Previously on Charmed, Raige and Ivan Sergei met cute over a convicted felon, Phoebe had uterine issues no one cared about, The Retarded Bimbo had missing sister issues no one cared about, and the Manor Morons struck a deal with the Homeland Security department's delightful Agent Murphy.
Currently on Charmed, the camera fades up on a debris-littered floor in Not!warts, the sounds of a violent struggle reaching our ears from the library beyond. The camera pans up from the trash in time to catch Raige as she orbs in with Piper, and both ladies scrunch up their faces in confusion as they, too, get an earful of the off-screen grunting and tussling. "Sounds like we found him!" Raige perks as the two warily spin around to tiptoe down the hall. "Yeah, but what's it doing [here]?" Piper wonders. "And it's beating up other demons?" she continues, puzzled. "That's not what Krycheks do." Raige whispers that the fiends in question don't normally attack gnomes and leprechauns, either, but this one did, so Piper's point would be...what, exactly? "Something's not right," Piper replies. "It doesn't make sense." "What doesn't make sense," Raige counters, "is that we are tracking this thing, and what does the government want with this demon, anyway?" "That would be the first thing I'm gonna ask Agent Murphy," Piper begins, but she's interrupted by a dark demonic sort flying backwards through the air into the hallway from the far room. Screaming, the thing smashes into a pillar and explodes into a ball of flame, and let's just pretend a protruding wall sconce plowed through his chest for that vanquish, okay? Unless, of course, we're now meant to believe that demons can be vanquished if you slap them around hard enough. Stupid show.
Raige and Piper goggle at the quickly dissipating cloud of smoke where the demon had been for a moment before they dart their eyes over to the library itself, where a vampire-faced entity has just zipped into view from points unknown to snarl and sneer at our intrepid heroines. The gentleman beneath the seventeen hundred pounds of makeup and padding, by the way, is the rather strapping behind-the-scenes effects technician first shoved in front of the cameras to portray the comic book alter-ego of that nerd from "Witches In Tights," and most recently seen on this show playing the massive and terrifying Floaty Green Head Of James Van Der Beek during the Dolt's descent into madness at the beginning of last season. I can't believe I thought this guy was hot three years ago. In any event, the ladies panic for the briefest of moments before Raige digs into her jacket pocket to produce a potion vial that she hurls into the vamp's chest. The resulting explosion twists him around a bit but leaves him pretty much uninjured, and so he continues lumbering towards the women, forcing Piper to unleash her Mighty Hands of Discontent in his direction. The first and second blasts of mojo have as little effect on the beast as Raige's potion had earlier, so Piper apparently amps things up for the third. A bright, white flash erupts to envelop his torso, and a brief burst of flame spins towards the camera before the demon drops out of the frame, physically intact but unconscious. Piper and Raige cringe away from the falling body for a second before leaning in to examine the demon's face. By the way, demons apparently keep their eyes open when they've been knocked out. Except, of course, when they don't. Just so you know.
"That thing's a Krychek?" Raige guhs, and when the camera cuts over to the guy for a brief close-up on his face, we can see that he's got some sort of barbed-wire tribal tattoo snaking down one side of his neck. "How is that possible?" Piper frowns. "Who cares?" Raige snorts. "Just vanquish it!" Piper duhs that she just tried that, dumbass, and besides, the delightful Agent Murphy wants the beast brought back alive. Raige howls that under no circumstance would she ever even consider orbing anywhere with the unconscious brute, just as a quartet of ethnically diverse and black-clad demonic sorts rounds the corner to enter the hall. Turns out they're also rather diverse sexual-orientation-wise as well, for they're led by Dr. Quinn's professional homosexual Chad Allen. Chad's wearing a wide-collared disco shirt with a cunning little choker beneath his leather vest, by the way. Queen. In any event, Chad, who'd been wincing as he fingered a series of fresh claw marks on his cheek, instantly scowls upon catching sight of the Glamorous Ladies and launches us all into one of the most fun effects sequences they've had on this show for a very long time. And it's so simple, too. Chad conjures a Flaming Ball Of Death in his right palm as the shot cuts quickly to Piper spinning her back towards him while latching onto Raige's arm and screaming, "Go-go-go-GO!" The shot cuts again to take in the gals, now in the blurry extreme foreground of the frame and already blue with the orbing, as Chad wings the FBOD in their direction from the library's doorway at the very far end of the hall. As the gals dissolve and vanish upwards, the FBOD hurtles straight through the orb cloud and into our faces with a roar before the opening credits burst through the ensuing full-screen flare. See? It doesn't take much to entertain me. So why are fun little moments like that one so rare on this awful, evil show? Huh?
