The night before I wrote the first draft of this recap, I dropped by my local for a few, and Paul The Bartender and I got to talking about how this would be my last Charmed recap ever, because CANCELLED! For some reason, this led to a little math: This is the one-hundred-forty-first episode I've covered over the last six years. If you allow for an average of eighty-five-hundred words per recap, that means I'll have written roughly 1,198,500 words about this show.
One million, one-hundred-ninety-eight thousand, five hundred words. ABOUT CHARMED.
I won't even hint at the hours involved. You'll think I'm insane.
But don't think I haven't had fun, because I have -- much more than I ever would have expected. And for that, I have numerous people to thank, foremost amongst them Sarah Bunting, Girl Editor Extraordinaire, and her fellow Television Without Pity Heads Of Programming, Tara Ariano and Dave Cole. ["Every word of the million-plus a precious gem, my dear. The pleasure was ours." -- Sars] I also must thank John Ramos, Stephanie Lucianovic, and Dan Blau for quite hilariously stepping in for me on those numerous occasions when I had to skip a couple of episodes in order to preserve my tenuous relationship with sanity. And last but certainly not least, sloppy kisses to the hysterical gang of bitter, bitter bitches on the forum boards, who left no nit unpicked, no atrocious abortion of fashion unvomited-upon, and no outrageous example of Phoebe's graceless and self-centered hagritude unjudged, while being most viciously funny about it all for six very long years. Now, let's get to it:
Previously on CANCELLED!, they blew up the Manor, and Phoebe died in the process! Hooray!
Currently on CANCELLED!, we fade up on the nighttime façade of The Hagquarters, and the camera pulls a slow pan in towards the windows as a brief burst of light flashes from within. We dart inside to discover the source of the burst: Piper, deploying the Mighty Hands Of Discontent to blast open the door. I'd tell her to use the doorknob like a normal person, but I'm thinking that in her current mood, she'd more than likely turn the Mighty Hands Of Discontent on me, and I didn't drag myself through six years of this crap just to get my ass blown off in the first ten seconds of the last episode. "Piper, you gotta keep it down," whispers the freshly defrosted Dolt, who enters The Hagquarters behind his wife. As he flicks on the lights and stands on the landing, staring dumbly at the apartment's furnishings, or something, Piper powers over to the Book of Shadows for a little abuse. "There's nothing in the Book that can fix this," the Dolt warns, snapping out of his strange reverie to bustle over to the kitchenette, where he dumps some water on a dishrag to wipe the soot from Piper's face. "There's gotta be something," Piper mutters, still fairly wrecked after the recent showdown in the now-destroyed Manor. "There's not," the Dolt insists, dabbing the dishrag against her forehead, "and [The Ever-Useless Elders] can't undo what's already been done." Well, of course not, Dolt. That's why we call them "Ever-Useless." Moron. The Dolt, ignoring me, gently but firmly shuts the Book, which Piper has placed on her lap, the better to disguise the fact that Holly Marie Combs is, by now, one hundred and thirteen months pregnant. "Are you sure the boys are okay?" he asks. Piper, tears in her eyes, just breathes, "I'm sorry you had to come back to this," by way of response. The Dolt blinks bleakly a couple of times before drawing her into a hug.
Oh, shit. I forgot this stupid bitch was still alive. The screen flares white to boot us over to Not!warts, where we find The Retarded Bimbo lumbering her oddly proportioned ass into The Inky Chamber Of I Forgot What I Called It Last Week And I'll Be Damned If I Go Back And Look It Up Because CANCELLED! And Last! Episode! Ever! Ahem. Long story short, Fugly Rufus gets the bullet on the current sitch from The Retarded Bimbo and quickly orders her to use her super-special projection power to travel into the past to warn Openly Deranged Chrissssty about The Hollowed Manor Morons. The Bimbo -- who's just as teary-eyed and wrecked as Piper, but I don't care, because I hate her and I want her dead -- collapses against his chest in a grief-stricken swoon. Shut up, Retard. Fugly Rufus just stares icily above her head at the onrushing opening credits.
Chez Victor. The gentleman in question sits in his robe at the dining room table, steeping a teabag in a mug while gazing bleakly at a toy chicken, but I'm not really paying attention to anything that's going on in this scene because Drew Fuller's name just appeared in guest scroll at the bottom of the screen. Big Gay Chris! My husband returns! Joined by TEETH!! And Grams! And Boring Jesus! Hooray! In any event, while all that is going on, there's a knock at the apartment's door. Victor leaps over to answer and finds his sole surviving daughter standing in the hall with her freshly unfrozen husband. Piper -- who's cleaned up rather nicely since last we saw her, like, what happened to the enormous scorch mark on her forehead, show? -- delivers the bad news, and Daddy Dearest is predictably stricken. I'm sure I'd find it all very touching, but we all know Phoebe and Raige aren't going to stay dead for very long, so let's move this along, shall we? Victor, trying desperately to come up with a way to bring his youngest daughter and her lippy bastard of a half-sister back to life, starts babbling about the Stoopid Magikal Kommunity and eventually blurts out Stoop's name. Piper, thinking fast, remembers that Stoop once took Phoebe on a time-traveling jaunt to revisit her past loves and quickly determines he'll be doing the same for them. "[Stoop]?" she calls out. "If you can hear me, I need to talk to you now." Stoop hearts in immediately. Piper rather bluntly informs him of Phoebe's death before getting down to business: She'd like his chunky Cupid ring, and she'd like it now. Stoop, also predictably stricken, hesitates, but eventually slides the thing off his finger and hands it over. "Okay, wh-what do I do?" Piper stammers before sighing in frustration and asking, simply, "How does it work?" Stoop, getting a little misty-eyed himself, explains, "You just think about that person and, um, how much you love them," before warning, "I gotta tell ya, it doesn't always work the way you want it to, though, 'cause love -- love isn't practical." Uh. Thanks? For all but ensuring a final spate of Wacky Wiccan Hijinks in this, the last episode ever? Not. Shut up, Stoop. As Piper places the ring on her own finger, the Dolt darts over to her side, vowing, "I'm going with you -- I'm not losing you again." Piper beams at him as Stoop offers one final bit of advice: "Keep it simple. Just follow your heart to one of them." Piper nods in acknowledgement then, clasping the Dolt's hands in her own, closes her eyes to breathe, "Phoebe." The dark walls of Victor's apartment glow pink and morph into...
