London, 1889 and Helena (H.G. Wells) being the awesome
Warehouse 12 agent she was and taking down Jack the Ripper. (Kipling is also a
Warehouse agent, I am most amused). Her mentor tells her all about the
Warehouse but also puts a little puncture in her idea that the Warehouse is
inherently linked to the British empire – though she does think there will
never be a Warehouse 13.
The current team are watching this on the Round Table
(and also learning that Helena has broken up with her current guy and is now
dating a woman which finally sets in stone the often referenced bisexuality of
Helena). The Table stores the memories of agents defining moments with the Warehouse
and she wants them to add to it. Which means Warehouse 13 is reaching the end
of its life. And if the Warehouse moves to a new country, the new country
provides new agents.
Pete is highly stressed by this and demands Mrs. Frederick stop it, accusing her of failing as a Caretaker – but this is not a crisis to solve, it’s what the Warehouse does. So Claudia decides to give everyone time to calm down by sharing her first memory
Which involves showgirls and Pete and Myka tap dancing
because of an Artefact Pete played with. The whole gang tries to battle
showgirls while tap dancing – and Claudia has to put on a major performance
(thankfully tap dancing) to charge another Artefact to fix it all.
It’s whacky, silly and immensely fun after which everyone announces “best job ever.” It was also the day when Claudia realised she didn’t want to be a Caretaker because she loves being an agent so much. Which leads to Pete freaking out about not being an agent any more. While he storms off, the gang talk to Claudia about whether she wants to be Caretaker and how she shouldn’t feel forced to become one.
On that subject, Artie’s turn to share a memory: a memory
Mrs. Frederick thinks will backfire on him.
Artie and a past agent investigate a time bubble from the 1940s with
someone using an Artefact to make a party last forever and avoid going to war;
it’s a bubble that can only be entered once a year, the date of the party. They
have 25 minutes to investigate and Artie’s junior Agent, Scott, is pretty good.
Scott’s insight helps them solve it though Scott is briefly emotional at the
woman with the Artefact’s plea – worried that her baby will grow up without a
dad. Which Artie feels guilty about – because Scott is his son.
Intermission while Claudia demands an explanation. Artie
never knew Scott existed for years; and Artie fought the Regents for the right
of a “one”, the right Regents have to have one person who knows about the
Warehouse. He meant this as a lesson that you have to fight for your happiness,
but Claudia is still reeling and she walks off.
Artie follows her and after talking Artie reveals that
Scott is still alive but not an agent, he has a normal life. He didn’t
introduced Claudia because she would have wanted him to be an Agent – which defeats
the whole point of the One – someone in the normal world to keep balance. The lesson
is sometimes you have to be a little selfish to be happy – and that “do as I
say not as I do” is totally the prerogative of a father figure. And a lovely
bonding parent moment.
Pete demands Myka show him the much mentioned manual –
and she does. It’s a library. (We finally got to see the manual!). She and Pete
have an argument with her trying to get Pete to accept the inevitable and he
being furious that she won’t fight to keep the Warehouse.
Myka shares her memory with her working on a case where
an Artefact turns a group of very very very very complicated women straight
from a soap into Ninja Cat Burglars. She and Pete fight the ninjas – and Steve
picks up on Myka’s very obvious crush on Pete much to Myka’s complete denial,
shock – and acceptance.
Artie, meanwhile has an epic, emotional, painful rant
about the Warehouse leaving him after all he has given to it, he tearfully
rants about being unappreciated – and the Warehouse, with a wind, blows an
apple to him. I’ll ignore the whole creepy element of the Warehouse being
conscious and run with the “awww”.
In the background, Steve and Mrs. Frederick are mining
all of Mrs. Frederick’s memories (including Mr. Frederick), none of which we
get to see.
It’s Steve’s turn and he’s worried because he’s never
really belonged with the Warehouse group (he doesn’t even get on the main
credits and I’m glad there’s some acknowledgement he has been kept in the
background of the big 5). The memory is of Helena using a shrink ray to send
Steve and Claudia into Artie’s body for shenanigans reasons to get something
out of Artie’s heart. Steve emerges from the memory to think of the awe and
peace he experienced with the Warehouse. Which is the point of the ritual, the
Warehouse showing people what it has done for it.
