Charmed S03 E03 – Not those kinds of tweens.

Previously: Piper and Leo tried to get married. It went poorly
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Once Upon a Time

Stephanie: Piper is tending to the bar at P^3 when Leo comes in. He needs to talk with her, but first they have to get their no-chemistry kissing on. When they break away, Leo says that he came to say goodbye because The Powers That Be won’t ever let them be together and all the usual nonsense we’ve been over a zillion times. His voice gets all dream-echoey and Piper can’t hear what he’s saying anymore even though it still sounds pretty clear to me. He backs away, mouths, “I love you,” and tinkles away. It’s a bit early for my gag-reflex to kick in, but there it is.

Marines: Charmed: It’s Never Too Early For Your Gag-Reflex™

Steph: Piper calls out for Leo until Prue shakes her awake and we transition to her bedroom. She cries because Leo isn’t coming back and TPTB are destroying her life. Whenever Piper cries I feel less sorry for her, which is probably not the reaction that Holly Marie Combs is trying to evoke from the audience. Her cry-acting is not great.

Mari: One of the things I thought I knew from my sporadic watching of this series when it was airing was that Holly Marie Combs was the best actress on the show…? I don’t know if this is indicative of how wrong I was in my youth or of the terrible things to come.

Steph: Probably a bit of both?

Prue comforts Piper with a hug. She should get a medal for dealing with her ridiculous sisters without being tempted to move into her own place.

Meanwhile, Phoebe is driving and jamming to music in Prue’s car. Prue calls and Phoebe answers by loudly saying, “Don’t you just love cell phones!?” Uh… what? (M: Someone in the writer’s room was having feelings.) Phoebe says she’ll have Prue’s car back in one piece, but Prue is actually calling because she’s worried about Piper. Come on, her boyfriend was force-tinkled away on her wedding day. Give a girl some time to cry it out. I definitely don’t want to see all the crying scenes, but her reaction to the situation is hardly unreasonable.

Anyway, Phoebe breaks suddenly because there’s a child on the road. She hangs up and checks on the kid, who’s holding a little lockbox and yelling at nothingness that it can’t have it and to leave her alone. She runs away, but doesn’t make it very far before she falls over and is briefly attacked by weird gremlin sound effects. Phoebe runs over to her and sees that the girl has claw marks on her shoulder.

I AM THE SAHN.

We skip over the establishing shots and crappy music and jump straight back to the manor. WTF? This isn’t the same show I’ve grown to hate-yet-be-amused-by.

Mari: That’s like a prime 45 seconds I get to fast forward every episode. I feel cheated.

Steph: I didn’t even consider that this omission resulted in more to watch. What the heck, show?

Phoebe gives Box Girl a snack and the other P’s come in and tell her her parents are coming to pick her up. Phoebe wants to get Box Girl’s jacket from the car, but the keys are gone. Box Girl says the fairies probably hid them. Oh boy, I don’t know if I’m prepared for Charmed’s version of fairies. Phoebe convinces Box Girl to say a bit more about fairies since they talk about weird stuff in the manor all the time, but we all know they mostly just talk about Leo. Box Girl says that fairies hide things and Phoebe asks if she’s got a fairy in the box. Box Girl just makes shifty eyes, so that’s probably a yes.

Box Girl’s parents arrive and Box Girl comes running in and yelling to get away from the front doorway because it’s an “in between.” Apparently, that’s bad because there’s trolls there. Box Mom tells the P’s that Box Girl has been regressing back to imaginary friends since her divorce. Relax, lady, this kid looks like she’s five. Not-Dad picks up Box Girl and as they start to leave, she spots a troll/Small-person-in-bad-makeup straddling the door frame. No one else can see it.

When the Box family is gone, the P’s convene in the kitchen to discuss. For some reason, Piper can’t believe that Phoebe believes in fantastical things like fairies. Are you kidding me? She’s fucking an angel and they just rescued an impaled owl-man the other day, but fairies and trolls? Pfft. (M: Impaled owl-man. I’m dying.) She makes excuses for what’s been happening to Box Girl. Like, you know when you accidentally trip and get claw marks on your shoulder or when your parents get divorced so you hallucinate about little people? Normal kid stuff. Phoebe still wants to check the Book of Shadows because she’s the only one with any genre-awareness.

Bedtime at Box House. Box Mom kisses Box Girl goodnight and goes to turn off the light, but Box Girl stops her because the tweens will come in the dark.

