Butt News Movie Club #32: Practical Magic

If I Could Do Magic You Would NEVER Catch Me Sweeping!!!

[Happy Halloweenie! A little bitty TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT real quick:

If you are in BOSTON, come see me tomorrow night, 11/1, at WBUR CitySpace for a live taping of Weight For It with Ronald Young, Jr.! Tickets and info here!

If you are in PORTLAND, OREGON, come see me 11/7 for a special post-election live taping of my podcast, Text Me Back, at the Reser Center in Beaverton! Featuring special guests Guy Branum and OR Speaker of the House Julie Fahey! Tickets and info here!

If you are in NEW YORK CITY, come see me 11/14 at Joe’s Pub, my first time back to New York since before Covid! I’ll be doing an excerpt from Every Castle, Ranked as part of a very special variety show, and if it’s a success then maybe Joe’s Pub will let me come back for a full run! YOU can help that happen by coming to this show! Tickets and info here!

If you are in FRENCHTOWN, NEW JERSEY, come see me 11/16 at ArtYard, where I’ll be doing the very same variety show as the above! Tickets and info here!

And, as always, like and subscribe to this newsletter if u love me. <3]

Well, well, well, look at the poser who wrote a book with “witches” in the title but hasn’t seen A SINGLE ONE of the seminal witch movies! It’s me! I asked my dear public for Halloween movie suggestions (not too scary, as I am home alone in the woods with up to SIX cougars stalking me ¹) on my Instagram and it was brought to my attention that I have not seen any of the following:

Hocus Pocus

The Witches of Eastwick

Practical Magic

OR

The Craft

HUMILIATING! What the hell is my problem?? My crisis management team said I had to start somewhere and Practical Magic seemed like the most ~*romantic*~ option, so here we gooooooo!

A bunch of pilgrims are hanging-to-death a witch on a cliff above the ocean, an extremely Massachusetts-coded activity, except that I know this movie was filmed on Whidbey Island and I’m FAIRLY CERTAIN Whidbey Island hadn’t even met a white person in the year 16-hundred-and-whatever?? So we must be doing Whidbey-as-Massachusetts, which is hurtful, but okay.

The witch is named Maria and she is the first ever witch in the Owens family, a witch dynasty that has been “blamed for everything that goes wrong in this town since pilgrim times.” The pilgrims wanted to hang her because she banged all of their geezers and the geezer wives were all on the “hanging committee.” But mainly also because they are scared of the gift of magic. How do you become the first witch in the family?? Is it just a genetic lottery, like high cholesterol? Asking for ME.

Maria jumps off the gallows to her death but the rope breaks using magic and the pilgrims are like WHAT THE HECK and they run away and banish Maria to an island (Bainbridge??). Her lover never came to rescue her and so she just hung out on the beach crying with a duck until she died, so she cast a spell upon herself that she would never again feel the agony of love (except for the duck) and the spell turned into a curse upon any man who ever dares to love an Owens woman, and that’s why Daddy died. Or as I like to call it, PMDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Ma’am, you can literally do magic—surely you can swim? Is there a spell for “hold on to a log”?)

A few generations later, it’s time for the narrator’s Daddy to die, like she said. Mommy and Daddy are at the beach and Mommy hears the skreet skreet of the Deathwatch Beatle (it’s George), which unfortunately means ur man is doomed 2 eat shit. He drops dead and then Mommy dies of a broken heart. But, silver lining, now the kids get to go live with Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest, so… one man’s trash?

The (unbound, unbroken, unvaxxed) neighborhood kids bully the Owens girls by yelling, “WITCH WITCH YOU’RE A WITCH,” which makes me feel like screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has never met a real child, because if eight-year-old ME heard that someone was a witch???? I’d be chanting “WITCH WITCH CAN I COME OVER????” Stockard Channing would be like “beep boop boop hello Spirit Realm 911? I need to file a spooky restraining order against this fat dork who won’t leave my house?”