...the sun-drenched and lace-curtained windows of the Manor's front boudoir. Piper and the Dolt, visibly puzzled, glance around briefly before Piper eyebrows, "This isn't right." By the way, this bit is shot so that the frame's cutting off Piper's lower body at her waist, the better to disguise the fact that Holly Marie Combs is, by now, one hundred and thirty-seven months pregnant. In any event, forest noises assault their ears at this moment, and Piper swivels her head around to find a "younger" version of her father canoodling in the boudoir's bed with her mother. Piper, understandably sickened and repulsed, clutches her nonexistent pearls and gags, "Oh, my God!" Patty, startled by this, snaps her head up and hisses, "Demons!" before flinging out a freeze that affects only the Dolt. I'm going to assume this means that Stoop's special method of time transport allows Piper not to lose her powers in the past, because this is the Last! Episode! Ever! and I don't feel like launching myself into a rant about the stupid fucking lack of continuity on this stupid fucking show now that it's been CANCELLED! and I am thirty-five minutes and forty-two seconds away from freedom. FREEDOM! "Why didn't she freeze?" Victor wonders. By the way, they've slapped a dark brown wig on James Read's head for these scenes in the past, but somehow neglected to address the matter of that thicket of grey hair sprouting from his pasty chest. God, I hate this show. They're also filming these scenes with the sort of soft-focus lens previously used only on La Milano when the latter was suffering through particularly dreadful patches of skeletal emaciation, but there's no masking the fact that James Read is fifty-three and Finola Hughes is forty-six, and they both look every single damn day of it. Whatever. CANCELLED! In response to Victor's question, Patty stutters out a confused and panicky "I don't know" before Piper cuts through the crap with a "Probably because I'm your daughter!" that's positively dripping with disgust at the fact that these ancient relics are naked in bed with each other. Ew. Victor and TEETH! gape and goggle and such while Piper flaps a grossed-out hand around in the air before eventually using it to cover her eyes. Heh.
"You must be a pretty powerful witch to be able to come here from the future!" the thankfully now-dressed Patty kvells as she leads the gang down the stairs to the main hall. Patty's sporting something paisley-patterned and flowing beneath a macramé vest, but as we shall presently learn, it's 1975, so she gets a pass from me. Everybody dressed like shit in the '70s. In response to Patty's misplaced enthusiasm over her supposed powers, Piper mumbles something about Stoop's ring that leads to an endless round of miscommunication between parents and daughter before Piper decides her current mission necessitates full disclosure of future events, despite the fact that said disclosure might screw up the past. Or, as she puts it when the Dolt frets about Imparting Too Much Information While Time-Traveling, "We gotta tell them something. I mean, how are we gonna figure out why we're here?" Oooh! Oooh! I know this one! Pick me, Piper! Pick me! It's because Daddy Dearest just now knocked TEETH! up with the Feebs! Am I right? Huh? AmIamIamIamIamIamIhuh? I'm so totally right, because The Importance Of Phoetal Phoebe was a plot point from the first goddamned season, and this stupid fucking show ran out of original ideas seven years ago. In any event, after much hemming and hawing, Piper steps on a white stuffed bunny she remembers from her childhood and finally thinks to ask, "How old am I now, in your time?" "Almost three" is the answer, which means The Late Lamented's five, and Phoebe's yet to be born. After more blundering about the issue, the Dolt at long last realizes I'm right, and TEETH!'s womb leaps with joy. Blow it out your uterine ass, Inanimate Object I Am Anthropomorphizing For The Sake Of This Recap. Even Phoetal Phoebe pisses me off.
Long story short, Piper and the Dolt fill Patty and Victor in on the entire future sitch, including the existence of Raige, the fact that Piper and her sisters are the Charmed Ones, and the final battle that killed two of Patty's daughters. To avoid the awkward, though, they leave out the bit about the twitchy bastard's dodgy paternity. In any event, Patty immediately vows to do whatever she can to help save her progeny, and wonders if they might somehow recreate the Power of Three by hooking up with Grams. "Do you have any idea what she's talking about?" Piper sighs, rolling her eyes at the Dolt. No fucking clue, hon, but let's just go with it for now, because Last! Episode! Ever! and CANCELLED! Hooray! "I'm talking about using our family magic to get you to where you need to go, instead of that silly ring!" Patty needlessly explains. "Look," she continues rather earnestly, "you can't come barging in here from the future -- and tell me that two of my girls are dead -- without expecting me to help." Piper, who'd clearly been leery of the entire idea, melts at this and allows her mother a little smile. Patty proposes deploying the ring's mojo to heart them all to Grams's current location -- which is somewhere other than the Manor -- as it'll be "quicker than driving" and, after pecking Victor on the lips with a kissy promise to return shortly, links hands with her shrill, passive-aggressive nag of a daughter and blithering, wrinkly dolt of a son-in-law. Piper closes her eyes to breathe, "Grams." Behind the little group, the sun porch's windows glow pink and morph into...
