- It’s amazing how many of the little things I leave out of these recaps. You’ll notice that several of the items on this list are personal character details that I’ve neglected to mention to this point but are crucial to understanding this episode. This is my bad.
- Edgar’s personal life is pretty crap. He’s bankrupt, he’s living in a hotel, and he’s in the midst of a very expensive, very traumatic divorce.
- There’s an old woman—a mage—named Sunday who thinks the Hunters are “interesting.” She’s given them cookies and behaved oddly. Two other mages, Charlie and Rico, have been hounding the Hunters, telling them to stay away from her.
- In his travels, Dean found a bag…a magical bag. It’s essentially a bag of holding with apparently unlimited capacity, capable of storing anything small enough to fit inside. The problem is that the bag belonged to someone else (he doesn’t know who), so all their stuff is still in it. And it’s quite a random lot of stuff, too.
- This group certainly has their vices. Dan is a stoner, Dean smokes like a chimney, Willem is a borderline alcoholic, and Edgar is a full-blown alcoholic, with added nicotine and gambling addictions. All except for Lucy, it seems, who always acts very uncomfortable at the alcohol and drug use around her.
- Though she’s been distracted from it by all the vampire- and zombie-killing, Lucy’s been involved in a rather lengthy cold war with her roommate, Vanessa—Lucy’s boyfriend, Brian, is sleeping with Vanessa and thinks Lucy doesn’t know. But she does, and Vanessa knows that Lucy knows, so the two of them are engaged in a bizarre battle of wills—Lucy waiting for Vanessa to have the nerve to admit it, Vanessa waiting for Lucy to have the nerve to confront her.
- Dean has a thing for Lucy. Since he’s new in town, she’s allowed him to sleep on her couch (telling Vanessa he’s a long-lost “half-brother”), and he made his move a while ago, but was gently (and awkwardly) turned down, with an, “Um…uh…not right now.” And this was before…
- Dean almost got everyone killed with a rather risky plan. This plan was enacted without the knowledge or consent of the group, and the results were lots of injuries for Dean, a savage bullet wound in the arm for Lucy, and bad feelings all around. Dean looked for Sunday’s help prior to the event, but she was nowhere to be found.
“Your Fairy Fucking Godmother”
Lucy looks through the newspaper, as she always does, looking for stories that might be supernatural-related. But it’s a slow news day—a princess from Bulgaria is visiting the city! Starting next year, Bazemore will have its very own minor league hockey franchise!—so there’s nothing.
Two weeks have passed since the botched double-cross, and Dean is not happy with himself. He’s spent that time doting on Lucy, helping her during her recovery. This has been done out of kindness and guilt, not any ulterior, romantic motive, but when he asks if he still “has a chance,” her only answer is, “You lied to everyone. You lied to me.” Depression sinks in.
The plan is for the group to meet back up at the bar that night—they haven’t met as group since the shooting—but Lucy reports to Dean that Dan “has the flu. He sounded really bad.”
After getting shot, Lucy was given a prescription for Percoset. This is perfectly normal, so it’s a little odd when Vanessa stomps in carrying the bottle and angrily interrogates Lucy: “Where’d you get these? Why do you have them? How many are you taking?” Even stranger, Lucy’s response is “Don’t lecture me,” and to remind Vanessa that she was shot. “Possibly the only thing in this world that hurts as much as a bullet ripping your arm apart is that same arm trying to put itself back together again. So, yeah, the doctors gave me something to take the edge off. Okay?” To change the subject, Lucy sardonically implies that she might drop by the place where Brian works tonight (since he tells her he’s working when he’s really with Vanessa); Vanessa encourages her to: “He can meet your brother.” After Vanessa leaves, Lucy, quivering with rage, takes one of her pills and tells Dean that they can’t be certain Vanessa’s not a vampire, and could maybe kill her just to be safe.
Later, in the car, Lucy confesses that Vanessa’s questions weren’t completely out of line—several years ago, Lucy was forced into rehab for an addiction to painkillers. She subsequently kicked that addiction, and she says she only takes the Percoset when she needs it.
