A giant hand picks up a truck with a very impatient
driver inside and dumps him in the water. An artefact that magically curses
people with road rage to be attacked by giants? Sounds good, where can I get
one?
Time for the gang to arrive at the scene of the crash and
fumble to think of some kind of cover story (sure Eve keeps throwing around her
counter-terrorism credentials, but there’s a limit to how often and where they
can use that). Jake flails badly, Ezekiel insults the sheriff by calling his
town boring and all of them fail basic social interaction and should really
leave this to Eve.
To the truck that the sheriff lets them examine anyway
and they see a giant fingerprint on the truck. Quick communication with Jenkins
who is the most awesome thing about this show and they learn about trolls –
big, dangerous and not very great in daylight. He vaguely offers more help if
they can get a picture of the troll or a sample of it.
Eve and Ezekiel wander off looking for the troll and the
snarky Ezekiel is snarky – mainly because that’s his motivation as he clearly
tells Eve: he’s a Librarian because it’s fun, and if it stops being fun he’ll
stop doing it. They find the troll as a statue and grab some rocks
Cassandra and Jake form their own team but Cassandra is
still worried that Jake doesn’t trust her (which he doesn’t). They get CCTV of
the truck crossing the bridge and Jake notes there was a small car, a medium
car then the big truck. They’re interrupted by the mayor jogging by completely
naked and oblivious to the fact, he believes he’s wearing a new jogging suit
(if you’re going to blur out his backside then keep the camera above the waist,
showing someone completely naked but blurred is just odd). They ask the sheriff
if anything else odd has happened but he’s sure their quiet town is quite
mundane. Of course, his definition of mundane includes a woman being stuck in a
pizza oven, talking animals and a few more oddly fairy-taleish events.
The gang gets back together so Jake can tell Eve that
there’s way more than a troll in town – when lots of people scream because a
huge wolf the size of an elephant appears walking down the road. Wearing a
granny’s nightcap and it menaces a woman wearing red. Jake kills it with a
thrown axe (axes aren’t usually that aerodynamic). In case we haven’t been
following, Eve tells us that someone has weaponised fairy tales. S
To the Annex where Jenkins draws up a big list of all the
Artefacts that can bring fairy tales to life and then crosses off the ones it
can’t be (which I kind of love – and not just because Jenkins is awesome). To
narrow it down further he wants to autopsy the wolf and doesn’t see why this
should be a problem.
Eve and Cassandra distract people (and everyone is oddly
staring at Cassandra) while Ezekiel and Jake steal the wolf carcass. They get
it back to the Annex, cut it open – and there’s a red clad woman inside. Still
alive. Jenkins now knows the artefact – a book, the Libris something or other.
Cut to an old man reading that book to a sick kid in a
hospital.
Elsewhere in the hospital, Cassandra has been latched on
to by the rescued woman who decides Cassandra is the most amazing, wonderful
rescuer - completely forgetting Jake, despite his many attempts to point out he
was the one who cut her free.
Jenkins has also joined them and is creepy and awesome
about vending machines and to potentiously exposition about how the Librus will
grow in power and sweep more people into the stories – eventually covering
whole nations. He suggests the Black Death was caused by it originally and adds
that to power it the book sucks life force – and if you read a story to someone
they become weak and sick and die. So time to check hospital records for people
sick without reason.
Some more fairy tale shout outs (a boy eating a piece of house, poisoned apple farm, a woman convinced her step-children wanted to kill her). Jenkins also makes it clear that fairy tales, the original non-Disney versions – are brutal and frightening but also that more people will fit fairy tale archtypes and be drawn in
To which we have Ezekiel getting lots of odd, amazing
luck and chasing after a coin her drops that keeps rolling as if supernaturally
powered. The coin leads him right to one of the children dying from said
life-sucking storybook. He teaches the fine art of lockpicking and hears that
the kid just got sick after story hour at the library.
Eve keeps losing her shoe as she and Jake go to the library
where they learn the library recently received some ancient books in a man’s
will. The librarian is unwilling to let these complete strangers examine his
very very rare, old books.