And as the credits sequence and extra-special extended-dance-mix Opening Travelogue with Ovary take up a full two minutes in an episode that clocks in at a little more than forty, I'm inclined to bless tonight's presentation with the season's highest letter grade yet. Yeah. Let's see how The Retarded Bimbo ends up fucking that generous gesture all to hell, shall we? After the lengthy tour of the Bay Area's notable landmarks accompanied by a squealing and unintelligible ovary ends, we land on the Manor façade over on Prescott Street before cutting inside to the dining room, where Piper has the Book of Shadows open on the table to the Book's entry for Krychek Demons -- which, I should probably note, for strictly trivial purposes only, faces the page devoted to TEETH!'s rather deadly Water Demon. "See?" Piper begins. "This is what a Krychek Demon is supposed to look like," and the Book's watercolor illustration does indeed seem to portray a rather harmless creature of the demonic go-go-boy sort. Just wait 'til you try to separate him from his meth, gals. Then you'll see the true ogre emerge. "Well," Phoebe offers, having apparently been filled in on the situation during the endless Opening Travelogue, "maybe the one you were following was just a bigger one." "This wasn't just 'bigger,'" Piper retorts. "This was like going from you to Schwarzenegger." Just then, the Dolt bumbles in from the kitchen laden with two pairs of skis and some boots. He promptly drops those boots onto his toes and blurts, "Ow! Dammit!" "Watch your language," Piper warns. "[The Psycho's] been picking up everything we say lately." And I'd toss in a gratuitous dead-eyed and bemulleted Psycho joke here, but this entire exchange exists simply to set up a spectacular round of Dolt abuse later in the episode, and spectacular rounds of Dolt abuse really are their own reward, aren't they?
In any event, the Dolt shoots the wife an exasperated look as Phoebe excuses herself to fetch some more coffee. The playfully bickering marrieds then fill the audience in on their planned weekend getaway to some Tahoe-esque resort or other before Piper reminds her halfwit of a husband that she must dash over for a brief meeting with the delightful Agent Murphy regarding the demon they left behind at Not!warts. "Why can't [The Retard] talk to Murphy?" protests the Dolt. "Because she's an incompetent moron, you fucking idiot," Piper replies. Or maybe Raige handles the response for her elder half-sister by popping into the dining room from the stairs with, "Because I cannot find [The Retard] anywhere!" Seems The Retard's not answering her cell phone. Piper, bless her, couldn't give a rat's ass. Phoebe ambles back into the dining room at this point to let Raige know that Ivan Sergei phoned last night looking for her. Raige gets this little piggy look of exaggerated disgust on her face and snorts, "Why? What did he want?" "I'm not sure," Phoebe breezes, "but I'm pretty sure he wants you." There then follows an amusing little bit wherein Piper, Phoebe, and the Dolt tease the lippy bastard about the new potential slampiece in her life before Piper and Phoebe move towards the front door to head over to the delightful Agent Murphy's office. "Hey!" Raige calls out in Phoebe's direction. "Don't you have a lunch date?" "I cancelled," Phoebe shrugs by way of response. "I'm taking a little hiatus." "From lunch?" Mugs the dimwit squints. "From men," the Feebs corrects as she vanishes out the door. Thunderstruck by this news, the remaining Manor Morons gape at each other all, "The bony slut's sworn off dick again? I smell a crappy romance-related subplot coming up this evening!" Or maybe I'm projecting a little bit.
Once Phoebe and Piper have departed, Raige tries once more to raise The Retard via her cell, and why Raige doesn't just deploy her Whitelightery supernatural lo-jack to locate the lispy bimbo, I'll never know. Regardless, Raige gets no answer, but we do get flash-screened over to Not!warts, where The Retarded Bimbo pokes her head around a corner just in time to watch the still-unconscious vampire-faced demon twitch himself into a seizure before morphing back into his Krychek form. The Retard then eavesdrops on the demonic infighting that follows as Chad Allen -- here playing an entity called "Emrick" ["which I am choosing to view as a rude reference the Julie of the same name" -- Sars] -- conjures another Flaming Ball Of Death with which he intends to torch the twitchy and tribal-tattooed go-go boy in retaliation for the latter's earlier attack. Emrick's dissuaded from this by a duster-clad "soothsayer" who looks like a middle-aged version of Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. Seems someone called "Margoyle" has his own designs on the twitchy go-go boy and will be certain to toast Emrick's scrawny ass should anything happen to the afflicted demon. The afflicted demon in question settles the matter for everyone involved by choking a bit and spontaneously combusting right there on the floor, leaving behind a rather suspicious pile of smoking ash. "I didn't do that!" Emrick instantly protests. Not funny. Shut up, Chad Allen. The Retarded Bimbo takes advantage of the distraction provided by the demons' general consternation to sneak into Snidely's old office, where she begins ransacking the bookshelf in search of something or another. Unfortunately for her, Emrick caught sight of her oddly proportioned body just as it disappeared around the corner and now stands in the doorway in what I'm sure Chad Allen thought at the time of filming was a threatening manner, but it's Chad Allen we're talking about here. Girl, please. Get over yourself, honey. You're about as threatening as a marabou boa.