At the bar, things are a little more cheery. Edgar is beside himself with glee—his sister, Michelle (described as the only member of his family who will still speak to him; more on this in a few sentences), is going out of town for a month and needs someone to watch her house. So Edgar is out of the hotel for a while, and even gets to use her car, on the condition that he care for Michelle’s “many” animals. His bliss doesn’t last very long, though, when a woman approaches him at the bar. Though her name is never mentioned, it’s clear she’s a mutual friend of both Edgar and Helena, his soon-to-be-ex-wife. She offers her support for Edgar, for what he “must be going through,” and he quickly realizes he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. A little more needling reveals that Helena is already seeing someone else, and, in fact, they plan on getting married. Willem and Dean, two kind, compassionate souls, start chiming in to get more information. “Oh, it must be someone you know.” “Do you have a brother?” As it turns out, Edgar does have a younger brother, and the woman confirms him as Helena’s new fiancée.
With his happiness gone, Edgar does a two-and-a-half tuck dive straight into a bottle of scotch, and gets absolutely plastered in record time. A stakeout of the Millhaven mental hospital is planned, but with Dan gone and Edgar really gone, Lucy suggests it wise to wait until tomorrow.
And here, Sunday chooses to make her entrance.
She’s all smiles and how-are-yous, completely ignoring the vitriolic looks she gets from the drunken Edgar. She says she was out of town, and has no knowledge of the horrible events two weeks ago. Edgar drunkenly demands to why she wasn’t there to help, getting more angry, more pushy, and more inebriated as the conversation continues. Towards the end, as Sunday continues to try to be nice, Edgar actually starts physically pushing the old lady around. Sunday gives him plenty of warning to knock it off—“I know you think I’m a nice old woman, Edgar, but I’m really not a nice person most of the time, okay? I’m not your fairy fucking godmother, so knock it off.” But Edgar doesn’t, and Sunday finally retaliates: she stands ramrod straight, locks her eyes on Edgar, gives a stiff, Barbara Eden-esque Magical Nod, and…
Nothing happens.
Edgar asks, “What the hell was that?” An apparently confused Sunday replies, “Nothing…that was…nothing.” No one really buys it, but Sunday keeps selling it, and quickly turns and leaves.
With the whole evening now good and smashed, the meeting breaks up. Edgar tells the group that he still wants to do the stakeout tomorrow, as planned, and they should meet at his sister’s house around noon. Luckily, the Hunters are thoughtful enough to call him a cab. Willem follows Edgar home and decides to sleep there, in case something happens during the night. Edgar’s sister’s home is, quite literally, covered with animals. Dogs, cats, birds, snakes, a rabbit, all creatures great and small roam around this jungle-like abode. With Edgar passed out on the couch, Willem clears a place in a big chair and goes to sleep.
The next morning, Lucy can’t even move her arm from the pain. She desperately wants to take one of her pills, but says she doesn’t know “if my arm actually hurts, or if my brain just wants me to take another pill.” She finally gives in and takes one, “only because I can’t even think.” Dean offers to hold onto her pills for her, and she somewhat hesitantly agrees.
They head to Edgar’s new place, and learn that, when Willem woke up, Edgar was gone. A cursory search is performed, but they suspect he may have been turned into one of the many animals running around. Sunday arrives, smug as can be, and confirms this. She’s even nice enough to tell them which animal, though simple logic would have narrowed it down quite a bit. We are dealing with a witch here, after all…
Lucy: “You turned him into a frog?”
Sunday: “I’m old-fashioned.”
Indeed, Edgar is know an oversized bullfrog, hopping around quite at random. Sunday defends herself, saying she was only retaliating from Edgar’s physical assault and drunken ranting. The Hunters demand she change him back—Sunday at first outright refuses, saying he deserved it, and later elaborates…
Sunday: “Okay, first of all, even if I could, I wouldn’t. He was drunk, he was mean, he was violent! He deserved it!”
Lucy: “…Even if you could?”
Sunday: “…Yeah, that would be the second of all.”
See, as Sunday explains, what she did to Edgar wasn’t a spell, as they assume, but a curse—spells can be broken and dismissed, but a curse is conditional. In order to release the curse, all they have to do is fulfill the condition.
