Previously: The Book of Shadows was stolen and we were reminded about all the dumb stuff in season one.
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Morality Bites
Marines: Guys, I wrote the first twenty minutes of this recap and lost it all because of some combination of the Internet and WordPress hating me. There was no autosave. It took me so long to recap this crap because of some combination of busy life times and me resenting this episode because I had to watch it again. Did you hear me? I HAVE TO WATCH A PORTION OF AN EPISODE TWICE.
Stephanie: I’m so sorry that you had to go through such a traumatic experience. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here for you.
Mari: I don’t know if I’m there yet, but thank you.
Manor. Piper hobbles into the kitchen with one shoe off because she stepped in some dog crap.
Steph: It’s not that clear in this gif set, but Phoebe’s skin has been looking very radioactive. Is she okay?
Mari: And doesn’t she have an friends to tell her she looks radioactive?
Phoebe has had it with this guy who keeps letting his dog take a poop in front of their house and hasn’t stopped even though they’ve left notes. NOTES. Next time, Phoebe says, she’s going to give this guy a piece of her mind. A dog barks because next time is upon us. Phoebe does this weird grandma run all the way to the window. The only explanation for that run is that the terribleness of her lavender on lavender outfit is preventing mobility.
At the window, the girls see Poop Guy and his dog. Phoebe encourages Prue to use her magic on this guy, and Prue is hesitant because they can’t use their magic for personal gain. Phoebe argues that it’d be for the greater good. She opens the window, which will apparently enable Piper to get around her “magic only in the room you’re in” thing. She freezes the guy and Prue telekinesises the poop onto his shoe. Second time watching this, still don’t understand how this is going to stop the guy from leaving dog poo on the sidewalk.
Steph: “I’ve stepped in poop. I’m never walking you again, dog!” I don’t know.
Mari: Phoebe’s all, “okay! Now that that piece of the plot set-up is out of the way, I think I deserve 15 minutes of channel surfing.” Wow, seamless transition show. Good job. Phoebe does indeed settle in for some channel surfing and stops on some news about baseball player Cal Greene. This sends Phoebe into a premonition of her being burned at the stake in the year 2009. She yells as the premonition ends and her sisters come running into the living room. She tells them what she saw and they gawk us into the credits.
I AM THE SAHN.
After the establishing shots and irrelevant music, the P’s wonder about what the vision is all about. The doorbell rings and it’s Leo. Piper gives him a hug but quickly tells him that she can’t hang out because there’s something she has to do. Leo looks off to the side kind of like Dean Cain used to do when Clark Kent was using his super hearing to pick up a cry for help. But stupider. (Also, second time I reference Lois & Clark in a Charmed recap. I’mma recap that one day. Just you wait.) All Leo hears is a bunch of tinkles and he asks the sky, “now?” He tells Piper to go do her thing because he has things he has to take care of. They kiss and he TINKLE TINKLES away mid-kiss, IDK why. Was it a bad kiss?
Up in the attic, Leo puts his hands over the Book of Shadows, causing the pages to turn. (S: Twist: Leo is Grams.) He leaves just as the Ps enter and they notice that the book is open to a spell to take them into the future. But the incredibly stupid spell of the week can only be used once and then disappears. WHY? I mean, other witches made these spells up, right? SO WHY? WHY? WHY?
Steph: Shhh. I’m here for you.
Mari: Deep breath.
Phoebe is hesitant, but Prue tells her that the premonition means that they are supposed to go to the future. Phoebe is easily convinced. She writes down the date of two weeks before her execution, Piper worries a bit about what they’ll look like 10 years in the future, they burn the paper, and say the future spell. They are spirited way in little twinkling lights.
Steph: Twinkling lights seem to be the only thing the special effects team know how to do.
Mari: One size fits all.