"Who are you?" Emrick demands. The Retard starts to bluff her way through a lamebrained excuse for her presence before she finally just flips Emrick onto his back on the floor and presses an athame against his throat, and Professional Homosexual Chad Allen just got his ass kicked by a girl. A retarded girl. Hee. The unbearably lispy Bimbo then hisses her way through a little tirade involving that missing sister of hers that nobody cares about and The Retard's ongoing search for same that I'll ignore because I hate her and want her dead. I will note, however, that The Retard's official last name is, apparently, "Jenkins." Also, The Retard biffs Professional Homosexual Chad Allen once more in the face before she finally exits the office. Again: Hee. Emrick glowers at The Retard's oddly proportioned and retreating form as a doorbell rings and the screen flares white to dump us back at...
...the Manor, where Raige clomps through the foyer to answer the front door. Ivan Sergei, toting a rather large and disturbingly pointy-eared infant, pushes past her from the porch with a quickly muttered "Hihowareyou?" before getting to the point of his unexpected visit: The sprog's neglectful mother just got sent to prison again, and Ivan's got until the end of the day to find the kid's father, or else Social Services will sling rug rat "Ramón" "into the system." Raige is all, "And you're telling me this...why?" Long story short, Ivan doesn't want that to happen and can't keep the kid at his office, so he was hoping Raige would provide temporary sanctuary for the thing. Raige is annoyed, so Ivan tries flirting with her. It doesn't quite work, but he looks cute doing it and she eventually relents anyway, so it's all good. Ivan pushes Ramón into Raige's arms and bolts, calling out, "I owe you!" Raige curls her lip into a sneer.
The camera cuts to a glass tower that is not "Columbia" "University" on the Paramount backlot, which was the last known location of the Department of Homeland Security's San Francisco bureau, because this show is ass, and I want to die, before scuttling indoors to find the delightful Agent Murphy rather laboriously scrawling something on a legal pad at his desk. Seriously, his mouth's dangling open and he's clutching at the pen like he just learned how to use it, and I'm wondering if that was a deliberate choice for everyone involved, or if it's just a happy accident that they've thus managed to portray the department's San Francisco bureau chief as being as dull-witted and mouthbreathing as the agency is as a whole. In any event, Phoebe and Piper burst into his office unannounced to make with the glaring and such while the delightful Agent Murphy obliviously burbles, "Good! You're back! How'd it go?" "Not good," Piper seethes, angrily folding her arms in front of her while Phoebe plants a pair of outraged fists on her bony hips. "Whaddya mean?" Murphy asks. "Where's our demon?" "'Our demon'?" Piper shrills. "Why don't you tell us a little more about 'our demon'?" she demands. "Like how the government got him in the first place," Phoebe adds. Agent Murphy stonewalls the gals for a lengthy period of time until Piper, aggravated, commands Phoebe to pull a premonition off the guy to see if he's lying, and hello, Self-Centered Hag's Asinine Romance-Related Subplot For The Evening! Because of the disastrous one-day marriage that eventually followed her Vex-related premonition from the season premiere and because the dizzy bitch still isn't knocked up despite receiving that initial vision of her future daughter two years ago, Phoebe doesn't believe in her power anymore. The asshole Elders never should have given it back to you in the first place, you selfish, self-serving pig.
The two witches bitch at each other while the befuddled Agent Murphy rather amusingly gapes at them in "Why did I make a deal with these IDIOTS?" dismay before he rises from his chair to cut through the crap with, "Did you or didn't you get the demon back?" Piper and Phoebe snap their yowling heads around in his direction to frost him with icy stares. "That was the objective," he almost apologetically offers, retreating a bit, but he's just managed to plunge himself into another endless round of shrill bitchery on the gals' part. "Are you kidding me?" Piper shrieks. "We barely wounded it!" "You still gotta go get him," Murphy blusters back at her. "Dude, are you deaf?" howls the Feebs. This shuts the agent up, for some stupid reason, offering Piper an opening to demand once more, "What did you guys do to that thing?" "I have no idea, I swear," he lies before warning the two that, should they not get the demon "off the streets," they all risk exposure. Piper shoots Phoebe a foul side-eye and groans, "There's the E word again." The ladies huffily sigh at one another as the camera darts back to...
