Previously on CANCELLED!, it wassss raining outsssside the night the Retard'ssss ssssisssster wassss taken; Stoop introduced himself to the Feebs, started yammering about her stupid love life, and hasn't shut up since; Ssssecretly Evil Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty launched a crusade to convince her maggoty-necked retard of a sister that the Charmed Ones are, to a glamorous lady, selfish bitches, after her attempt to banish Pator provoked The Mighty Wrath Of Piper; The Ultimate Retard broke up with the Manor Morons to join her sister in the Underworld, where they held hands and thought real hard for a minute and vanquished the unvanquishable; and the Ps finally -- finally -- realized that something's not quite right at Chez Retard.
Currently on CANCELLED!, we fade up on the sunny exterior of the Manor before heading inside to the dining room, where we run into a rather dark conversation already in progress. Well, it would be dark, I suppose, if Phoebe weren't being such blithering idiot about the whole Retard situation. Piper, it seems, is inclined to agree with me, for when Phoebe blurts that even though the Jenkins Sisters vanquished the unvanquishable, it doesn't necessarily follow that they're evil, Piper snorts, "Don't be so naïve -- [Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty] was raised by The Triad, who wanted us dead, remember?" Phoebe argues that even though Chrissssty spent fifteen years training beneath a group of upper-level demons who have been plotting the bloody downfall of the Glamorous Ladies for decades, she and her retard of a sister are still good people, and oh, my God, Phoebe's a fucking moron. Raige orbs in at some point, takes a quick moment to gauge the tension in the room, and immediately sets to mediate the bickering that continues. Or, rather, she would mediate the bickering that continues if tonight's primary typewriting crackmonkey hadn't burdened these actresses with what seems like eighteen minutes of entirely unnecessary expository blather about Piper's gigantic Doltsicle of a husband, Phoebe's still-vacant uterus, and Raige's neverending attempts to find balance in her life, or whatever. Yaaaawn. Just then, Raige's new charge rings her Whitelightery bell, and I will be taking bets on the time of this new charge's death...now. "Mikelle," you see, is yet another Whitelighter-to-be with a characteristic penchant for frequently finding herself in untenable situations, so with Raige as her guardian, she's pretty much guaranteed to end up a broken and battered corpse by the end of the hour. Raige orbs out almost as quickly as she orbed in, leaving the still-simmering Piper to glare at the Feebs for a lengthy period of time before she heads up towards the nonexistent attic to whip up an anti-Retard potion of some sort. "I don't think I'm ready for this!" whines the Feebs. "Better get ready, you dimwitted hag," Piper grunts, never once looking back and with, perhaps, fewer words than I just used there. Phoebe heaves a tremendously put-upon sigh. Shut up, Phoebe.
We shudder around the top of the Transamerica Pyramid for a bit before landing in a dank and forbidding alleyway filled with Convenient Shipping Pallets Of Grave Bodily Injury in a variety of sizes, along with an imperiled and soon-to-be-dead Whitelighter-to-be and a black-clad demonic sort. Mikelle -- played by Sara Downing, whom I should recognize from her six-episode stint as a Ferret stalker six years ago on Roswell but don't, because I've forgotten absolutely everything there is to remember about that particular piece of wicked evilness, and thank God for that -- plants one of her boots in the demonic sort's chest, slamming him into a small pile of pallets before spinning on her heel and racing off down the alleyway. Raige chooses this moment to orb in, and Mikelle's all, "Holy crap!" in surprise at the orbing, which is a little more amusing than it should be. Meanwhile, the dark demonic sort reveals himself to be a Darklighter when he conjures up one of their very familiar crossbows to take aim at Mikelle's back. "Duck!" Raige shouts, and Mikelle hits the asphalt just as the Darklighter squeezes the trigger. Deploying her orbing telekinesis, Raige reverses the arrow's course, sending the thing flying straight back at the Darklighter's head. He dodges the thing at the last instant, and it embeds itself in a length of corrugated metal. By this point, Mikelle's returned to her feet to pant, "[Raige], I don't understand -- where did you come from?" Raige is all, "I don't have time for this shit," and, latching onto Mikelle's right arm, orbs both herself and her charge away just as the Darklighter smokes another arrow into his crossbow. He lowers his weapon once he realizes they're gone and shoots a couple of foul glances at the emptiness they'd so recently been occupying before he yanks his first arrow out of the wall and huffily black orbs himself directly into the opening credits.