Mari: PLEASE NO. NOT THE TWEENS. SOMEONE SAVE US.

Steph: Mom just ignores her and turns the lights out anyway. Maybe they’re trying to save money on the electricity bill. Box Girl protects her box as the gremlin sounds start up around her room. The voice starts laughing and the closet door opens. Box Girl screams.

Manor. Phoebe’s up in the attic researching. She shows Prue some drawings of their fairy friend from when they were children. She says they grew up and stopped seeing her, but she found some information in a non-BoS book. Fairies, trolls and elves live in a parallel world separated by a veil that’s only lifted in “tween” places. AKA doorways, windows, shadows, etc (not middle schooler kinds of tweens). (M: Well, this just got 100% less scary.) When Phoebe found Box Girl, it was midnight, the hour when the world becomes a tween. Phoebe explains that there’s nothing in the BoS because it was written by adults. So who wrote the book Phoebe is reading now? Babies and children? (M: Bitter tweens.) Prue thinks they should give Piper some time to mope about Leo while they figure things out on their own, but Phoebe thinks that’s an even better reason to make her come along. No, please, just let her cry off-screen.

Phoebe goes downstairs and gives Piper the fairy drawings and grabs the phone because it’s Cole time. I kind of like Cole right now because he wants to destroy the P’s, so we have a lot in common.

Cole flirts with Phoebe by using a cheat sheet of things she likes and asks her out to dinner.

  He moves the cheat sheet and reveals a map marking the location of the Book of Shadows with an excessive amount of circles. Unfortunately (or fortunately so we don’t have to watch any dates), Phoebe needs to rush off the phone to stop Piper from leaving the house, so she turns him down for now and hangs up. Cole shuts his sloppy book of evil, makes it disappear, and glares at nothing. That book is ridiculous. Get a binder or something. (M: Surely there is someone in hell that can hole punch.)

Phoebe and Prue try to stop Piper from leaving. Phoebe asks if she saw the fairy drawings, and Piper is like, “whatever, kids have imaginations.” Besides she’s done doing stuff for TPTB(c) since they only make her life miserable. So I guess she’s going to just leave a small child in danger because she’s sad about her crappy not-wedding. She pushes through her sisters and leaves.

Box House. Prue and Phoebe come over to question Box Girl about tween stuff. Box Girl is drawing a really good picture of trolls, and Prue is like, “hey I have one too,” and shows her own fairy drawing which is awful by comparison.

Prue tells her that they believe her, and that she needs to tell them everything so that they can help. Box Girl gives us the fairy lore run-down. The fairies rule the Enchanted Kingdom, but the trolls want to take over so they kidnapped the fairy princess, Thistle. Box Girl rescued Thistle from the cave she was being kept in, and now the trolls are coming after her at midnight. What in the world was this kid doing inside of a cave?

Mari: Her parents were too busy getting divorced? I don’t know. I got nothing.

Steph: Box Girl goes to her window to open the box and show Thistle to Prue and Phoebe, but they don’t see anything. She listens to the box and tells them Thistle has a way to make them innocent again and throws CGI sparkles at them. This makes them crack up laughing, so I guess that means they’re innocent. Isn’t this like, the 5th time something has made the P’s act young? I hope it doesn’t last the entire episode. Anyway, now when Box Girl opens the box, a pink fairy in a costume from party city flies out.

Later, Piper shows up at P^3 and finds Prue and Phoebe on the stage singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”

 Piper freezes the club and goes up to the stage to find out what’s going on and Prue and Phoebe both start talking at her in really annoying voices. It’s almost like they’ve never been in contact with an actual child before, but there was literally a child in the previous scene, so I have no explanation for this baffling acting choice.

Mari: I can only offer to distract you from that by directing you to whatever the hell Phoebe is wearing on her head and body and really all over.

Steph: I think I’ve gotten so used to the bad clothing that I don’t even notice it anymore. Now I’m upset with you for bringing it to my attention.

Baby Phoebe explains that they were hit with fairy dust and shows Piper by hitting her in the face with some. It doesn’t do anything except make her sneeze.

She unfreezes the club and walks away. The girls follow her and whine a lot. Piper thinks they’re trying to trick her into stopping her witch-strike, so she sends them home.