We see the Piper Lights land in future!Piper’s body. As she comes to, a little girl runs into the living room, calling her mommy. Piper is a little slow on the uptake, but then looks in the mirror and sees that in 2009, she’s got a curling iron she uses and a wedding ring. Behind her, the TV is tuned to a news report on Phoebe. She asks out loud where the volume is (which is totally what I do every time I think, “I need to control the volume setting on my TV!”) and their bulky as hell TV unmutes itself because it’s 2009, you see? The announcer says they’re going back to their regularly scheduled programming: MTV’s Real World 18, On the Moon. BECAUSE IT’S 2009, SEE? AND EVERYONE IS ON THE MOON!
Steph: This is the most pathetic attempt at the future I’ve ever seen. Curling irons! People on the moon! I’m surprised we didn’t get a 20 minute establishing montage of flying cars.
Mari: That’s cross the line of too much effort.
Piper’s daughter calls out for her and out in the foyer, the car pool lady asks how she’s doing with Phoebe’s execution and all. Car Pool Lady is going to pick Piper’s daughter up after school. CPL makes sure that Piper really wants her daughter dropped off at her ex’s after school. Piper’s all, “SURE.” Before she leaves, Piper’s daughter promises not to use her magic ever again. She hugs her mom and takes off. Piper watches them leave and then a limo pulls up. Prue in a really stupid blonde wig climbs out. She’s also wearing one of this handkerchief shirts so popular in their day but definitely NOT in 2009, but its leather. I can’t stop laughing. I mean, even on second watch. (Second watch D:) (S: I’M SO VERY SORRY.)
Prue gushes a bit more about her 2009 life and as they go into the house and Piper gives her about the recap of her kid and ex. Prue wonders why they woke up in their future bodies and I wonder why she’s wearing that stupid wig. Piper’s reasoning for the future bodies is, “because the future is different than the past!” Cool.
Prue finally decides to think about her little sister Phoebe and they realize that she must be in her future body too. Piper commands her 2009 TV to get louder and they listen to the news report about Phoebe’s witch burning for being accused of murdering Cal Green. The DA makes a statement about the fight between good and evil. Phoebe is going to burn and he says it should serve as a warning to other witches out there.
After a not!break a very noisy and “futuristic” car drives by the Manor. Prue and Piper go upstairs and can’t find the Book of Shadows. Prue freaks out about the missing book and flicks her hand with lots of emotion which sends half the attic crashing into the wall and exploding. They take this pretty calmly considering they now have a hole in their house and witches are being hunted. Moving on. Piper sees a key hidden on the bottom of the book stand. Prue recognizes it as the one to her safe at Bucklands. They wonder why they would move the book. Did they hear the report about the witch hunt in the future? Why are they so confused about this AND NOT ABOUT THAT STUPID WIG?
Steph: It’s like they’re trying to do a subtle build up of this anti-witch future world, but we already know all of this because Phoebe is going to be BURNED AT THE STAKE. I can’t figure out if the writers think the audience is very stupid or if the writers are very stupid.
Mari: Well, you probably know what I would vote for.
Hobart State Penitentiary. Phoebe’s hair is longer, she’s wearing a maroon jump suit and she’s got a collar around her neck. She’s yelling out that she needs to talk to someone and soon finds that if she touches the walls of her cell, she gets zapped.
Piper can’t believe she still has her same old car while Prue has a limo. They talk again about all the stuff they don’t know about the future and Piper sees a man about to drop his coffee. For some reason, this worries her enough that she freezes time. But her power is a super power now too and she freezes all of outside. They marvel at that for a second before a slightly more scraggly and more aggressive Leo appears. He yells at Piper for using her power in public, even though they agreed she wouldn’t, for Melinda, their daughter’s sake. Of course Leo is the ex, because duh. (S: Piper has had a lot of men in her life. It could have been Banker Boyfriend. Or the ghost of John Cho.) A lady exits a nearby building, and I’m not sure Piper’s power has grown that much if walls are still a problem, but this lady is unfrozen. She sees the scene and starts crying, “witch!” Leo has to explain to our slow heroines that there is a witch hunt going on, even though we heard that on the TV like five minutes ago. They run.