A time-wasting Opening Travelogue! Hooray! Pity it's so boring. The sun rises above the Golden Gate Bridge, and the camera swings around the span for a few passes before we cross-fade over to All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me, where the Feebs arrives to find the office in the throes of Take Your Aggravating Rugrat To Work Day, and ! No, seriously, on to the scene, because Phoebe's uterus is throbbing so loudly at this moment that I'm surprised the resulting sonic waves aren't shaking that tired old newspaper building apart at the seams, and what's more, I DO NOT CARE ABOUT PHOEBE'S ATTEMPTS TO GET KNOCKED UP. Long story short, Phoebe and her overactive ovaries wade through the tide of annoying brats until Phoebe notices Stoop lounging around in her office, paging through a copy of the paper emblazoned with the front-page headline "'ASK PHOEBE' A WHORE." Oh, my bad -- the headline actually reads, "'ASK PHOEBE' A HERO," so that must mean he's reading something from much, much earlier in this neverending, godforsaken season for whatever reason. None of that really matters, though, for Stoop is here only to berate the Feebs for screwing up the plans he so carefully crafted for her in the last episode, or something. Seems that after all that rampant, derivative stupidity, Phoebe barely managed to make it through a single date with Douchey Michael, The Tooliest Toolbox In The Whole Entire World, and Stoop's pissed because he has a reputation to protect, and NOT CARING! and move it along, please! Phoebe basically tells Stoop to go blow because she's got bigger issues to deal with this evening. He rises to his feet and, after allowing himself a little sigh of disappointment, urges her to talk to The Ultimate Retard before he exits, shutting Phoebe's office door behind him. Phoebe stares at his retreating form for a while until the screen flashes white, kicking us over to...
...Not!warts, where Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty enters the Library to find her maggoty-necked retard of a sister abusing a great many books in search of something I totally don't care about, because I hate this entire storyline as much as I've hated it since the beginning of the season and whatever! CANCELLED! Basically, since the events of last week, The Ultimate Retard's been riffling through old prophecies, trying to find the one that indicates she and her sister are destined to take out the Charmed Ones because, her reasoning goes, something that major would have been written about centuries ago. I think I just explained it all better than she did. Moron. Unfortunately for Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty, Maggot Neck's research -- tireless and unbelievably thorough, I'm sure -- has turned up nothing remotely relevant to the situation, so The Ultimate Retard's now having second thoughts about the entire endeavor. Chrissssty, watching her Nefarious Demonic Plot For Retard Domination crumble before her very eyes, wastes not a moment in immediately ripping the Glamorous Idiots' reputation to shrezzzzzzzzzzzzz. Seriously. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. She's evil. WE GET IT. Now would someone just vanquish their damn asses so this CANCELLED! show can end already? Crap. She's still talking. Long story short, Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty argues that the Manor Morons possess absolute power, reminds Maggot Neck that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," and insists that Destiny compels The Sisters Retard to put an end to the Halliwells' unholy reign of terror upon the earth, or something like that. Maggot Neck remains unconvinced and crosses to another book, this one open to an entry entitled "Poder Maximo," whose opening lines I'll transcribe because believe it or not, after reading the thing, I'm thinking the typewriting crackmonkeys might very well put it to use in one of the few remaining episodes. Yeah, I know. My brain is totally fucking fried after six years of this shit, isn't it? Anyway, nevertheless:
The spell known as "Maximum Power," actual name "Poder Maximo," is a spell believed to tap into a dark, and unknown, collective power. The results are absolute decimation and destruction. A very dangerous spell, its origins are clouded in as much darkness as the spell itself. The first known user, Levto, an ancient mystic who roamed the Pangeanic Expanse in the dawn of magic, described it as "horror no man's eyes should ever see."
Or maybe I transcribed that because I read that bit about "horror no man's eyes should ever see," connected it instantly to far too many moments on this show over the last eight years up to and including this entire damned season, and decided it simply must be made part of the recap. Your choice. In any event, the camera's actually focused in on that page so The Ultimate Maggot Neck might receive a secret and magical message from one of the idiots Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty's been railing against for the last seventy-three hours. In the blink of an eye, the vast majority of text on the page vanishes, leaving only the following characters visible to the bimbo: "TALK? PHOEBE." At least she spelled her name right this time. The Ultimate Retard babbles out some nonsense about needing a bit of fresh air to clear her already empty head before excusing herself and exiting the room. Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty, immediately suspicious, picks her way around the table to peer at the "Poder Maximo" entry, but by this point, the text has long since reverted to its original form. Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty shoots an annoyed glare at her sister's retreating and oddly proportioned ass as the screen flares white again to shoot us over into...