...the sun porch's windows again. D'oh! "What happened?" guhs the Dolt as the three glance around the center parlor. The yellow walls of the hall and stairwell appear to have been repainted lavender, and there's some unfamiliar furniture littering the floor. "Where's Victor?" Patty wonders, for she is as stupid as everyone else on this awful, evil, awful, wicked, awful, CANCELLED! show and so does not realize that the repainted walls and unfamiliar furniture add up to the fact that some time traveling has occurred. Piper picks her way across the carpet and finds the familiar stuffed bunny from the scene on one of the unfamiliar end tables, only the bunny's now worn and grey. "Now where are we?" she grumbles. In an answer to that question that's totally not, a woman's voice shouts out off-camera, "Triple-word score!" A gentleman's voice immediately disputes that claim, and Piper, Patty, and the Dolt edge around the corner to find an elderly couple playing Scrabble on the sun porch. The woman's fabulous mane of glossy white hair betrays the fact that she's Old Piper, while the gentleman's appearance on this show as Mack Daddy Grandpa in Piper's Retard-induced dream world betrays the fact that he's Old Dolt. The elderly marrieds are playing the game with the Book of Shadows plonked down on the table to the board, the reason for which becomes clear when Old Dolt querulously demands of his younger self, "How do you spell Zankou -- with a Z or an X?" They've rejiggered the rules so they can only play the names of demons they've vanquished, you see, and are using the Book as a dictionary. And sad to say, I think I'd kick both of their asses were I a part of the game. Javnah. Abraxas. Cryto. Vinceres. Raynor and Vornac. Clea and Corr. Gammill and Ludlow and Rowan and Orin and Jeric and Dyson and Malvoc and Vassen and Katya and Imara and Vicus and The Dread Bunyip and see what's happened to my brain? God, I hate this show.
"That's cheating!" Old Piper chides. "I'm not asking you," Old Dolt sniffs, "I'm asking me." He points a gnarled finger at, um, I can't really call him "Young Dolt," can I? Because, you know...not so much. Yeah. Dolt Dolt freaks for a bit, exchanging gape-mouthed goggles with the wife, before offering his older self, "Z." Old Piper grimaces, because that would have been a pretty sweet fifty-one points, but she removes the tiles as her younger self, still not getting it, begins, "Are you...?" "The future you and [Dolt]," Old Dolt confirms, and I suppose here's as good a point as any to note that they outdid themselves with the casting of Old Piper. Ellen Geer really could pass as Holly Marie Combs's older self, though it is a bit insulting that this 64-year-old actress is supposed to be, without benefit of prosthetics, an 83-year-old woman in this scene. Whatever. Last! Episode! Ever! "We've been expecting you," Old Dolt continues, and Old Piper backs this up by offering the arrivals the chocolate-chip cookies she'd baked in anticipation of their visit. Patty and Dolt Dolt are delighted. Meanwhile, Piper Piper's wondering when she's going to be done with the stupid fucking Wacky Wiccan Hijinks already. Thirty-one minutes and thirty seconds, doll. Hooray! The spunky elderly marrieds twinkle in the soft, warm light of the sun porch for a moment before vanishing into the first commercial break.
Future Sun Porch. Aftermath. "I just don't understand how..." Piper Piper begins. "You were aiming for Grams, but you weren't specific enough," Old Piper explains, chuckling for whatever reason, "so you came to the future where you're the Grams instead, and here I am!" Piper Piper's as shocked as the audience to discover that Big Gay Chris and "I Conjured The Village People For My Third Birthday" Jesus have spawned. "Blows your mind, doesn't it?" Old Piper grins. You have no idea, old lady. The Dolt wants to know how the elderly marrieds knew they were coming. "Because fifty years ago," Old Dolt reveals, "we were sitting there where you're sitting, talking to our future selves." And they make note of the date during this scene...when, exactly? Oh, that's right: Never, because this show sucks, and I want to die, but WHATEVER! because CANCELLED! Hooray! Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Old Dolt and Old Piper wax nostalgic for a very lengthy while before Old Piper begins to instruct their younger selves on what, precisely, they'll need to accomplish in order to save Phoebe and Raige. This leads to the following exchange:
Old Dolt: Ah-ah-ah! Don't say too much, hon. We don't want them to mess up the future.
Piper Piper And The Entire Viewing Audience, Vastly Diminished Though That Audience Might Be: Isn't it already messed up?
Old Dolt, condescendingly, as if this were entirely obvious: Oh, no!
The Entire Viewing Audience, But Not Piper Piper, Because She Is An Idiot: Wait. What? How?
Old Dolt: ...
The Entire Viewing Audience: [Unintelligible garglings of rage, followed by several choice deleted expletives.]
If you really must wank out an explanation for all this, though, you could think back to The Angel Of Teasley's line at the end of the last episode regarding the unexpected outcome of the final battle, and interpret it to mean that the Destined result did not include the destruction of the Manor and the deaths of...oh, my holy Christ, what the fuck am I doing? Who cares at this point? CANCELLED!
"You keep using the ring," Old Piper instructs her younger self, "but focus on who you want to go to with your heart, not with your head." Old Dolt assures them that this method will, in fact, lead them first to Grams, then eventually to Phoebe and Raige. "But what do we do when we get there?" Patty wonders. "How do we save them?" "You get rid of The Hollow together," Old Piper replies, placing particular emphasis on that final word. Piper activates Stoop's ring, and the screen flares pink to whisk our intrepid adventurers...
...about five feet from where they'd been sitting. D'oh! Also, riddle me this: How did they start this leg of the journey seated on the wicker sun porch furniture with Piper on the Dolt's right and Patty on his left, only to end up standing in the middle of the sun porch floor with Piper and Patty's positions reversed? Oh, fuck it. CANCELLED! The three dart their eyes around the room for a bit before Patty hesitantly opines, "I think we're back in my time, now." The conversation they stumble upon in the main parlor quickly proves that supposition wrong, though. Our three intrepid adventurers tiptoe over to hide themselves behind the doorframe separating the porch from the rest of the first floor and eavesdrop as Grams -- hi, Grams! -- tells a sniffling Preadolescent Piper, "You're more than okay, sweetie. You're very, very special, and you need to know that." "I'm not as special as Prue," Preadolescent Piper, a martyr even at that tender age, protests. "Or even Phoebe," she continues, whining a bit. "Everyone likes Phoebe." I think my head just exploded. Do I tell Preadolescent Piper that she needs to realize that everyone likes Phoebe because Phoebe's easy, or do I direct Preadolescent Piper's attention to the forum boards, where hardly anyone likes Phoebe at all, especially because Phoebe's easy? Decisions, decisions. Decisions that I don't have to make, actually, because CANCELLED! "But you're special in your own way, Piper," Grams assures her, and you know I love Grams and everything, but do I really have to transcribe the tongue bath she proceeds to give Preadolescent Piper's ego? Didn't think so. Besides, why bother with that when I can point and laugh at the horrendous auburn wig they've saddled poor Jennifer Rhodes with for this evening's festivities? I realize they're trying to make her look Grams's supposed age in this scene, which should be about fifty, but Jennifer Rhodes -- fabulous though she is -- has gotten a little too jowly over the last few years to pull that one off, so the unsettling, unnaturally colored tangle of hair's just making her look like Bea Arthur as Sarah Jessica Parker in that Sex And The City parody from TV Land that I keep seeing at Sidetrack. (Abe Vigoda's Mr. Big. It's gruesome.) Anyway, Grams eventually shoos Preadolescent Piper upstairs, then rises from the parlor sofa with a start when she realizes intruders are lurking on the sun porch. "Who's there?" Grams barks. Before Piper can stop her, Patty smiles, "It's okay, Mom -- it's just me." "Patty?" Grams yelps before rolling her eyes into the back of her head and dropping to the floor in a dead faint as the soundtrack quite literally goes, "Wah. Wah. Waaaaaaaaah." Patty gasps and races to her unconscious mother's side. "Why'd she faint?" she demands of her daughter. "Probably because you're dead," Piper snorts. Ah, Piper. Always with the tact. Patty tosses her overly glossed lips around in shock.
