Previously on CANCELLED!...ooops! My tape cut off the previouslys. However, I'm pretty sure it wassss raining outsssside the night the Retard'ssss ssssisssster wassss taken. I'm also fairly certain Raige wed Darling Henry, Stoop introduced himself to the Feebs, The Angel Of Teasley tossed a gigantic Doltsicle into her great big Sub-Zero in the sky, Noxon demons can't be vanquished, Ma and Pa Retard got whacked in their hotel room, and Openly Evil Chrissssty thrust her fist and forearm through Candor's chest at Not!warts.
Currently on CANCELLED!, we fade up on the brilliantly sunlit quad of a university I suppose I should recognize from its bell tower, which is a fairish replica of the one that famously collapsed in Venice, but I don't recognize it, and I really can't be bothered to look it up at so late a stage in the game. (Except, of course, for the part where I just did, and now I'm positively florid with disgust. The Ultimate Retard matriculates at Berkeley? GOD, I hate this fucking show.) We cross-fade to the low, vaguely Gothic façade of one of the dormitories before heading inside to find The Ultimate Retard and Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty returning to the former's obnoxiously enormous single from their parents' joint funeral somewhere in The Flyover. If I cared about The Ultimate Retard or Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty at all, I'd likely call bullshit on this entire exercise because, as their parents' only heirs, they'd be stuck in The Flyover dealing with the estate for the three months at the very least and so should not be befouling my television screen at the moment, but I don't care about The Ultimate Retard or Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty at all, so whatever. CANCELLED! Maggot Neck and Chrissssty enter to perch on the bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Long story short, Chrissssty blames Piper for their parents' untimely demise for, as her reasoning goes, had Piper not called Maggot Neck back to the Manor, The Ultimate Retard would have been able to protect Ma and Pa from the Noxons' attack. Or something like that. Just know that Chrissssty's efforts to separate her sister from the Glamorous Idiots begins in this scene, and let's make like Chrissssty herself and get the hell away from The Ultimate Retard by slipping through the doorway and disappearing into a flash of white that whisks us over to...
...Not!warts. Creo, who evidently appeared in a fairly crappy episode I didn't watch because I was on vacation (thanks again, Keckler!), stands in the center of the Library, lecturing a quintet of black-clad underlings on the difficulties they're likely to endure in their search for the remaining Noxon demon, who's vanished somewhere into the Underworld. One snotty, slouching, sneering henchdemon questions Creo's authority on the matter, especially considering the fact that he's still following orders issued by the now-dead Triad. Creo responds to this insubordination by flipping a Flaming Ball Of Death into Snotrag's chest, and Snotrag go boom. "What's going on?" Openly Evil Chrissssty demands as she strides into the Library from the hallway beyond. "Is there a problem?" "No," Creo assures her before amending that statement with, "not anymore." He ambles over to her and somberly and sincerely intones, "We're here to help." Openly Evil Chrissssty gives him the hairy eyeball for a moment and decides she can trust him for now before smirking her way into the opening credits. Was that supposed to be a DUN!? This stupid show. We already know she's evil, so discovering she has her own little matching set of henchthugs is not a surprise, assholes. By the way, was that the first time this show's made it through the pre-credits sequence without an appearance by a single one of the women it's supposedly about? Whatever! CANCELLED!
