Sodom, Vampire Lesbian Division. King Lizzie's enjoying a bath, and yes, the strumpet manicurist from the prior scene is the lucky gal who gets to sponge her down. Somewhere right now in Chappaqua, Bill Clinton's touching himself, and that, frankly, is a prospect far too disturbing for me to contemplate. Poor Chelsea. No wonder she fled to Europe to hang out with trans-Atlantic trash like Gwynnie and Donatella. With a dad like that, wouldn't you? Another strumpet artfully holds a towel just so, so that the viewing audience cannot glimpse King Lizzie's implants in all their soapy, glistening, immobile glory. Sam finishes filling her in on his encounter in the elevator with Raige. Lizzie's delighted, and gently chides Keats for suggesting that a meeting with The Sole would be useless. If they can convert a Charmed One to their side, she notes, they will be powerful enough to wrest control of the Underworld from anyone who would dare challenge them. Keats, killjoy that he is, points out the flaw in Lizzie's plan: Charmed Ones "don't change sides on a whim." Sam leans close to his shoulder to promise he'll be able to ensure Raige "sees things [their] way."

Sidebar: my first pass through this scene, I didn't bother to think too much about it -- this is Charmed after all. I even found it modestly entertaining in a campy sort of way. You know, they're vampires, for Christ's sake. Grain-of-salt and all that. It wasn't until I went back to edit what I'd written that I developed a nagging unease that quickly amped up to a low-level fury. Aaron Spelling should be shot in the head. That these obviously queer characters are stomping around forcibly "converting" people is bad enough. I'd be willing to suspend the outrage if it stopped there, but it doesn't. Not only are these queer characters forcibly converting presumably "normal" people, they're also such an abomination to the accepted order that they've been banned even from Hell -- so deceitful, so irredeemable, so vile that even The Source Of All Evil wants nothing to do with them. This on a show set in San Francisco. I can just imagine Aaron sipping a vodka tonic in his grotesque mansion, idly remarking to Candy -- who's wrapping gifts in that special room of hers, natch -- that "San Francisco was such a nice place before the faggots took it over."