...TWoP Towers. Peter Wingfield of Highlander fame appears on the screen to sneer at and upbraid the feckless Darklighter from the top of the hour for the latter's incompetence. "Overpowered by the powerless?" he bellows. "What happened?" "She was saved by her Whitelighter, Salek," the Darklighter underling patiently replies. "Then you should have shot both of them," Salek snorts. The underling's all, "Um, no, because the Whitelighter was a Charmed One, and now she's cloaked her charge, so I can't find either one of them," because it's way too difficult for him to black orb into the Manor to look for them there, apparently, because everyone on this show is a fucking idiot. This particular fucking idiot is pretty gung-ho about resuming the hunt anyway, but Salek orders the underling to cool his jets, because Salek intends to slaughter Raige himself. Muah ha ha ha NOT! This plan is clearly doomed to fail, so I'll be paying as little attention to it as possible, because CANCELLED! Salek fiddles with an arrow as the screen flares white once more to escort us...
...topside, where we find Raige ushering Mikelle into the Manor foyer. Mikelle, quite naturally, has many questions about witches and "Blacklighters" and whatnot, but Raige is far too busy to deal with all that at the moment, so she orders her soon-to-be-dead charge onto one of the parlor sofas while she herself heads up to the nonexistent attic to investigate the source of an explosion, the sound of which has just hit their ears. Gangly Mikelle lopes into the adjacent room as Raige disappears up the stairs.
Nonexistent Attic. Raige arrives to discover Piper's demolished a dress form with a vial of something lethal, and wonders what gives. Piper just stares at her lippy bastard of a half-sister, all, "What the hell do you think gives, fool?" "Oh, Piper," Raige chides, but Piper's having none of it. "Sooner or later you [and Phoebe] are gonna realize that it's us or them," she eyebrows, referring of course to The Sisters Retard, "and I, for one, would like to be ready." Then Raige gets a line that makes me hate her more than I've hated her in a very long time: "You can't just vanquish [Maggot Neck] and [Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty] -- for one thing, it's illegal." What the fuck ever. The illegality of slaughtering human beings sure as hell didn't stop you and Phoebe from offing Rick Gittridge two years ago, so SHUT THE FUCK UP, RAIGE. Jesus! CHRIST! Piper's on my side, thank God, and, likely mindful of the exact same incident, snorts with withering amounts of derision, "That the best you got?" Raige counters by mentioning Piper's desire to retrieve the Doltsicle from The Angel Of Teasley's great big Sub-Zero in the sky, leading Piper to exasperate, "You know, I'm tired of everyone using that against me like it diminishes my credibility, because it doesn't!" and you go, Piper Halliwell. Screw getting a damned consensus on this decision with your idiot sisters and just blow Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty and The Retard right the fuck up already. And wouldn't you know it? She just might do it. Hooray! Piper pockets a vial of the Power of Three potion she'd been preparing and storms out of the nonexistent room. Mugs McGowan twitches something utterly unimportant as the camera cuts over to...