The aunties make the girls feel better by saying that they don’t have to go to school because it’s more important for them to learn how to light candles using only their brain. The girls are like “phat” and go upstairs to chill but just then some neighborhood woman comes scratchy-scrabbling at the door demanding a love spell. The aunties are like ok sure just hold this bird for a second.

Scratch-Scrabbler: “I want him to want me so much that he can’t stand it.” [STABS PIGEON WITH KEBAB]

Dianne Wiest: “Be careful what you wish for.”

The girls are lurking on the stairs watching this go down and eating strawberries, which somehow they’ve gotten all over their faces, which is not how strawberries work, but wtf do I know, they’re magic strawberries I guess. Baby Sandra Bullock vows that she will NEVER fall in love, but Baby Nicole Kidman says she can’t WAIT to fall in love. This is the two types of women.

BSB plucks flower petals and makes a list of her ideal man’s attributes, which are: being able to flip pancakes and having one green eye and one blue eye. (AIM HIGHER, SANDY! A DOG COULD FLIP A PANCAKE! ASK FOR THE PANCAKES TO ALSO TASTE GOOD!) BNK is like didn’t you JUST SAY you never want a boyfriend? And BSB says that “that’s the point—the guy I dreamed up doesn’t exist.” Because if her boyfriend doesn’t exist then she can never die of a broken heart. Smart, imo! BSB takes the petals outside and they fly away to the moon to put all potential boyfriends ON NOTICE.

Now they’re adults. Nicole Kidman is sneaking away with her boyfriend to get sexually married, and Sandra Bullock is a dork in a bathrobe. NK says don’t worry—she and SB are still going to grow old together with cats eventually (counterpoint: grow old with cats NOW!!!), she just has to go to Orlando and listen to a man talk about himself for a few years first, the rite of passage that all women crave. They seal the cat lady pact with BLOOD MAGIC by cutting their palms open and rubbing the juice together and then SB says “I love you, Jelly Bean,” the famous blood magic catchphrase.

Channing, Wiest, and SB make their way through the town that is literally obviously Coupeville, and all the people are being NEGATIVE about them. They get a postcard from NK explaining that instead of settling down with that first loser, she is sexing her way through every loser in Orlando. The aunts approve. All witches are sex-positive. Meanwhile, SB says she just wants to be NORMAL.

Wiest points out that even normal-seeming people are not normal at all: “See that couple there? He’s having an affair with the babysitter and she can eat a poundcake in under a minute.”

See? That’s why you should ALWAYS MARRY A POUNDCAKE instead of a man.

They run into the town’s crate-lifter Mark Feuerstein, liftin’ crates as usual, and he and SB have hot chemistry. She goes back to the house but then Faith Hill starts playing so she has to run back to the Farmers’ Market and immediately kiss him on the mouth. Unclear if they know each other?

Now it’s been three years and SB and Mark Feuerstein have two kids and “life is perfect.” SB tells NK all about it in a letter, which NK reads by the pool where she lives in the nude and parties with men. The aesthetic of this section of the movie is upsettingly 90s. I was led to believe that I would receive folksy seaside charm. Why does this pool scene have the vibe of an episode of the television show Fastlane starring Bill Bellamy and Peter Facinelli?

NK tells her sister that she’s seen a million Florida penises and she’s rocked ‘em all, but now she only has two words to say: “Jimmy Angelov.”

NK is inside the party house and Jimmy Angelov comes up behind her and blindfolds her and she’s thrilled about it even though she did NOT verify it was him, for the record! It could have been JD Vance for all she knew!!

SB is sleeping in the bed with Mark Feuerstein when she hears DEATH BEETLE SAY SKRICK SKRICK SKRICK. She ignores it and goes back to sleep! She doesn’t know about the beetle’s call! Now the guy from Suits will surely die!²

The next day, SB starts ripping up the floorboards looking for the beetle, and I can’t tell if she’s trying to kill it because she remembered it’s an omen of boyfriend-death or if she’s sick of the noise. She ruins her entire house.

