set up yet another round of this tedious Pepper Anderson nonsense -- that she and Piper were wondering the same thing. Piper does not place a quieting hand on her stupid half-sister's arm and inform Pepper Anderson that it's probable the intruders were after last night's receipts, because Piper's got her head so far up her ass, she'll need a couple of windows in her tits to see where she's going for the rest of the episode. Pepper Anderson absorbs all of this rampant stupidity with an odd half-smile on her face, thanks the ladies for their time, and promises to keep in touch before heading across the room to consult with the forensics team. Raige bright-sides something dumb about Pepper Anderson not remembering them thanks to Dead Bulging Brody's special Whitelightery fairy dust, allowing Piper to lay the following bit of unnecessary exposition upon the long-suffering and rapidly dwindling audience's collective ass: "Yeah, but it's not a hundred percent guaranteed. If we give her the slightest cause, her memory could come flying back." "Which," Piper adds, tossing a final glance in Pepper Anderson's direction, "is another reason we need to find the demon who did this." Muggy McGowan rolls her eyes so far back in her skull, she looks like she's been temporarily possessed by Patrick Bauchau's character on Carnivle. Hey! Now that I think about it, between Raige's moustache and Lila's beard, those two ladies would make a pretty sweet couple.
No. Kidding. Ew.
“ Just remember, though, that when Imara initially came up with this masterful plan to switch bodies with a 'beautiful Charmed One,' she picked Piper first. Hee. Suck it, Phoebe. ”
Cut to The Lair Of The Demon Who Did This, and hoo boy, do I hate the set-up for tonight's A plot. You see, The Demon Who Did This is a supposedly unsightly hag named Imara who intends to weaken Zankou by first taking out his "most trusted lieutenants" on earth, a trio of upper-level sorts named Daleek, Benzoar, and Lintzen. As these demons can only be vanquished by unusually powerful forces of good, Supposedly Unsightly Imara plans to switch bodies with one of "the beautiful Charmed Ones," and needs a lock of hair to complete her wicked spell. Why do I hate this? Because everyone around Supposedly Unsightly Imara behaves as if she's so ugly, she's impossible to look at, which naturally means Imara has beauty issues, and it's obvious those issues will result in her downfall long before this evening's over, so why should I care about any of this at all if the conclusion is so obviously foregone? So, there's that. Even worse? Imara's not so much repulsive to look at as she is badly wigged. She's also suffering from the detrimental effects of indifferently applied prosthetic makeup effects, primarily an obviously fake nose spread across the center of her face, along with a pair of furry eyebrows taped to her forehead. If half her face were melted away, say, or if she looked like the second version of the original Source -- hell, if she looked like Joey Ramone, for Christ's sake -- I could maybe sort of buy all of this crap. As it is now? Never. God, I hate this show.
Anyway, long story short, Imara sent her most trusted underling, Lantos, to P3 to snatch a lock of Piper's hair, but as that attempt failed and Piper most certainly will be expecting another attack, Lantos must now target Imara's second choice, Phoebe. Poor Suzanne Krull. In addition to laboring beneath that wig and that nose for all of her scenes this evening, she's found herself saddled with snaggle-toothed dentures that are just killing her diction. That last line actually came out sounding like, "Shinsh she'w be ekshpectink anozzer attack, I need you to go aftaw a diffawent shishta now: Feevee." God, I hope they paid her well for this humiliation. In any event, Lantos protests that Raige would be easier to trap, as she's "less intuitive" and "more predictable." Unfortunately, as Imara notes, "She's also a Whitelighter now, which puts her in constant contact with the [ever-useless] Elders." Not a good thing, as Imara will have to fool everyone she comes into contact with for her plan to succeed. Besides, she notes with deepening envy, "Feevee's a shelebwity -- idolized." Desirous to secure similar treatment for herself, Imara sends Lantos on his new mission. Just remember, though, that when Imara initially came up with this masterful plan to switch bodies with a "beautiful Charmed One," she picked Piper first. Hee. Suck it, Phoebe. Even hideous crones in the Underworld think you're second-rate.
“ Phoebe doofs something inane about the shears as she too casually fans away the smoke left over from the henchdemon's vanquish, while flashing the hateful Cooter Tattoo at the unsuspecting and undeserving pair who now plunge into the commercial break to commit suicide. ”
Manor. Shut up, Phoebe. No, seriously. SHUT UP, PHOEBE. Christ. Hag ignores me. Hag always ignores me. Bitch. The ill-mannered Feebs blares her way into the kitchen from the dining room, completely ignores the fact that Piper's rather intently brewing up a massive amount of something dangerous on the center island's burners, further ignores Piper's attempts to fill her in on the latest demonic situation, and proceeds to spend the three hours bitching about the fact that the legal department at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me wants a professional, degreed psychologist to vet all of her columns before they're printed, in the interest of avoiding lawsuits. Which...doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but if the lawyers at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me really have nothing better to do with their time, so be it, because I'll be wasting as little brain energy on this asinine subplot as is possible for the remainder of the evening. Piper finally manages to get a word in edgewise and informs Phoebe of the attack earlier in the episode. Phoebe Oh! My! Gods! and offers the brutally dimwitted comment, "Demons never attack at P3!" -- like, yes, they do, you stupid, stupid, hateful, wretched excuse for a human being -- before Piper notes, "Even weirder? I don't think they wanted to kill me." "One of them could have easily nailed me with a [Flaming Ball Of Death]," she explains to the slack-jawed, barely dressed moron now leaning heavily against the counter, the better to display the vast expanse of boobage the latter's top is struggling to contain, "but then didn't." Nevertheless, Piper's determined to off whoever dared to violate the sanctity of her workspace. Piper passes Phoebe a vanquishing vial -- which they are all to carry at all times henceforth for their own protection -- before Phoebe begs off to deal with her stupid work issues. Piper sighs.