...the Manor, where The Retard bangs through the swinging kitchen door into the dining room to find Raige futzing with El Niño on the sun porch, and The Retard's wearing culottes again, and I can't handle that shit, and Mugs McGowan and her bizarrely phrased and emphasized line readings are back in full-force during this scene because Kaley Cuoco's an even worse actress than McGowan is and has yet this season not to drag McGowan down into the toilet with her, so I'll be skipping ahead to the point where Emrick squiggles in from Not!warts to toast these two tedious nightmares with a couple of Flaming Balls Of Death. I guess I should mention that Emrick's all vamped out now, too, because whatever was afflicting the immolated go-go boy apparently transferred to Emrick when the go-go boy slashed those gouges into Emrick's cheek. Raige, thinking fast, deploys her orbing telekinesis to send El Niño upstairs to the nursery, where he does not slam into poor, neglected, and doomed Tiny Gay Chris when he coagulates out of the orb cloud in the tiny gay one's bassinette because this assy show has once again forgotten that Piper has a younger, non-psychotic, and eventually far-prettier son. Sigh. Back down on the sun porch, The Retard slides her athame from her boot and whips the thing into Emrick's vamped-out shoulder, to no effect. Emrick yanks the knife out to hurl it at The Retard's maggoty neck, but the athame plows harmlessly into a door when The Retard snipers to the floor. Vampy Emrick flies into a rage, tossing the dining room furniture around for a bit before snatching The Retard up by her face and flinging her into the floorboards. Raige, panicking, deploys her orbing telekinesis once more to send the demon back to Not!warts, and Emrick obliges by vanishing in a hastily dissipating blue cloud. The camera goes all shaky and hand-held while The Retard lisps something unbearable before the two dumbbells get swallowed up by the commercial break.
Manor. Piper and Phoebe barge through the front door to babble endlessly about Phoebe's stupid past premonitions and Phoebe's stupid future daughter and Phoebe's stupid current life until the two notice The Retarded Bimbo carefully sweeping up the debris left over from Emrick's attack on the sun porch. "What the hell?" Phoebe peeves, eliciting a testy "Language!" from Piper before the two cross onto the sun porch to confront The Retard. "What happened?" Phoebe demands through a tightly clenched array of teeth. The Retard fills them in on the sitch, which leads to another round of shrill yowling until Phoebe notices the gash Emrick scratched in The Retard's maggoty neck. DUN! Or not, 'cause if The Retard ends up spontaneously combusting as a result of her injury, the only thing I'd be moved to do is cheer. Repeatedly. For, like, the five goddamned years. The Retard blows off Phoebe's concern, and in the blathering that follows, we learn that Raige evidently deduced The Retard's vampy demon suffers from the same "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing" as the go-go boy from the precredits sequence, which somehow amped Emrick's powers up to the point that he was able to "track" The Retard back to the house. "Why are all these demons running around on steroids?" Piper wonders. "It doesn't make any sense." Sense? You're looking for sense? On this show? Now? After seven and a half years during which absolutely nothing has made any sense whatsoever? Shut up, Piper. She ignores me in favor of sending The Retard atticwards for a round of Book abuse as El Mouthy Niño's squalling reaches their ears from the kitchen. Piper and Phoebe enter to find Raige mashing up a bowl of homemade applesauce, like, Albertson's, you dim bitch, and quickly get the bullet on Raige's simpleminded subplot for the evening. After we're treated to a few cute little glamour shots of El Niño happily gumming away at the applesauce Raige so stupidly labored to provide, the Manor Morons conduct a brief processing summit during which they rehash information of which the audience is already aware. Raige eventually foists El Niño-minding duties onto the Feebs and flees to beg Ivan to take the kid back, as the Manor's no place for a child at the moment, what with the wacky demonic hijinks and such. Phoebe protests because of her tedious Non-Issue Of The Week, but Raige and Piper refuse to take no for an answer and dart out towards the main hall, leaving Phoebe alone to sigh something unimportant as the screen flares white to whisk us back to...
...Not!warts, where Emrick's morphed back into his regular form and now lies on a table in the library, groaning and writhing in pain, or something. Booger fiddles with some potions as Emrick pants, "What's happening to me?" "You're dying like all the others," comes the callous response, not from Booger of course, but from the previously mentioned Margoyle, who flounces into the library from the hallway beyond, complete with the bald head and the asinine facial hair and the annoying British accent. "It's happening all over the Underworld," Margirly exposits as he minces on up to the table. "What have you learned?" he demands of Booger, who's forced to admit that he hasn't learned much at all, really. This displeases Margirly, who snatches Booger up by the neck to make with the threats and such. Booger's all, "Back off, Swish, and let me explain," so Margirly lets him go long enough for Booger to ramble on about "isolat[ing] the one cell fragment in [Emrick's] blood" that's causing the vampiric transformation. Unfortunately for Booger, Emrick decides that what this moment most needs is a little spontaneous combustion, and so Chad Allen bursts into actual, honest-to-God flame for a little while until he's reduced to a suspicious pile of grey ash upon the tabletop. Smell ya later, doll, and best of luck with that gay detective series of yours on the new all-gay cable network that absolutely no one subscribes to. Snicker. Margirly, panties now thoroughly in a wad, zaps a Flaming Ball Of Death into Booger's chest, and soothsayer go boom. Another duster-clad gent, who'd been standing unobtrusively off to the side during all of this, now ambles over to Emrick's ashy remains, eliciting a snippy "What do you want, Tracker?" from Margirly. The tracker reveals he watched as Piper, Raige, and The Retard attacked the afflicted demons, so Margirly, realizing the Charmed Ones are involved in all of this nonsense, sends the tracker off to learn whatever he can. Margirly leans heavily on the table supporting Emrick's ashy remains as the screen again flares white, and...