On their way out, Phoebe and Prue get attacked by a troll in the doorway. By attacked I mean the troll, who just looks like a regular human, zooms around a bit and it looks really stupid. Since they’ve got the key to Thistle’s box now, they decide to go home and wait for the trolls to come for them at midnight. While they go off to be witches, Piper wallows in self pity, looking at the card Leo got her that one time when she was in that other boring relationship. (M: Man, I had almost erased that floppy haired dude from my memory…) (S: I’m not carrying that memory alone.)

Manor. Prue and Phoebe come running in, yelling about too many doorways. The doorbell rings and they rush to get it. It’s Cole, of course. You’d think they might’ve run into him outside on their way in, but whatever. Cole is crouching and looking suspicious, but the girls are too busy trying their hardest to act like babies to notice. They attempt to get rid of him, but he asks if he can use the bathroom before he leaves, and they both have a good laugh about him needing to poop. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Cole looks confused, but otherwise doesn’t seem to notice anything is up. They act like huge weirdos every time he’s been around, so I don’t blame him.

  Cole enters the bathroom and then teleports up into the attic. He smiles when he spots the BoS.

Downstairs, Prue and Phoebe contact Box Girl over walkie talkie. She’s freaking out about all the stupid sound effects in her room. Phoebe tells her not to be scared and to keep the lights on. The trolls will come for them instead because they’ve got the key.

Up in the attic, Cole reaches for The Book, but it starts to glow and flies away from him, so he turns into Darth Maul.

Mari: Um, yes. Exactly.

Steph: The Book’s not a big fan of this new look and moves away again.

The girls hear Cole being noisy and karate chop their way into the attic. Darth Cole disappears when they spot him, and baby P’s wonder what a demon has got to do with all of this, but it can wait because they still have to help Box Girl.

Mari: I cannot believe they first get a look at Cole Maul while Cole was in the house and NO ONE PUTS THIS TOGETHER. God help us for everything yet left to endure.

Steph: You mean you don’t want hours of exciting mystery as the girls try to figure out a demon we already know the identity of?

As Phoebe makes her way through the doorway, a troll jumps down into her shirt and motorboats her? Both girls panic and roll down the stairs in a way that would seriously injure most people, but instead just seems to make them not children anymore. Now the trolls have the key. Cole comes out of the bathroom, sans Sith lord get-up and asks if they’re alright.

Prue and Phoebe push Cole out of the house, and explain away their weird behavior as drunkenness and then getting undrunk by falling down the stairs. Something like that. With him gone, Phoebe asks Prue why they’re not making stupid voices anymore. Prue thinks the trauma knocked the innocence out of them.

Prue heads upstairs to find a way to see the trolls. She flips through the BoS for about three seconds and then pulls an idea out of her butt. They’ll combine an innocence spell, a spell to see the unseeable, and the power of three spell  to make a spell to see tweens. They’ll need Piper to freeze the trolls and probably learn an important lesson about not choosing boys over witchiness.

P^3 where the trolls are now attacking Piper. Phoebe calls and tells her that they need her home before midnight. Piper is starting to believe now that she’s being knocked onto the floor by invisible things. She agrees to help, and hangs up before Phoebe can warn her about staying out of tween places.

While Piper looks for her keys, the trolls continue to attack her. For creatures that are only supposed to be “in between” they sure do seem to be everywhere right now. Piper finally makes her way outside, but she’s pushed from the shadows into a conveniently placed beam of light. She starts throwing a tantrum, yelling at the sky toward TPTB that they’ve taken everything from her. She says she’d be a great witch-wife and demands that they send Leo back to her, or she’ll stay in the lot forever.

Sounds good to me. Seeya, girl.

Mari: If only.

Steph: Back at the manor, Phoebe and Prue are still waiting for Piper because she’s too busy being a big baby even without the fairy dust. Phoebe suggests that they do the spell without her, but they need the Power of Three. It’s not like Prue can just rewrite the spell in 6 minutes even though it only took her 3 seconds of flipping through the BoS to create it. It’s cool though because Piper finally arrives to bring everyone down. She joins them and they all recite the spell. It rhymes, which Phoebe for some reason doesn’t approve of even though all their spells sound like that.

Mari: Half of Phoebe’s schtick is not approving of things. 

Steph: Box House. The P’s make it to Box Girl’s room just as it turns midnight. The trolls appear and they all get attacked. The spell apparently didn’t work, so this makes the P’s even more useless than usual and they just kind of flail about and then stand there doing nothing while Box Girl is dragged under her bed and turned into a fairy. The Trolls take her away. Good job, dum-dums.

