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‘Warehouse 13’ recap – Past Imperfect

By Wayne Hall Aug 24, 2011, 4:21 GMT

Federal Agents dealing with the Paranormal? ScFy debuts a light, humorous take, starring Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly as the comely FBI agents Lattimer and Bering. Lattimer has a bit of clairvoyant capabilities. Bering is no-nonsense.Saul Rubinek plays Artie Neilson, an absent-minded professor type who bumblingly overseas a hidden giant Warehouse filled with government neutralized paranormal objects. ...more

This season, ‘Warehouse 13’ seems to be placing its main characters in situations they really aren’t very comfortable in. For instance, we saw Pete struggling to deal with Myka’s return and the perception that everyone he cares about leaves him. This week, it’s Myka’s turn.

Here’s the episode summary from tv.com: “Pete helps Myka catch a dangerous killer--the man who murdered her previous partner. Meanwhile, Artie, Claudia, and Steve interrogate a dog that is a key witness to the theft of an artifact.”

I enjoyed the main storyline of Myka’s obsession with tracking down the killer of her partner/lover. Whenever Pete and Myka switch places when it comes to how they behave, I find that fascinating.

The flashbacks really helped us understand what Myka was going through. You have to give Joanne Kelly a lot of credit … her starry-eyed Myka who was head over heels in love was very different from the oh-so-cautious version we see every week. Now we know why she’s behaving the way she is.

I’ve said before and I want to say it again, I prefer this show when Pete and Myka operate on the same level. Like last year, this season accomplishes that, and it makes ‘Warehouse 13’ even more enjoyable.

The secondary plot did help advance the season-long arch about the mysterious organization working against the Warehouse. Even though that has been a serious storyline, the funny sequence with Arnie understanding the thoughts of the dog was very well done. That’s another strength of this program—easily transitioning from serious action to laugh-out-loud humor without missing a beat. This week showed just how the series does that.

I still have to fuss a little about keeping the pairings the same from week to week. I’d rather we see Steve go into the field with Myka or Pete go with Claudia more often than they do. I understand why they needed the main duo together this week—otherwise, it wouldn’t have had the same emotional punch. But when that’s not needed, we should see the teamings mixed up a lot more than we do. It helps flesh out the characters when they bounce off of other ones in the show, I believe.

Steve and Claudia faced an unknown assailant as they thought they had their artifact taken away from them before they could get it back to the Warehouse. And resorting to the dog’s memories fit right into the weirdness associated with the group, so it made me both smile and wonder what was coming next.

It’s another great episode for this season. I do have to say that every once in a while, it would be a nice change of pace to not have an artifact be at the bottom of what’s going on … just to keep us off-balance and guessing. I know it is the trademark of the show to have the unusual, but it would be cool to vary that just a little every so often.

It was good to see J. August Richards guest star. I remember him from his days on ‘Angel,’ the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ spin-off.

Next week’s episode is called “The 40th Floor.” Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from ‘Star Trek: Voyager’) guests as Pete, Myka and Arnie must stop someone from wiping out the Warehouse Regents.