Retro Review: Warehouse 13

Retro-review: Warehouse 13

One of the benefits of the all-on-demand all-the-time access to media is that you can revisit beloved shows from your childhood, with the possibility that you’ll realize that your 10-year-old self had lousy taste in television.  Or you can revisit recently departed shows you sort of liked and try and figure out why you only liked them as opposed to loving them.

I recently finished binge-watching the recently departed (2009-2014) fantasy series Warehouse 13.  I liked the series well enough to remain a loyal viewer through its run, but it never was the appointment TV destination I thought it might be.  Re-watching all 64 episodes over a couple of months provides some perspective.  The show was about a team of agents that sought out and captured “artifacts” or common items (usually used by famous people) that gained supernatural powers through the emotions of people who used them.  So the bell used by Ivan Pavlov would make dogs come running (and make the user drool a lot), Lizzie Borden’s compact would force anyone using it to murder someone they loved, and Marilyn Monroe’s hairbrush would turn any woman’s hair blonde.  Warehouse 1 had been created by Alexander the Great, Egypt had hosted Warehouse 2, and subsequent Warehouses were hosted by the dominant world power and eventually America claimed Warehouse 13, which was set in the South Dakota town of Univille.

The commentary track on the pilot episode provided a key insight on a fact that perhaps shaded my perception of the show: one of the main draws was the credit line that the show was co-created by Jane Espenson, the brilliant writer of such Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel episodes as Band Candy, Guise Will be Guise and (my personal favorite Buffy episode) Earshot.  She also took her distinctive comedic touch to other non-Joss Whedon TV series such as The Gilmore Girls and Once Upon a Time.  But she was never mentioned once in the commentary, and I suddenly realized that she seems to have had no creative input into the show during its production, where Jack Kenny was the showrunner.  That certainly explains why the show never matched my expectations in the humor department.

Let me begin with the shows problems, which can start with the casting of the two leads.  The duo of Secret Service Agents tasked with “snagging, bagging, and tagging” mystical artifacts were played by Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly, two physically attractive actors who had proven to be more or less competent in other roles.  The main problem here is that they have no chemistry what so ever.  It’s like they are the anti-Mulder and Scully.  The show realized this early and decided to steer into the skid, so to speak, making a plot point of the fact that they had no chemistry.  In one episode an artifact affects them so they will pass out and lose their memories, so they take off their clothes and get into bed together because they knew that when they woke up, they would be certain it was impossible that they slept together so they would seek an alternate explanation.  Spoiler Alert: this entire plot line is abandoned in the final 6 episodes and at the end of the series they realize they love each other.

McClintock and Kelly were both problematic in their roles.  McClintock played Pete Latimer, an ex-alcoholic ex-Marine who worked for the Secret Service, but McClintock’s broad comic skills made him seem like an undisciplined, semi-literate, overgrown child.  Kelly, as Pete’s partner Myka Bering, is a stunningly gorgeous actress who seems embarrassed by her looks and awkwardly tried to hide her light under a bushel.  I swear that during season 4 she told the producers of Warehouse 13, “You know what, I’m just going to come in an hour later, so don’t worry about my hair or make-up, and I’ll just wear an oversized t-shirt for my costume.”

As I said, the plot of the show was that everyday objects gained the ability to affect people’s behavior in ways related to their origins.  Sometimes this was overly-literal, like the mirror used by Alice Liddel (the model for Alice in Wonderland) would suck people into an alternate dimension; sometimes the effect was rather random, like Harriet Tubman’s thimble giving people the ability to assume the appearance of other people (huh?).  Towards the end of the show’s run the artifacts became deus ex machinas, doing whatever was convenient to resolve the plot.

What was good about Warehouse 13?  Let me start with two words: Allison Scagliotti.  She joined the show early in its first season and quickly became the emotional fulcrum for the remainder of the series.  Also, unlike the principal pair of actors on the show, she had great platonic chemistry with her partner, played by Aaron Ashmore (they made the relationship platonic by establishing that Ashmore’s character was gay early on).  I stuck with the dismal show Stitchers primarily because of Scagliotti (and her co-star, Salli Richardson-Whitfield from Eureka).

Saul Rubinek did great work on Warehouse 13 as the curmudgeonly Artie, boss to everyone but a father figure to Scagliotti’s character.  The show did display a lot of imagination in its plotting, and did an excellent job of working out intricate seasonal arcs that were resolved reasonably well.  The show got some good guest performances from the likes of Anthony Stewart Head, Roger Rees, and especially Jamie Murray as the female H.G. Wells (she had the ideas, her brother wrote the books).  The show generally had good special effects given the small budget they had to work with.

Warehouse 13 is a minor entry in the history of science fiction on television, pleasantly diverting but mostly just empty calories.  I don’t mean to sound too disapproving; it is difficult to do mediocre science fiction on TV and Warehouse 13 was far better than mediocre.  But I can’t help wonder what the show might have become had creator Jane Espenson stayed on as the showrunner.  Warehouse 13 is another example of the importance of casting in the creative process of television production; Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, conceded that David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson’s chemistry was a gift he couldn’t have manufactured. When it came to chemistry, Warehouse 13 was not visited by Santa Clause.