The camera lingers on Postcard Row for a bit before cutting to take in the much-abused grandfather clock, which reads 11:47 AM. Raige, the recent newlywed, distractedly paces the center parlor before goggling her eyes and puckering her overly rouged lips into blowjob position when she hears the front door creak open. She clatters into the main hall to greet Piper, who's just now returning from dropping her ever-feuding offspring at their grandfather's apartment, and who is rather surprised to find Raige lurking about the Manor now that the latter's moved in with her husband. Raige babbles endlessly about the impending ultimate battle between good and evil, or some such nonsense, before Piper finally cuts through the crap and calls her on it. "You need to talk to Henry," she states, rolling her eyes a bit and heading up the stairs. "About what? Demons?" Raige bluffs as she leaps to follow her sister. "No," Piper replies, never once breaking her stride, "about whatever it is you came here to talk to me about which you should be talking to him about." Raige makes a series of feral grunting noises as the two hit the second floor before admitting, "I can't tell him about it, because it's just going to hurt his feelings." And what, you wonder, could ever so outrage Darling Henry's delicate sensibilities? You don't want to ask that question. No, seriously, you don't, because the answer is that it "took [Raige] so long to forge an identity separate of [Piper] and Phoebe," and she's now "afraid of losing [herself] in the marriage," and BORING, and THEY'VE DONE THIS ALREADY, and I NEVER NEEDED TO SEE THIS SUBPLOT AGAIN, and CANCELLED! Piper, who by now has reached the landing just outside the nonexistent attic, plants her hands on her hips and guesses, "So, you're burying yourself in fighting demons?" Raige shrugs by way of assent. "I don't approve of the way you're handling this!" Piper sings before turning to enter the nonexistent attic.
She's stumbled across a cunning plan to track down the remaining Noxon, you see, and explains said plan as she leads Raige over to the Book of Shadows's stand. She correctly guesses that the Noxons were sent after Ma and Pa Retard by a higher-level demon. Mr. Peabody and Rocket J. Squirrel, you'll recall, were originally targeting the Dolt's special band of Nit!wits, and would therefore be unlikely to alter their modus operandi unless ordered to do so by someone with much more power than they themselves possessed. Piper also finds it extremely likely that whoever tasked the Noxons with their last mission is also after The Ultimate Retard, and so plans on tracking down the remaining Noxon and forcing him to talk. Raige is way stoked to help, so Piper sends her off to the Underworld to see what she can learn of the hunted demon's current whereabouts. "Done!" Raige nods as she spins on her heel to exit down the stairs. "Be careful!" Piper calls out after her. Piper then flings a pinch of something into the copper potions pot. The pot erupts with a badly CGI'd cloud of smoke that billows outward to engulf the entire screen.
When it clears, we've been transported to Hell, where we find Pator nervously scurrying through various chambers until a rather familiar-looking serpent-like creature slithers up from the ground to wrap itself around his right leg. Pator staggers against a rock and flips a quick Flaming Ball Of Death at the serpent's body, but it's of no avail, as the creature seems simply to absorb the mojo and retighten its grip on Pator's leg. "What have we here?" a voice calls from off-screen. Pator whips his head around to find an absolutely revolting demon now approaching him from another underground chamber. Seriously, the make-up job they've done on this guy makes him look like he's decomposing before our very eyes, and the first time I watched this, I found it difficult to keep my eyes on the screen. It's not any easier this time around, I can assure you. He's absolutely repellent. "Who are you?" Pator panics. "Stay back!" The new arrival -- "Jondar" -- continues advancing upon Pator while sneering, "Or what?" "She's not just clutching your leg," he explains, referring to the serpent. "She's clutching your powers. It'll come in handy when I feed off of you," he adds with a smirk. Gross. What follows is an endless round of expository banter between the two, detailing plot elements we've already learned about over the course of the last three episodes, so I'll be skipping ahead to the end. Jondar, convinced Pator is lying to him when the latter claims he's being hounded by demons and "powerful witches," smiles, "Well, seeing as how you're so neatly tied up at the moment, I think I'll just leave you here -- see who comes looking." And with that, he squiggles out. Pator gets all screamy for a moment before the screen flares white to dump us in...