In town, Mark Feuerstein is—you guessed it—moving crates! when he is almost run over by 100 bicycles. They manage to swerve around him and he laughs as though mortality is a GAME TO HIM so then he gets poundcaked by a truck (full of crates probably—ironic). SB psychically feels his death in her witch bones and is ruined just like her floorboards.

She goes to see the aunts, who admit that they nonconsensually did a love spell to get SB and Mark Feuerstein to kiss three years ago and that’s why it was so weird. SB says that was NOT COOL and runs and gets their spellbook and is like ok now u have to necromance him as reparations.

Stockard Channing, a real one, explains that “Even if we did bring him back, it wouldn’t be [Mark Feuerstein]—it would be something else, something dark and unnatural.” Yeah, ma’am, that’s called Pet Sematary, and I specifically did NOT PICK THAT ONE from the Instagram suggestions because it’s too scary!!! Don’t you dare!

Sandy B is acting the hell out of this movie by the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SB brings her kids to live with the aunts, but she vows that “my children will never do magic, ever,” which is a real hater move. If my mom made that call and didn’t consult me??? WHY I OUGHTTA!

SB is too depressed to get out of bed even though it’s Evan Rachel Wood’s first day of school, and I appreciate the nod to imperfect parenting! Even witches have bad days!

NK is in her sex den doing smoking and drinking in between sex. She says she has to go to the bathroom and Jimmy Antonov (Goran Visnjik) says he would like to go to the bathroom with her and watch her pee. Is Goran Visnjik still working, by the way? We want him back! She manages to sneak to pptown by herself where she drops some seed beads into Jimmy’s tequila. They’re sleepy little beads! He passes out and she magic-drives back to Whidbey Island from Florida listening to “Case of You” in a VERY FUNNY time-lapse montage because she sister-sensed SB’s broken heart.

They sit by the fire and gossip. SB explains that she was really happy with Mark Feuerstein and they were going to open up a botanical shop and sell shampoo—she was going to make the potions and he was going to supply all the crates. NK says that she is similarly really happy because Jimmy is a Dracula cowboy from Bulgaria: “He talks about our relationship in terms of centuries. Sometimes we just stay up all night worshiping each other.” And THAT’S the kind of line that makes a cult classic!

Then NK says she’s gotta go because the belladonna beads are going to wear off and Dracula Cowboy is going to wake up and want to get back to worshiping her ASAP. She says she drugs him with belladonna beads quite a lot, actually, just so she can get some sleep what on account of all the worshiping. She tells SB to get up and brush her teeth and take care of her kids and move on with her life. SB says yeah ok. She wakes up and NK is gone but that’s okay—she feels better. Sometimes you just need your sister to tell you what you already know! (Sometimes your sister telling you what you already know is grounds for homicide, but sometimes it’s helpful.)

SB walks over to her botanical shop, which she implied she was cancelling but I guess not, where her employee Margo Martindale is arranging the potions (imagine a small business being able to afford an employee!). Evan Rachel Wood and her other kid come up to the window and start licking the glass and making faces and everyone acts like it’s HILARIOUS even though Margo Martindale probably just Windexed that!!!

The nasty island kids show up with the same chant their moms used against NK and SB—“WITCH WITCH YOU’RE A WITCH”—causing the ragamuffins to cease licking the window (good!!!). Sandy B wonders aloud why they haven’t come up with a better rhyme in 300 years and DUDE IT’S NOT A RHYME. Evan Rachel Wood says she hopes one of the bullies gets chicken pox and his mom is like OH NOOOO because she’s out of PTO and can’t afford to stay home with this poxy idiot! And like, okay, if you genuinely believe these people are witches who can inflict warts upon your shitty son, wouldn’t you tell your kids NOT to bully them????? Serves you right!

