THE LIBRARIANS and the Season 2 Opener

Season 2 , Episode 1: “And the Drowned Book”

After what seemed like a very long break after the close of Season 1, The Librarians is finally back.  The opener was a two-parter that delighted the fans, and will bring a smile to bibliophiles everywhere.  This new season promises to challenge the team with a new race of characters: the Fictionals, who are brought forth into existence by Prospero, the wizard from The Tempest by William Shakespeare.  Our season protagonist conjures his various cohorts as needed from their respective books.  The concept reminded me of the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde and Libriomancer series by Jim C. Hines (both great reads for you literary types).

From the trailers, I thought that Season 2 might follow the works of Shakespeare throughout the season, but I was pleasantly surprised that the Fictionals are brought forth from a variety of books, each bringing with them their own dynamics and rules of existence, dictated by their original story.

Flynn Carson (Noah Wyle) opens the season sporting his outdated ascot, and seems just a little quirkier than before.  As the younger members of the Team have each gone off to follow their own Clipping Book directions, Eve Baird (Rebecca Romijn) has been off adventuring with Flynn.  Eve returns this season with a softer look and milder disposition than last season, and there seems to be some romance-type stuff happening between her and Flynn, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

This show is not afraid to have some family-friendly fun, and they even tip their hat to Indiana Jones, with a shot of Flynn and Eve running from aborigines as they race for transport to get back to the Library.  But I’m getting ahead of the story, so sit back and relax, and I’ll start at the beginning, which happens to be a flashback from 9 months in the past.

We start with a dark and stormy night, 9 months ago in London.  As magic is returning to the world, the Earth’s lay lines are lit up like glow sticks, and we witness Prospero selecting a partner straight out of an old volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

Shift to present day and we find Jenkins perplexed by shifting bookcases, disappearing artifacts, and erratic gadgets.  Maybe it’s just a phase that the Library is going through, but whatever it is, it can’t be good for the repository of the world’s most magical artifacts to be exhibiting erratic behavior.  (Makes me reminisce about Warehouse 13.)

Prompted by the Clipping Book, Flynn and Eve arrive at the Museum of History in New York to investigate the grand opening of a shipwreck exhibit.  In fact, all of the Librarians, off on their own separate adventures, are each called to New York by their own mini Clipping Books to investigate a variety of things all in the same place.  It was fun to see that technophile Ezekiel has had his Clipping Book converted into a handy phone app.  They meet Flynn and Baird at the museum, Ezekiel sporting a suit (what?!), Cassandra as prep-trendy as ever, and Jacob looking like… Jacob.  Each were sent to investigate different things: for Flynn, it’s the shipwreck and its artifacts; for Jacob, a donated chess set from Milan; Cassandra is drawn to look at the new state-of-the-art sonar weather service station on the roof; and Ezekiel is lured by some antique jewelry owned by the Italian royalty attending the grand opening of the exhibit.  With all of these talents all drawn to the same place, Eve smells trouble and suggests that they come up with a plan to pool their resources.  She is disappointed to see that the team is now taking an “every man for himself” attitude, which Flynn dismisses with a rather flippant wave of his hand.

Flynn: “They’re Librarians, that’s what they do!”

And so they split up to do their own things: Jacob is off to find the chess set, Cassandra is off to take a look at the high-tech weather center on the top floor, while Ezekiel must somehow charm a beautiful and aloof Italian princess out of her antique pearl earrings.  He first gets her attention by asking her about the jewelry, and she goes into a long drawn-out history of the jewelry.  Ezekiel’s internal dialogue made me laugh. It was clear that he would rather be talking about anything other than her accessories.

Ezekiel: (to himself) “Blah, blah, blah, earrings.”