...The Hagquarters. The hag of the quarters herself lounges in a wicker armchair, clad in a red velour sweatsuit and a pair of Uggs, while Stoop...wow, this scene is boring, because I DO NOT CARE ABOUT PHOEBE'S QUEST FOR TRUE LOVE AT ALL. Stoop wants to set Phoebe up with Michael, the editor of the Style section at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me. Phoebe claims she doesn't date coworkers. Well, I suppose that is true. Phoebe doesn't "date" coworkers, she just bangs them on her assistant's desk at the office. Blow it out your ass, slag. After endless -- endless! ENDLESS! -- amounts of flattery and ego-fluffing and generalized knob-slobbering from Stoop regarding Phoebe's supposed desirability, he finally, exasperatedly begs her to "be open the time love comes knocking" just as someone raps at The Hagquarters's door. Alyssa Milano and Victor Webster exchange cute little "that certainly was unexpected" looks before Phoebe rises to answer, only to find a maggoty-necked retard standing on her welcome mat. Stoop bails to check on this Michael person while Phoebe invites The Ultimate Retard in. Maggot Neck immediately collapses onto the sofa and asks if she can hang out there for a while, as she doesn't want to be alone. Phoebe does not immediately wonder what happened to Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty, for Phoebe is an idiot, but she does grant The Ultimate Retard full access to The Hagquarters for as long as Maggot Neck needs it. And...scene.
Nonexistent Attic. Piper loads a clutch of vanquishing vials into a cunning little carrying case as Raige orbs in with news that she's found Pator, but they have to hurry "in case he moves," like, I guess she didn't notice that ENORMOUS SNAKE WRAPPED AROUND HIS LEG HOLDING HIM IN PLACE. Dimwit. Piper does not immediately take Raige's hand so they might orb off to the Underworld at once, choosing instead to berate her lippy bastard of a half-sister regarding the latter's treatment of Darling Henry, because for some stupid reason we're all supposed to care about Raige's stupid identity crisis this evening. It's not working. Nevertheless, the two ladies spend about a minute of screen time bickering about Raige avoiding Darling Henry's phone calls before Piper finally gives in and passes Raige a slip of paper that presumably contains last week's banishing spell. Just then, Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty enters the nonexistent room from the upper landing, all, "Where are you going?" Piper and Raige are like, "And so nice to see you, too, Rudeness! By the way, how was your parents' funeral, huh?" Chrissssty's most displeased when she learns that The Ultimate Retard has fled her dorm room in favor of The Hagquarters, but she manages to shake it off to snipe, "So, where are you on finding the demon you let kill my parents?" "Whoa!" Piper snorts. "We didn't let anybody kill..." she begins, but Raige quickly interrupts for whatever reason with news that Pator's been located, but that she and Piper must leave now before he vanishes again. Chrissssty insists on accompanying them, vowing to be the one "who sends his sorry ass to the Astral Plane." Raige attempts to convince her of the fact that it's far more important they interrogate him first, but Chrissssty, masking her desire to cover her tracks and eliminate any possible connection between herself and the Triad with a sort of off-kilter and all-consuming lust for vengeance, dismisses the entire argument with, "Who cares? I want him dead!" Piper, clearly annoyed but managing to keep her wits about her, states simply that if there's any vanquishing to be done, it'll happen after they've grilled the demon in question for any and all information that might help her regain her husband. Chrissssty leaps on this last point and all but accuses Piper of being a selfish, self-serving bitch before Piper, disgusted, turns to clasp Raige's hand and order, "Let's go." Raige and Piper turn blue with the orbing, but at the last instant, Chrissssty places her hand on top of theirs, thereby jumping the orb.