The daughters get in trouble and pout and then say it sucks that SB has magic powers but doesn’t use them and expects her kids to get bullied willy-nilly with NO SPELLS. They go home to talk shit about SB with the biddies.

SB warns the biddies not to teach the kids any nonsense and goes upstairs to write another letter to her sister. She SAYS she hates magic but she doesn’t hate her automatic stirring spoon!!!!!

BTW, you don’t need to stir your tea for that long! Girl, it’s stirred!

I didn’t really listen to the monologue she writes in the letter but it’s about all the same stuff—she wants all of the love but none of the beetles, etc. etc. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe I’ve had my happiness.” Well, you definitely HAVEN’T, based on a verrrrrry hunky name I saw in the opening credits!

The phone rings and she knows it’s NK because of sister psychic powers. NK says “I’m scared” so SB BOOKS IT outta there. She leaves the daughters with the aunts and concedes that they are allowed to take them to the Solstice Celebration but they are not allowed to dance naked under the full moon. The aunts are like yeah sure of course on opposite day.

She gets to the shitty motel room where NK is all beaten up and hiding. NK says she and Jimmy drove around for two weeks and it was great but then she laughed at him because he didn’t know there was jelly in a jelly donut so he punched her. OMG, did Griffin Dunne direct this extremely accurate parable about the unkillable specter of intimate partner violence because of Dominique Dunne?? That’s probably a well-known obvious fact, but I just thought of it!!!!! BOO, MEN.

They’re about to escape but then NK looks up at the moon and sees that it’s orange and starts Shaqtin’ a Fool about it. “Blood on the moon! Blood on the moon! I need my tiger’s eye!” Unfortunately, she left her tiger’s eye, which she “needs,” in Jimmy’s Bulgarian car. She goes to grab it but he’s hiding in the back seat so he grabs HER and kidnaps them both!

Once again, don’t you girls famously DO MAGIC?????

Jimmy is wasted and makes a long speech about Louis L’Amour being a foreigner while Sandra Bullock drives. The girls make eye contact in the rearview mirror and make a telepathic plan about murking him with the belladonna again. Jimmy tries to brand NK with his ring, so SB almost crashes the car and yells, “Louis L’Amour is NOT a foreigner, he is from NORTH! DAKOTAAAA!!” which was very funny to me.

Somehow, while driving, SB slips the belladonna into Jimmy’s tequila again but he doesn’t pass out. Maybe she didn’t put enough? He goes 2 peepee and then he tries to choke NK to death so SB attacks him but luckily he dies of belladonna just in time. It’s like Thelma and Louise with magic! I don’t hate that!

Now Sandy B is FED UP—they’ve got a dead Dracula cowboy on their hands and meanwhile she has KIDS on WHIDBEY ISLAND?? And Nicole Kidman is refusing to go to the cops even though it was obviously self-defense?

Sandy says she doesn’t want to have her kids taken away, which sometimes happens when you commit murder, and Nicole says the perfect solution is to Pet Sematary Jimmy so he isn’t murdered anymore. Like, haven’t you SEEN Pet Sematary? There’s no reason why Stephen King wouldn’t exist in the Practical Magic universe!

SB is like yeah but the aunts said that’ll turn him into something dark and unnatural and NK says “Jimmy already is dark and unnatural!” A great line.

They go to the necromancy chamber and put Jimmy on the slab and draw a pentagram on him in whipped cream. They do a chant—“black as night, erase death from our sight”—and now the book says they’re supposed to stick needles in his dead eyes. They DON’T want to. But just when they’re about to do it, his eyes open! He wasn’t actually dead? Or the spell worked? Even without the needles? Are the needles just security theater like taking your shoes off at the airport?

Okay, it's definitely the spell, because this guy is crustified and gross. He starts screaming “MA WAAAAAYF” straight Borat style and tries to strangle NK again. SK bonks him with a pan and re-murders him. They bury him in the garden and pledge to tell the aunts nothing for some reason even though those divas would NEVER narc!