...AAUAUAAUUUUAUAUAGH! God-DAMN. When the screen clears, we find ourselves in an extreme close-up of The Retard's maggoty neck, and that shit is just disgusting. I suppose we're meant to be examining the gouge in said maggoty neck, much as said maggoty neck's owner is doing at the moment, but please. We're too busy clawing at our eyes. And by the time I've finished screaming in horror, the camera's pulled back to reveal The Retard at the Book's stand up in the nonexistent attic. The Dolt lopes in from the upper stairs to retrieve yet another suitcase for his stereotypically overpacking wife and to natter with The Retard about what she's discovered, which is nothing, as the Book contains zilch on "how to supercharge a demon." They blather about the Book's history and how The Retard should start one of her own until The Retard shakily draws a hand across her forehead. The Dolt wonders if she's feeling all right, and she lies that she's fine before asking, "Are witches and demons different species?" The Dolt's all, "Buh?" so The Retard elaborates: "You know, like dogs and cats and how they can't get each other sick and stuff?" "I guess so," the Dolt replies, for the stupid Dolt apparently doesn't realize that if witches and demons can successfully knock each other up and bear each others' children, they're certainly capable of infecting each other with all sorts of nasty viruses and germs, but I don't care, because this show is ass, and I want to die. The Dolt bumbles on out of there as a quartet of tense strings hits the soundtrack and The Retard fingers her maggoty neck. Gross.
Over at Trudeau Memorial, formerly Andy's House Of Beef, formerly The Loneliest Precinct House In The World, Ivan Sergei works the phones in search of El Niño's father. Raige enters, and there's bantering and there's flirting and there's sparks flying and there's me being shocked once again at how unannoying I find Ivan Sergei and how unannoying I find Rose McGowan when she's playing a scene off of him, and then they finally get to the point: Ivan Sergei's so invested in wee El Niño because Ivan Sergei himself was bounced from foster home to foster home when he was a kid, and he promised Mamí Ramón that the same thing would never happen to her child. And that's about it, really. One of Ivan's coworkers wanders in to leer at Raige while Raige surreptitiously pockets one of Papí Ramón's photographs from Ivan's desk, but not much else happens. Well, aside, of course, from more flirtatiousness between the Ivan and Raige that all but guarantees they're going to end up in bed together in the episode, I suppose. And...scene.
Back at the Manor, Piper and the Dolt bicker playfully with each other over the nine thousand pieces of luggage Piper's insisting they pack for a two-day ski trip until a flustered Phoebe storms into the Bridal Boudoir with a fussing El Niño. There's some tiresome back-and-forth regarding Phoebe's Non-Issue Of The Week that nobody cares about, until Phoebe contrives to pass responsibility for wee El Niño over to Piper and flees the room. Wee El Niño, of course, immediately calms down once he's in Piper's arms and far away from the selfish, skeletal hag he'd been spending the last five tormented minutes with. Piper and the Dolt discuss Phoebe's Non-Issue, but what's really important is that Holly Marie Combs is obviously beguiled by the adorably wriggly infant they wrangled to play El Niño, at one point almost dropping out of character to ad-lib an amused "hi" at the kid when he shoves his entire hand into his mouth and twists his head around to look her in the eye. He's totally upstaging both of them in this scene -- which, I suppose, isn't all that difficult, given how boring their current conversation is. Phoebe sucks. Even when she's not physically present.
Anyway, Piper suggests they hold off on their ski trip to deal with Phoebe's obnoxiously selfish Non-Issue when the hooting and yodeling of the selfish hag in question reach the second floor from below, followed by a large crash. Piper passes El Niño to the Dolt and races towards the stairs, arriving on the lower landing just in time to see Phoebe destroy the long-abused marble-topped foyer table with her painfully bony derriere. Piper skips over to help Phoebe to her feet, in the process spotting a figure moving through the sun porch beyond. Piper prepares to deploy her Mighty Hands of Discontent, but Phoebe snatches at her sister's wrists, crying, "Don't! It's [The Retard]!" The camera skitters over to the sun porch to take in The Retard's vamped-out form, and they've apparently hired a cadre of actual lady wrestlers to portray the various transformations of Retard and Manor Morons this evening. Not that I particularly care, mind you, but whatever. Just thought you should know. The Vampy Retard has to growl and snarl and flip a coffee table into the wall before Phoebe allows Piper to deploy the Hands. The resulting blast does not, in fact, destroy The Vampy Retard, but it does send her hurtling through the air to smack her head hard against the molding. The Vampy Retard slides, unconscious, towards the floor and into the commercial break.