...The Hagquarters, where The Ultimate Retard's just now arriving for her cou-à-tête with the Feebs. This should be riveting. Not. After much tiresome blathering, they eventually begin to reach the point of the scene when Phoebe waves her hands around in the air in frustration and, referring to herself and her sisters, sighs, "Look, we're not the bad guys, here!" "[Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty] thinkssss you are!" Maggot Neck hissssssssessss by way of ressssponsssse. "Sssshe thinkssss you're ussssing your powerssss only for yoursssselvesssss and not The Greater Good and ssssooner or later, you'll have to be sssstopped." Phoebe, finally beginning to realize that this is all heading towards a very bad resolution, folds her arms across her chest and frosts, "Is that what you think, too?" Before we get to hear the ansssswer to that one, however, Piper bursts through the Hagquarters's door, leading Maggot Neck to sssshriek, "I thought you ssssaid we were alone!" "Hello!" Phoebe duhs. "We were alone, you worthless, pathetic excuse for a human being," she continues, perhaps leaving off that last bit, and I hate it when Phoebe's right and she and I are on the same side of an argument. Shut up, Charmed. Phoebe flusters her way over to Piper's side with, "What are you doing here?" "Wondering what she's doing here," Piper calmly replies, nodding in Maggot Neck's direction. "We were just having a little...chat," Phoebe explains, as Maggot Neck warily backs away from icy Piper and her Mighty Hands Of Discontent. Hee. Blow her the fuck up, Piper! You know you want to. Piper, unfortunately, chooses instead to keep those Mighty Hands Of Discontent behind her back -- the better to conceal the potion she's carrying, you see -- and responds to Phoebe by hooting, "Good! Great! I'm listening." The three stare each other down for a moment, before the off-camera Chrissssty shrills, "Stay away from my sister!" The shot swings around to capture her as she stalks into The Hagquarters proper from the apartment's balcony before cutting back over to Phoebe, who goggles, "Okay, how did you get in?" "The same way we're leaving," Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty retorts, shaking a vial of her own around in the air. As The Ultimate Retard retreats to her sister's side, Phoebe makes one last plea for open communication between the two groups of witches, something Chrissssty assures her will never happen "because there's nothing to talk about." "All right, then!" Piper grits, finally drawing her hands from behind her back and winging that Power of Three vial at Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty's head. Chrissssty squints at the thing as it flips end over end through the air and ends up igniting it with her pyrokinesis. The resulting explosion hurls Piper and Phoebe backwards into a wall. Piper recovers quickly and moves to deploy the Mighty Hands Of Discontent, but Phoebe shouts, "No!" and yanks the Hands aside. "Do you need any more proof?" Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty asks, almost rhetorically at this point, and with that, she smashes her vial of teleportation mojo against the floorboards. Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty and Maggot Neck vanish in the cloud that materializes to envelop them as Piper, pissed, turns to face Phoebe and echo, "Do you?" Phoebe purses her sad little lips before falling into the first commercial break.
Manor, and my, but this is a pointless scene. Mikelle's had the sort of sad and difficult life we've come to expect of the losers The Ever-Useless Elders choose for future Whitelighterdom and, while Sara Downing is playing it all with a sort of wry detachment that is fairly enjoyable to watch, who the hell cares? CANCELLED! Shouldn't the typewriting crackmonkeys be gearing the rapidly dwindling audience up for The Ultimate Battle To End All Ultimate Battles, rather than wasting screen time on tedious storylines we've already seen at least fifty-nine times in the last eight years? Whatever! Long story short, Raige gifts her soon-to-be-dead charge with a little pep-talk until they're interrupted by the arrival of Phoebe and Piper, who burst through the front door in mid-fight. "Why didn't you just freeze them?" Phoebe groans. "Because it wouldn't have worked," Piper needlessly reminds her before lighting into Phoebe for keeping the latter's meeting with The Ultimate Retard a secret from the other Glamorous Idiots. Phoebe castigates Piper for "starting a war" as Mikelle, quickly grokking to the fact that she's simply getting in the way by remaining in the Manor, rises to leave. "A little help?" Raige bleats. Piper distractedly flicks a wrist in Mikelle's direction, halting the soon-to-be-dead charge in her tracks before refocusing her attention on the Feebs and glaring, "There. I froze somebody. Happy?" Well, I'd have been happier had you flicked a wrist when it really mattered, doll, but thanks for the concern. Not. Raige drags her bickering half-sisters into the center parlor for a mini processing summit, the upshot of which is this: Piper insists that the full Power of Three is necessary to stop Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty and Maggot Neck, stupid Phoebe's still not convinced that The Sisters Retard need stopping in the first place, and useless Raige remains on the fence. Raige and Phoebe flee in different directions, leaving Piper alone to brood until the screen flares white yet again to shoot us back over to...
...Not!warts. The Ultimate Retard's consummately conflicted. Manipulative Chrissssty's ssssecretly evil. Coma-prone Demian's catatonically drooling, because this shit is boring, and CANCELLED! Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty can prove that the Glamorous Idiots have "lost their way." Is Maggot Neck ready to see that? Who the hell cares? !