Once they rematerialize in Jondar's cavern, the howling and bitchery is immediate and rampant, with Raige shrieking something about Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty not knowing what she's doing and Piper shrilling something about following through with her plan no matter what and Chrissssty shrewing something about avenging her parents and OH MY GOD WILL YOU ALL SHUT UP? Even poor Pator, slouched in downtrodden submission on the floor of the chamber, is thinking death would be preferable to listening to these three shrikes tearing at each others' throats for what seems like eighteen goddamned years. By the way, give it up for John Rosenfeld here, who over the last two weeks has taken what is, as written, the sort of unidimensional character we've come to expect on this show and endowed it with surprisingly nuanced layers of demonically existential angst. Pity he put all of that effort into it, though, because CANCELLED! In any event, Piper finally spins around from Chrissssty, slides a vial from her cunning little carrying case, and, addressing the downcast demon in the dirt, gets down to business: "You have one chance -- and one chance only -- to tell me who sent you, and why." Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty, positioned just behind Piper and Raige, allows a wild, panicked expression of dread to wash across her face before Pator, remaining loyal to her despite the obvious consequences, dejectedly replies, "I don't know what you're talking about." "The hell you don't!" Piper ices, hurling the vial into his chest. Pator bursts into flame and howls as Jondar's serpent flinches and retreats, scorched by the power of the vanquish. "Say the spell!" Chrissssty cries as Pator wails in the background. "No!" Piper insists as Raige pivots in Chrissssty's direction to spit, "Stop it!" Chrissssty snatches the slip of paper from Raige's hand and violently shoves her towards the far wall. As Raige stumbles headlong to the floor and Piper goes chasing after her, Chrissssty reads the spell aloud from the page, making it as far as the last two words before Piper flicks out a Hand Of Discontent in Chrissssty's direction. A tiny burst of explosive mojo sears Chrissssty's arm and slams her face-first into an outcropping of rock right before Chrissssty's able to condemn Pator to an eternity of pain in the Astral Plane. As Piper helps Raige to her feet, the vial's effects fizzle out on the unvanquishable Pator's body. Jondar picks this moment to squiggle in at Pator's side, and he twinkles, "I guess you were telling the truth," before latching onto Pator's shoulders and squiggling right back out of there. "Dammit!" Piper growls. "Are you okay?" she asks Raige. "It's not me I'm worried about," Raige admits, tossing a wary side-eye in Chrissssty's direction. Chrissssty herself has scrambled to her feet to clutch at her injured arm while glowering and pouting her way into the first commercial break.
Manor. Aftermath. Raige orbs into the main hall with Piper and Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty, and the rampant howling and bitchery recommence, until Chrissssty stomps out the front door while snarling that the Manor Morons need to stay the hell away both from her and from her maggoty-necked retard of a sister. Piper and Raige sigh and fret about the whole ridiculous situation for a bit -- with Piper pointedly placing her cunning little carrying case on the side table in the foyer -- before Piper proposes another round of Book abuse just as the Manor's phone rings. Piper disappears up the stairs as Raige grabs the cordless to fill Phoebe in on recent developments. Before Raige can delve into the details, however, the call waiting pings, so she switches lines to find her husband on the other end. Darling Henry is, of course, adorable ("Are you mad at me? Did I do something that I don't know I did?"), and the whole jumping-between-phone-lines, ooops-it's-not-Phoebe-it's-Henry shtick is cutely done, but seriously. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT RAIGE'S SUDDEN IDENTITY CRISIS. Long story short, Raige begs Darling Henry for a little time to unscramble her addled brains, then asks Phoebe if she could borrow Stoop for a bit of relationship counseling. The screen flares white, and we're once more thrown into...
...Not!warts, where Openly Evil Chrissssty's bellowing at the ceiling for Creo. He presently squiggles in, and the two settle on one of the Library's sofas to hash out tonight's Nefarious Demonic Plot For Retard Domination. Basically, Creo's to capture the missing Noxon demon before he can do any more damage, while Chrissssty's to use her Piper-inflicted injury to convince The Ultimate Maggot Neck that the Manor Morons do not have the Jenkinses' best interests at heart. !