Meanwhile, Cassandra arrives at the weather station just in time to witness the high-tech weather staff scattering like cockroaches, abandoning their posts due to the massive storm that is approaching the city.  Okay, you’re right — a top-notch weather team hired to run a state-of-the-art sonar weather station all tuck tail and run from a storm.  Hmmm.  Well, it was easier this way.  Now, Cassandra can have access to the station without all of those pesky people trying to work.  She hears ghostly voices through the headphones, but only by ignoring her math and logic can she hear that these are what seem to be very sad voices.

But as we all knew it would happen, each of the Librarians need each other.  Jake seeks Cassandra’s knowledge, and Ezekiel seeks Jacob’s, which gives them a little taste of working together again, and also a reminder of the bickering that drove them apart.

Ezekiel, armed with new conversation topics (courtesy of Jacob), tries to impress the Italian princess to get another shot at her earrings.  He comes up with the perfect pickup line, asking her to join him for some “good old American crime.”  Of course, she says yes, but she loses her interest soon enough when they meet Jacob performing an experiment on several chess set pieces and Ezekiel ignores her to listen to Jacob explain.  Really?  Ezekiel is more interested in Archimedes’ principle than the lovely lady he was escorting?  (We ARE talking about Ezekiel, right?)  Okay, we’ll just go with it because it takes us to the next scene, when the guys find that she meets Cassandra, who not only got her to remove her earrings to listen to the voices through the headphones, but also received her phone number to stay in touch.  As the guys pick their jaws up off of the floor, they don’t notice that the white king of the chess set and the earrings have been swiped by an unidentified thief.

Back at the party, Flynn has met his match in investigational skills. James Worth, the scientist who is responsible for the museum’s display, turned the tables on Flynn with some deductive skills worthy of Sherlock Holmes.  (Remember that flashback at the beginning of the episode? The game’s afoot!)  After their exchange, Flynn is determined to prove his superior knowledge of history to this new intellectual competition.  James suggests that Flynn should have a look at some of the unidentified artifacts from the shipwreck, so see if he can help them.  Flynn takes the irresistible bait, and James walks off with Eve.

(permanently distracted).

The janitor (or is he?) lets Flynn into an office with access to some of the ship’s unidentified artifacts.  Flynn has all but forgotten about Eve, who is taking advantage of James’ attention to discuss her issues about the team’s resistance to work together.  His advice was sage and applicable to just about everything: “Do what needs to be done.”  I get the feeling that he may regret that advice later.  James excuses himself to “help” Flynn, who has discovered a Sherlock Holmes book without any ink in it, and is quickly connecting the dots.  When James enters the room, Flynn goes a little fan crazy, thinking that this is Sherlock Holmes in the flesh, but it is Eve who comes to the correct conclusion of this man’s true identity: James Moriarty.  He is the mastermind who arranged the assemblage of the objects they have each been sent here to investigate.  Flynn and Eve tie him up, and thinking that he’s working on his own, they promptly leave him by himself.

Little do they know that there’s another Fictional at the party.  Meet the wizard from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and mastermind of this season’s “rule the world” plot: Prospero.  By assembling the stolen artifacts and having recovered his drowned book (also the namesake of this episode), he is now conjuring the massive storm above Manhattan, and determined to recover his full powers.  Flynn appeals to him, reminding him about the story that Prospero came from; the one where he drowned his book and broke his staff to renounce his magic.  Unfortunately, Prospero explains to Flynn that he only did those things because his author wrote it that way.  Talk about the power of the pen!

After he lost his magic, Prospero wandered for centuries as a mere human (albeit one with a very long life span) until the magic came back to the world.  He then summoned Moriarty, the genius needed to assemble the necessary artifacts that will now allow him to write his own ending, rather than following the hand of his writer.

Moriarty has escaped his bonds (surprise, surprise) and has a great duel with Eve.  Although she spears him through, he is unharmed because, well…”that’s just not how his story ends.”  He locks her in the room and leaves.  From a magical pocket watch, Prospero conjures the fairy Ariel, whom he controls.  Ariel opens a portal that he and Moriarty jump through, leaving the Librarians to deal with the massive storm over Manhattan that will bring destruction to the city and its inhabitants.  The Librarians, now assembled once again as a team, brainstorm about how to get rid of it, coming up with a number of ideas like using Zeus’ lightning bolt, Thor’s hammer, or massive amounts of heat. (You know, like the amount you’d get from a sun.)