The Hagquarters. Phoebe enters and closes the door, but barely has the latch clicked shut before someone knocks. It's Stoop, of course, who'd been "hovering in the ether" waiting for the Feebs to arrive, and the two settle in the Hagquarters's living room to rehash recent events until Phoebe wonders, "If I ask you a question, you have to promise me that you'll be really honest?" "Absolutely," Stoop replies. Phoebe takes a deep, nervous breath, and releases it with, "Do you think I'm selfish?" "OH MY FUCKING GOD, YES," Stoop does not reply. "A THOUSAND, THOUSAND, THOUSAND TIMES YES," he fails to continue. "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HAVE THE GALL TO ASK THAT QUESTION OF ANYONE AND EXPECT ANY ANSWER BUT 'YES,' YOU FOUL, SHRIVELED, SELF-CENTERED HAG OF A WOMAN," he neglects to conclude. Not to worry, though. I'm pretty sure those of us still watching this crap took care of all that for him. God knows I did. Stoop instead lets loose with yet another cheery little speech about how Phoebe deserves to enjoy a normal life after everything she's done over the last eight years, but I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy listing all the different examples of Phoebe's hagritude I'd have to yank links for in this sentence, and by the time I realized there were more examples than there were words, the scene had ended. Pity!
Manor. Up in the Broken Marriage Boudoir, Piper perches on the coffee table as Elizabeth Dennehy orbs into the room from Whitelighterland. Piper thanks her for coming, and gets right to the point: "I need to know if [Maggot Neck] and [Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty] are the ones we're going to have to fight to get [the Dolt] back." Short answer? The Ever-Useless Elders haven't a freaking clue. Big surprise, there. The longer answer involves The Triad and the "insidious" plot they put into motion years before the Glamorous Ladies even knew about their inherited bitchcraft and super-special Capital-D Destiny in the world and whatnot, but you don't really need to plow through all of that, do you? Didn't think so. Basically, all signs point to yes, but as The Ever-Useless Elders can't offer a definitive answer, Elizabeth Dennehy will be of no use in convincing Phoebe and Raige of the danger they face from The Sisters Retard. As Elizabeth orbs on out of there, Raige arrives to announce that Maggot Neck's just phoned to request a summit. The two descend the main stairs to join Phoebe on the sun porch, where she's arrived after receiving a similar call from The Ultimate Retard. "This could be a very bad idea," Piper warns. "I just spoke with an [Ever-Useless] Elder, and she confirmed those two could be very big trouble for us." "What?" Raige gasps. Piper's forced to admit that Elizabeth "wasn't a hundred percent sure," but before she gets much further, The Ultimate Retard blooms on the sun porch in a cloud of teleportation mojo. God, remember when people on this show who didn't have access to Whitelightery orbing actually had to walk from place to place? Those were some good times. In any event, Piper gets in a good one when she greets Maggot Neck with, "You know, considering you want to kill us, maybe you should use the front door." Heh. Of course, Piper, you do realize that snappy one-liners would no longer be necessary if you'd just blow her oddly proportioned ass up right now, yes? Piper ignores me, and that's bad news for her, for The Ultimate Retard's barely materialized before she flips a vial of something dark and presumably dangerous at the Manor Morons' feet. Each P glows white for a moment before they all collapse onto the floor, unconscious. D'oh! Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty appears at her sister's side to make with the smirking and the false promises and such before the screen flares white to dump us into...
...the commercial break? Well, that certainly was stupid, wasn't it? I hate this goddamned show.
Manor. Aftermath. Lengthy round of expository blather short, the potion hurled the Manor Morons into "a deep sleep, so all they do is dream, and since dreams provide insight, [Maggot Neck] will be able to see what they really care about." The hell? First of all, the dream stage of sleep...oh, fuck it. CANCELLED! Mikelle haplessly wanders onto the scene, quickly takes stock of the situation, and flees, correctly realizing that Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty and The Ultimate Retard are evil and must be destroyed. Poor, doomed Mikelle's barely made it onto the front porch, however, when Skakel or Skeletor or Scudworth or whatever the hell Methos's goddamned name is supposed to be this evening black-orbs in, sneers something about her Whitelighter leaving her unprotected, latches onto her neck, and black-orbs back out with her. DUN! Meanwhile, back on the sun porch, there's more barely intelligible psychobabble from Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty before she hands Maggot Neck a red crystal that allows the latter to enter "Dream World" and move from sister to sister. In a nice little effects shot, the moment she accepts the crystal from Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty, The Ultimate Retard flares crimson and constricts into a fist-sized ball of red light that presently breaks apart into three glittery, glowing tendrils wafting through the air. After circling above the unconscious Ps for a moment, the tendrils shoot down into their heads. The camera plows down towards the floor to follow the one that wormed its way into Piper's skull, and the screen washes out for an instant before it clears and we find ourselves in the Dream World version of the center parlor.