Jondar's Lair. Pator's tethered to the floor again, and there follows yet another lengthy scene between the two demons during which we learn neither anything new nor anything of particular interest. We do, however, get an awesome vanquish. Jondar's lair, you see, is littered with smoldering fumaroles spaced randomly across the floor. At the appropriate moment, Pator boots Jondar in the chest, sending his captor flying backwards through the air to land flat on his back atop one of the smoky cones, which immediately burns a hole straight through the decomposing demon's torso. A geyser of steam billows upwards through the gaping wound for a moment before Jondar bursts into a Waste-Land-bound cloud of flames and chunky demonic bits, howling all the way. Wicked cool. Meanwhile, its master now vanquished, the tentacle lashing Pator to the floor glows red for a moment before shattering into a pile of orange embers. Pator pushes himself to his feet and flees. The screen flares white once more to shoot us on over to...
...All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me, and BORING! Stoop's giving Michael a Phoebe-related pep-talk during which it becomes clear that Michael's a douchebag and Stoop is falling in love with Phoebe himself. It's also clear, if it hadn't been before, that Stoop is the worst Cupid ever, because did I mention that Michael's a douchebag? Why in hell would Stoop set one of his charges up with this tool? I suppose we're meant to believe that his burgeoning feelings for the Feebs are clouding his professional judgment, but whatever. CANCELLED! Long story short, Stoop orders Douchey Michael to meet him outside The Hagquarters with a dozen long-stemmed red roses, and Douchey Michael skips out of the office just as Raige arrives to ask for a little identity-crisis-related advice, and I care not at all about this asinine subplot, so let's cut to the chase: Raige claims she'll be fine with whatever help Stoop can offer her, so he activates his chunky opal ring and waves it around in front of her face. Raige instantly glows pink and evaporates. Ruh-roh! By the way, we learned during all of that that Raige and Henry's wedding supposedly occurred a mere two weeks ago. Shut up, show.
Trudeau Memorial, formerly Andy's House Of Beef, formerly The Loneliest Precinct House In The World. Darling Henry's head glows pink to herald the arrival of tonight's wacky Wiccan hijinks, and Ivan Sergei amuses me to no end by blinking and flapping his hand around his head as if Stoop's mystical mojo were a particularly irritating insect. Raige's voice eventually calls out, "Henry?" Darling Hank's all, "Where the hell are you?" and Raige is all, "I have no fucking idea," before she manages to rub a couple of her remaining brain cells together and orders him to the mirror rather conveniently hanging on his office wall. Darling Henry wigs when, as anyone who's seen All Of Me would expect, he finds Raige peering back at him in the glass. Raige, instantly irritated, screams for Stoop while Darling Henry gapes and goggles and makes with the "What the fuck is this?" jazz hands.
The Hagquarters. The camera pans down from The Ultimate Retard slumbering in the boudoir to land on Phoebe, tapping away at her laptop until she notices that someone has been peppering her glass balcony doors with pebbles. She emerges onto said balcony to find Douchey Michael standing in the middle of the street below, and I simply cannot tolerate the Cyrano De Bergerac rip-off that follows, especially because the characters here involved include a desiccated hag, a douchebag toolbox we'll never see again after tonight, and an admittedly hot but nevertheless gibbering idiot, so know this: Stoop feeds Douchey Michael all of the gooily romantic lines the latter tosses up at the Feebs, who seems smitten despite herself. Regardless, she rather rudely instructs Douchey Michael to leave the roses on her building's front steps when someone begins pounding on The Hagquarters's door. And...scene? Yeah. Scene.
Back inside The Hagquarters, Phoebe and The Ultimate Maggot Neck open the door to find Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty lurking on the welcome mat. "What happened to you?" The Ultimate Retard gasps. "Piper attacked me!" Chrissssty seethes, displaying her injured arm. Phoebe's all, "Come in and we can talk about this," but Chrissssty's having none of it. "I'm not coming in," Chrissssty snarls. "[My maggoty-necked retard of a sister] is coming out." Everyone stares at each other for a while until the commercial break swallows them whole.
