This episode is split into two separate stories, one with Myka, Pete, and Claudia, and the other with Artie and Jinks.
Myka, Pete, and Claudia
A little backstory: Douglas Fargo, played by Neil Grayston, is a crossover character from another Syfy series, Eureka. At Eureka he is known to cause multiple accidents. He had shown up in a Warehouse 13 episode last season, and Claudia had gone over to Eureka.
Claudia, Pete, and Myka rushed to Palo Alto, where Fargo and a friend of his, Jerry, were sitting on the couch with virtual reality headsets on, but their heartbeats were spiking. Claudia tried prying off the headset, but it did not work. Gibson explained that Fargo and Jerry were playing a video game, but he could not get them out and their heart rates had been going up and down. Gibson showed them a video on a computer that Fargo did to tout Fargames, a virtual reality game that he developed with Jerry and Gibson. The game is played using a device called BRAID (BioElectric Reality Augmentation Interactive Device). Claudia figured out that BRAID never worked by itself. Gibson explained that the only way it worked was for them to drink tea from a special tea set, which was an artifact.
The team called Leena, who found that the tea set was previously owned by Beatrix Potter, author of the Peter Rabbit series. The Warehouse had one of the four cups, and the whole set had been on Artie's most wanted list for years. The tea set is known to stimulate the imagination part of the brain. Myka remembered seeing Potter's first editions in the Warehouse, and asked Leena to track it down.
Fargo and Jerry kept seizing, and Claudia said the only way to help them was to get into the game. Claudia reconfigured one of the headsets to be a communication device, so they can talk to the real world. To test it out, Pete drank the tea and went into the game. Gibson was able to talk to him through the headset and told him to look at his belt. On it, Pete had a white game controller. When Pete pressed the button on it, he instantly woke up in the real world.
With that, both Pete and Claudia drank the tea and went into the game. Pete was a gladiator (because he told Gibson that he wanted to be a bad ass) and Claudia was an elf (because she told Gibson that she just wanted to be "myself"... and Pete told her she should have enunciated better... get it?). They noticed that the castle was basically Warehouse 13. They were greeted by in-game Artie, who was a crazy, overenthusiastic version of Artie named General Arthur. General Arthur explained that they had to fulfill a quest to win the game, which involved getting a key and rescuing a princess.
Myka was reading the first editions and it showed some very graphic scenes, not quite the child-friendly Peter Rabbit she remembered. Pete and Claudia went down the yellow road and after going around for awhile, they ran into a hooded figure on the ground shackled to a disco ball. [Mr. Y - The next scene had a lot of very strong Scott Pilgrim vs. The World elements, including in-game sound effects and first person shooter points-of-view.] Pete tried to cut off the chains, but it did not do anything. Claudia pulled out her vial of purple liquid and deduced that since the disco ball was an artifact, she should use the purple goo on the shackles. That worked to release the figure, who turned out to be Leena with wings. This started a whole in-game joke about how all Pete could notice was Leena's ample bosom. Leena thanked them and gave Claudia a feather. She told Claudia to use it if she needed her help, and then flew away. As Claudia and Pete walked away, a large, furry creature followed them dragging an ax on the ground.
They entered another room which looked like the Warehouse's Dark Vault. Claudia noticed a key on a pillow, and collected it. When she was walking back, she noticed that part of the floor was quicksand. A hand came out from the sand, and Pete used his sword to pull him out. The guy in the quicksand turned out to be Fargo. In the real world, Fargo's heart rate went down. But then the creature turned up, and took all of their controllers, which meant they could not get back to the real world. Pete tried to engage the creature in battle, but he cut through Pete's shield with the ax. So they ran.
Fargo said the quicksand and the creature were not original parts of the game. Pete talked to Myka on the communicator, and Myka told them that Potter's first editions were more like dream journals and very dark. They figured out that the tea set was magnifying their fears in addition to their imaginations, and brought their fears to live in the game. Fargo said that he used to have nightmares about drowning, and then he ended up in quicksand. They decided they had to finish the game to get out, so the next step was to go to the Black Tower to rescue the princess.
Myka was trying to figure out what was in Jerry's subconscious, but Gibson had no idea because they never talked about it. Myka remembered seeing a picture of Jerry with a girl in a mug, and figured out from looking through Jerry's phone that her name was Hannah. Hannah came over and was really confused as to what was going on and was very scared for Jerry. She explained to Myka that they broke up a week ago because he kept promising that he was going to propose, but he never did, so she got sick of it and broke it off.