Dream World Manor is pretty much the same as Real World Manor, save for the softer focus in the camera's lens and the saturated blue tint to the lighting. Incidentally, the Glamorous Ladies remain self-aware during all that follows, for whatever reason. I'd go back to the scene and transcribe Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty's explanation for that, but, you know. Why bother? It won't make any sort of rational sense anyway, and besides: CANCELLED! In any event, the gals, who had apparently split up upon arriving in Dream World to investigate, now regroup in the center parlor to process through what they know, which is nothing. "[Maggot Neck] obviously did something to us," Piper grunts. "Yeah, but what?" Raige wonders. "I don't know," Piper replies, "but this is weird, and that's never good." Piper then most awesomely smacks Phoebe hard on the arm and grumbles, "I told you it was a trap!" Just then, Phoebe spots The Ultimate Retard lurking in the foyer. Maggot Neck babbles some lie about being late for class because she's supposed to pretend to be a part of their dreams, or whatever, and bolts for the door. The second she crosses the threshold to the porch, however, a shimmery blue portal erupts in the doorframe and sucks her in. The Manor Morons, who'd been hot on The Retard's heels, brace themselves against the wood, but are eventually sucked through the portal themselves.
First to emerge on the other side is Phoebe, who finds herself in All The Dream World That's Fit To Fuck Me where, rather predictably, her subconscious mind has conflated Take Your Aggravating Rugrat To Work with the day-to-day operations of the newspaper to produce an office full of preadolescent brats behaving as if they were actual adult reporters and editors and whatnot. One of the little shrews is actually Phoebe's much-loathed Daughter From The Future, who moans, "Mom, we're running out of time, and you can't keep putting us on hold." Put a sock in it, Hagulita. Seriously. The kid hasn't even been conceived yet, and already I hate her more than any other character on this stupid, evil, stupid, wicked show, with the obvious exception of The Ultimate Retard. Whatever. CANCELLED! ANY-way, Stoop whispers to the Feebs from Phoebe's private office, calling her "baby" and crooking his finger in a smoldering and irresistible come-hither gleam in his eye. I knew Phoebe was going to find a way to bang this guy on a desk in her office. Maggot Neck, who'd been eyeing all this from the main doors, turns away as the screen washes blue.
Dream World Memorial, formerly Andy's Dream World Of Beef, formerly The Loneliest Dream House In The World. Raige tries to raise an outside line on Darling Henry's phone, but finds that they all appear to be dead. Frustrated, she calls out loudly first for her sisters, then for her husband. "Henry's not here," Dream World Raige calls out from the hall. Real World Raige splutters and stammers at the sight of her nightgowned doppelganger as the latter continues, "But then, you're not looking for him, anyway." "Follow me," Sensei Raige finishes before turning to disappear down the hall. Senseless Raige barrels after her, but pulls herself short when Mikelle (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) flares in to beg for help. Senseless Raige, under the watchful eye of the carefully hidden Ultimate Retard, orders Mikelle to wait where she is while Raige goes chasing after...herself? Yeah. Whatever. CANCELLED! The screen washes blue as Senseless Raige continues down the hall.
DWP3. The place is a madhouse, mainly because, even though it's as poorly managed and maintained on this plane of existence as it is in ours, the patrons in this reality actually seem to notice and care. Piper struggles through a crowd of disgruntled yuppies to reach her vaguely familiar underling, who shouts in digitally processed tones of voice, "You can't keep neglecting everything for [the Dolt], you know." Piper's momentary confusion disappears when she spots The Ultimate Retard at the bar. Maggot Neck attempts to flee, but Piper manages to snatch hold of her arms, and spins her around to spit, "I want answers, now!" before dragging her oddly proportioned ass into the commercial break.
Piper slings The Ultimate Retard onto the sofa in the club's office, and once more demands to know what's going on. Maggot Neck bluffs her way through another lie in yet another attempt to convince Piper that The Ultimate Retard is simply part of Piper's dreamscape, and I'm sure I'd be happy to recap that bluff were The Ultimate Retard not to blow her cover immediately afterwards by closing her eyes, thinking real hard, intoning Phoebe's name, and vanishing from the club office in Piper's full view. I'd then scream about how stupid everyone on and responsible for this show is, but WHATEVER, because CANCELLED!