Not!warts, and WE DID NOT MISS YOU STUPID PEOPLE AT ALL. Long story short, Fugly Rufus guides Maggot Neck through a meditation ritual so The Ultimate Retard might project herself into the past to reconnect with...The Zombie Triad! Muah-ha-ha-zzzzzzzzzzzz. Bimbo Girl issss sssshocked and appalled. NO ONE CARES, RETARD. !
Back in 1982, Patty tends to the still-woozy Grams in the parlor while Piper and the Dolt chat about recent events out in the hall. Piper notes the Dolt's suddenly fretful disposition, and wonders what gives. The Dolt reveals that he's certain that, should all go as planned, it'll mean The Ultimate Battle will once more have yet to be fought, and that means it's extremely likely The Angel Of Teasley will cascade back into the Manor to whisk him once more up to her great big Sub-Zero in the sky. Piper announces that they'll fall off that bridge when they get to it. In the meantime, they've got a recovering Grams to deal with. "What happened?" she snaps upon waking. "It's okay -- you just fainted," Patty assures her. "Well, of course I fainted!" Grams peeves. "You're dead!" Hee. Grams then gives Continuity a swift uppercut to the jaw when she wonders who Piper is. Oh, Grams. Why you gotta be as stoopid as everyone else on this godforsaken show? You know who Piper is because you met her on March 24, 1975. Grams slowly absorbs the information she should have already known and takes a moment before announcing, "I need a drink." You and me both. Oy. And Grams does my failing liver no favors when she goes on to greet, with unseemly amounts of surprise and delight, Patty's news that the preadolescent trio of Ps currently plaguing the 1982 Manor goes on to become the Charmed Ones. Grams. YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY. To her credit, though, once she realizes her granddaughters are in danger, she wastes not a moment to leap to her feet all-business, demanding, "What do we have to do to save them?"
Not!warts and NOT CARING. The Ultimate Retard, crossssssss-legged on the floor of the Library, hisssssssssessss, "Chrissssty! Chrissssty! Chrissssty!" Get this: That last "Chrissssty!" proceeds to echo and overlap on the soundtrack, so all I'm hearing is "SSSssssssSSSSssssssSSSSSS!" until the projection-mojo noise replaces it as the Library and Fugly Rufus smear around in the background of the shot. The Ultimate Retard openssss her eyessss to find ssshe'ssss transsssported hersssself to the Manor'ssss ssssecond-floor hall, pressssumably the previoussss evening jusssst prior to the final battle. We get confirmation of this when Yesterday's Maggot Neck and Yesterday's Openly Deranged Chrissssty descend from the attic, fresh from sucking up The Dead-Eyed Psycho's powers, and vasssst issss the hissssssssing that followssss when The Retardssss confront each other. Long sssstory sssshort, Yessssterday'ssss Maggot Neck telekinetically flingssss Tomorrow'ssss Maggot Neck into a wall, and sssshe and her openly deranged ssssisssster continue towardssss the lower sssstairs.
They arrive on the main floor in time to see The Hollowed Manor Morons orb onto the sun porch, and the pre-battle sniping repeats itself. However, this time around, at the moment the two sets of witches unleash their bolts of deadly mojo at each other, Tomorrow's Piper hearts into the dining room unnoticed, along with Grams, Patty, and the Dolt. The just-arrived women recite The Hollow's banishing spell, and despite the fact that the original spell required the participation of a dark demonic force sent from the flaming maw of Hell, it works anyway. The deadly bolts shoot back into the battling witches' bodies, and The Hollow buzzes up from each of their faces to stream away into the night. Tomorrow's Piper edges into Yesterday's Piper's line of vision, eliciting a "What the hell?" from the latter. "Don't ask," snorts Tomorrow's Piper. "You'll get a headache." Tomorrow'ssss Retard alightssss on the sssstairwell landing at thissss point and lingerssss there until sssshe'ssss caught up in a pink flare that sssshootssss her into Yessssterday'ssss Retard'ssss body. Same thing happens to the Pipers. "Looks like time caught up with itself," opines the Dolt, and no, it didn't, not really, because Tomorrow's Piper and Retard are still several hours ahead of Yesterday's Piper and Retard at this point, but I'm not going to argue, because I'm twenty-two minutes and twenty-nine seconds away from FREEDOM, and CANCELLED!