Manor. Aftermath. The still-dead-to-the-world-but-not-dead-enough-for-my-taste-thank-you-very-much Vampy Retard sprawls on the floor between the center parlor and the sun porch while Phoebe, Piper, and the just-arriving Raige try and fail to puzzle out what's really going on. Eventually, Piper heads into the kitchen to summon an ever-useless Elder while Raige heads up to the nonexistent attic to scry for Papí Ramón. Phoebe's to remain in the center parlor with The Vampy Retard, because Piper's sick of her birdbrained sister's obnoxious hagging and hopes The Vampy Retard will once more rise up to kill the selfish bitch. Or something like that.
Out in the kitchen, the ever-useless Elder who threatened the life of Daddy Dearest in the premiere and later advised Raige to fling open the Manor's doors to the snooping reporters who swarmed the deglamoured Glamorous Idiots after Agent Murphy's press conference orbs into the room to fill Piper in on the entire annoying situation from a Whitelighterland perspective. Long story short, the precredits go-go boy was Patient Zero for a virus that's now ripping through the entire "magical community," both aboveground and in the Underworld. "We have learned," Ever-Useless Elder Whatsisname reveals, "that the more powerful you are, the quicker the virus consumes you." Piper looks perturbed, and then we get an entirely unnecessary shot of the Manor's façade before the camera cuts over to...
...Trudeau Memorial, formerly Andy's House Of Beef, formerly The Loneliest Precinct House In The World, where Ivan Sergei's flipping through some files as Raige enters his office with El Niño in her arms. Ivan freaks until Raige produces a slip of paper with every imaginable bit of contact information for Papí Ramón, right down to the name of the local he hangs out at after work, and how she gleaned all of this from one scrying session up in the nonexistent attic, I'll never know. Nor will I ever care, because I am so beyond all of that after seven and a half years of this garbage. I will note that the subsequent scene between the two is very pleasant, indeed. However, as nothing they say to each other is of any overall importance to the episode at hand, I'll once again be skipping through it all in favor of returning to...
...the Manor, where The Vampy Retard shudders her unconscious self into a seizure on the center parlor floor. Phoebe calls frantically for Piper, who arrives in time to see The Vampy Retard morph back down into regular Bimbo form. "Oh, no," Piper groans before giving Phoebe the short version of what she learned from the ever-useless Elder in the kitchen. "If we don't find an antidote soon, she'll die," Piper finishes, and I must say, Piper doesn't seem to be too concerned about the whole Impending Death Of The Retard thing. God love her. However, Phoebe, for some ridiculous reason, phreaks, and kneels by the unconscious Bimbo's body to mewl and whatnot until Piper calls for Raige, who orbs into the center parlor from points unknown. "We've got to get to Agent Murphy's," Piper announces, reaching out for Raige's hand. Raige instantly orbs with Piper up through the ceiling, leaving Phoebe alone with The Retard. I don't know about any of you, but I'm of the opinion that now would be a perfect moment for the Underworld to launch a massive concerted demonic attack on the Manor, no?
Heimatshutz-Ministerium. Raige orbs in unannounced with Piper, startling the delightful federal agent, who splutters, "Y-you can't just --" Piper blows up his phone. Heh. Raige flips a little orbing telekinesis in the door's direction to flip the lock shut before Piper cuts to the chase: "You're not telling us everything, Agent Murphy, and we're running out of time." "You need to tell us everything you know about that demon now!" Raige adds. Murphy lies and lies and lies some more, so Piper blows up his lamp. After yelling at him a bit more, Piper arches a brow and cues Raige, who orbs his chair out from beneath him, dumping him onto the floor. "You're gonna tell us how this whole thing started," Piper continues as Murph pulls himself to his feet, "or the thing I'm gonna blow up is you." Don't fuck with the Mighty Hands of Discontent, Murph. The last guy who tried that lost his balls. Dolt. The delightful Agent Murphy huffs and puffs and straightens his tie right into the commercial break...
...and we're back, picking up shortly where we'd left off. Murphy roots around in a low cabinet and supplies a file, along with the lie that he'd performed a little investigating after the gals left his office a few scenes ago and discovered what Das Heimatshutz-Ministerium had actually done to Patient Zero after the department had recovered his injured ass from "the desert." Long story short, the government injected the demon with human blood in an attempt to combine the two, and thus extract the demon's powers in order to concoct a serum with which they'd then dose unsuspecting GIs in order to create a legion of supersoldiers. Just go with it. It is always so much easier when you just go with it. The experiment, of course, failed, as the "test subject failed to react." However, the entire process apparently led to this mutant virus, which Patient Zero proceeded to spread throughout the magical community once he escaped from the government's containment facility. By, you know, just squiggling the fuck on out of there, because our government is run by imbeciles. I want to die, and for an entirely different reason than the assosticity of this show, for once. "You said the test subject didn't show any side-effects?" Piper asks, leading Raige to wonder where Piper's going with that line of inquiry. Piper, who apparently acquired an advanced degree in molecular biology at some point in the last week, is of the opinion that the antidote resides in the veins of that immune test subject, and rises to demand the guy's current location. The delightful Agent Murphy hasn't the first clue how to find the gentleman in question, as the military destroyed all but the slim little file Agent Murphy had presented to the gals. Well, the slim little file he'd presented to the gals and the test subject's ID bracelet, of course. Piper and Raige sigh in frustration, because they've apparently forgotten that if Raige can zero in on Papí Ramón using nothing more than a photograph she swiped from his ex-parole officer, they certainly can scry for the federal government's human lab rat with the fucking ID bracelet, because everyone on this show is a complete fucking idiot. Trash. Charmed is trash.