All The Dream World That's Fit To Fuck Me. Phoebe comes thisclose to banging Stoop on her desk but at the last instant remembers she only bangs guys on her assistant's desk, and so comes to realize that she's stuck on another plane. Or something like that. Feebs, with a quick farewell to Dream Stoop, hustles out of there to return to the Dream World Manor. The Ultimate Retard glares at her from a nook at the far side of the main office. Shut up, Retard.
Dank And Forbidding Alleyway Of Dream World Doom. Senseless Raige catches up with Sensei Raige, who's levitating five feet above the ground, serenely cross-legged on a cloud of orbs. "Come -- seek!" Sensei Raige actually, honest-to-God says, and it only gets worse from there. Senseless Raige's "inner truth," you see, involves finding herself, or some such damn thing. "A search for self is a noble one," Sensei Raige intones serenely, "and if you don't find it, you'll be lost, imbalanced, and -- ultimately -- spread too thin." God, I hate this show. The Ultimate Retard, having eavesdropped on all of this, decides she's heard enough for now and switches sisters again. This time, however, we stay with Senseless Raige, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, believe it or not. In a fairly creepy shot, Sensei Raige suddenly, unexpectedly lets her head drop back and opens her mouth in a howl. The human part of that howl, however, is merely a faint, far-away cry, while the mechanical part -- the part that sounds like a high-pitched train whistle -- screams. Senseless Raige flashes briefly on Mikelle's forlorn image before snapping back to the unearthly howling, which gradually diminishes after Sensei Raige abruptly dematerializes. Raige realizes her doomed charge is in some deep shit, and spins around to race back to the Dream World Manor...
...where, coincidentally enough, Phoebe's just now arriving to find Piper on the sun porch. The two bang their heads together in a lengthy processing summit during which Phoebe realizes that in order to escape Dream World, each Glam Gal must first follow her individual dream to its conclusion, wherever that conclusion might be. The one amusing moment during the endless chatter comes when Phoebe admits to canoodling with Stoop in her reverie: "You're having sex dreams while I'm sitting here wracked with guilt?" Oh, you martyr. Meanwhile, The Ultimate Retard, who'd been spying on them from the upper landing, hears a noise above, and waddles off to investigate.
Up in the nonexistent attic, she finds Raige struggling with the Book of Shadows, a struggle Raige quickly abandons in favor of tossing Maggot Neck up against a wall and shrieking, "Get me out of here now!" Whoa. Raige, honey. Why so tense? "I don't have time for this crap!" she yells, all up in The Retard's face. This is kind of awesome. "You wanna stop us? You think we're selfish? WHATEVER!" Oooh, Raige! I think I like you like this. "But if you don't get me out of here right now," she screams, paying me no mind, "my charge is going to die! Is that what you want?" Maggot Neck gulps, and that gulp ripples down through all the many folds in her disgusting neck before the screen washes blue once again.
Sun Porch. Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty paces past the unconscious Manor Morons as the glittery, glowing tendril shoots from Raige's head to coagulate into Maggot Neck form at Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty's side. Raige gasps awake soon after and flips a few threatening remarks in the direction of The Sisters Retard before orbing away.
Raige reforms down in TWoP Towers, but barely has she had time to take in Mikelle's battered and bloody form on the floor before Scudworth squeezes the trigger on his crossbow and slams two arrows into her back from the far side of the chamber. Raige's eyes roll into the back of her skull as she drops out of the frame. Scudworth ambles over and kneels at her side. "Well," he sneers, "hopefully you'll die faster than it took you to get here." Raige drops from consciousness into the final commercial break.
Dream World Manor. There's more endless chatter between Piper and the Feebs, but the end result is that Phoebe realizes -- surprise, surprise -- Su Bonita Hagulita is the real center of her particular Dream World, while Piper discovers -- surprise, surprise -- that the Dolt is the focus of hers. The Ultimate Retard, who'd returned at some point after freeing Raige, eavesdrops at the kitchen door as Phoebe assures Su Bonita Hagulita that she wants her daughter "more than anything in this world." Maggot Neck turns her attention to Piper just as the latter hears the patter of little feet out in the parlor. Piper crosses from the sun porch to find the front room positively swarming with preadolescent brats as an elderly gentleman who clearly represents Old Dolt approaches from behind to croon, "Music to the ear, huh? A house full of grandkids? It's what we always dreamed of, isn't it, Piper?" Piper's all, "Dolt? But you're so wrinkly! Well, you know, more so than usual. I mean, what I mean to say is...oh, whatever. CANCELLED!" He pulls her into a warm hug under the watchful eye of The Ultimate Retard. As Piper hesitantly eases into the clinch, Old Dolt whispers an urgent "Save me!" into her ear. "Whatever it takes," Piper murmurs, still visibly freaked because Grandpa here's about to mack on her. Just as The Ultimate Retard decides she's heard enough from all of them and disappears, the spectral image of Raige intrudes upon Piper's intergenerational hanky-panky to hover above the sun porch floor and plead, "Help." Piper vanishes into a final blue wash and...
