Charmed S01 E15 – Arbitrary Skepticism

Previously: Phoebe told her sisters that Leo is a White Lighter, but they didn’t believe her because nothing unbelievable ever happens on this show.
—

Is There a Woogy in the House?

Lorraine: The Halliwell Manor shakes. The P’s come running down the stairs and Phoebe helpfully announces, “oh no! Not another after shock!” Thanks, Phoebe. I was almost there but now I really know what’s going on! Phoebs says Prue is the only who who likes earthquakes.

    The girls are tidying up in the kitchen when Prue gets a whiff of something foul. Piper has already smelled this smell and thinks it’s coming from the basement. She called someone to check it out, all without ever discussing this with her sisters because exposition needed to happen now. In fact, the gasman has just arrived.

Prue freaks out because they are hosting some auction-house-related dinner at the Manor. Phoebe assures her that everything will be okay. Gasman heads to the basement to investigate and Prue and Piper make fun of Phoebe for being afraid of the basement. Baby!Phoebe said a boogeyman (or “woogyman” which is kind of adorable) was down there. Phoebe insists that she saw it and the other Ps’ are all, “A-HA-HA. SO SILLY, SEEING EVIL BEINGS.” Because this show is awful.

In the basement, the lights go out as soon as Gasman gets down there. He finds a crack on the floor and pokes inside the crack. It bursts open, releasing smoke that growls. The Woogyman possesses Gasman for his ultimate plan of taking back the Manor.

In the kitchen, Piper is handing out mail. Phoebe used the fake name “Shanda Lear” to score some free CD’s and in the face of Piper’s light judging, says she protects the innocent, she doesn’t have to be innocent. All of this is just another way for Piper and Prue to make more fun of her for believing in the woogyman.

Woogy!Gasman comes back upstairs and announces that by tonight, there will be no more problems. Okay, crazy. Prue leaves to work and Piper to the store. In the basement, Woogy!Gasman talks to his shadow and asks which witch the demon wants. The demon growls, “Phoebe,” which is convenient since she’s the only one that’s home. And her powers are useless.

I AM THE SAHN.

Buckland. Boss Lady Claire comes in with the guest list for that night’s party. At the top of the list is Professor Whittlesey, who is fascinated with the Halliwell Manor. Whittlesey walks in just then and announces that she’s bringing a guest to the dinner. She’s a professor of architectural history at Berkeley, “explaining” why she’s so fascinated by the Manor. The house had to be rebuilt in 1906 after an earthquake, which was right around the time the Halliwells moved in, and surprise, surprise, it’s said to be built on a “spiritual nexus.” Claire’s all, “that’s nice,” and hurries Whittlesey out of the office.

Store. Prue calls Piper with the news that dinner is now +1. Distracted by the call, a blond man swoops in and grabs the bottle of wine Piper was standing in front of. She goes after him and tries to convince him to take another bottle because she needs it for her recipe. He won’t budge so Piper freezes him. She argues with herself a bit about whether this counts as personal gain, and decides just to walk away, unfreezing time as she goes.

Manor. Gasman calls “help me!” from the basement and Phoebe runs over. She hesitates when she realizes he’s still in the basement. Phoebe braces herself against the wall, and when she touches a picture frame has a flashback!vision of Grams clearly doing some magic in the basement. In the present, Phoebe calls that she’s going to get some help but Gasman is all, “NO. IT NEEDS TO BE YOU.” or something equally suspicious. Phoebe goes down and I get that he’s calling for help, but girl. What did you think the vision you JUST HAD was about? Woogyman is all, “yaaas, I’m REAL.” The Woogyman goes up Phoebe’s nose.

Piper gets home.

Piper hears an electrical crackle as she enters. Kit goes running out the front door because that cat is the smartest person in the house.

In the kitchen, Gasman startles Piper and really invades her personal space, but she realizes too late that he’s exceptionally creepy. He grabs her arms and pins her against the counter, meaning of course that she can’t freeze time. Without her hands. Because. Piper calls for Phoebe, who comes running upstairs. A bat appears in Phoebe’s hand and she uses it to knock out Gasman.