The Ultimate Retard and Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty emerge from The Hagquarters onto the street, and Chrissssty starts right in with the whole "The Manor Morons are selfish bitches!" spiel she and Creo had earlier agreed upon. Maggot Neck orders Chrissssty back to the (Berkeley! BERKELEY!) dorm room while she herself heads over to the Manor to confront Piper and Raige. As The Ultimate Retard disappears down the sidewalk, Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty gets a devilish glint in her eye. Had she a moustache, she'd be twirling it right now.
Speaking of moustaches: Raige. Yaaaaaaawn. Despite Ivan Sergei's best efforts, I cannot care about this subplot, especially when he himself aggravates, "You were losing yourself? What does that even mean?" Exactly. They eventually conclude...I don't know. That a marriage is greater than the sum of its parts? I haven't a clue. Nor do I care, because BORING! and BEEN THERE AND BACK FORTY-SEVEN TIMES IN THE LAST EIGHT YEARS! and CANCELLED! There's a vaguely amusing bit with one of Henry's parolees catching Henry apparently canoodling with himself in the office mirror before Henry sighs, "We have to do something about this, fast." "I couldn't agree more," Raige bites from inside his head, and with that, Henry dissolves into an upward-drifting cloud of orbs that...
...plops him down in the middle of the Manor kitchen, right in front of a startled Piper. Phoebe, by the way, has somehow managed to get herself showered, powdered, dressed, and over to the Manor in the three minutes it took the preceding two scenes to play out. This stupid, awful, stupid, evil show. "Whoa," Henry -- adorably, endearingly -- Keanus upon coagulating to the center island. "Whoa yourself," Piper retorts. "How'd you do that?" Henry -- adorably, endearingly -- explains the sitch and points the finger of blame at Stoop. Phoebe's supremely unsurprised to learn that her Cupid did something so egregiously stupid. Piper, meanwhile, has more pressing concerns. "You need to get him to undo it!" she testily intones. "We need the Power of Three to find the Noxon." "I think I might be able to do it from here," Raige yells inside her poor husband's head. Henry -- adorably, endearingly -- relates this information to Piper and the Feebs just as the creak of the opening front door hits their ears.
The three file through the dining room to find The Ultimate Retard bearing down upon them from the foyer, all lispy hissing and fried hair and oddly proportioned ass and maggoty neck, with the "We need to talk!" and the "How could you attack my ssssisssster?" and the "Sssso, you jusssst thought you'd vanquissssh her, too?" and the "It sssseemssss to be all about what you want!" and the "All you guyssss care about is finding [the Dolt]! You don't care about me!" and SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DROP FUCKING DEAD, RETARD. Sssshe ignoressss me, choossssing insssstead to noticssse Piper'ssss cunning little carrying casssse on the sssside table while Phoebe and Piper try and fail to get Maggot Neck to understand their position on the whole stupid matter. Eventually, Maggot Neck ssssnatchessss up one of the vialssss. "What do you think you're doing?" Piper demands. "I'm gonna vanquissssh the Noksssson!" Maggot Neck retardssss. "No, you're not," Piper carefully enunciates, delicately and deliberately stepping forward. "What, are you gonna blow me up, too?" Maggot Neck ssssnotssss. Only if this were a just and caring world, you worthless piece of trash. In the background during all of this, Raige whispers, "Hold out your hand and call for the vial!" Darling Henry, slouched against the dining room's doorframe, sort of shrugs, places his hand palm-up in the air, and says, "Vial," almost as if he weren't really expecting anything to happen, so you can imagine his delight when the vanquish suddenly materializes in his grasp. "That was cool!" he goofs. Heh. Maggot Neck, getting all pissssssssy, flickssss a little telekinetic energy in Henry'ssss direction, managing to ssssnatch the vial back by having it zip through the air into her own hand again. With that, she wordlessssssssly and gracssselessssssssly clompssss out of the Manor. The Manor Morons bemoan their collective fate, or whatever, and hustle upstairs to abuse the Book of Shadows.