Cassandra is being beloved by all womanhood as amazingly
Charming as the whole gang gathers together. Ezekiel tells them about the sick
kid who, unfortunately, is the daughter of the sheriff who already doesn’t like
Ezekiel. He tries to cuff Ezekiel – and he just takes them off again; so the sheriff
goes all glowing eyed fairy tale, threatening to huff and puff – and blowing
out all the glass in the bar. They run – the bar’s only made of wood after all.
Fairy tales start catching up with the main gang – Prince
Charming Cassandra, Eve is now humming, laughing fairy tale princess and Jake the
huntsman is now carrying around an axe. And an owl. Cassandra thinks that’s
fine – heroes are safe but Jenkins objects, heroes have all kinds of difficulty
and hardship in fairy tales. Only Jack, the lucky rogue and thief, gets through
unscathed. That would be Ezekiel. Who runs off, leaving the other three looking
at a town that is becoming more and more consumed by fairy tales - Cassandra
leads an evacuation of the civilians using her Prince Charming magnetism while
the sheriff and other “wolves” follow.
Ezekiel sneaks his way back into the hospital where the
kindly librarian is reading the Death Book to sick kids. Except kindly
Librarian is very aware of what he’s doing, killing kids – and the book also
super-charges the storyteller so Ezekiel can’t just take the book from the
super-strong old man. He’s quite bitter and furious about being neglected and
forgotten in his old age. He uses the book to direct the wolves after the other
librarians.
Princess Eve calls Ezekiel and tells him that basically
everything rests on him because, as the rogue, he’s the only one the story will
support. Which is when the wolves break into the library and Charming Cassandra
pulls out a heroic dramatic speech much to the adulation of the civilians and
the happiness of Princess Eve. They fight – Cassandra and Huntsman Jake being
awesome, Eve is frustrated by her suddenly appearing high heels.
Then we get still weirder with a magic lucky coin and
Ezekiel taking the book in the hospital and giving the book to Jenny, the sick
child to tell her own story; with robots, ninjas and merlin. Because why not –
run with it, it’s silly and fun. Evil librarian is sucked into the book because
why not.
Happily ever epilogue with some clumsy explanations (I
actually kind of like how they use the standard explanations these shows always
do and they just don’t work. “Mass hallucinations? We better call FEMA!”)
Back to the Annex, complete with the rare book collection
just in case (much to Jake’s glee). Everyone deals with what they’ve learned
and Ezekiel smugly points out that when a magic spell turned everyone to heroes
of legend, it turned him into… him. So running around relying on luck is
something he’s going to keep doing
I can’t say I love Ezekiel as a character but I do quite
like the clarity of his motivations. Ezekiel is there because being a Librarian
is fun – and that’s an ok motivation for a character. I actually quite like the
idea of a character who is involved because it amuses him. It’s such a realistic motivation and something we rarely
see in the genre – protagonists are involved because of noble duty, base
self-interest, self-preservation, forced by circumstances – rarely because they
are actively amused by what they’re doing and enjoy it. Why shouldn’t fun be a
motivation?
It’s nice to see him more involved this episode –but also feel that “rogue” was a bit of a cop out because it didn’t involve anything about him changing
I also really like Jake’s position on Cassandra – he doesn’t
trust her. That doesn’t mean he dislikes her or doesn’t like spending time with
her or can’t work wither her – but he doesn’t trust her (both because of his
own trust issues and because she betrayed his trust). Which is fine. I strongly
dislike the idea that anyone is owed our trust or we have a duty to trust
people or that deciding not to trust someone is offensive or rude or wrong or
some kind of failing. No-one has a duty to trust – and Jake was really good here
in making it clear that distrust doesn’t have to come with being an arsehole or
mean to someone just because he doesn’t trust them.
Both of these are nice little nuggets in an episode and a
show that is just fun fluff. And that’s not a bad thing – this episode is
exactly what Libarians should be – fun, light, a little silly, but really fun.