The kids get home and say they had the best time dancing naked under the full moon. Sandy is 2 stressed 2 care. Wiest offers NK a brownie for breakfast just like the old times and it’s sooooooo wacky!

They go down to the botanical store and NK is just smoking cigarettes inside even though this is where healing happens. Wait, is the apothecary in Schitt’s Creek an exact replica of this store? I think I vaguely remember David saying that except at the time I didn’t know what the Practical Magic botanical shop looked like so it meant nothing to me?? But now I know! I’m a lifelong learner! Or am I making this up? I’m hungry!

SB rushes off to a meeting at the school and Margo Martindale and the other employee (the biggest fantasy element of this movie? A small business having TWO employees!) explain to NK that today is the day when the town moms decide who goes where on the phone tree. The phone tree is very prestigious and the higher you are the better. But they never let SB be anywhere on the phone tree because she is constantly poxing their sons!

NK barges into the phone tree meeting and the moms are scandalized: “Is that a snake tattoo??”

Nicole Kidman/Me Screaming into the Junk Food Drawer: “That’s right, I’m back! Hang on to your husbands, girls!”

NK does a little squeaky magic and gets SB put at the TOP of the phone tree. The other mothers can’t believe this. It’s unheard of!

Outside the aunts’ house—the house is great, by the way, everyone loves the house, you don’t need me to tell you about the house—something is sliming through the grass but I can’t tell if it’s evil or not. Probably evil. Almost certainly evil.

NK wakes SB up from a dead sleep and screams “MARGARITAAAAASSS!!!” in her face and SB is happy about it?????? She also screams “MARGARITAAAAASSS!!!” and they run downstairs where the aunts are making MARGARITAAAAASSS and they all drink MARGARITAAAAASSS and dance around to “Lime in the Coconut” for what I can tell is going to be way too long. Coincidentally, I just looked up the lyrics to “Lime in the Coconut” a couple of weeks ago because I was singing “Lime in the Coconut” to annoy my family, and it’s kind of a misogynistic song! This woman goes to the doctor suffering from lime overdose and he gaslights her and call her a “silly woman” and prescribes her MORE LIME as revenge for waking him up from his nap???? Get therapy, sir!

Finally the dancing stops and they sit around the table drunkenly insulting each other. NK says everyone but her is a “frigid old hag” and so Stockard Channing calls NK a slut and then SB says “since when is being a slut a crime in this family?” and they all laugh. They are all screaming and dying laughing and drinking tequila until suddenly there is a bad vibe in the house. The aunts begin singing “Always on My Mind,” which is the song Jimmy was singing when they homicided him. Then they realize that the tequila bottle is the special Jimmy tequila that Jimmy was drinking when he got corpsified! The aunts shrug and say that “somebody left it on the porch,” and, yeah, “drink it” is probably what you WOULD do with something you found on the porch if you lived in a town that had hated your family’s ass for 300 years.

Then a broom falls over and someone says, “broom fell, company’s coming,” which is a scary part of the movie to be sure!

The aunts do the brain-math and realize what’s going on and decide to teach NK and SB a lesson about NUI (Necromancing Under the Influence). They sneak into the little girls’ room and tie a piece of Maria’s death-rope around each of their necks to protect them from whatever undead bartender is buried in the yard, and they DIP.

Having their wise role models who could fix this all in one second disappear at the worst possible moment to “teach the protagonists a lesson” feels like lazy writing, but who cares! I hate to see these queens go, but I love to watch them leave!!!

Sandy and Nicole wake up the next morning to find their aunts missing and the kids wearing ugly necklaces made of rope, but are strangely unperturbed. SB asks Evan Rachel Wood to go get some mint from the garden, but she says, “Not while he’s out there… the man under the roses.” And that’s a certified bona fide bone-tingler!