Dorm Room Of My Despair. Maggot Neck enters to find Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty on the bed, taping a gauze wrap around her wounded forearm. "You were right," The Ultimate Retard ssssimperssss. "We are on our own." Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty grins triumphantly before dropping into the commercial break.
Not!warts. The Ultimate Retard and Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty have apparently decided to occupy the abandoned school for the duration, and the only interesting thing that happens in the scene that follows occurs when Creo silently squiggles into a far corner of the Library to engage in a telepathic conversation with Chrissssty, warning her that the Glamorous Idiots are close to nailing down Pator's current location and urging her to use her powers to "follow them." The moment Creo squiggles out, Chrissssty gets a playfully crafty gleam in her eye and says, "I wonder...maybe I can listen in on [the Ps] -- see if they found him yet." Maggot Neck's surprised to learn Chrissssty can do that, but agrees to the plan. Chrissssty closes her eyes, concentrates, and presently focuses in on Piper, Phoebe, and Henry's voices reciting the following in unison:
Ancient powers, we summon thee --
We, the Power of Three --
And seek your help in finding
The demon who is in hiding.
The shot had cut over to the nonexistent attic during all of that, and we've arrived to find the three clasping hands in a circle above the simmering potions pot at the table. The spell, however, fails, and Darling Henry's forced to apologize to his sisters-in-law for being such a lame-ass mortal, or something like that. Piper grumbles about the wacky Wiccan hijinks currently in progress and demands that Phoebe summon Stoop, so he might fix the mess he created. Phoebe complies, and Stoop presently hearts into the nonexistent room bearing a box of chocolates with a poetry-laden card he claims was written by Douchey Michael. Surprise, surprise: Stoop himself actually composed the poem a few hundred years ago -- something Phoebe realizes almost immediately -- yet they still waste endless amounts of time flirting with each other until Phoebe finally drags him over to Henry's side to reverse the ring mojo that trapped Raige in her poor husband's brain. Once this has happened, the ladies send the gentlemen on their respective ways and get back to the demon at hand. As they recite once more the spell above, the shot cuts back to...
...Not!warts, where Chrissssty's still telekinetically eavesdropping on the proceedings back in the nonexistent room. As soon as the Manor Morons' voices fade out, Chrissssty snaps her eyes open and blurts, "They found him! Quick -- throw the potion while I'm still channeling them!" The Ultimate Retard complies, smashing a vial onto the faux-marble flooring. A cloud of teleportation mojo surrounds them, quickly filling the screen before dissolving into...
...a jet of steam from one of Jondar's fumaroles. The camera plows through the steam to find Pator racing into the chamber from the far entrance, darting around various obstacles in a vain attempt to escape Piper. He plants his hands on a low rock wall and swings his legs into the air to vault himself over it just as Piper flings out a freeze. Phoebe and Raige amble into the cavern immediately afterwards, trailing Piper as she casually lopes around Pator to twist a wrist in front of his face, thereby unfreezing his head. His body, entertainingly enough, remains suspended in mid-air. I love it when they pull shit like this. The Glamorous Idiots make with the threats, and Pator's about to squeal when The Ultimate Retard and Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty crash the party. A brief Idiots-versus-Retards showdown ensues before Maggot Neck wings her purloined vanquishing vial at Pator's head. Piper intercepts it in mid-air with her Mighty Hands Of Discontent, but the resulting explosion knocks Pator out of the freeze and onto his back on the far side of the wall. "No!" The Ultimate Retard cries, leading Chrissssty to assure her telepathically, "We don't need the potion -- you can use your [poorly defined, but CANCELLED!, so whatever] power to amplify mine." With that, The Sisters Retard lock hands and close their eyes to think real hard for a second. Pator's eyes flip an incandescent white as his head burns briefly red before his entire body goes nuclear. The vanquish of the heretofore unvanquishable demon sends a shock wave hurtling through the cavern that knocks the Glamorous Idiots into the dirt. Chrissssty and The Ultimate Retard, meanwhile, take a quick moment to savor victory before vanishing in another cloud of potion-created teleportation mojo. As Piper, Phoebe, and Raige stagger to their feet, Raige bleats, "Did they just vanquish an unvanquishable demon?" "What does that mean?" Phoebe howls. "I think it means," Piper opines while brushing loose bits of dirt from her hands, "that we found the ultimate power." DUN! Not! Because the audience already knew about that! Also: CANCELLED! Also also: Commercial!
