Warehouse 13: Season 4 Premiere

This week the long awaited season four premiere of Warehouse 13 dropped. I have been impatiently tapping my foot and checking the proverbial clock every five minutes for this one ever since the finale episode of last season. Wanna know why? Because the whole fraking place blew up! All of the warehouse was destroyed, and a few beloved characters had been killed off as well. It was a bleak and horrid cliffhanger. Plus, what the hell were they going to do at that point? I mean, the show is called WAREHOUSE 13!

It is with the anxieties above that I approached this new episode. And I have to say, the writers did a pretty decent job. They stuck to the classic cliffhanger format: Insert problem in finale episode, torture the audience with waiting, then in new season premiere, insert an attempt to solve said problem but make sure that the attempt is an “against all odds” kind of attempt, and then IF the problem gets solved, only solve it at the last minute, and always leave the door open for future calamity with a “dah dah DAAAHH!” moment in the last few seconds.

I will illustrate the above using the events of this season premiere episode, so if you haven’t watched it, and you don’t want to read any spoilers, I suggest you save this article for a later date—because we’re about to drive into Spoiler City.

So what was the cliffhanger problem from last season? BOOM! The entirety of Warehouse 13 blows up! And it’s not a regular bomb like some pansy nuke, no, it’s a strange artifact bomb—one of the only things that could actually do major harm to the place. H.G. Wells (Jaime Murray) sacrifices herself to save Pete (Eddie McClintock), Myka (Joanne Kelly), and Artie (Saul Rubinek). And while Leena (Genelle Williams) and Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) are all right, the destruction of the warehouse, Mrs. Frederic (CCH Pounder) dissolves.

It is at this point that the writers decide to make us, the audience, wait. Cruel, isn’t it?

But when we come back, Artie discovers that the artifact bomb unleashed Pandora’s Box. It had been locked away in the depths of the warehouse in a secret sealed chamber, but now it’s out and the entire world is screwed. The only artifact left is the watch that Artie had been holding when H.G. Wells protected them from the blast. Luckily for the team though, the watch is exactly what they need to save the world. And they have to use it by deciphering Latin and following mysterious clues around the world, and they only have 23½ hours to get it all done. It’s like a life and death Scooby Doo scavenger hunt adventure and I am totally in at this point. I didn’t care that the dialogue got a little too expositiony at a couple points. This could have been fixed by planting clues about this stuff last season, but it was kind of minor, and I took it as a wink from the writers to the audience—“See, this could happen. Just shut up and watch this awesome scavenger adventure we crafted for you.” With the time deadlines, and with the characters starting out not even knowing where to look in order to fix the problem, you’ve got your “against all odds” problem. And it gets amped up when they discover they’ve got less than a day to make it all work out.

They go through the machinations of danger and adventure and mystery, and it’s the usual Warehouse 13 goodness, and of course they make it last to the very last moment before they miraculously save the day, but only after torturing us all emotionally with death upon death of our beloved team. So that takes care of the “last minute” necessity.

So what future calamities and conflicts await us as the season continues? Well, Mrs. Frederic is back since the team reversed the calamity with the magical watch artifact, but she is suspicious of Artie. Artie is the only one who remembers what happened, as he is the one who activated the device. Everyone else is blissfully unaware, but Mrs. Frederic knows that Artie is hiding something because she now has a gray streak in her hair. She, being biologically linked to the warehouse, is more sensitive to it than everyone else. So there’s mistrust stewing there. Also, earlier, Claudia told Artie that no matter what happens, she’s going to try and bring her close friend Steve (Aaron Ashmore) back from the dead using a special artifact (a metronome). Later in the night, Artie dreams of Claudia stabbing him to death and is awoken by a phone call from Leena explaining that Claudia has run off into the night and she’s taken the metronome with her…dah dah DAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Do you see what I mean? It’s good old fashioned textbook cliffhanger stuff. Sometimes being innovative can leave much to be desired, and I’m glad the writers of Warehouse 13 didn’t fall into that trap. Thanks writers, for an enjoyable premiere episode.