Pete, Claudia, and Fargo made their way through a familiar white tunnel to the tower. Fargo said there was something he needed to tell them before they opened the door, but Claudia opened it before he could say it. It turned out that the princess was a silly, giggly version of Claudia with an enhanced bosom. Pete had the best line in response, "Really, you didn't see this coming?"
They found Jerry cowering in the corner, but before they could do anything, the creature showed up again and killed the princess. The creature then went to Jerry and revealed itself to be a freaky version of Hannah. Hannah then took Jerry out of the tower. They tried following them, but ran into a fiery dragon. Fargo said the dragon was part of the game. They raised Myka on the communicator, but Pete's fear of losing communication was realized and they got cut off. Claudia remembered the feather, and used it to call Leena. She called her steed, which was a griffin with wings, to take them off the tower.
They found Jerry in a guillotine-type device. Jerry was apologizing to Hannah about not proposing and about how he was afraid she was going to say no. Hannah put a candle near the rope holding the blade up to burn it down slowly.
Claudia started to feel her fear, which manifested itself in the form of the doctor who treated her when she was in psychiatric care. He told her this was all part of her delusion and that her brother was dead (a reference to the first season). All of them ended up in straight-jackets and Claudia was tied down to a table. The doctor was administering electroshock on her when a figure in a red hood showed up to temporarily freeze the doctor and the guy holding Pete and Fargo. Claudia killed the doctor herself. It turned to be Myka, who came into the game to save them. Claudia said it was cathartic to kill the doctor. They decided to split up - Myka and Claudia to release Jerry and to talk to him, while Pete and Fargo tried to distract the creature. Pete and Fargo fought the creature and Myka and Claudia convinced Jerry to propose to the creature to save all of them. He finally pulled out a massive ring, proposed to the creature, and the creature turned into normal Hannah. All of them came back to the real world and Hannah and Jerry reunited.
Claudia faced her fears and performed at the coffeehouse to huge applause. Myka and Pete were seen being silly after putting the Potter tea set together. Fargo shut down Fargames and Jerry proposed to Hannah for real.
Artie and Jinks
Artie and Jinks were in a New York gallery meeting up with FBI Agent Sally Stukowski, played by Ashley Williams. (Sidenote: Mr. Y and I always think of Ashley as Victoria in How I Met Your Mother). The first episode of the season established that she was working for some sort of big bad, but we don't know who he is and what his objective is. Sally explained that she called them in because they specialized in weird. The curator of the exhibit fell two stories from the window, but his body looked like it had fallen from much higher. Artie and Jinks looked around, and Artie spotted a significant painting on the wall, Van Gogh's Stormy Night. Artie pretended that he agreed with the coroner's verdict of suicide, and made ready to leave. As they were leaving, he told Jinks that they had been looking for that painting for years, and that they had to come back to steal it later. Sally did not look like she believed him.
Artie and Jinks came back at night and Artie disarmed the various security systems using a couple of devices. One of them, the Eclipse, turned off the lasers for exactly 42 minutes and 59 seconds, which Artie explained was how long the Dark Side of the Moon was. Jinks asked if Artie was a Pink Floyd fan, and in typical Artie fashion, he shot it down. Sally showed up and told them that unless they told her what was going on, she was going to re-activate the security system.
Sally expressed skepticism that they could replace the painting and no one would notice. Artie pretended that he heard something and Sally went to investigate. While she was gone, Artie told Jinks to take out a blank piece of canvas from the purple tube that he was carrying, and using Guttenberg's memory paper and camera, printed an exact replica of the Van Gogh on the blank canvas. Sally came back and accidentally sneezed on the Van Gogh, which activated the painting and a storm started in the gallery. The strong winds were pulling them away when Artie managed to spray some purple stuff on the painting to stop the storm.
Artie, Jinks, and Sally replaced the painting with the copy, and as they were about to leave, a piece of leaf had gotten stuck on the Eclipse and deactivated it, causing the security system to come back on. Sally took the tube and managed to get out of the room before the steel doors came down, as Artie and Jinks looked on in shock.
Artie and Jinks were sitting in the back of a police car arguing about Sally and whether to tell the policemen who they were when a policeman showed up and told them he was talking them to headquarters. All of a sudden Sally showed up and claimed that Artie and Jinks were part of her anti-terrorism squad, and the policeman released them.
Sally apologized to Artie and Jinks and told them that she had always planned to catch up with them later. She returned the painting to them. Artie and Jinks walked away, but Artie couldn't shake a feeling that something was wrong. We see a guy in a cab giving Sally a nod, and Sally looking pleased with herself.
Sally reported to a shadowy guy in a wheelchair and said that it was done. We flashed to the warehouse, where the painting started rippling and tons of metal bugs started flying around.
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