Hello, this is Mr. Y, guest blogging for my wife who is still recovering from her hand surgery and can't type any long blogs... which a recap of Warehouse 13's latest episode surely qualifies. So, anyway, where to begin? Lets start with a full disclosure - this will be the first time I've blogged about anything, so please bear with me :)
Like most of the previous episodes this season, this episode was again split between a pair of separate story lines, one following Myka and Claudia and the second following Pete and his mom, Jane (Kate Mulgrew!). Both stories start at the same point, with Pete coming to terms with the fact that his absentee mom is really a Warehouse Regent (revealed at the end of the previous episode) and no one ever told him, even after he became a Warehouse Agent. Pete is confronting his mom about this fact and Jane is just about to sit Pete down to explain why he was never told when Mrs. Fredericks does her trademark magical appearing act and suddenly shows up to interrupt them. She notes that, with a number of Regents being recently killed, the Warehouse is at war. She notes that Artie was able to trace Sally Stutowski (Ashley Williams' character, killed at the end of the last episode) to a company called A To Z Technologies, but hasn't been able to turn anything up on that company. Jane immediately channels her inner Han Solo and remarks that "she has a very bad feeling about it." This gets Pete all fired up again because he suddenly realizes that his "Spidey Sense" ability may not be some random ability that he has, but something that he may have inherited from his mother. He also realizes that if the Regents had never come under threat, he would have never learned any of this about his mother. He then leaves in a huff after which... we learn that Mrs. Fredericks's first name is Irene! (Jane calls her that in the quiet moment after Peter storms off.) Mrs. Y insists that Mrs. Fredericks's first name was revealed previously, but I feel like that this is the first time they acknowledged it. We also learn that Mrs. Fredericks has a son (who is NOT an agent).
The story then segues to Portland where we're shown a man mowing his lawn. After a brief conversation with his wife, who is going to the store, he glows in bright flash of light, we see his skeleton (like in an x-ray) and he vanishes. All the nearby lights blow out. The story then comes back to the Warehouse, where Artie gets the ping about the anomaly in Portland and assigns Myka and Claudia to go investigate. This is a pretty funny scene because Myka and Claudia spend the whole time complaining to Artie that Jinks shouldn't be fired (from the last episode) while Artie single-mindedly ignores them to give them their assignment. At this point we get a minor spoiler from the opening credits. Aaron Ashmore's name doesn't appear in the Guest Star list, which means Jinks won't show up in this episode so it's doubtful that there will be any resolution on his firing this week (and there wasn't, though it was teased at the very end of the episode). On the other hand, we see that Anthony Michael Hall is in this episode and we can safely assume that if he's hired, he's going to play someone important.
On Myka's way out to go on her assignment, she stops by Pete's room to try and give him some emotional support in regards to his anger/frustration at learning his mother was a Regent and had been lying to him for almost all his life. She's not particularly successful, but it's a nice scene to show that Myka and Pete continue to have a very strong, caring (and, for once in these type of shows, a non-sexual) relationship. From this point, the stories completely diverge and I'll recap them one at a time.
Myka and Claudia
Myka and Claudia go out to Portland to investigate the person's disappearance (a one Jason Kinser). They learn from eyewitnesses at the scene that Jason just disappeared in a flash of light, afterwards all the nearby electrical power went out for a few seconds. They then go to Jason's place of a work, a novelty t-shirt manufacturer and learn that he was manager there and pretty well disliked by all the workers because he "didn't respect the artists" and laid off a number of people. As Myka and Claudia are interviewing the staff, one of the managers tells one of the designers to "add more glitter" to one of the t-shirt designs (important later!) prompting Claudia to ask whether glitter is making a comeback. One of the female staff members responds that she finds it everywhere, including on her vijayjay. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, SyFy went there. The look that Claudia gives is pretty funny and Myka wraps up the interview by asking the manager to give her a list of all former employees that were laid off by Jason.
We then jump to a scene where an angry young man (who we later learn is named Brandon Hill) is trying to get into an apartment building but the person inside is clearly ignoring him. It becomes quickly obvious that he's either an ex-boyfriend or a soon-to-be ex-boyfriend as he yells from the outside of the apartment that "he's not angry" but wants to talk. Despite his proclamations to the contrary, he gets steadily angrier as he screams up at a window that is strangely boarded up with old pizza boxes. Someone is clearly peaking through the pizza boxes which only makes Brandon angrier. Then, all of sudden, Brandon disappears in the same fashion as Jason (flash of light, x-ray effect, nearby light bulbs blowing out). The only noted difference is that this time, he leaves a clear shadow outline on a bin that he was standing near before he vaporized.
