‘Warehouse 13’ 4.11 Episode Recap and Review: The Living and the Dead

Warehouse 13 is back, and nothing is ever going to be the same!

It’s been a long hiatus, so let’s catch up quickly, shall we? When Sykes destroyed the Warehouse at the end of last season, Artie used the Astrolabe to turn back time long enough to fix what Sykes had done. This, in turn, released a terrible, unnamed evil that turned out to be a second personality in Artie himself. Eventually the personality took over entirely, causing Artie to fatally shoot Leena and open the container that held the Chinese Orchid, releasing the Sweating Sickness upon the world. Claudia used Francesco Borgia’s Dagger to expel the evil from Artie, fulfilling Artie’s visions of Claudia stabbing him. And that’s what you missed on Warehouse 13!

The team transports Artie back to the Warehouse. The magical, mystery Warehouse paramedics are able to remove the dagger, which leaves no wound behind. Regardless, Artie is still catatonic, having retreated into a fugue state in which he imagines that Leena is still alive. Mrs. Frederic uses the debriefing as a learning experience for Claudia, whose connection to the Warehouse and its Artifacts seems to be getting stronger every day.

Jane Lattimer uses Freud’s Clock to send Jinks and Claudia into Artie’s mind to bring him out of his catatonia. Artie’s subconscious uses everything from images of Mrs. Frederic and MacPherson to a bag of snakes and William Hornaday’s Cap to keep the two of them from finding him in his ‘office.’ Claudia is on the verge of giving up, not on Artie but on fighting the good fight as a whole. Jinksie gives one hell of a pep talk about how their life isn’t about the win; it’s about the fight. He gets thrown out of Artie’s mind in the struggle with MacPherson, but Claudia is able to fight her way to Artie, finding him playing the piano back at the B&B in his head. Claudia tearfully forces him to face the reality of what’s happened, but Artie refuses to leave the B&B and wake up. She finally throws him through the door that leads back to the real world, but Artie seems none too happy with her or anyone else.

Back in the quickly sickening real world, Pete and Myka are able to find a smidgeon of research about a ring that can reconstitute dead flowers, which is exactly what they need to stop the Sweating Sickness before anyone dies. The ring belonged to the Count of St. Germain, and there’s only one expert on him left in the word: Professor Sutton. Sutton is a skeezy drunkard, but he knows his stuff. The ring is in the catacombs of Paris. Myka knows where the map to the catacombs is, but Sutton is the only one who knows where the map’s legend currently resides. He leads them to the home of Charlotte Dupree, purportedly an academic rival of his. Dupree’s collection happens to contain a portrait of the Count, who looks exactly like Sutton himself. Sutton is the Count, kept young thanks to an encounter with the Philosopher’s Stone.

As it turns out, Charlotte isn’t as out of town as Sutton originally thought. She turns a rather wicked-looking shotgun on the group, but Myka is able to get the drop on her. Sutton, Pete, and Myka find the legend and head to the catacombs where they find the Count’s tomb. The ring is there, and so is a rather large diamond that once belonged to St. Germain. The tomb is booby-trapped to hell and back, and of course the main trap is activated when Sutton snags the diamond. In an amazing and thus far uncharacteristic display of heroism, Sutton throws Myka out of the path of a poisoned dart, taking it in the heart himself. Pete and Myka use the ring to bring the Orchid back just in the nick of time. Sutton dies in his own tomb, admittedly loving the poetry of the moment.

Hours later, Charlotte Dupree makes her own way down to the tomb. She was never just an academic rival of Sutton’s. She was his wife back in the court of Marie Antoinette. She isn’t exactly weeping over his body, though. Possibly because there’s no body to weep over. It looks like Sutton isn’t as dead as Pete and Myka thought, and Charlotte has a serious yen for some vengeance.

They’re back! I always miss this show so much when it goes on hiatus. Now, we knew from the get-go that the Sweating Sickness wasn’t going to last past the mid-season premiere. It was, however, an excellent jumping off point for the new mystery of the season. Sutton isn’t dead, and Charlotte has some serious revenge fantasies going on. We’re definitely going to be seeing those two again.

As heartbroken as I am, I can’t wait to see how the Warehouse and its family are going to learn how to cope without Leena. She’s always been the den mother of the crew, with a special connection to the Warehouse, to boot. There’s so much about Leena that we never learned, like the promise Mrs. Frederic made to her or even her last name. Jack Kelly, the showrunner, has confirmed that Leena is really and truly dead, but no one in science fiction is ever really gone. Maybe we’ll still get the chance to learn more about her as the season goes on. Meanwhile, it looks like we’ll be getting Kelly Hu (Arrow, The Vampire Diaries) in to take care of the B&B.

See you lot next week for another episode!

Best Quote:
Pete: “It’s always ‘ultimately death.’ Artifacts never release a plague of tickles or an epidemic of kittens.”
Jane Lattimer: “Some do. They end badly, too.”

Things to Ponder:

• So who’s going to be taking care of the B&B now?
• Did it bother anyone else that a handful of paramedics now know where and possibly what the Warehouse is?
• I’m going to try to keep a list of new (to us) artifacts used in the episode. Given the way this show works, though, I make no promises. This episode, they introduced Sigmund Freud’s clock, Nicolas Baudin’s map and legend, and William Temple Hornaday’s cap. Go hit the library and learn you some things!