Piper asks where the heck the bat came from and Phoebe says they can talk about that later because they have to call the police, aka the Only Two Detectives in San Francisco.

Prue gets home and finds her sisters in the living room. Piper explains about Phoebe’s new power. Prue suspects Phoebe did something with the Book of Shadows. Phoebe snaps back that Prue is just upset she isn’t the hero this time. Piper and Prue watch her strut out of the room. Shanon Doherty isn’t wearing a bra.

Phoebe heads down to the basement and uses her new shadow powers to make a knife appear. Woogyman tells Phoebe to go after her sisters. She fights it a bit and says she doesn’t want to. Woogyman says she isn’t strong enough to resist him.

After a not!break, Phoebe is doing her nails and wearing a revealing dress because nothing says evil like sexuality. She uses her shadow powers to give herself an instant manicure, which is way awesomer than premonitions.

In the kitchen, Piper is getting zapped by all the appliances. Prue comes in complaining about lava water in the shower. They figure something is wrong with the wiring following the earthquake. The doorbell rings even though they weren’t expecting the guests for another hour. Turns out, though, the clock on the microwave was wrong so they completely lost track of time. Phoebe comes up from the basement fully and offers to answer the door. There, she introduces herself as the “cruise director” for the night and gets, “the hell?” looks from Boss Lady and Whittlesey. Wine Bottle Snatcher is also in their company.

Things continue to go wrong in the kitchen. Bottle Snatcher comes in and is surprised to find Piper. He apologizes for being a wine thief and points out that Piper has flour all over her face. Things are awkward.

Phoebe grabs a tray of duck medallions and takes it out to the living room. When she uncovers it, there is a live duck underneath. Prue laughs it up and thankfully Whittlesey laughs along.

The kitchen continue to turn against Piper. The sink starts to act up and Phoebe creeps up behind her with a knife.

Bottle Snatcher interrupts and make a crack about the mess in the kitchen. Piper tells Phoebe to get him the heck out and to get her Prue.

Prue is giving Whittlesey a tour and the whole spiritual nexus things comes up again. The Manor is equidistant from 5 spiritual elements, making it a place of great power. Phoebe finds Prue and tells her she’s needed in the kitchen. Prue finds Piper throwing a tantrum. She can’t cook the meal in the possessed kitchen and it’s too late to do anything else about it. Prue says they should end it before it gets worse. Behind them, we see Phoebe leading Whittlesey into the basement.

In the foyer, Prue tells Boss Lady they are having technical difficulties. Piper jumps in and says there is a table waiting for them at Qua    ke. Whittlesey shows back up again, acting unlike herself and singing the praises of the basement. Prue accompanies her guests outside and tells Boss Lady she has a few loose ends to tie up at home and then she’s going to try to make it to Qua    ke. The guests leave and Phoebe appears at the door. Prue tries to storm back into the house but she’s zapped back and onto the yard. Phoebe seems like herself for a few seconds, but then she’s back to being possessed and says the other Ps don’t live there anymore. Woogy does. She flicks her fingers and in a scene that mirrors the pilot, shuts the door.

The next morning, Piper and Prue are still just sitting outside the house. Weird. They’ve tried everything and they can’t get inside and apparently it’s taken them these 8 hours to realize that Phoebe made some references to “he” so maybe she isn’t herself. The don’t have access to the Book of Shadows, but they did just conveniently meet a person who knows the house better than they do.

Woogy!Phoebe walks through the house and causes destruction around her. She places an order for pizza, even though the place isn’t open yet, and tells the person to put whatever they want on the pizza, but make sure it’s delivered by a redshirt, or whatever.

The girls track down Whittlesey, but she’s being led away in handcuffs. Bottle Snatcher tells them that she snapped and attacked him. The P’s are all, “back to us, though.” and ask about the spiritual nexus. Turns out, a place located on a nexus can be swayed to either be good or evil. Bottle Snatcher has to go follow after Whittlesey, but says they can look around his office if they want.