Manor, and boring! Phoebe delivers a tedious pep-talk to the dying Retard, and scene!
Back in the kitchen, Phoebe erupts in some inexplicable bout of frustration, or something, and takes it all out on the blameless Manor refrigerator. Whatever. I have to admit, though, that Alyssa Milano looks better tonight than she has in years. Her hair's finally grown back in, the makeup's relatively subtle, and she's been wearing a simple pair of well-tailored jeans beneath a soft and concealing kimono-style blouse. Pity I couldn't care less about her selfish character's obnoxious Non-Issue Of The Week if I tried. Raige chooses this moment to orb in with Piper, and the three bang their heads together for a little bit until Phoebe stumbles across a cunning plan, because she's the smart one. And that plan? Is to infect themselves on purpose with the virus currently ravaging The Retard, in order to amp up their powers to the point that they can track the government's lab rat down to his current location with the found ID bracelet. Brilliant, Feebs. Just fucking brilliant. Raige and Piper have obvious reservations, but do trail after their dimwitted hag-ass of a sister as the latter storms from the room back to the center parlor. After the Manor Morons have vanished from the scene, the ironing board that had been leaning against the table in the mud room beyond the kitchen suddenly morphs up into that tracker demon I'd entirely forgotten about. He takes a moment to smirk before squiggling the hell out of there.
Out in the center parlor, the Manor Morons slice open their palms. Phoebe infects herself first by...pressing her hand against the gash in The Retard's maggoty neck? It's totally not clear. What is clear, however, is the anvilicious moment when the three Charmed Ones rather resolutely press their hands together to spread the infection amongst themselves. While all this is going on, The Retard starts shuddering herself into her death rattle, but Piper unfortunately flicks out a freeze before The Retarded Bimbo blows up on the couch. Dammit. "How long's that gonna last?" Raige wonders. "Hopefully, long enough," Piper replies, without, of course, explaining how the freeze is supposed to prevent The Retard from blowing up once they've returned from their ludicrous adventure to find the possible source of the appropriate antidote, but before the appropriate antidote has had time to take effect, because this is a lousy show that should have been cancelled last May. Idiots.
Up in the nonexistent attic, the Dolt abuses the Book as the sisters arrive from below. "I haven't found an antidote yet," he frets as he crosses to greet them. "That's okay," Piper shrugs with a hint of a sigh. "I think we have." And with that, she exaggeratedly cracks her neck before she, Phoebe, and Raige vamp out into a trio of professional lady wrestlers in the shredded remains of the Glamorous Morons' clothing. "Holy crap!" the Dolt bleats. Vampiper shrieks, "Language!" and pretty much backhands the Dolt into the commercial break. Pause. Rewind. Play. Pause. Rewind. Play. Pause. Rewind. Slow-forward. Dolt abuse! Hooray! Woot-woot-woot-woot! Hey, I gotta enjoy it while I still can, am I right? …Ooops. Was that a spoiler?
Nonexistent Attic. Aftermath, and good God. I just rewatched the scene that follows as well as the one after it, and the premise is so wretchedly stupid, and the professional lady wrestlers are such awful actresses, and the overdubbing of the dialogue with the regular cast's voices is so miserable, that I'll be skimming through it all lest I lose what little is left of my tiny, shattered mind. The Vamped-Out Unglamorous Ladies Of Halliwell Manor tussle with each other for a brief moment before availing themselves of the ID bracelet to scry for the government's erstwhile lab rat. The crystal slams down upon a set of unspecified coordinates in tandem with a wet mop slapping to the floor at said coordinates, and the camera pans up to take in the former lab rat now going about his nightly janitorial business as the Unglam Glams orb in behind him. A posse of fiends arrives at the same time, led by some random vamped-out dark demonic force, and hand-to-hand combat ensues, with the Unglam Glams eventually prevailing. Vampiper, by the way, vanquishes her equally vampy foil by ripping the guy's heart out with her fingernails, which was sort of cool, but entirely unbelievable, so whatever. Margirly -- remember him? Yeah, neither did I -- squiggles in during all of the excitement to slash a gash in the janitor's arm, in the process obtaining a sample of the guy's blood that Margirly collects on his clawed fingertip and proudly displays for the Unglam Glams' benefit before squiggling away. The painful sequence ends with the Unglam Glams, in a particularly hideous bit of overdubbing, demanding that the now-terrified janitorial lab rat save their lives.