The kids tell SB and NK that the aunts just said, “clean up your own mess” and left. They go out to the garden and see Jimmy’s boots poking out of the mud but then they slurp back underground like two slimy moles! A giant nest of roses grew up over Jimmy’s body overnight, so SB starts hacking away at it like a crazy person. But then Aidan Quinn shows up! And ladies? He’s got a spatula.

He's actually from the state prosecutor’s office in Tucson and he wants to talk to Nicole Kidman because turns out Jimmy is a serial strangler and Aidan Quinn is manhunting him. Sandy B says, “How did you know that I’m her sister?” and Aidan Quinn says SHRUG??? in a suspicious way.

She runs inside and tells NK what’s going on and says they gotta come up with a plan because for some reason she feels like she can’t lie to him. NK is like OF COURSE YOU CAN LIE TO HIM WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT but SB is like IDK MAN ALL KINDS OF WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS TO US.

SB runs back down to the kitchen and asks Aidan Quinn what he wants and he’s like oh I found your creepy letter in Nicole Kidman’s stuff so I came here. She says that the letter was private, because it’s the letter where she wrote her monologue about how she just wants to find a man who won’t inevitably be eaten by beetles, and he says too bad so sad I already read it loser!!!!!

Then NK comes downstairs and executes her plan, which is to be SEXUAL. He says he needs to find her boyfriend and she explains that her boyfriend hit her and she hasn’t seen him since, because “a man hits me, he only does it once.” Terrible thing to say to the cops! That sounds like you DID murder him, which you did!!!

Aidan Quinn is like um ok but why is his car in the driveway, and, I’m sorry, they just left his WHOLE CAR IN THE DRIVEWAY? Plates and all?? Once again I am begging people in movies who want to commit murder: Watch! One! Dateline!

Sandy confesses that they stole Jimmy’s car due to he kidnapped them, but they didn’t kill him. Aidan Quinn starts dabbing at her rose scratches with a napkin, which is both inappropriate and not a good way to handle scratches. Little bits of the napkin are going to stick to the blood! You need to get that wet, my brother!

Aidan Quinn canvases the town asking about the Owens sisters, where he receives mixed reviews and learns about the curse.

A guy named Dwight comes into the apothecary to complain to Sandy B about an ineffective product she sold him for his scalp condition. She says that the product isn’t supposed to go on his head, and he asks where else it would go, and she says “try to remember,” and then he has a BIG AHA MOMENT and scuttles out embarrassed.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

DOES IT GO UP HIS BUTT???????

Dwight runs home to stick the scalp medicine up his butt.

Aidan Quinn tells SB there are holes in her story (correct), so he’s going to come by the house tomorrow at 10 am and interrogate her again.

AQ: “It’s a date.”

NO IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!

Nicole Kidman is having nightmares, so she goes outside to yell at Jimmy’s murderous ghost: “Go away! Go away!”

CAN’T YOU LOOK IN THE SPELL BOOK?

“HOW TO BANISH EVIL GHOST”?

Oh, lol, that’s the next scene. Nicole Kidman is wearing sunglasses inside, and Evan Rachel Wood is helping her make the banishing potion they found in the book. Except, no, they’re trying to banish Aidan Quinn, not the ghost! BANISH THE GHOST!

banish the 90s

Aidan Quinn arrives for sexual breakfast interrogation, and you KNOW what they’re having. It starts with a PANCA and ends with a KES!

SB says he should come back for Halloween when they all jump off the roof and fly around and kill their husbands. This makes him horny as hell and they have one of those movie convos where they get their mouths closer and closer together as they talk.

SB: “There’s no devil in the craft.”

AQ: “What kind of crafts do you do?”

SB: “I manufacture bath oils.”  

Sandy says that “magic isn’t just spells and potions,” and that his cop badge is “just a star, another symbol, a talisman, it can’t stop criminals in their tracks, it has power because you believe it does.”

