So the formula is set for this series after the two hour pilot. Now, we’re into the case of the week situation. The best parts of this episode are the gadgets that again look antique but they do near magical things. The weakest part of the episode is the procedural elements. The writers must find a way to make the investigation less boring. This week, Pete and Mikah find themselves joining forces with an FBI agent, played by Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) to investigate a series of bank robberies. Artie sends Mikah and Pete to look into these robberies because he of course believes some sort of artifact is involved. Can you call something an artifact if the person that created it is still alive?
At any rate, it turns out that the thieves are using a portable record player to play a piece of music in the banks that makes everyone within earshot feel great pleasure and not worry about the money being stolen. Haven’t we seen this in sci-fi before? This is a gimmick that has been used a ton of times in other shows, and to better effect actually. Mikah and Pete track down the man who created the music originally and find him nearly comatose. He’s apparently had a mental breakdown after the record label he sold his music through took everything from him, including the rights to his music. The man’s caretaker and daughter are determined to buy the rights to his music back and they’ll rob banks to do it. Pete and Mikah take the magical record but leave the man and his daughter to try and rebuild their relationship. Their only responsibility is to get the artifact not make sure these people pay for robbing banks.
Secondary stories are a bit more interesting. Artie discovers that someone is trying to hack into the warehouse so he travels into the field to find answers and his investigation leads him to Mikah and Pete’s old boss. While there is some interesting mystery here the most entertaining part of this secondary story is the use of a camera that does a lot more than take pictures. The story with more depth comes from Mikah’s background. She is dealing with a party that sets up a strained relationship between her and her father and the FBI agent reveals a bit more about what happened to Mikah in Denver. Apparently an agent was killed that Mikah was having an affair with. So that ghostly voice that visited Mikah in the first episode now has a bit more importance. Also, what’s the deal with the football?
The biggest failure of this episode is the money that was wasted by casting Tricia Helfer. She’s great in every scene she’s in, but she barely appears in the episode and is all but completely out of it by the halfway point. Her character has no importance to the plot either. It appears that she’s just in the episode to look good and be flirted with by Pete. If you’re going to stunt cast like this at least make the character important to the episode. Helfer was used fantastically in Chuck but she’s just wasted here. I’ll still contend that Warehouse 13 has some entertaining moments but the cases need to be more intriguing and so does the process. The show can only ride on the charisma of the characters for so long.
18. July 2009 at 6:16 pm
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said about Warehouse 13 (in both articles). Personally, any time the show takes place in/around the actual warehouse, or a scene involves Artie in some way, that’s when the show is entertaining, inventive and fun. It reminds me of an old Twilight Zone episode (from the run produced by Wes Craven in the 80s’) called “Wong’s Lost & Found Emporium”. I wish the show would focus more on that sort of whimsical tone of magic and wonderment. The warehouse seems to be so vast that it’s actually endless, or merely defies the laws of physics, time and space. Either way, more time should be spent there. I’m not so interested when the two leads keep going off on these fleeting, outside adventures, away from Artie and the warehouse. When you have such a creatively fruitful location/setting with such a charismatic and delightful character actor in Saul Rubinek, it’s not a good idea to be constantly separating from all that with two main characters who are, quite frankly kind of dull and uninspired (the actors are fine, but not much is given/required for them to be anything more than that). I’ll keep watching, sure. Anything to support decent to good science fiction TV on a network that seems intent on turning its back on the very thing that put them on the map, so much so that they feel the need to change their name (don’t get me started). I just hope that as things progress, we’ll get more localization and face time with all the characters in one place (preferably the warehouse), working together to solve a problem that’s actually interesting, and not just a minor nuisance of the week.
P.S. Perhaps Tricia Helfer (as well as her character) should have been Lattimer’s new partner? Just an idea.