Jacob: We have a sun?

Jenkins: Yes, in the sun room….  What else would one store in a sun room?

They find the sun room, a nemesis star trapped before it could destroy the earth by Einstein and Feynman in 1952, using technology from the Roswell project.

Ezekiel: I thought Roswell was aliens…?

Flynn: (scoffing) It’s never aliens!

So, with certain doom looming from the storm, and great peril threatening them from exposure to the sun room, Jacob and Jenkins don their heat protective gear and ready themselves to redirect the energy by the use of mirrors to the nearest and largest heat conductor that New York has to offer:  the Statue of Liberty.  After much ado, the sun’s energy is directed up into the storm, the clouds burn off instantly, and Manhattan is saved.

The Librarians are back together and stronger as a team, and Flynn & Eve stroll off under the rainbow to plan how to thwart this season’s new villain, Prospero, and his mastermind minion, Moriarty.

As with most series, the writers cut their teeth on character and relationship development, and this is no exception.  The Librarians seem to be more comfortable in their skins this season, and I was especially struck by Ezekiel’s change.  Not only has he grown from his street urchin look, but his role seems more defined as part of the team.  The writers have embraced his technical skills and his pick-pocket prowess, and are having fun with these as part of the interplay with characters, rather than being a target for scorn and admonishment.  With his digital know-how, he’s now the anti-Jenkins for the group, and I can see where they could exploit this dichotomy in some very fun ways.

No mention of Cassandra’s “brain grape,” although we do see her dab at her nose to check if her recent math session caused a nose bleed.  She’s still crazy fast with calculations, and even crazy faster with words.  I didn’t think that that girl could squeeze any more large words into a small amount of time, but she managed to do just that.  Jacob was his usual self, and since he seemed a fairly well-developed character in season one, I’m glad they left well enough alone.  Jenkins (a.k.a. Sir Galahad) is starting to show his human side under that crusty defensive shell of his, and he seems to be accepting the increased traffic through the Library quite well, even becoming (dare I say) fond of the team.

The show continues to develop its quirky, campy feel, and create its own special brand of fun.  This season promises to explore a whole new universe of familiar book characters who might be leveraged into some clever situations.

If you are one of those people who keep an eye out for scientific missteps, continuity issues, and gaping plot holes: you won’t be disappointed — if this episode was any indication, this could be a season full of Handwavium, as we here at SciFi4Me like to call it.  Here’s the thing: unlike other shows that take themselves seriously, this show includes these things on purpose.  My advice: just embrace them and laugh.  This show is all about fun, so sit back, buckle up, and enjoy the ride.

All fun & games aside, and acknowledging the purposeful silliness, the one thing that didn’t jive for me was the relationship that Flynn & Eve are now in.  They’ve just spent the last few months traveling together and seem to have formed a closer, more intimate relationship.  Although Flynn keeps scheming to get Eve away from the group and to himself, he does these 180 flips and completely ignores her or her advice.  It’s almost as if he doesn’t respect her at all, and surprisingly, she seems okay with that.  With Flynn being more disassociated and eccentric than ever before, it was hard for me to understand the personal attraction from Eve’s perspective.  I’m just not buying it.

I get it: there must be some obstacles in the face of true love, or this would just bore us.  But, in my opinion, the writers have the pieces in place already:  Eve is a team strategist and Flynn prefers to wing it on his own through the tough spots.  That, in itself, should be enough to write some witty dialogue where they irritate each other into some sexual tension without all of this other nonsense.

Well, I should trust in the process and see if the writers are going somewhere with this.  The season is still young, and there’s another episode to write, so on with the show!