Then Aidan Quinn runs to the kitchen and screams “HAVE YOU EVER EATEN A SAGUARO CACTUS???” and makes a saguaro cactus-shaped pancake and, before Sandy B can even re-insert her IUD, he up and FLIPS IT.

Next, Aidan Quinn serves the kids his signature pancakes out in the garden, and WHY IS THIS COP HAVING BREAKFAST WITH THESE SUSPECTS?

Nicole Kidman doses the syrup jug with go-away potion (were you going to warn Sandra Bullock?????), but just when she starts to hand it to Aidan Quinn the kids cockblock and throw it into the sea. They’ve got a good thing going with this pancake guy!

Nearby, an evil toad watches. He vomits up Jimmy’s ring. Aidan picks it up and is instantly enraged: “You better get yourselves a damn good lawyer and don’t even THINK about leaving town.”

The mood spoiled, they throw all the pancakes in the garbage (not necessary!!!) and the sisters fight because SB tells NK that she’s a sex-addicted narcissist. NK says SB is just jealous because she’s never had any adventures such as being strangled by Dracula in Arizona. NK is also mad that SB has WAY better witch powers than she does, but she just wastes them on shampoo! NK dreamed of having SB’s talent, but all she knows how to do is fuck up.

SB is like U KNOW WHAT? She’s gonna go tell her crush the whole story because she needs to be true to herself. She goes to Aidan Quinn’s hotel room and sees her letter on the desk and realizes that it’s all tattered because he read it like a million billion times. She tells AQ that Jimmy is in the spirit realm and that Nicole Kidman didn’t kill him—all technically true!

AQ: “He has to be held accountable.”

SB: “He has been punished.”

Then, KISSING!!!!!!

Sandy’s like, “I can’t,” and pushes him away, but then she’s like I CAN! AND I WILL! AND I DID! and they kiss some more. Nothing hits quite like a 1990s forbidden kiss! Suddenly she realizes, oh shit, Aidan Quinn has one green eye and one blue eye AND he did the pancake thing. She runs away.

AQ (calling after her): “I was born with it!” (lol)

SB hears NK’s voice in her head: “I need you!” She runs home and the kids are FREAKING OUT. Nicole Kidman is possessed on the bed. The reanimated corpse of Jimmy is stealing her life force and let me tell you he is GROSS.

Aidan Quinn arrives with his gun, but quickly sees that things are NOT normal. They all just kind of stare at each other for a while. Then Jimmy goes, “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” and shoves his whole hand into Aidan Quinn’s chest and tries to steal his heart! Hey! That belongs to SANDY! (Also, missed opportunity to rip out his tongue, imo!)

Just when you think our boy is toast, Jimmy’s hand is sliced, diced, murdered, flayed, and burned up by AQ’s magic badge, because nobody crosses the THIN BLUE LINE a.k.a. AQ’s cop skin! Then AQ holds the badge up to Jimmy like the talisman that it is and Jimmy sees his reflection in the metal and vanishes in a puff of dust that probably smells horrible.

AQ is just like, “What was that?” kind of nonchalant, which I don’t think is what you would say. Then he tells Sandy B that her read her letter “1000 times,” and actually he came to Whidbey Island more to meet her than to catch Jimmy, which is a crazy thing to admit when catching Jimmy is your taxpayer-funded job.

She explains that he’s actually only there because she sent for him via the flower petals via the post office on the moon. Now they’re not sure what to do. Are they in actual love? Or fake love due to magic, which seems like a potential consent violation? Aidan goes, “So you’re saying what I’m feeling is just one of your spells?” but he says it kind of sexy like it’s not a dealbreaker. But SB, committed to being a big fucking bummer at all times, is like yeah I guess we can’t be together because of that, so he’s like ok I guess I’ll go then???

On his way out he says, “curses only have power when you believe in them, and I don’t.”

YOU DON’T?????? AFTER YOU JUST FOUGHT A GHOST?

