Warehouse 13

1. season 1. 2009
2. season 2. 2010
3. season 3. 2011
4. season 4. 2012

There are mysterious artefacts Out There, that need to be bagged and tagged before they cause mayhem and havoc. Warehouse 13 is the super secret government storage for these. Agents Myka Bering and Pete Lattimer find themselves working for Artie Nielsen and the deeply mysterious Mrs. Frederic, being sent out with purple latex gloves to bring the artefacts back for safe storage.

Amusing, fun mind candy. The enormous Warehouse itself is a steam-punk cornucopia of the weird and the wonderful, and the individual episodes are mostly capers involving something going wrong with the retrieval. But there are darker moments, particularly about Artie's background and his relationship with treacherous former Agent MacPherson.

Despite having several premises in common with Fringe, I enjoyed this (in a pop-corn sort of way), but couldn't stick with Fringe. It's to do with the technobabble. Here it's done right: there's no (or only very little) attempt to have the babble be a meaningful part of the plot, no attempt for it to make sense. Because, of course, it doesn't. So it doesn't intrude, and disbelief can be willingly suspended. Fun nonsense.

Rating: 4
[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]

reviewed 19 July 2010

More bagging and tagging the artefact of the week, but with some arc, and a bit more bite this season. We get more of the history and even mythology of the Warehouses, and the mysterious Regents who oversee their work. Pete and Myka meet some previous agents, and it gradually dawns on them that not many Warehouse agents live long enough to retire. And we get a great new character in the form of none other than H.G. Wells.

Although Pete is still a bit of an irritating goofball (I think this is supposed to be "cute", or something), there is one episode, "Around the Bend", where he's affected by an artefact in quite a chilling manner. There's also an amusing crossover episode with Eureka, "13.1", where Fargo comes to upgrade the Warehouse computer. (Things go wrong.)

SF crosses over with real life this season: Jaime Murray, the actor who plays H.G. Wells, was named after Lindsay Wagner's character Jaime Sommers in The Bionic Woman. Meanwhile, Lindsay Wagner is also in this season, playing Warehouse medic Dr Vanessa Calder. Small world.

Rating: 3.5
[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]

reviewed 6 October 2012