Phoebe hears a door open and she calls out Prue and Piper’s name, but the DA walks in instead, saying her sisters never visited her before and they won’t start now. He and Phoebe go back and forth, him calling her evil and gross and stuff, and her trying to fish for information about her crime. All she learns is, hey what do you know, stuff we already know: she killed a man and she’s going to die soon. DA says again that she’s evil and he hates her. Phoebe thinks he’s talking out of fear, but he’s all, “nah, bro. You killed a man.” He only hopes he can one day kill all the witches.
Leo leads Piper and Prue to some sort of hideout. They try to convince him that they are from the past but he just yells at them. Piper decides the only way to prove that this is the truth is to kiss him like it’s 1999. I’M NOT EVEN JOKING. She grabs his face and kisses him and he softens all, “you haven’t kissed me like that since…” “1999,” she finishes, because apparently the kissing all went downhill after that one time he TINKLED away mid-freaking-kiss. IDK how things could go more downhill from there, but OKAY. (S: I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING.) Leo suddenly believes. He remembers opening the Book up to the future spell.
Leo explains that this underground thing is a haven for people accused of witchcraft. Phoebe killed Cal Green because he killed someone unnamed person she loved. He got off on a technicality and she took justice into her own hands. Prue says Phoebe’s power is useless though, but I guess in the future it can kill people. The girls want to go see Phoebe, but Leo warns them that they’d have to use magic to get to her and expose themselves as witches. They don’t care. Leo hears his heavenly intercom, or whatever, and tells them he’ll go. He can orb in without detection, I guess. Prue and Piper are going to Buckland to collect the Book of Shadows and they’ll all meet up at the manor.
Buckland. Prue is crowded by a bunch of people but they are called off by Prue’s assistant. They walk into her office and this scene makes clear that future!Piper never visits future!Prue and that Prue is pushing some sort of acquisition that will result in layoffs. Prue shoos her assistant away and then takes some time to freak about her future life (S: She’s hugely successful, but she doesn’t have a man. And we ladies know that this is the worst fate that could ever befall us), before remembering that their sister is going to burn at the stake. They pull out the Book of Shadows and find that the go back to the past spell is gone. They figure that must mean their future selves already used it, but IDK why if they used the forward to the future spell, why their future selves would ever require a back to the past spell…?
Penitentiary. Leo orbs in and tells Phoebe no one is coming to rescue her. He says this would be easier if she knew what she did, so he hands her a newspaper article. When she grabs it, she has a flashback (premonition?) of her frying Cal’s brain with her upgraded useless power.
Steph: This scene pissed me off because this is a show about magic and they get a million opportunities to do something cool visually, but we keep getting these super static magic deaths. Just give me a some camera movement to make the scenes more dynamic, sheesh. Also, Phoebe not only brain fries, but she can float too. I bet the crew was all, “this will look cool,” but it does not. This rant is a build up of all the many times Charmed has made magic look boring. I am done.
Mari: Well, now I’m here for you.
Phoebe snaps out of it sadly and Leo orbs away. I mean, I know future!Phoebe killed a man, but this visit by Leo was kind of a jerk move. “No one is coming for you. BYES.”
Manor. Prue is noticing that some of the spells in the BoS are earmarked. (EVIL.) There are also a bunch of little baggies and a crude map of the prison. Clearly, their future selves were planning a breakout. They wonder at the “for personal gain” part of this all, but apparently their future selves don’t curr. Leo arrives sans Phoebe and the girls are mad. He explains that he’s watching out for the great good by letting Phoebe die. We all nod at our screens. Leo’s reasoning is stupid, though, and involves some notion that if Phoebe dies, the witch hunt will stop. Nothing I’ve seen makes that likely. Prue starts to get angry so Piper freezes Leo and calms her down. They keep looking through the Book of Shadows.
In her cell, Phoebe can kind of hear and see the DA on TV happily shouting about burning someone alive. Like today. Even though they were supposed to go back two weeks before and no one explains why suddenly Phoebe is going to die today.