And then he’s like, “You know what? I wished for you too,” and Sandy B cryyyyyy! But she still lets him leave! You guys, it’s okay to be together if BOTH people did a spell!

In the aftermath of all the drama, the sisters hug. Weirdly, Nicole Kidman starts licking Sandra Bullock’s face. Huh! Interesting!

OH NO YOU GUYS IT’S STILL JIMMY.

Seems like this should be the moment when SB stops fighting her powers and uses magic to save her sister. Instead, she just punches Nicole Kidman in the face and ties her to a chair. Then FINALLY the aunts show up and diagnose Nicole Kidman: “He’s squatting inside her like a toad.” (Have you tried psyllium husk??)

One of the aunts is like, “This is what comes from dabbling—you can’t practice witchcraft while looking down your nose at it,” and that’s a great reminder to all of us that being an un-fun snob can be DEADLY.

Dianne WIEst says that to evict Jimmy from Nicole Kidman’s butt chakra they need a whole circle of witches: “Nine women. Twelve’s better.”

Stockard Channing (to Sandra Bullock): “Do you have any friends?”

This is Sandy’s big moment! SHE ACTIVATES THE PHONE TREE. I got goosebumps!

They light candles all over the place and SB does her trick where she blows on the candle to light it and yeah, we get it, you’re incredibly powerful. Nicole Kidman is shitting evil toads everywhere at this point, so the kids run around and collect them all in a bag and then dump them over the cliff. ALL the moms of the town show up, because all women are witches in a way!!!!! EVEN CHICKEN POX MOM CAME.

Now they do the ritual. They make a broom circle. They do a chant. NK is writhing all around. Jimmy does NOT like this. NK begs them to just let Jimmy have her because she’s too tired to fight anymore, but SB is like NO so NK dies I guess?

Sandy takes a tequila shot, breaks the broom circle, and uses the tequila bottle to lure Jimmy out of Nicole Kidman’s body! Tequila is nature’s undead domestic abuser catnip!

He lunges at the tequila bottle but then they grab him and do the blood magic hand-slice thing again from the beginning of the movie and all the women join hands and form a glowing circle and Jimmy turns into a little dust Twister that gets everywhere.

praxis

Classic 90s woman: “I wonder if that would work on my ex-husband!”

Margo Martindale: “Come on, ladies, let’s clean house.”

Women do love sweeping!!! Pleeeeeeeeease can I helm a remake of this movie where we just polish up the gender politics like 10%? Put your 2024 fantasy casting in the comments!

Stockard Channing: Nicole Kidman

Dianne Weist: Sandra Bullock

Nicole Kidman: Joel Kim Booster

Sandra Bullock: Bowen Yang

Aidan Quinn: Sam Richardson

Mark Feuerstein: Tim Robinson

Margo Martindale: Me

Jimmy: Nicole Byer

Then they sweep the Jimmy powder out the door and dump rancid potion on his dirty rotten grave! They did it! Girls rule!

Aidan Quinn writes Sandy B a letter saying that he’s done her a solid and ruled Jimmy’s death accidental. He took care of it 4 her like a good boyfriend even though they decided not to be boyfriend-girlfriend. But then look who’s creepin’ and peepin’ up the lane! It’s Aidan Quinn! They will be boyfriend-girlfriend after all! They kiss! Nicole Kidman is so happy that she kisses her radishes (then marries them).

Now it’s Halloween when they all fly off the roof. They really do jump off the roof and it’s fine. They definitely really literally can do magic! WOW, YOU GIRLS BRING A REAL “I CAN’T DO MAGIC” ENERGY TO THE “BATTLE AGAINST THE UNDEAD” THAT “VIEWERS WHO KNOW YOU CAN DEFINITELY DO MAGIC” REALLY DON’T LIKE!!!!!

GOODBYE!

1. From my neighbor’s trail cam, ONE MILE from my house!!!!!

2. You’re telling me he wasn’t on Suits???????!?!!??!?