The Hagquarters. Phoebe enters to find Stoop brooding in the apartment's darkness. The scene that follows lasts a full three minutes, and while I was initially able to get through it thanks to the many, many gorgeous and dewy-eyed close-ups with which LeVar Burton so lovingly lavished Victor Webster, I simply cannot listen to the bullshit dialogue one more time, let alone transcribe it, because I DO NOT CARE ABOUT PHOEBE'S QUEST FOR TRUE LOVE AT ALL and whatever! and CANCELLED! Well, there is one bit that I suppose will become important later: When Stoop jokingly asks if the Feebs had a rough day at the office, she replies by heaving a tired sigh and noting, "Well, you know -- you let a young witch into your family and teach her everything that you know, only to be betrayed by her? Yeah, it was a rough day." Everything after that -- even though it's all surprisingly well played by the actors involved, and even though Victor Webster is so very, very pretty -- is hideously boring relationship crap. Long story short, Stoop has fallen in love with the Feebs, but he can't tell her about it because he's a dumb-ass, and the Feebs has developed sudden and unexpectedly intense feelings for Douchey Michael, The Tooliest Toolbox In The Whole Entire World, because she's an idiot. An idiot who's blind, apparently, because no sighted person would put Victor Webster and Ron Melendez to each other, and then choose the latter. NO ONE. Is this scene over yet? It is? Good.
Closing Travelogue. We soar above the Ferry Building at night before panning and cross-fading through the city as dawn eventually breaks. Over at the Manor, The Dead-Eyed Psycho is performing an unspeakably loathsome act upon a blameless stuffed animal on the sun porch while Tiny Gay Chris has curled himself into a tiny ball in smallest corner of his playseat, hoping to avoid his elder brother's murderous attentions. Piper, meanwhile, is lost in thought at the table until Raige enters with a comforting, "Hey. It's gonna be okay, you know?" "Oh, yeah?" Piper eyebrows. "I'm not so sure," she continues, shaking her head. "It was right there in front of us the entire time, and we didn't see it. [Chrissssty], and their powers? The Triad? We just missed it, and now I hope it's not too late." Raige frowns at this and settles into a chair, wondering, "Not too late for what, exactly?" "To stop them," Piper replies with significantly dark tones coloring her voice. Raige is aghast. And twitchy. "No!" she jerkily protests. "No, Piper, you can't vanquish them -- they're not demons; they're people." Piper takes a deep, deliberate breath and exhales it with a tight "People the Triad targeted to take us out." "You don't know that for sure," Raige counters. "Don't I?" Piper snaps back. "Think about it. It makes complete sense." Raige can't deal with any of this at all right now and flaps her hands around in the air, counseling patience, as the situation might just resolve itself now that Pator's gone. Piper's silent, deadpan stare in response to this says it for me: "Yeah, Raige. Not gonna happen." Raige flutters off to meet up with Darling Henry as Piper gazes bleakly off to the side, in a close-up that's paralleled after the flaring screen delivers us to...
...Not!warts, where we find The Ultimate Retard holding the same pose. As the camera pans back from her face, Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty joins her on one of the Library's sofas. "It's just you and me, sis!" Chrissssty perks, patting Maggot Neck's hand. Then, turning her head away to stare into the middle distance, she adds rather ominously, "And it always will be." Dun dun DUN!
week, the long-awaited Retard smackdown begins. Also: One hundred seventy-four down, four to go. Hooray!