Of Swords and Parasols

January 31 - tell me about your favorite element(s) from Warehouse 13. (umadoshi )

I really like SyFy’s “quirky community” shows which this one falls into, though it’s more in line with Killjoys than with Eureka or early seasons-Haven in that it has the insulated feel even though it’s a smallgroup that travels instead of an actual community. Found family is a big thing, of course, and I liked that thee were no canon pairings among the major characters, even if they took that from us at the very end. I mean, I like canon pairings that are good in my shows, but sometimes it’s nice to take a break from that. My favorite episodes, though, tended to be the ones with previous agents, or that talked about previous agents/previous versions of the Warehouse. It’s never happening but I’m still holding out hope for SyFy to eventually have some TV movies or a prequel miniseries about the past agents.

Arrow 1.3-1.4:

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Beauty and the Beast 1.3-1.4: I feel I've watched all these mystery plots before in various other shows but I don't care because I just enjoy watching Catherine and Tess running around being buddycop and the show not feeling it has to bend over backwards to reassure us that they aren't lesbians. (Though, since the show appears determined to be all het all the way, I can't help but think they'd be better off doing Tess/Evan than trying to force a Vincent/Catherine/Evan triangle, because the Catherine/Evan thing mostly feels like the writers assume two people that pretty will HAVE to want to jump each other and so have other characters assuming the same when the characters...don't come across that way, really.) These episodes seemed to devote a lot of time to Vincent making up his mind, which is ok since it had a bunch of Government Conspiracy stuff going with it, but I can only take so much "I must hide from the world so no one will see me! But I'll leave the pretty cop notes and run out to save people every 5 minutes BUT NONE MUST KNOW I EXIST!" and am ready to get back to Catherine and her official and unoffical buddycop adventures.

Elementary 1.5: I think I liked this mystery more than the earlier ones. They're definitely getting better at them. But I mostly liked learning more about Joan's past (even though we didn't learn as much as I thought we would) and being amusedc at Sherlock's less-than-secret obsession with it.

Nikita 3.2-3.3: Well, these episodes took care of the doubts the first episode of the season left me with, and could be summed up as "Nikita: the suprspy who saves other women, and her sidekick, the first girl she saved." Actually, 3.2 might be my favorite episode of the series so far, but it did play into a lot of excellent narrative tropes, and the writers appear to have watched Hanna between seasons.

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Once Upon A Time 2.5: Much better than last week, but that wouldn't be hard to achieve in my book.

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Person of Interest 2.5: The first half of this episode was absolutely hilarious. In general, the series seems to not be taking itself quite as seriously as it did in the first season, and I think it's stronger for it. I had actually forgotten that there were dangling threads for the ongoing plotline this episode went back to, but that's ok. It's always good to see Zoe Morgan, even for that little amount of screentime, and I think this was Gloria Votsis auditioning for Lois Lane. Hopefully she'll be in more episodes, since White Collar seems to have written her out.

Revolution 1.6: I don't know who thought a promo that went "Will Charlie be forced to prostitute herself to save her friend? MEN WILL DISCUSS IT AND DECIDE." was more interesting than the actual plot of the episode, but whoever it was really should not be left in charge of promoting shows again.
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In non-currently-airing US TV news, I've watched season 3 of Warehouse 13 and it was its normal campy delight and had some interesting changes and developments (only somewhat marred by the horrific decision to give Joanne Kelly straight hair. Not that it actually hurt the character or her looks or anything, but sometimes I get attached to character/actor hair, and in this case, Joanne Kelly with straight hair is just wrong.) until the last couple episodes, in which in all became Gloom and Angst and Drama and I was pretty much sitting here going "......whhhhyyyyyy....." and then the DVDs ended with a Christmas Special that appears to be set during the first season (maybe early in the second) in which Harry Dresden is being stalked by Santa, and so at least the DVDs ended on a happier note, even if the season didn't. I'm also 9 episodes into season 4 of Fringe and I was really really enjoying the new status quo (especially the changes to Olivia and Nina's relationship, even if they still had few scenes together) and hoping it'd be like Eureka and make the radical change permanent, but apparently changing things back to the way they were before is the main goal of the season. Also, why can't Olivia have a partner without developing a romantic interest in them? (Or even just a partner who isn't a white male close to her in age and with a compatible sexual orientation.)

Warehouse 13 was first described to me a “a show about the warehouse at the end on Raiders of the Lost Arc,” and that’s…basically what it’s about. Myka and Pete are secret service agents who get to middle-of-nowhere South Dakota, to work for the reclusive, paranoid, and scarily detail oriented Artie, who sends them out to collect frequently-dangerous objects that have some sort of supernatural power . (Many of them of mythic origin, which also tends to add an appropriative element at times.)

There’s also Mrs. Frederick, their unaging boss, Leena, who runs the B&B everyone lives at and sees auras, and Claudia, Artie’s sidekick who is trying to get him to realize that modern technology is not evil. Sometimes, Myka and Pete’s old boss shows up to grump about Artie stealing his people, and Artie’s Mortal Enemy shows up to…actually, I don’t get his “destroy everything!” issues, but whatever. (The show thinks it needs a metaplot? Sometimes, you really don’t.)

Oh, and Mark Sheppard shows up, because he’s Mark Sheppard, and he’s like that.*

I roll my eyes at how Myka and Pete inevitably fall into “she’s smart and detail oriented and by-the-books and he has intuition and thinks outside the box” though the narrative preference for the latter is considerably less obnoxious than in many other cases. Mostly, it has the comfortably feel-good small town feeling of other Skiffy shows like Eureka and Haven, despite, uhm, not actually having much small town-ness.

Basically, it’s fun and kind of like brain popcorn, and easy to binge on. The last is particularly good for times like when you specifically shuffled up several series in your Netflix queue to make sure you didn’t burn out of any and then Netflix completely ignored your requests for The Lost World, Painkiller Jane, and Jonathan Creek and sent you the whole series at once.

*“Who is Mark Sheppard?” you ask. This is Mark Sheppard. As you can see, Mark Sheppard is determined to put in at least one appearance in every US TV show ever, and he’s making good headway there.

In fact, I hear that The Vampire Diaries still hasn’t cast Klaus. (I think they were looking at a guy, but no official announcement was made.) This apparently is because they’re having trouble finding someone who can “out-Damon Damon.” Urm…unless they’re trying to find an actor willing to be even more of a sadistic, self-righteous murderer and rapist…well, I don’t think it would take much to outdo Damon in most categories? Maybe the emo whining. Anyway, I vote they cast Mark Sheppard and Klaus. I mean, really, a vampire may be the only thing he hasn’t played yet. If Damon tries anything, he could just chunk his resume at him, and that would be that.