Reconstituted Piper does not immediately deploy The Mighty Hands Of Discontent upon her unwelcome houseguests' worthless asses, because Reconstituted Piper is an idiot, thereby allowing Reconstituted Retard enough time to smash the potion vial she'd toted from Tomorrow's Not!warts onto the floor. Maggot Neck and Openly Deranged Chrissssty disappear in a cloud of teleportative smoke. "Dammit!" Piper grumbles. Hey, it's your own stupid fault, honey. Don't go bitching about it now. And if you think that's bad, doll, it's about to get a little bit worse. Patty barely has time to puzzle over The Late Lamented's absence when The Angel Of Teasley arrives in a magnificent cascade of golden light. "I'm sorry," she apologizes to Piper, "but I have no choice." Just as quickly as she appeared, she then dematerializes with the Dolt, that little golden ball of hers dancing around on the sun porch for a moment before darting into the commercial break.
Manor Parlor. Aftermath. The Glamorous Grandladies join The Manor Morons for a processing summit during which Phoebe and Raige are brought up to speed on both recent and distant events. "If I'm gonna get my husband back," Piper concludes, "we have a battle to finish." "And we have to get Mom back safely," Phoebe adds, "otherwise, [Raige] and I won't be born." "Well, fantastic!" Raige sarcastically puckers. "Are there any other problems we should be worrying about?" Your answer, Raige, is arriving now in a swirling cloud of glowing golf balls. Big Gay Chris! And Boring Jesus! SQUEEEE! Sad, isn't it? I'm coming perilously close to the point where I can officially say I'm pushing forty, and I've been reduced to the level of obnoxious and squealy fangirls just because my pretty, pretty husband is back on this awful, evil, awful, wicked, awful, stupid, awful, CANCELLED! show. "What are you two doing here?" Piper hoots with only mild surprise, likely because after the day she's had, it'll take a lot more than her flaming adult sons arriving from the future to shock her. Boring Jesus just gets this doofy and Dolt-like apologetic grin on his face. Meanwhile, Big Gay Chris -- clearly his mother's son -- instantly pisses, "Somebody just screwed with our future!" The assembled ladies gape.
Out on the Paramount backlot, Chrissssty and Maggot Neck break up, and that'ssss all you need to know about that, because I'm heading back to the Manor, where...
...my adorable husband is explaining why he and my boring brother-in-law traveled into the past. "We don't know what happened -- one minute, everything's fine, we're kicking demon ass," he begins before Boring Jesus interrupts with, "Actually, I was kicking some demon ass," and shut up, Boring Jesus, and let my husband finish his story. Basically, in the middle of a fight, Boring Jesus suddenly lost his powers, so the boys cast a spell to take them to the point the powers went bye-bye, and I didn't realize this until I just now typed it out, but that doesn't make any fucking sense at all. Why would they cast a spell to take themselves to the point where Boring Jesus lost his powers when, from their perspective, they already knew when he lost his powers, which was in the middle of that fight? THIS SHOW IS GOING TO KILL ME. However. None of that is important, because of one thing that happened during that entire exchange. Big Gay Chris apologized to Grams for using the word "ass," and Boring Jesus reacted to this by getting all verklempt and going, "Grams? You mean, the Grams?" which can be interpreted in a number of ways. The way you will interpret it is this, because I said so: For whatever reason, Grams stops visiting the Manor from the afterlife at some point in the very near future, which is why Boring Jesus doesn't recognize her. Big Gay Chris does know who she is, however, because his Season Six self didn't really die and fade away, to be replaced by a series of fugly little blubber wads who would have no reason to return to 2003 from 2026 because the Dolt zapped Snidely to death and The Dead-Eyed Psycho grew up to become Boring Jesus and blah blah wah. No, Big Gay Chris's Season Six self evidently faded out of 2004 and shot straight forward into 2026, where he merged with his alternate-future self to retain both sets of memories in much the same way his mother just did a couple of scenes ago. Why is this more important than anything else that's happening in this scene? Because it's about Big Gay Chris. Duuuuuh. You think I give a rat's ass about anybody else on this stupid show?
Anyway, Piper quickly connects the loss of Boring Jesus's powers to The Retard Sisters' abuse of The Hollow, and vows to kill them. Phoebe proposes they jump into the past again to prevent Maggot Neck and Chrissssty from absorbing The Hollow in the first place, but Piper complains that they have no idea when, exactly, that happened, and they do, because it happened at the same time they themselves absorbed The Hollow, and WHATEVER!, and CANCELLED! Boring Jesus assures her that his bemulleted and dead-eyed Psycho self will know the answer to all that, so he and Big Gay Chris prepare to orb over to Chez Victor to consult with the little freak. Patty jumps to join them, eager to see what her beloved Victor looks like "at this age," and there's a round of eye-rolling and mugging from her mother and her daughters because 1975 Patty doesn't know what 1976 Patty did with Sam Sam The Whitelighting...is this scene over yet? It feels like it's been going on for three years. In any event, just as they're about to depart, Stoop hearts in to take back his ring, and Boring Jesus blows yet another future secret by blurting out, "Uncle [Stoop]!" Big Gay Chris -- God love him -- pissily whacks his brother hard on the arm while Phoebe goes nuts with the spluttering and the outrage and such. Piper flutters around, ordering her sons and her mother off in one orbing direction before joining her sisters and her grandmother to flee the Manor in another, leaving a befuddled Stoop to hot his hot self over to the sun porch, where he huffs and pouts and hots and are we done here? Good.
Chez Victor. The gentleman in question sits in his robe at the dining room table, steeping a teabag in a mug while gazing bleakly at a toy chicken, but I'm not really paying attention to anything that's going on in this scene because Drew Fuller's name just app-- whoops. What I meant to say was, Victor gazes bleakly at a toy chicken until he hears a knock at the apartment's door. This time when he leaps over to answer, however, he finds not his sole surviving daughter standing in the hall with her freshly unfrozen husband, but rather his overexuberant and dead ex-wife with their two gay adult grandsons from the future. And that is the most bizarre sentence I've ever typed in my entire life. "Yaaaaaah!" Victor screams as Patty hops into his arms. There's a cute little scene in which 1975 Patty at long last learns what 1976 Patty did with Sam Sam The Whitelighting Man before Daddy Dearest sends Big Gay Chris and Boring Jesus off to consult with their younger selves. The screen flares white to escort us over to...
