WAREHOUSE 13 Gets Psyched!

Episode 405 “No Pain, No Gain”

[photos: Steve Wilkie/Syfy]

It’s a Warehouse 13 cross-over with Psych!

Well, not really. It would be a fun bit, especially since Timothy Omudson and Kirsten Nelson show up. It’s fun seeing them play characters other than Lassiter and Chief Vick.

We start in Japan, where Claudia and Myka, dressed as geisha girls, recover a Medusan artifact in a briefcase. After taking down the extras in the scene and recovering the artifact, myka gets a call from her sister Tracy, who’s pregnant.

They bring the artifact back to the warehouse, where Artie is watching hockey. A hockey player has an artifact that lets him heal.

So this week, we’re back to the usual pairing of Pete and Myka to get the main artifact of the week, while Steve and Artie try to track down all of the other Artie-centric artifacts that have been stolen. Steve’s figured out that Artie’s hiding something, and follows him through the warehouse to catch him looking for artifacts and finding those big fake black diamonds. So Artie has to fess up to Steve and get his help in retrieving the stolen Artie-facts.

Meanwhile, Claudia – who’s let Artie know she’s been having weird feelings – gets an invite from Mrs. Frederic to join her in Minneapolis, where the elder warehouse caretaker takes Claudia to see the birth of an artifact.

These stories stay pretty much independent of each other this week, so everyone gets a chance to have a moment. Claudia’s is the most emotional, I think, as she’s forced to stand by and watch a jewelry store get robbed, only to witness an act of selfless bravery on the part of a young woman wearing a bracelet – which becomes an artifact because the woman put herself between a baby and a bullet.

Mrs. Frederic tells Claudia that there are actually some good things that come from being part of the warehouse, and the artifact stays with the woman. Retrieval is only necessary when the artifacts are used with malicious intent.

Which certainly seems to be the case with the artifacts stolen from Artie. He and Steve use the Hatfield rifle to track down the McCoy rifle – among the stolen collection – in a fun bit of symmetry that had to be suggested by the recent popularity of the Hatfield & McCoy miniseries. Had to be.

And the rifles are imbued with so much hate from the two families, they start firing at each other on their own, which causes Steve to slip up and reveal that he and Claudia are connected, so if he were to get shot… and this is another piece of the puzzle Artie’s trying to put together. And it really does seem like the writers are waving a big arrow sign pointing to the possibility that the Claudia in Artie’s nightmare is actually a possessed Claudia. [See below for my theory.]

Just like Artie’s recent “Allons-y”.

The real fun this episode: Pete and Myka dealing with alternate reality versions of Lassiter and Chief Vick. Although Omundson doesn’t have very much to do outside of mosey around and tell the hockey players to cooperate. But it’s nice to see him step out of that ramrod stiff uppity by-the-book stuffed shirt and relax a little with a different character. Like his turn in that Voltron fan film, Omundson needs to do more outside of Psych, because he’s got a little range that no one ever gets to see.

Same with Kirsten Nelson, although she’s almost aged out of the love-struck groupie type. But she pulls it off nicely here, giving her character just enough emotional pain to anchor the character in a reality of her own making. Possibly going off the deep end because of her grandfather’s death, Judy is the reason for the superhuman success (and healing) of the hockey star, Mike Madden. Her grandfather’s dog tags grant wishes, and Judy’s been using them to keep Madden healthy when his injuries should have forced an early retirement.

Of course, that goes south when Pete and Myka figure it all out, but not before Pete makes a wish of his own – and Myka ends up pregnant! Instantly!

Pete’s more of a softie than he lets on. A glimpse of a young boy prompts a wish just as Pete has hold of the keychain with the dog tags, and since Myka’s the one woman who gets what he does, she becomes the object of the wish. Boom. Instant baby bump.

This creates quite a few moments of fun in what is otherwise a send-up of Misery combined with something like Fatal Attraction. Nelson’s performance isn’t over the top. It’s just half-cocked crazy enough to be real. We’re able to buy into her obsession, and you almost feel sorry for her when you find out her grandfather’s dead. Maybe he was all she had left, and his death sent her off the deep end.

Deep is the word for Artie’s problems, too. He and Steve recover the stolen artifacts, but Steve notices the shipping supplies. So do they have everything or not? Won’t find out until they get back to the warehouse.

In the aftermath, we get two little codas: Mrs. Frederic taking Claudia to visit Mrs. F’s grandson, who’s now the older of the two; Pete and Myka getting a couple of steps closer to being a couple, as Pete reveals that he actually cares about Myka, and even uses the “L” word in a slip of the tongue. Myka, of course, has to blow it off and make fun, because if she were to open up about how she feels, methinks she might reciprocate. [All you H.G. fans are wailing at me now, I know, but H.G. isn’t here, now is she?]

Next week: Alice returns from Wonderland, and she’s stalking the bionic woman?

OK. Theory: vision-Claudia is either controlled by Steve for some reason, or she’s possessed by the body-jumping Alice.

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[Official Show Site at Syfy]         [Previous recap: “There’s Always a Downside”]