Prue and Piper are parked outside of Leo’s house. Piper walks up to the front door and watches her daughter play for a bit, binding spell in her hand. Leo appears behind her and the Tinkly Music starts up as Piper admits she can’t say the spell. Leo promises to watch over their daughter and they have their relationship chat that no one cares about. Something about them both having powers getting in the way of their relationship. (S: He kept tinkle tinkling away every time they kissed or had sex.) Leo isn’t going to stop them and they say a non-goodbye.
In the car, it’s Prue’s turn with the Tinkly Music as she sads about not having a life or anyone to say goodbye to. Piper gives her a pep talk and off they go.
Penitentiary. Piper and Prue sneak on the grounds and use a spell to create a door. Inside, Phoebe is collected by a guard. Downstairs, a guard catches Piper and Prue, but Piper freezes him.
They make their way up to Phoebe’s cell, but she’s already gone. Phoebe walks to her pyre and she’s surrounded by reporters and stuff. After a not!break she’s chained in. DA tells her some more about how cool this is for him. He addresses the reporters about how defying human nature will always be punished and gives the sign for them to light the pyre. Piper and Prue break in just then, and Piper freezes time. Phoebe tells them not to rescue her, though, because she deserves to die for what she did. Prue thinks that DA is the one who should be punished and looks at her hand like she’s a second away from telekinesising his face off. Phoebe stops her because they can’t all turn into murderers. She cries that the wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing. She cries through all the lessons learned of her future self, like punishing the guilty is bad and maybe this is why they were sent here. They all cry and cry and say goodbye.
Phoebe gets back on the pyre, Piper unfreezes time while they are still in the room, which is highly suspicious, and Phoebe burns in a mostly silently way, which, lol. No. I made more noise when I burned myself while making salted caramel sauce last year. Piper looks like she’s in more pain as she watches. Anyway, all their lessons learned, the girls are spirited back to the past because of reasons and reasons and reasons.
Steph: This was dumb. I think it was supposed to make us feel emotions or something, but I have a simple solution: Don’t kill that guy in the future. DONE.
Mari: They all reunite back in the past and cry some more. They turn on the TV and see the same report on Cal Greene that sparked Phoebe’s premonition in the first place. Piper asks all the questions like, “who sent us back? Why? What for? What was that wig about?” (okay maybe not the last one) and then they hear that telling bark of a dog about to poop on their sidewalk. Piper and Prue spring into action, eager to fling more poo at this guy even though it wasn’t their idea in the first place. Piper says this guy still hasn’t learned his lesson and Phoebe sagely says, “apparently, neither have we.” See, the Powers That Be Contriving sent them back to this day, because this is where murdering a man for murder and burning at the stake aaaall started. The first time they used their magic for revenge.
SO BASICALLY, THEY HAD TO BE SENT TO A FUTURE WHERE PHOEBE BURNS AT THE STAKE BECAUSE THEY FLUNG POO AT THEIR NEIGHBOR WITH THEIR POWERS.
Steph: There’s a moment during each episode where I want to chuck my television out of the window. It came a bit later than usual this time, but here it is.
Mari: I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my high school biology teacher on this blog before. Her philosophy was, “if you lie, you cheat, if you cheat, you steal and if you steal, YOU MURDER.” Well, welcome to episode two: if you fling poo, you break rules, if you break rules, you murder, if you murder, YOU BURN.
A little more stuff happens as they wrap up the episode, but I’m done now.
Steph: Fair.
Mari: I mean, I did watch part of this episode twice.
Next time on Charmed: Prue says some mysterious words on a painting aloud like an idiot in S02 E03 – The Painted World.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a miniature adult who still gets offered the kid's coloring menu at restaurants. I like to pretend I'm an illustrator, but mostly I spend my time complaining about TV on Twitter. My life dream is to have my consciousness placed into an android body so that I'll have more time to watch/read things.