...immediately snaps awake in the real world, with Phoebe doing the same not a second later. They scramble to their feet -- not an easy task for the freshly pregnant Holly Marie Combs who, I should note, is already showing -- and exit in search of Raige as Chrisssssty and The Ultimate Retard emerge from their hiding place in the main parlor to watch them go. "It'ssss not wrong to want what they want," Maggot Neck opinessss. "It is when they've got the kind of powers they do," Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty counters, "and when they use those powers to get what they want at the expense of all else." This, incidentally, has been Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty's point all along, but I think I forgot to mention it earlier because CANCELLED! "Somebody's got to stop them before it's too late," Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty concludes, shooting A Look Fraught With Significance at her maggoty-necked sister. The Ultimate Retard pauses for effect. Or, rather, "effect." "I know," she agreessss. DUN!
TWoP Towers. Photogenically dying Raige still manages a grunt of anguish when Scudworth yanks the remaining projectile from her back. "No need to waste good arrows," he smiles, admiring their gory tips, and what does it say about this show that the demons are the ones who recycle? Whatever! CANCELLED! Scudworth savors victory for a moment as Piper and Phoebe arrive in the chamber upon swirling clouds of glowing golf balls. "You're too late!" he giggles. Piper just rolls her eyes and deploys the Mighty Hands Of Discontent on his smug ass. STAMOS! Once Scudworth's gone boom, the arrivals race to Raige's side. There's little they can do but fret and mope. Thank Elderland, then, for Mikelle, whose reincarnated Whitelightery form orbs onto the dirt to her rapidly cooling corpse to apply the tingly touch to the gaping wound in Raige's back. It takes a little time -- Raige was mostly dead, you know -- but presently both wound and stretchy yellow ribbed tank are healed, and Raige pushes herself up from the floor to express her gratitude. The Ever-Useless Elders summon Mikelle back to Whitelighterland, and so up she orbs, Raige watching her go with a broad smile on her face.
The Closing Travelogue swings us above the nighttime city for a while before cross-fading over to the Manor façade, and oh, wow. When's the last time the Glamorous Ladies gathered at the end of the episode to dispense with The Lessons Of The Week? It's been a while, I can tell you that. Flames flicker in the main parlor's fireplace as the camera pans past Raige sipping from a mug of something soothing while curled up on one of the sofas. Phoebe and Piper enter from the hall to see how their lippy bastard of a half-sister is doing after coming so close to death. "I guess I'm okay, considering," Raige shrugs. "Considering what?" Piper leads. "Considering that I was supposed to save my charge and instead she wound up saving me," comes the reply. "Maybe [The Ultimate Retard's] right," Raige breathes. "Maybe we are selfish." "Wanting a life doesn't make us selfish," Phoebe vehemently disagrees, like, go figure that sentiment's coming from the hag, "it makes us normal." "Well, we're not normal," Raige counters, echoing the glorious Grams. "We're 'The Charmed Ones,'" she continues, gifting their official title with a couple of uncharacteristically sardonic air quotes. "Nobody said we had to be that for the rest of our lives," Piper claims. "It's not written in stone." And we'll go with that for now, partly because of The Original Angel Of Destiny's testimony on the matter and partly because I'm too damned tired to dispute much of anything at this point in the recap, but mainly because CANCELLED! "I'd say we've done enough," Piper reasons, "and that doesn't make us evil." "I think it does, from [Maggot Neck] and [Ssssecretly Evil Chrissssty's] warped point of view," Raige sighs before wondering, "So what are we gonna do?" "We're gonna stop them," Phoebe calmly vows, "before they stop us." Piper flicks her eyes in Phoebe's direction, all, "Took you long enough, you stupid bitch!" as we finally fade to black.
week: No clue, if I rely solely upon the dismally unspecific promos the WB's vomited up for the episode, but the good news is: 175 down, three to go! Whee!