Lucy: “What’s the condition?”
Sunday: “Not a fan of the classics, are we?”
Dean remembers the newspaper story Lucy had mentioned the day before…about the Bulgarian princess visiting the city. Yes—to turn Edgar back into Edgar, the frog has to be kissed…by a princess. “And it has to be a real kiss,” says Sunday, “none of this, ‘Hold the frog up to her lips while she’s sleeping’ crap. She has to want to do it, and she has to know she’s kissing a frog.” She explains that it’s just that simple, though there is a time limit: the kiss has to happen before midnight of the next full moon. Unfortunately, she realizes, to her chagrin, that the next full moon is that night, leaving the three of them less than twelve hours to pull this off. She apologizes for that profusely.
After Sunday leaves, they debate their next move. Obviously, getting a Bulgarian princess to kiss a frog of her own volition is not an easy task. They decide to grab a newspaper to see if they can find where she’s staying in town. Luckily, it’s printed right there in the Lifestyle section: she and her entourage are staying at the Luxury, the fancy-schmancy rich-people hotel in Westwood. They head that way, still unsure what they’re going to do.
(This might be a good time to note Dean’s original idea: buy a dog, name it Princess, and have it kiss the frog. Considering what happens later, it’s debatable whether this would have worked or not. The sticking point seems to be “She has to know she’s kissing a frog,” but still—no one is sure.)
Once they get there, the first idea goes nowhere: walking up to the front desk and telling the woman there they have a frog for the princess. They go back outside before security can be called.
Out there, they continue to debate about what to do. The problem, it seems, is that none of them have any clue. This is demonstrated quite clearly when several black limos pull up, and the princess—along with nine bodyguards—strides toward the hotel. Willem calls an audible, gets an egg from Dean’s bag of holding, runs toward the group of Bulgarians, and hurls it at one of her guards. He immediately runs away.
The idea seems to have been to distract the guards long enough for Dean and Lucy to grab the girl and execute the kiss. However, as Lucy will angrily proclaim later, “We aren’t Bowser,” and nabbing a princess is harder than it looks. Plus, surprisingly, throwing things at a woman does not inspire the nine people charged with guarding her to suddenly abandon her. Go figure.
Several of them do give Willem chase, though, and he burns Willpower points to get away and leap into a dumpster in an alley. To his surprise, he meets Charlie inside. He also finds himself inexplicably wearing a tuxedo. Charlie tells Willem he knows all about the frog thing, and offers this as the final proof that Sunday is “bad people.” He then gives Willem a way to solve the problem—he gives him a small blue vial that, if drank by a woman, will cause her do to one thing on command. The command has to be issued by the person who puts the liquid into her drink, and it only works once, and only on a woman. (Willem, of course, asks if he has more, and Charlie says no, citing the difficult process needed to make it. “Nothing in this world is harder than getting a woman to do what you want.”) The tuxedo is for the opera—the newspaper article they read earlier also mentioned the princess would be taking in a show at the Bazemore Opera House this evening. Charlie gives Willem three tickets and a suitcase containing a tuxedo for Dean and a dress for Lucy.
They regroup and head to Der Weinerschnitzel for lunch and planning. (Lucy tries feeding the frog, but Edgar won’t eat.) They come up with a vague plan of action: since the guards are probably going to be looking for Willem, he will go in and make himself noticed, which will at least thin out her protection a little as they go after him. Dean can sneak in and put the potion in a drink, which he will give to Lucy, who will deliver it to the princess, claiming it’s from “the mayor” or something. Later, they will run up to the princess as she leaves, and Dean will ask her to kiss the frog. Edgar can only croak.
Once the evening comes, they dress for the show—Dean in his tuxedo, and Lucy in her dress. She’s extremely uncomfortable in the formal clothes, but she looks fantastic, which is a great big railroad spike in the chest for Dean, who vows to get drunk as soon as possible.
At the Opera House, the first part of the plan, amazingly, works perfectly. Willem distracts, Dean slips the mickey, and Lucy delivers it. With nothing else to do for the next several hours, Lucy and Dean decide to watch the show, as Dean pours all the alcohol he can into his body. But when they get to their seats, they find themselves sitting next to Sunday, wearing a garish purple dress and ready for the opera. There are harsh, bitter words, though Sunday continues to profess her innocence. To make things less uncomfortable, Sunday leaves.