...Not!warts and STILL NOT CARING. Chrissssty and Fugly Rufus bang their weeny little heads together to figure out a different way of reaching The Zombie Triad now that Maggot Neck and Chrissssty have broken up. !
The Hagquarters. Piper and Grams bicker over a smoking pot brimming with Retard-destroying potion when someone raps at The Hagquarters's door. Raige answers to find her long-lost husband loitering in the hall. Darling Henry! So nice to see you again! I'm afraid I must inform you, though, that you are now my second-favorite gentleman on this show, because my adorable husband has returned from the future. Sorry! Raige and Henry banter. Over in the kitchenette, Grams mutters darkly, "Don't tell me she married a Whitelighter, too." "Worse," Piper smirks, "a mortal." "Oh, good God!" Grams cringes. "Didn't I teach you girls anything?" Piper's all, "Eh, whatever. There's always 'Uncle [Stoop].'" With that she gestures dismissively towards the boudoir, where we find Phoebe and Stoop in a heated discussion about their relationshzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Wow. I swear to God, Victor Webster's, like, three feet taller than Alyssa Milano. Couldn't she have stood on a box for these scenes? It's terribly distracting. Not as distracting as his almost debilitating hotness, you understand, but still. Have they shut up about their boring issues yet? They haven't? I'm going for a cigarette, then. Back in a few.
Hi. Oh, my God. They're still talking. Long story short, Phoebe blows him off again, some more, though she seems to realize that "Uncle Stoop" thing will have to be dealt with at some point in the future. As she exits to rejoin the others in the Hagquarters proper, Fugly Rufus silently squiggles in behind Stoop, grabs his arm, and squiggles out again. DUN!
Manor. Raige orbs into the parlor with her sisters, her grandmother, and the Book of Shadows. "Okay!" she perks upon coagulating on the carpet. "All we need to do now is find [Maggot Neck and Chrissssty]!" "You don't have to look far," The Ultimate Retard bleatssss assss sssshe enterssss the parlor from the foyer. "Can we talk?" NO. BLOW HER UP, PIPER. BLOW HER UP NOW. Unfortunately, Piper ignores me, choosing instead to stare the vacant, vapid, slackjawed, dull-eyed, mouthbreathing atrocity down until everyone vanishes into the commercial break. DAMMIT.
Back from the break, Maggot Neck hissssssssessss out a sssseriessss of excussssessss and apologiessss for her recssssent behavior that neither the assembled ladies nor I wish to hear, so let's skip ahead to the point where my adorable husband and his boring brother arrive on the sun porch from Chez Victor to share what they learned from The Dead-Eyed Psycho. Which is nothing, actually, because they apparently just asked Daddy Dearest when The Psycho disappeared: Shortly before five in the evening the day before. Bimbo Girl revealssss what we already know about The Psycho's abduction, and Piper snarls something ferocious in her direction before Phoebe starts calling out Stoop's name. They need his ring again, you see, to return to a point earlier in the timeline in order to prevent Fugly Rufus, Openly Deranged Chrissssty, and The Zombie Triad from doing something undoubtedly wicked, but I totally don't care about any of that, because now I'm wondering how in the hell they're going to follow their hearts to the goddamned Zombie Triad. This stupid show. Whatever! Moving on! By the way, when the Feebs started bellowing for Stoop, Big Gay Chris and Boring Jesus exchanged a couple of Looks Fraught With Significance. Just so you know. He's so pretty. Sigh. Anyway, Stoop of course does not appear, which leads to much worry and dismay until Big Gay Chris and Drama-Queen Jesus heave meaningful sighs. "What?" Piper snaps at them. Hee. "The [Ever-Useless] Elders," my husband explains to his bony hag of an aunt, "sent [Stoop] down to you not just to help you find love, but to help you find him." Boring Jesus adds something I'll not be transcribing because it reiterates the vomitous notion that Phoebe somehow sacrificed more of herself over the last eight years than any of her sisters did. After that passes, my pretty, pretty husband continues, "They weren't going to put you through what Mom and Dad went through, so..." "...it wasn't and it will not be a forbidden love," Boring Jesus concludes. Phoebe, flabbergasted, waffles around for a little bit before getting to the point. "I don't understand how that information helps us right now," she admits. By way of response, she receives a load of bullshit about how she and Stoop are "as one" in the future, and how she just has to think about him to have him appear. So, Phoebe closes her eyes, thinks real hard for a moment, and Stoop hearts on in. I hate this show. He's somewhat worse for the wear after his struggles against Fugly Rufus, and is forced to admit that "some demon" absconded with his ring. Unforgivably, Maggot Neck's the one who putssss two and two together. "We're too late," sssshe realizessss. "They're going back in time, but I can, too."
Cut to a shot of the Manor façade, above which time reverses itself to the day. Over in Not!warts, Tomorrow's Fugly Rufus hearts into The Inky Chamber Of I Forgot What I Called It Last Week And I'll Be Damned If I Go Back And Look It Up Because CANCELLED! And Last! Episode! Ever! And Eight Minutes And Fifty-Four Seconds To FREEDOM with Tomorrow's Openly Deranged Chrissssty. Tomorrow's Fugly Rufus barely has time to blurt out an explanation for the benefit of Yesterday's Fugly Rufus and The Zombie Triad before The Manor Morons plus Maggot Neck flare in at the opposite end of the chamber. The Glamorous Ladies hurl vanquishing vials at The Zombie Triad, who howl and wail until they detonate into shards of ghostly demonic goo. "Noooooo!" Tomorrow's Fugly Rufus screams. "Yes!" Piper smirks, right before she unleashes The Mighty Hands Of Discontent upon his annoying ass. Yesterday's Fugly Rufus attempts to squiggle out of there, but The Mighty Hands connect with him as well, and the Rufi blaze their merry little ways down to The Waste Land.