Not!warts, and not caring! The Dolt, demonstrably competent at his new job in ways dim Raige never dreamed of being, orders an underling about for a bit and agrees to substitute for a sick teacher, all the while focusing part of his attention on his lippy bastard of a sister-in-law's own Issue Of The Week, which I still don't care about. Shut up. All of you. Now. None of them pay me any heed. There follows an endless pep-talk from the Dolt, who urges Raige to trust her instincts as far as Mitchell is concerned, much as he himself did when he was confronted with the trio of shrill, shrieking harpies the ever-useless Elders tossed in his direction oh, so many years ago. And...scene? Yeah. Whatever.
All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me. Phoebe, in a pair of distressingly low-riding pants, spews something into her cell phone at the paper's lawyers, or whomever, before entering the just-arrived elevator car alone. Lantos and a henchdemon squiggle in silently behind her to menace her with a pair of scissors. The henchdemon slings an arm around Phoebe's waist and pushes her face-first towards the elevator wall, but she hoots and yodels and runs her feet up the paneling until she's hurled herself into a backflip that positions her once more in the center of the car. Without so much as a backwards glance, she boots Lantos in the head while landing a punch on the henchdemon's jaw that sends him staggering away from her a bit. Phoebe frantically paws through her pockets for the vial Piper had given her, and finds it just as Lantos recovers to stalk up behind her. Phoebe manages to land the vial in the henchdemon's chest, and henchdemon go boom right there in that tiny, enclosed space. Lantos, undeterred, leans forward and successfully snips off a swatch of Phoebe's hair. Phoebe immediately spins around to yank the shears from his mitt while backhanding the demon in the teeth. She spins once more to, um, build momentum, or something, and rams the scissors through the air in the direction of Lantos's heart. Lantos, however, has long since squiggled away, and the scissors simply embed themselves in another bit of the elevator's paneling. Needless to say, the elevator comes to a stop at this point just in time for two visibly perturbed colleagues of Phoebe's just to get an eyeful of Phoebe's asscrack as the Feebs crawls up onto the car's railing to yank the scissors out of the wall. Phoebe doofs something inane about the shears as she too casually fans away the smoke left over from the henchdemon's vanquish, while flashing the hateful Cooter Tattoo at the unsuspecting and undeserving pair who now plunge into the commercial break to commit suicide.
“ 'This is going to be fun,' she promises, crossing away from her minion to approach the camera, and Imara? I'll be the fucking judge of that. ”
Or something like that.
Imara's Underworld Boudoir Of Very Bad Wigs And Even Worse Body Issues. "What pretty hair she has!" Imara croons, stroking the Phlock Lantos retrieved for her. "This is going to be fun," she promises, crossing away from her minion to approach the camera, and Imara? I'll be the fucking judge of that. Lantos -- who's not a bad-looking guy, quite frankly, even though I don't normally go for the bald sorts -- blathers on and on about Phoebe's intuition and Piper and Raige's own powers and wah, but Imara impatiently shuts him up so she can get all crazy jealous while "wonder[ing] how men look at [Phoebe]." "With lushtful heawt, no doubt!" Imara spits through her dentures. The absolute only thing that saves that line is Suzanne Krull's delivery of it, which ends up giving us the impression that Imara's just as disgusted as we are that so many losers chase after that bony skank. After issuing a smackdown on Lantos's ass for his incessant impertinence, or whatever, Imara crosses to one of her maids and drops Phoebe's hair on the salver the woman holds, just as the screen flares and we find ourselves...
...back at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me, where Phoebe's examining the damage to her coif by angling her compact around her head while whinging at Piper via her office phone regarding the same. "And I just spent $250 on a cut and color!" Phoebe adds indignantly. Two hundred and fifty dollars on a fucking haircut? Death is too good for you, you stupid bitch. Piper's of the much the same mind as I am on the matter, only she's far less verbal with the whole Death To The Stupid Bitch bit. Instead, she chooses to pump her wicked, wasteful hag of a sister for further information on the attack, and is pleased to hear that Phoebe has the scissors in her possession, which should of course allow them to scry for the current position of the demon responsible. At this moment, Phoebe spots the lawyer-recommended psychologist arriving in the outer office, and abruptly hangs up after promising to return to the Manor with the shears as soon as she can. "Dr. Randall" then enters Phoebe's office to make with the introductions, and I will be paying no attention at all to any of this, especially because the Cooter Tat threatens to leap from the screen and suck out my brain through my eye sockets the longer I linger on this scene, so let's head back down to Hell, shall we?
Ah. See? It's always so much better down in Hell. Imara twiddles the Phlock of hair while chanting some Craptin. Eventually, she lets it drop into a massive, steaming cauldron, which emits an explosion strong enough to knock Imara onto her back on the floor. A black cloud representing Imara's infernal essence, or whatever, pillars instantly from her inert body to plunge upwards through the chamber's ceiling.