Artie calls Myka and Claudia via their Farnsworth and informs them he got a second ping that coincides with Brandon's disappearance and tells them that they need to make the connection between the two victims. Myka and Claudia call on Brandon's roommate, who had just reported his disappearance to the police. He tells them that they were supposed to meet up at a David Lynch festival, but Brandon never showed. He said that the last thing he knew Brandon was doing was going to go pick up his girlfriend, Megan Reese. That name instantly rings a bell with Myka who remembers Megan being on the list of people that were laid off by Jason from the t-shirt factory.
The ladies go pay a call on Megan and, lo and behold, Megan is the girl hiding from Brandon. They arrive at the apartment building and see the same window boarded up with pizza boxes and (surprise, surprise) she doesn't answer the outside buzzer for them either. Instead of getting angry and yelling like Brandon, they instead case the building and Myka notices the shadow outline on the bin along with nearby blown-out light bulbs. She tells Claudia that it reminds her of footage that she's seen of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped... that there were shadow outlines of many of the victims that were vaporized by the blast. This causes her to wonder aloud whether the artifact that they're dealing with is nuclear in nature.
They find the landlady of the building and get her to let them into the building and lead them to Megan's apartment and the landlady is happy to oblige. When the landlady knocks on Megan's door, Megan tells them to leave. After a heated exchange between Megan and the landlady, Myka shoos the landlady away. Myka then kicks the door in and her and Claudia storm in with their Teslas armed and ready. They find Megan sitting on the floor looking very scared. She tells them that they're going to die and puts her head down, which causes Myka and Claudia to dive for cover. Fortunately, nothing happens. After picking themselves up, they quickly discover that Megan doesn't have an artifact. Instead, they learn that Megan believes that she's personally causing the deaths and doesn't seem to have any real control over it other than whenever she gets angry at somebody, that person dies in a flash of light. She tells them that she had accidentally killed a couple of people in her home town, which caused her to flee to Portland. (At this point, I actually thought that this episode would turn into a crossover with Alphas, especially as Alphas has already had one Warehouse character show up in their series. Alas, it's not the case.)
Instead, they convince Megan to leave her apartment and come with them to the t-shirt factory to see if they can find any clues for an artifact there. As it turns out, it wasn't a great idea because as they leave the apartment building, the landlady spots them and immediately accosts Megan. Megan gets very distraught and then suddenly, the landlady disappears in flash of light. Megan freaks out and makes a run for it. Fearing that they might get flashed next, Claudia and Myka let her run off.
Once Megan is gone, Claudia and Myka carefully examine the scene. Myka notices that the shadow left by the vaporized landlady on the apartment building sign seems to indicate that the she was hit from a different direction than from where Megan was standing. Myka realizes that the landlady must have been blasted by something or someone else standing at an angle from Megan. She tells Claudia to go find Megan and then traces the angle of the shot to a nearby building.
Claudia goes and eventually finds Megan sitting in the middle of a cemetery. They have a bit of a silly bonding moment. In the meantime, Myka is standing on the roof of the building that she traced the blast to. As she's looking around, she spots glitter on the roof. She immediately calls Claudia and they realize that it must be someone at the t-shirt factory that has the artifact. Also, since Megan said the incidents started at her hometown, it must be someone that she knew from back then that had then followed her to Portland and the t-shirt factory. Myka races back to Megan's apartment and finds her old yearbook and immediately figures out who the culprit is, Jeff McMasters, the head designer at the t-shirt factory (and one of the people they interviewed about Jason Kinser's death). It turns out that he's in Megan's yearbook, but Megan said that she barely knew him and didn't even realize that they had gone to high school together.
Myka, Claudia and Megan concoct a scheme to lure Jeff out. Megan goes to the t-shirt factory, seemingly alone, and approaches Jeff. Jeff is initially thrilled that Megan is talking to him and eventually reveals that he's been using a pair of binoculars to "help protect her." However, he starts to get suspicious when Megan gets progressively nervous. Claudia and Myka jump out with their Teslas drawn but Jeff is able to grab Megan and use her as a human shield. He pulls her into a warehouse and shuts the door. Claudia and Myka follow them into the warehouse and, after a bit of cat-and-mouse (where Jeff tries to use the power of the binoculars on them), they're able to get the jump on Jeff and capture him. It's revealed that the binoculars were from one of the pilots of the Enola Gay, the WW2 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It has the power to absorb nuclear energy and project it forwards through the lenses as an energy beam.
Myka and Claudia's sequence ends with them saying goodbye to a much happier Megan. Claudia then goes off to give Jinks a call. Myka asks Claudia to say hi to him from her.