, Raige deploys her orbing telekinesis to retrieve Stoop's ring from Chrissssty's finger. Chrissssty, in a fury, conjures a billowing cloud of pyrokinetic energy that she sends flying towards her faithless and oddly proportioned ssssisssster. The Ultimate Retard reflexively flings out her hands, and the resulting telekinetic burst inadvertently redirects the thing straight back into Chrissssty. Chrissssty go boom. FINALLY. Kaley Cuoco drops to her knees to "emote," dissolving into heaving sobs of "agony" and "grief" and "runny mascara," and I laugh and I laugh and I laugh some more. God, she's wretched. The Glamorous Ladies have the good grace to feign concern before everyone disappears into the final -- the very final, as in "Last! One! Ever!" final -- commercial break.
Sun Porch. Grams paces restlessly while Stoop, Big Gay Chris, and Boring Jesus lounge around on the wicker furniture. I find that oddly amusing. Anyway, Piper presently hearts onto the sun porch with Phoebe and Raige to ensure everything's back to normal. Boring Jesus confirms this by orbing to her side and rather self-satisfactorily smugging, "I got my powers back!" Brief mention is made of The Retarded Bimbo's current location, but nobody EVER cared about her goddamned stupid SUCKY ass, so WHATEVER. The delightful Angel Of Teasley chooses this moment to cascade into the Manor to return the Dolt to his rightful owners. Piper shares a giddy little smile with him before shifting into her always-expect-the-worst mode to demand, "You're not gonna take him away again. Right?" "No," The Angel Of Teasley beams. "This is the way the battle was supposed to end all along, and it's over. Congratulations." And with that, she dematerializes upward. Piper and the Dolt race into a hug, followed almost immediately by Stoop and the Feebs. Everyone else present giggles and applauds. Yawn. Patty and Victor arrive with Tiny Gay Chris and The Dead-Eyed Psycho, and there are just waaaaaay too many Manor Morons on the sun porch at the moment, so let's cut to the chase, shall we? Stoop is to escort Grams and Patty back to their respective times. Big Gay Chris reminds him to arrive just before they were taken, as this will ensure they remember nothing about their jaunt to the future, for whatever reason that I cannot be bothered to understand at this point because I am five minutes and forty-six seconds away from FREEDOM because CANCELLED! and LAST! EPISODE! EVER! and I still have a lengthy and plot-tastic forward-looking montage to get through. Ooops! Spoiler!
God, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah. Grams wants to remember everything she experienced this evening, but Patty would like very much to forget about it all, especially "what happened to Prue." At this, the camera cuts over to Phoebe for an appropriately downcast reaction shot, like, you hypocritical bitch. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO GOT HER FIRED. "Oh, Mom," Piper sighs. "It's all right," Patty claims with a brave little face. "I know everything happens for a reason -- I believe that." In other words, fuck you, Shannen Doherty. "I also know," Patty continues, brightening a bit, "that when one door closes, another one opens," and this has suddenly become less about The Late Lamented and more about the fact that at this point, no one present will ever have so steady a job again. Not that the four leads particularly need jobs after the millions they've raked in over the last eight years, but still. In any event, the family reunion degenerates into an unscripted hugfest that puts Victor Webster in dangerously close proximity to Drew Fuller, and my poor, battered brain just went to a filthy, filthy place. Woof. Damn you, Charmed!
As they all snicker and chortle and giggle and whoop, the screen slowly cross-fades to pass up the Manor façade one last time before cross-fading again to the dining room, presumably on the following day. Phoebe and Raige are seated across from each other, nursing mugs of something soothing as Piper enters from above with the Book of Shadows, which she rather deliberately places upon the table in front of her sisters. "Don't tell me we have to go fight a demon," Raige grumps. "No," Piper allows, "I don't think we'll have to do that anytime soon." "So, what's with the Book?" Phoebe wonders. "Well, I think we should write everything down," Piper suggests. "Everything that happened and everything we want future generations to know, so we can pass it down, just like it was passed down to us." Haven't they been doing that all along? What is wrong with these morons? Oh, whatever. It's simply a flimsy excuse to push us into what follows, in which each sister narrates a voice-over that projects the audience into her future. By the way, the first time I watched this sequence, I thought it awkwardly written at best, because each seems to narrate in her present voice events far in the decades to come, but upon a second (and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth) viewing, it more or less becomes clear right away that they leap almost immediately from their present selves somehow looking forward to their future selves looking back.
Phoebe's the first to go, and she eagerly whips out a Sharpie to deface the priceless family heirloom with the following scrawl: "So much has happened over the last eight years -- so much has been gained and lost -- still, in some ways, I feel as if my life is just beginning." And here's where they make the break from the present into the distant future, as present-day Phoebe stops narrating long enough for us to witness her marriage to Stoop, officiated by the delightful Angel Of Teasley in the restored Not-So-Great Hall of Not!warts. Phoebe looks lovely, if a little too thin, but I still think Rose McGowan made this show's best-looking bride. Present are the primary family members, with Piper off to Phoebe's side as Matron Of Honor and Raige apparently acting as Stoop's Best Mug. Piper, incidentally, is clutching Phoebe's bouquet against her torso, the better to disguise the fact that Holly Marie Combs is, by now, seven thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight months pregnant.
As Phoebe and Stoop exchange vows, Future Phoebe picks up the narrative thread with "And it was, for though I had loved before, I'd never really known love until I met [Stoop]." As the bride and groom kiss, the shot cross-fades to The Hagquarters, where the heavily pregnancy-padded and obviously in-labor Feebs staggers from the boudoir towards the front door, Stoop comically fumbling with the wife's overnight bag in the background. Future Phoebe continues to voice-over, "[Stoop was the] man [with whom] I shared the special little girl I had long ago foreseen but feared I might never have" -- two Hagulitas here assault the Feebs before she's made it halfway across the floor, shouting, "We love you, Mommy!" -- "along with two other special little girls I had not foreseen." "I was suddenly so blessed to have a new family of my own," Future Phoebe blathers on, seemingly endlessly, as Stoop and the Feebs finally make it to the front door and exit into the hallway. The camera swings back around through The Hagquarters to find The Retarded Bimbo waving goodbye at the departing couple with Phoebe's kids as Future Phoebe adds, "And old friends to share it with." Kaley Cuoco finally looks almost decent, what with her grown-up-lady coif and flatteringly hued blouse, but who cares? CANCELLED! The camera cross-fades from Bimbo Girl and The Hagulitas to take in a demurely attired Phoebe at All The News That's Fit To Fuck Me. Looks like she finally took Phrances's advice and stopped dressing like a tramp. "Though I kept working and giving advice to those who asked, I was more interested in helping them find love," Future Phoebe concludes, "since finally having been loved." And I'm not going to touch that ass line with a bargepole, nor will I address the ludicrous poster above her head, in which she sports a suit Maria apparently returned from the grave to fashion from what remains, after all this time, of the Captain's draperies, because I am three minutes and one second away from FREEDOM!