The camera cross-fades over to the Manor's nighttime façade before we hear his response, but we're meant to believe he acquiesced, because the shot is of the now-cured Retarded Bimbo waking, rather than blowing, up on the couch. DAMMIT. Phoebe, who'd changed out of the tattered shreds that remained of her earlier togs after her vampy version's enhanced musculature pretty much ripped right through them, enters from beyond with a mug of something comforting as The Retard bolts upright and whimpers, "What happened?" "Cliff's Notes version?" Phoebe smirks. "We hulked out, kicked ass, and saved the world." They also passed "the antidote" -- which they apparently developed in the space of five minutes with Piper's advanced degree in molecular biology down in the fully equipped pharmaceutical laboratory they set up in the basement after Piper received said degree in the last week, and I hate this show, and I want to die -- to the ever-useless Elders, who are now distributing it amongst the topside magical community. Oh, and Phoebe refers to The Retard as "one of the family now," which makes me throw up a little in my mouth. Actually, it makes me throw up a lot, so it's quite fortunate that Raige orbs in with Piper at this moment to distract me by rather tidily dispatching with the asinine Heimatshutz-Ministerium subplot by noting that the delightful Agent Murphy has grown tired of dealing with their stupid and mouthy asses, and so will not be contacting them for assistance anytime soon. Or something like that. Raige then fucks off to play footsie with Ivan Sergei, leaving Piper alone with The Retard and the Feebs to realize that, much as The Retard's recovered from her scratch, so too has Phoebe recovered from her Non-Issue Of The Week. Piper gets in a couple of digs at Phoebe's expense before heading back upstairs to finish the endless packing for her ski trip. The Retard and the Feebs bare their teeth and bray at each other. Joy.
Trudeau Memorial, formerly Andy's House Of Beef, formerly The Loneliest Precinct House In The World, where Ivan Sergei has an endless scene in which he finally restores custody of El Niño to Papí Ramón, and the only thing that pleases me about the whole scene, pointless as it is with regard to the overall plot, is its length, because there goes another whole two minutes' worth of this already-foreshortened episode that I can completely ignore. Hooray! I think I love you, Ivan Sergei! Papí Ramón eventually thanks Ivan Sergei, who replies, "Don't thank me -- thank the lady who found you." Papí Ramón's all, "Whaaaaaaa?" so Ivan clarifies with, "[Raige] Matthews? Beautiful lady? Great smile? A little wacky?" Raige has silently arrived in the hallway outside to hear all of this, and her eyes light up as she grins to herself before leaning against the doorframe. Ivan babbles some more unimportant stuff at Papí Ramón, who finally exits with El Squirmy Niño. Raige enters fully into the room to tease Ivan about the "great smile" comment, and she's non-twitchy and quite lovely throughout, and I'm quite happy to learn that they've decided to keep Ivan around for the rest of the season, and he and Raige flirt some more, and then it's...
...back to the Manor we go to find Phoebe staggering around aimlessly on the second floor. She lurches towards what I'm presuming to be her own boudoir when El Niño's left-behind baby blanket catches her eye, dangling as it is from poor, neglected, and doomed Tiny Gay Chris's empty bassinette, and oh, shit. I'd managed to forget about what follows completely since this episode originally aired. Long story short, El Niño's left-behind blanket hurls Phoebe into a full-color premonition in which she spots her future Alanis Morissette self picking her daughter up from school. It's the same little girl they used a year ago, by the way, and the two are wearing the same outfits they sported in Phoebe's Charisma-induced premonition during that episode. And then -- get this -- Phalanis stalks over to talk to Premonoebe. The hell? Since when...how is this...why can she...oh, fuck it. I so don't care anymore. Long story short, Phoebe's power has apparently advanced to the point where she can, I don't know, astrally project herself into the future to consult with herself, or something, and receives assurance from Phalanis that the future revealed during the Charisma-induced premonition is still most certainly available. Or whatever. Fuck you, Charmed. And with that, Premonoebe snaps out of it to find herself back at the Manor, where Piper's howling something at the Dolt about dragging along another pair of shoes. Piper catches sight of the unnaturally contemplative Feebs at the far end of the hall and ambles over to find out what gives. "Are you all right?" Piper wonders. "Yeah," Phoebe smiles without turning around, gazing down at El Niño's left-behind blanket. "Never better." Piper chooses not to pursue the matter at this moment, and Phoebe heaves a tremendous sigh as we finally fade to black.
week, Death comes on little cat feet to abscond with the Dolt. For real. See what happens when you beg for an extra season long after a show's sell-by date? They fuck you over every time. Stop watching this shit, now!