After the show, the Hunters wait at the back entrance for the princess. With only twenty minutes or so left before midnight, she exits, surrounded by bodyguards. Dean rushes her and asks her to kiss Edgar, and though she clearly doesn’t understand why she’s doing it, the girl agrees. She takes the frog, holds it up to her lips, and kisses it.
Nothing happens.
Confusion all around, of course…and then they realize the girl in front of them isn’t the princess—it’s a decoy, put in place sometime after Willem threw an egg at her. (“A decoy? What, have they got Amidala back there?”)
With time running out, and hope going with it, the three Hunters pile back into Willem’s car, determined to get wasted as quickly as possible. Disconsolate, Lucy sings softly to herself—she has a beautiful singing voice.
For some reason—either out of desperation or divine inspiration—Willem tells Lucy to kiss the frog. She at first refuses, saying she’s not a princess…but then remembers her mother. She died when Lucy was a little girl, but when she was alive she was a lounge singer in Vegas. Her stage nickname was “the Queen.”
With five minutes left before midnight, Lucy kisses the frog. Poof! Edgar changes back, very relieved. In his pocket, he is surprised to find a large envelope; inside is a note for Dean—and just for Dean.
Dean,
See? You guys did it. It wasn’t that hard, was it? And you didn’t need help from those two idiots, did you? I apologize for the inconvenience it caused you. I hope you understand why I did it—I’d do it again if I had the—
Dean stops reading here and looks inside the envelope again. In addition to the note, Sunday left a large stack of money: $450,000. Dean goes back to the note.
I’d do it again if I had the chance. But I’d like us to be friends. I think you guys are interesting.
Yours,
Sunday
P.S.—She likes ice skating.
The Hunters return home.
The next day, Dean once again seeks out Sunday, and this time finds her in the park. He apologizes for his harsh words the night before, and she tells him no apology is necessary. He also thanks her for the money and the information about Lucy, but tells her the latter is useless—she doesn’t want anything to do with him. Sunday tells him he has to have patience, because “you’ve got some kind of social ADD happening.” He tells her that Lucy isn’t going to change her mind, and Sunday says that’s because Dean is “small-time—you think in the short term.”
She gestures to a nearby tree. “Now, look at this tree. You look at it, and you think it’s a tree. And you assume it’s always been a tree. That yesterday it was a tree, that tomorrow it will be a tree. But unless you come back here and check, you really don’t know. If you walk away now and tell yourself, ‘Well, it’ll be a tree forever,’ you’ll never find out. You have to have patience. Now, maybe, if you come back tomorrow, it’ll still be a tree. And maybe next week, it’ll still be a tree. Maybe you’ll have to wait a long, long time, and it’s still a tree. But if you’re patient, and you’re dedicated enough, maybe one day, you check it out again, and…” She pulls off a piece of bark and takes a big bite of it. “Mmm—fudge!”
Storyteller’s Notes: First off, the conversation with Dean and Sunday was actually roleplayed the day after this session, in case you were wondering. Second, the idea for this episode was inspired by, of all things, a Peter Gabriel song, “Kiss That Frog.” (Of course, the song isn’t about a literal fairy tale situation—it’s a rather graphic plea for oral sex: “Sweet little princess, let me introduce His Frogness/You alone can get him singing/He’s all puffed-up, gonna be your king…You think you won’t/I think you will/Don’t you know that this tongue can kill…Princess, you might like it/If you lower your defense/Kiss that frog, you will get your prince.” But it’s a great song nevertheless, and it did inspire this story.) And third, this story was originally supposed to be episode 7—this spot was to be taken up by a much more serious, darker story called “Hardware,” which would deal with Lucy’s desire for revenge and thirst for big, powerful automatic weapons with which to serve that cold, cold revenge. But Dan’s player was unable to join us, so that plot was jettisoned for this one, instead. The plot from the lost episode may or may not be reworked into a later one.
Next week’s episode: “Green.”