Myka goes to see Pete with her love revelation but Pete
is rambling away about how much he needs the Warehouse until Myka breaks the
rant to kiss Pete. She explains he cannot lose her, she will be with him
because he loves her. He tells her he loves her and she kisses him back. Also
he confesses that her punching him in the arm, which she has done repeatedly
for 5 years, turns him on – and she says she knows.
We have a little cameo from Leena, her first day in the
Warehouse talking to Mrs. Frederick and predicting that some day she will die
in the Warehouse, Mrs. Frederick won’t be able to stop it – but it will be ok
(watched by Steve and Mrs. Frederick)
And it’s Pete’s turn – which includes an epic flashback
of a 1,000 scenes. He doesn’t have a defining moment – because all of it is his
defining moment, every minute with the team is his moment. He’s desperately
afraid of becoming what he was before the Warehouse. He has a huge touching
speech – then adds that he may have broke the table and Mrs. Frederick laughs.
This is considerably more shocking than a giant blue mongoose raging into
scene.
More reminiscing is stopped by Artie getting a ping.
Before he goes, Pete asks Mrs. Frederick if it’s over and she replies that this
wonder is “endless.” Pete kisses her on the cheek and calls her Hillary – her first
name. The gang gathers and do they’re usually awesome banter.
Several decades later in a Warehouse of the future,
another grumpy old fart is running the Warehouse, new agents bickering and
Claudia, the new Guardian, arriving with classic “didn’t hear her coming”
style. She makes a comment on the number of times she’s seen the Warehouse “almost
move”. She goes to the table to listen to the gang all talk about Endless
Wonder.
Ouch, that was a bitter sweet ending. Definitely the
powerful, emotional, character driven send off that Warehouse 13 deserved. If Warehouse
13 had to end at all. Which it didn’t, I’m saying this now
If nothing else, this episode also showed us how amazing vignette
episodes could be – not just 2 Artefacts an episode, throw in 4 or 5 mini ones!
As ever, the character interaction is what truly drives this show and this episode showed it to its best.
I don’t think I can be a big fan of Pete and Myka
together. I know they keep being on the cards, but I’ve always seen them as
having more of a sibling relationship than a sexual one. But it’s also the meta
societal message of it all – that a straight woman and a straight man working
closely together must have a sexual or romantic subtext – how often do we see
this? I would have quite liked them to have their happily ever after as
devoted, caring, dedicated friends forever.
While this episode was great… these last 6 episodes of
Warehouse 13 have left me... unimpressed. Warehouse 13 deserved better. I
thought it would be used to clear up the loose ends of Paracelsus… which it
did. In one episode. Claudia’s sister was too short lived a storyline to
encourage any real sense of investment. Valda came back as a villain for one
brief episode which felt pretty pointless and there was some fear of the
Warehouse moving which was primarily for the angst of this episode (I also don’t
see how the new Warehouse can manage with entirely new agents, that’s a damn
steep learning curve).
Over all, the whole of Warehouse 13 has been decent on
the sexuality inclusion – Helena is bisexual, even if we only ever saw her on
screen with a man, it was never completely hidden. But she wasn’t a main
character. Steve is gay and was made clear as gay from almost the moment we met
him and he was a character who was largely devoid of stereotypes and with his
own storylines (occasionally). He was one of the very few gay characters on the
shows we watch that didn’t come with regular cringe-inducing moments. He never
quite made it to main cast (as the credits show) and he was constantly dogged
by gay jokes (even in this episode) and they tried to undo
a lot of good work lately. But generally he was well done
The same can’t be said for POC – Mrs. Frederick is
awesome, but she’s also the poster child for Promotion to Obscurity. Leena was
very very underused – and
then killed off and not even given much attention compared to Artie’s guilt.
Abigail was a late stage replacement who never had the chance to become an
actual character. This is the very definition of tokenism.
Criticisms aside, I loved this show – I loved the
character interactions, I loved how they worked together as a team and as a
family. Good bye Warehouse 13, you were one of the good ones.