Pete and Jane
Jane and Mrs. Fredericks are still talking after Pete leaves them and Jane mentions that she wishes she can remember why A To Z Technologies seems so familiar to her. That causes Mrs. Fredericks to think of something and she takes Jane into the Warehouse to see Artie. Mrs. Fredericks tells Jane and Artie that there is an artifact in the Warehouse that will allow Jane to travel through her own memories. She believes that it will allow Jane to figure out why A To Z Technologies keeps reminding her of something. Artie knows of this artifact and warns them that it can be very dangerous as the user of the artifact can be permanently lost in their own memories. Jane states that it's a risk that she's willing to take and Mrs. Fredericks interjects that the risk can be mitigated if a second person travels along with the user to "ground them" and "pull them out if necessary." Mrs. Fredericks says that she'll be that second person to watch over Jane when Pete suddenly steps into the room and insists that he be the one to ride shotgun. After some quick melodrama, it is agreed that he'll go with Jane.
Artie retrieves the artifact from the Warehouse shelves and the artifact turns out to be a bronzed pair of baby shoes. Strangely, they never state what this artifact is called as this show is generally very good about naming and providing histories to virtually all of the artifacts it features. He tells Jane to concentrate on what she wants to discover ("A To Z Technologies") and the artifact should take her to that part of her memories. Jane and Pete each touch one of the baby shoes and are instantly transported into Jane's memory.
As it turns out, they arrive at their house on the day that there is a wake at the house honoring Jane's husband (Pete's dad), who recently died fighting a fire. Jane quickly realizes that Pete subverted her control of where in her memory they would go as this memory doesn't seem relevant to her solving the "A To Z Technologies" mystery. Angry that Pete has seemingly hijacked her memory, she tries to get him to refocus on the mission, but he is insistent on revisiting this memory and steps into the midst of the wake. As the memory unfolds around them, Mrs. Fredericks shows up to the wake to talk with the younger Jane. Like Richard Alpert of Lost, Mrs. Fredericks seemingly has not aged at all (though she doesn't have his thick lush eyelashes). Peter is shocked to realize that Mrs. Fredericks has effectively known him his entire life. He also sees that his mom was a former Regent that had retired once Pete and his sister were born. Mrs. Fredericks had come to recruit the younger Jane back to being a Regent because of a local artifact situation involving a young boy. It's clearly implied that Jane has a soft spot for children.
After some persistence, Mrs. Fredericks finally convinces the younger Jane to come out of retirement. We then follow the younger Jane as she takes the assignment and then, later, approaches a young boy standing in his yard hitting baseballs with a baseball bat. She engages him in idle chitchat and clearly takes note that he's wearing what appears to be a rope bracelet around his right wrist. As they chat, the boy grows suspicious as to why Jane is talking to him. His eyes suddenly turn all black before quickly reverting back to their original blue color. The younger Jane seems to note this too and bids the kid farewell and walks off.
Pete and the older Jane are standing nearby watching this memory unfold. Pete doesn't seem to understand what just happened so his mom explains it to him. It turns out the rope bracelet that the kid was wearing was Carlo Collodi's Bracelet. Collodi is credited with writing the original The Adventures of Pinocchio, a much darker, mean-spirited story than the modern Disney version. The bracelet enables a person's legs to move, but gradually increases the darkness within a person's soul. As it turns out, the boy was crippled from the waist down, but the bracelet gave him his legs back. However, it was slowly turning the boy evil. Thanks to Jane, Warehouse Agents (a younger Artie and MacPhearson) were able to bag the artifact.
Jane then explains to Pete that the reason why she came out of retirement wasn't because of anything Mrs. Fredericks said or did. It was because she wanted to protect him and his sister from some of the horrors of the world. She reveals that it was actually Pete's dad that helped convince her of that. With that, Pete is finally able to come to a better sense of closure as to why his mom is a Regent. Jane then holds Pete's hand and they exit out of the memory and back into reality.
Artie and Mrs. Fredericks approach them to see if they discovered anything. Pete apologizes, thinking that he may have screwed up the mission. However, his mom interrupts him and says that, no, she figured it out. She remembers back to the boy that she saved from Collodi's Bracelet, Walter Sykes. After the artifact was bagged, the boy returned to being in a wheelchair and could not longer play baseball. However, it seems the artifact had done its damage and planted a "dark seed" within the boy's soul. More importantly, Jane remembers the baseball hat that the boy was wearing. It said AZTECS (which clearly is inspiring the name
A To
Z Technologie
s).
We then flash over to the mysterious man in the wheelchair that's been hinted at over the course of this season, Walter Sykes. It turns out to be Anthony Michael Hall! He's the major baddie of Season 3! It's revealed that he's killed off another Regent, Lok Archer, but that before Archer died, Sykes was able to extract some important piece of information from him. The episode ends with him telling his right-hand man, Marcus, to go and try and "turn" Jinks. He also told Marcus that he will be meeting Jane and Pete very soon.