Future Raige picks up the narration, even though we rather confusingly see Present-Day Raige for a moment penning her thoughts in the Book of Shadows as her voice-over begins. "As for me?" she asks rhetorically. "Life without demons opened up similar avenues." We fade over to Darling Henry frog-marching a perp through Trudeau Memorial, formerly Andy's House Of Beef, formerly The Loneliest Precinct House In The World, as Future Raige notes, "Henry, of course, continued to look after his parolees, even if they didn't want to be looked after, while still making time to help me with Little Henry and the twins." By this point, the camera's cut over to Raige, sporting a pair of dork-chic tortoise-shell eyeglasses, grinning in front of the precinct's filing cabinets with a trio of incredibly dork-tastic children. The overwhelming dorkaliciousness of the entire Matthews-Mitchell family makes oddly compelling sense. Darling Henry scoops all three of his dorkitudinal children up into his arms at the same time -- which seriously makes me want to propose marriage in Massachusetts to Ivan Sergei -- as Raige finishes, "[This] allowed me time to finally embrace my inner Whitelighter, and to help the generation of witches to come into their own." We've found ourselves in a dank and forbidding alleyway, where a Darklighter's just squeezed the trigger on his crossbow. As the arrow zips towards Raige, she deploys her orbing telekinesis to redirect the thing back into the Darklighter's chest, and Darklighter go boom. Raige helps a nearby paisley-patterned granny-blouse victim to her feet.
"[Raige] could pass on all that she learned," Future Piper begins, as we get yet another unnecessarily confusing shot of her Present-Day self, "not just to her own children, or to mine, or to Phoebe's, but to other future witches and Whitelighters as well." During all that, we've watched as Piper and the Dolt send their three children off to school. Yes, three, for they apparently add a daughter to their brood at some point to complete the whole "Power of Three times three" thing we've got going in this montage. As the shot fades up to the nonexistent attic to take in Big Gay Chris and Boring Jesus looking incredibly girly while flinging potion ingredients into the copper pot, Future Piper continues, "[This] filled the time between when we were doing the fighting, and when our kids were old enough to take over." The pot emits a small cloud of smoke, through which a somewhat older Piper emerges to test a sauce she's preparing down in the kitchen as her voice-over carries on with "allowing me time to get back to my roots and cook something other than potions for once -- and open the restaurant I'd always dreamed of owning." In a lovely little call-back to the very first episode, she decides the sauce needs a bit more wine. Of course, this time around, she doesn't need to freeze some fugly toad of a faux-French fucker in order to do so. It's a nice moment. "As for [the Dolt]," Future Piper continues as we cut back over to Not!warts, "after we reclaimed [Not!warts], he went back to teaching, which he continued to do until it was time to retire." The Dolt's instructing a class of third-graders on the finer points of orbing telekinesis, and the shooting script indicated that the kid he fondly addresses as Matthew is actually their eldest grandson. Just so you know.
"Although we've certainly had our struggles," Future Piper begins, but before she's made it halfway through that phrase, her voice has been overlaid with Old Piper's, who continues, "and heartaches over the years, we're a family of survivors, and we will always be, which is why we've truly been CANCELLED!" Whoops. "'Charmed.'" They've truly been charmed, is what she said. In any event, we've landed upon Old Piper in an overstuffed armchair in the Manor parlor, reading that last bit aloud to her youngest granddaughter. The youngest granddaughter is a wee yet miserable excuse for an actress, but I'm going to gloss over that fact because I am quite seriously thirty-six seconds away from FREEDOM! The Wee Yet Miserable Excuse For An Actress begs, "Again, Grandma, again!" Old Piper chuckles, "I can't -- I need to rest." As she pushes herself out of the armchair, she passes the Book to The Wee Yet Miserable Excuse For An Actress. "You can look at it for a little while if you'd like," Old Piper smiles, kissing The Wee Yet Miserable Excuse For An Actress on the latter's forehead. "After all, it'll be yours one day." Old Piper joins Old Dolt in the foyer, and the elderly marrieds head up the stairs for a little geriatric nookie. As they pass the lower landing, we note the older portraits of the gals' Victorian ancestors that had lined the stairwell have been replaced with more recent photographs, including ones of The Dead-Eyed Psycho looking foul-hearted and evil and Tiny Gay Chris looking brain-damaged and doomed. Also up on the wall are Piper and the Dolt's wedding photo, the portrait of Grams first seen seven years ago, the shot of Patty reading to a four-year-old Piper from the fifth-season premiere, and, finally, a cluster of new shots including the Dolt with the kids, Big Gay Chris and Mangy Jesus hanging all over each other, and Patty and Victor. As Old Dolt and Old Piper climb the final steps to the second floor, they pass a large version of that photograph of The Reconstituted Charmed Ones we last saw in the Manor rubble. Prue? Who her? The camera cuts back down to the foyer, where four obnoxious preadolescents tumble through the front door, leaving it open as they pass. The Wee Yet Miserable Excuse For An Actress flaps her hand around, becoming the last Halliwell to shut the front door at season's end, because CANCELLED!
And can you believe there are still fifteen seconds to go? Fortunately, those fifteen seconds are taken up by nothing more than a slow pan upwards and outwards from the Manor's front door as it gently clicks shut while a glowy triquatra materializes in an overlay on the screen before we finally -- and I do mean finally -- fade to black.
FREE! WE'RE FREEEEEEEEEEEE!