After the not-break, the P’s try to figure out what happened to Box Girl. Phoebe holds on to the fairy box, and tries to activate her terrible power by begging for a premonition. Piper says that their spell didn’t work because she doesn’t believe anymore. She feels guilty about what happened to Box Girl for about one full second before she turns it into wishing Leo were there.

Phoebe’s still in the background trying to will her powers into working by squinting now, but they won’t need them because Piper’s moped herself into believing and now the spell is working. They spot a man-fairy in the window and follow him outside. The fairies don’t seem to have any sort of consistency in terms of scale because one minute they’re big enough to see full body from the window and fit into a box, but now he’s suddenly small enough to be a lightning bug? (M: MAGIC.)

Man-fairy leads them to the cave from Box Girl’s drawing. Still no word on what she was doing in this cave in the first place. I don’t know anything about parenting, but I’d say not letting your 5 year old hang out in caves seems like a pretty good place to start. (M: I vote Stephanie mom of the year.)

They head inside and find Thistle and Box Girl trapped in a cage, about to be roasted on a fire by the trolls. The P’s talk loudly about what to do, attracting everyone’s attention. All the trolls start zipping around again and I don’t get why the P’s are having so much trouble fighting them when they don’t seem to be doing anything?

Piper eventually manages to freeze one and Prue magics it into the fire. Phoebe makes a constipated face and then jumps in the air and starts floating. (M: I honestly thought Phoebe flying was a joke.) With Prue’s tele-help she floats over to the cage and rescues the fairies from the fire. Phoebe can’t even move on her own, so her new power is just as stupid as her other one.

Piper freezes the fire and she and Prue jump through it because I guess fire stops being hot when it’s not moving? (M: I’m not sure how science would feel about that.) When they’re on the other side, she unfreezes the fire and the trolls just run straight into it for some reason. I did the thing where I rewind over and over again and I’m still not entirely sure what just happened. Just another Charmed action scene.

With the trolls defeated, Phoebe opens up the cage to let Thistle and Box Girl out. Box Girl wants to stay a fairy, so it’s time for all of Piper’s mopiness to come together in an inspirational message. Basically, Piper understands how she feels because everything is about her and her problems, Box Girl should get over her post-divorce sadness because things happen for a reason, and everyone would be sad if she didn’t come back. That’s enough to convince her to be human again. That or she doesn’t want to hear Piper talk anymore.

Mari: Box Girl did everyone a favor.

Steph Manor. Everyone comes home all banged up from the troll fight. Yeah, but rolling down the stairs earlier was nothing. The fairies have left flower goodies and the missing keys out on the doorstep. Piper puts on a flower crown, and tells us all about the lessons she’s learned this episode. She gets why she and Leo can’t be married. He’d be tinkle-tinkling all the time, and she’d be throwing baby-tantrums instead of saving people. She’s willing to sacrifice their relationship to help people.

Of course, Leo takes this as his cue to tinkle on in and they embrace, making everything Piper just said feel totally empty. Leo’s got good news: TPTB have reconsidered their decision about their relationship because Piper has shown great courage and faith. Are you fucking kidding me? She spent the entire episode being insufferable. This is what convinced them?

Mari: Maybe they just wanted her to stop talking, too.

Steph: TPTB are giving them a chance to prove that their relationship won’t interfere with witch stuff. Well, the only drama this relationship has is the fact that TPTB wanted to keep them apart. So if it wasn’t for their stupid meddling we wouldn’t even be here in the first place. I’m so annoyed right now.

Piper leads Leo upstairs for “we’re back together” sex. Now with the Leo problem fixed (Ha, I don’t even believe what I’m writing), Prue’s moved on to worrying about Darth Cole, but they’ll let Piper have sex before bothering her with demon stuff tomorrow.

Speaking of sex, Phoebe calls Cole and awkwardly babbles about how she was going to leave a message since she’s embarrassed that he was around when she was talking like a weird baby. Cole says she’s a mystery he’s looking forward to figuring out. They hang up and Cole sends his shadow away with the message that he’s getting closer. Closer to starting up the next romance plot we’re going to just adore, I’m sure.

 

Next time on Charmed: The girls go back in time in S03 E04 – All Halliwell’s Eve.