In the office, Piper grabs a map. Prue remembers what Whittlesey said about the nexus being equidistant between the five basal elements. They mark their house on the map and then identify the points that correspond to these elements. For instance, the bay for water and the Twin Peaks for earth. Once all five points are marked, Prue traces the lines and it forms a butterfly. JUST KIDDING! A pentagram. She says this means their house is also a Wiccan nexus, making it a battleground for good and evil. I like how she frames that like a discovery when two minutes ago, Bottle Snatcher told us it was between good and evil.

Drawing some lines on a map has seemed to bless Prue with sudden knowledge and she knows that if evil takes the house it’ll spread.

Andy and Morris park in front of the Manor and across the street, people are being evil by throwing trashcans. Morris heads to take care of that while Andy walks up to the front door. Phoebe answers before he knocks (SHOTS!). She strokes the door as she asks if he can check her gas leak. You shouldn’t try to be seductive over the words “gas leak” but we’ll blame the Woogyman who probably hasn’t had recent experience in flirting. Also, I think Phoebe is wearing more make-up than usual because nothing says evil quite like eyeliner.

Morris is getting the story from the neighbor. He went into the Halliwell’s house and then suddenly had the urge to do some really evil trash throwing. Piper and Prue arrive and Morris explains that Whittlesey is at the station and the last place she was before she went crazy was the Halliwell Manor. You know, beside Qua  ke, her house, and Berkeley. Maybe a coffee shop. Anyway, Andy is at their house waiting to question them.

Prue and Piper hide when they see Andy leave him and Piper freezes him as he’s half out the door, figuring the house’s defenses are down. They get in and notice that Phoebe is frozen too, meaning she’s no longer a good witch. The girls run upstairs to the attic before time unfreezes.

Outside, Andy runs across the street and pulls out his gun. Morris takes him down quickly and it seems like Andy bumps his head and gets the evil shaken out of him.

Prue and Piper can’t find anything in the Book of Shadows and finally Prue is all, “alright girl. Let’s slow down and, I don’t know, think about things.” They identify the basement as a common denominator and finally decide that since they’ve seen lots of evil crap, probably Phoebe’s childhood monster was real. Their grandma used to tell them a story about the Woogyman and they think it was a spell. Now they can’t remember how it goes. Piper starts ranting about how they have to hurry up and opens the attic door for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Woogy!Phoebe is on the other side. She grabs Piper, pushes her outside, walks into the attic and locks the door. Prue tries to appeal to Phoebe, the real one, but the Woogy keeps on coming, machete in hand. Finally, Prue squints and sends her flying. Not even because she remembers that she has a magic power, but because she flinches. Prue and Piper run downstairs but find they can’t leave the house that’s trying to kill them.

Writing that sentence reminded me of this:

Phoebe wakes up and I guess she didn’t bump her head hard enough to get any evil shaken out.

Prue and Piper are trying to remember Gram’s story when they hear Phoebe calling for help from the basement. Prue reasons that they have to weaken the Woogyman’s hold on Phoebe so that she can remind them how the story goes. Those two go down to the basement and find the Woogy. Their powers are useless so they go back to appealing to the Real Phoebe to help them. This goes on for a bit and the Woogyman seems content to just hang out in the background and let them work out a way to defeat him.

Phoebe struggles against the woogy influence. Woogy!Phoebe braces herself against the door and touches the picture frame from earlier. I’d call this contrivance, but we’ve seen that Woogy!Phoebe does like to stroke doors. This throws her back into the same vision from earlier of Grams fighting the Woogy. For whatever reason, this lets Phoebe come into her own again and she recites the vanquishing spell.

       

Yay, success.

The next day, Piper visits Bottle Snatcher to check up on Whittlesey, again for whatever reason. Bottle Snatcher gives her a bottle of the same kind of wine he snatched earlier and smiles a lot.

Manor. The girls clean up the attic as Phoebe moans about having a dark side. She was born in this house meaning she could be either good or evil. Her sisters gloss over this fact. Prue says the Woogy could come back and thinks it’s time they made their first entry into the Book of Shadows. No word on why Grams didn’t just add this spell in there herself, BUT OKAY.

 

Next time on Charmed: Prue tries to triple her powers and we get stuck with clones instead in S01 E16 – Which Prue Is It, Anyway?