The mid-season finale of Warehouse 13 aired this week and it was an emotional roller coaster of a ride. Three extremely artifacts are in play, Artie has gone all Johnny Depp in The Secret Window, and Jinks is upset that he’s on the B-team. With Artie gone over the the Dark Side, Mrs. F is in charge of the team and is trying to get one step ahead of him knowing that he makes a formidable enemy. But will her efforts pay off or will they be in vain?
Leena is dead. The only explanation of why she was shot to death is that Artie has gone crazy. The evil unleashed by the Artifact of Doom was a fracturing of Artie’s psyche. Jinks hopes that it’s a fracture that can heal, that if healed maybe time will right itself, and Leena will still be alive. While the death of Leena has a devastating effect on the crew, as a viewer I’m not convinced she’s dead dead and I have less emotional connection with her death. And just when I’m about to let myself believe it, she shows up as a phantom of herself to Pete and leads him to pictures of the Claudia Knife. The knife from Artie’s vision where he see’s Claudia stabbing him. At one point Artie had sent H.G. Wells out to find out about the knife and this is her research.
A hologram of Artie arrives at the Warehouse demanding the Artifact of Doom, as Evil Artie he wants to set Artie free of the Warehouse and return everything to how it was when hope was let out of the box and several of the other team members were dead. Evil Artie is extremely nasty, and this plays throughout the rest of the episode. If Artie ever does come back to himself, he has a lot of damage he will have to work through with everyone. Especially Claudia who looks up to him as a father figure and refuses to believe he is totally gone. Before he left Artie bombed the IRS Quartum which is where all the artifacts from Holy Roman Empire-era Warehouse 8 are stored, and the gang sifts through the wreckage to figure out how to track him down. Which Claudia eventually does with technology.
Data Monk shows up and expositions some background information about the Artifact of Doom how it was used by Maximilien Robespierre part of the French Revolution. Robespierre’s mind also fractured and he eventually became the evil was was trying to eliminate. It was nice to add some context to the Artifact of Doom but as the show progresses I really think they could have brought in that information earlier because it is artifact overload in “We All Fall Down.” The gang is trying to stop Artie from tracking down H.G. Wells and getting his hands on the Artifact of doom, but they must also stop him from getting the dagger, and for some reason this special Orchid that was connected to Warehouse 8 and buried somewhere special because it is also basically an artifact of doom. The Chinese Orchid releases the English Sweating Sickness, a 24-hour death-with-no-cure kind of epidemic. Ring around the rosie kind of epidemic, the plague. Its contained now in a glass container which is only penetrable by the Claudia Dagger. Yes, I know, I don’t really understand why they added this third dimension to the artifacts of this episode. I was a little confused also.
Myka and Pete head out to try and stop Artie from getting his hands on the Claudia Dagger but just before they can get their hands on it, Evil Artie shows up and uses an artifact to hang them. Which he is only able to do because he stuns them with his mocking of their pasts, leaving Pete and Myka emotionally devastated. Still, while slowly choking to death because of the hanging, Pete gets to use the Klingon looking ax to save them all, and they hurry after Artie. Meanwhile Claudia and Jinks head out to find the Chinese Orchid because Claudia doesn’t want anywhere near the knife. Jinks is upset that they are the B-team and Claudia says, “We’re not the B-team. Fool, we are the second A-team.” Which was hilarious, especially because they are totally the B-team. They find a cavern with a carving cut into the stone that Mrs. F identifies as a marker for the Steinbrook family which were connected to Warehouse 8 and have been hiding the flower in a glass container for generations. This Pocket Full of Posies wont save the team and so Claudia and Jinks go to track down the Steinbrooks who are still alive and guarding the Orchid.
But Artie is one step ahead of them there, having met up with the family members, convinced them he is from the Warehouse and has rogue agents after him and so they take him to an old mill where the Orchid is hidden. Pete, Myka, Claudia, and Jinks arrive at the mill just as Artie and the Steinbrooks do. Artie handed over those clanging cymbals to one of the Steinbrooks who uses them to immobilize the team for a few precious seconds. But they rush into the Warehouse were Claudia and Jinks take on the Steinbrooks and Myka and Pete try to stop Bad Artie. Myka gets her hands on the dagger, Jinks finds the Orchid, and Artie pulls a gun on everyone. And life is going Ashes to Ashes for this team.
Pete tells Myka with his eyes to throw away the dagger because he doesn’t care if Bad Artie shoots him, he just wants everyone safe. It was heartbreaking. Between Leen, Artie’s badmouthing of Pete’s past, and his willingness to lay his life on the line for his friends, Pete is the person I most connected to at this moment. Eddie McClintock really shows how great of an actor he is throughout this episode, and it is great to see that the writers have given him something to work with that isn’t just a bunch of jokes. Artie escapes grabs the orchid and reaches the Claudia Knife just as she comes upon him. With a plea and tears in her eyes Claudia begs that the real Artie come back to her, but after some internal struggle Evil Artie says really hurtful things to her and plunges the knife into the glass. He shouts, “I cast you out!” and drops the knife. Claudia picks it up and realizes that she has to cast out the Evil Artie and so she raises the knife over him and plunges it into his chest. They crumble together and Claudia sobs but Artie’s regular voice tells her that it’s OK.
The blue Orchid flies from Artie’s hand as he and Claudia fall backward and Pete dives to catch it, but as it hits his hand it dissolves into black ash which swirls around the room and infects the entire team before spreading out across the entire world.
We All Fall Down
Absurdly Nerdly 