WAREHOUSE 13: Pete’s Floored. Are You?
WAREHOUSE 13
Season 3, episode 8: “The 40th Floor”
[all photos: Syfy]
Groovy lines of the week:
Claudia: “Tesla grenade. Don’t leave home without it.”
Jane: “We’re not out of Dodge yet, so cowboy up.”
Continuing the line of thought from last week’s episode, we catch up this week as rogue FBI agent Sally Stukowski (Ashley Williams) is torturing Regent Theodora Stanton, and the Warehouse Gang has managed to connect Stukowski with the deaths of four other regents. This is considered a Very Bad Thing, because it means there’s a group of people using artifacts for torture, and who knows what devious plots they could hatch?
Off to Atlanta, where Artie uses a map once possessed by Sir Henry Morton Stanley (he of the “Dr. Livingstone, I presume” fame) to locate where Stukowski has been spending her time, and finds a very tall building guarded by Thugs with Guns. After Claudia zaps them with a Tesla grenade (and then does a merry turn in the revolving door), they see that the Thugs with Guns have Eye of Horus tattoos, which means…
Adwin Kosan (Faran Tahir) is in the building! And he has two other regents with him: Phillip Petrov and “Jane” (Kate Mulgrew), who need to get out of the building now that it’s been compromised. So it’s up to Artie and Myka to get them out while Pete and Claudia go after Stukowski’s accomplice, revealed on security video. Using Stukowski’s SIM card in a very steampunk USB device, Claudia finds the guy and the chase is on!
Accomplice, James Aquino, has a spray can, which he and Stukowski used to put building-eating graffiti all over the tower, cutting off all means of escape and sending Artie and company to the roof, where they await a helicopter. The spray paint is from East Germany, and was used on the Berlin Wall.
In an effort to get Stukowski to talk about the rogue group she’s in, Mrs. Frederic uses … ahem.. unconventional means to get information. Specifically, a medal from the Japanese Army’s covert biological and chemical warfare Unit 731. This artifact has the effect of making you feel like you’re drowning (which is odd, considering the source… wouldn’t it cause radiation or chemical poisoning?), and Stukowski fights for a bit, but it’s clear she’s not going to last long.
Well, Mr. Steve Jinx will have no truck with torture. No, sir. And he has the nerve to pull his gun on Mrs. Frederic, giving agent Stukowski the chance to get away before revealing everything she has to share. Mrs. Frederic is not happy. No, she is not.
Artie and the posse head back downstairs, since it’s clear the building isn’t going to last long enough for the helicopter to arrive. On their way, they lose Jackson the Bodyguard and Phillip, who’s wearing the bracelet of Genghis Khan. He’s the protector of the Warehouse, and knowing he’s about to die, transfers the bracelet to Jane. So now, she’s the protector and they have to get her out safely before the world explodes or something. Making it down only so far, their target is a window-washing rig. Using Frank Lloyd Wright’s pick-up sticks, Artie and Kosan make it out, but Myka and Jane get cut off, so they have to find another way down – rappelling down the elevator shaft with fire hoses.
Some really nice bits between Kate Mulgrew and Joanne Kelly, especially when Myka turns the “cowboy up” line back on Jane. And the bit when Claudia hacks into Aquino’s GPS navigator and pretends to be the voice of the unit – that was priceless. Someone needs to call Garmin and have them do a Claudia Nuvi or something. I’d buy that for a dollar.
Turns out the spray paint works both ways, using strong emotions as the trigger mechanism. So Pete uses it to paint a big peace symbol on the building, and it fuses the cracks back together and stops the destruction just before the elevator shafts collapse in on Myka and Jane. And Mr. Marcus Diamond is not happy. No, he is not. And neither is the Evil Boss in the Shadows. Very disappointed in agent Stukowski.
So that’s it for Stukowski’s run on the show, and it’s not looking good for Jinx, either. Since he drew his weapon on his boss, and let the bad guy get away, Mrs. Frederic has fired him. And Claudia is none too happy about that. No, she is not.
And at the end of it all, Myka brings her partner over to meet her new friend Jane, and whoa! Jane is Pete’s mother?
Oh, and Syfy, a little note: you might want to wait until the actual end of the show before rolling credits and killing the sound. We almost missed Pete’s “Mom?” in your haste to get to the next show.
Fun little bits:
Myka’s grappler – standard issue in 1890. Something to imply that she still has contact with H. G. Wells? Or is it just something left over?
Author Keith R. A. DeCandido pointed out in his Twitter feed, that the Thugs with Guns are named Miller and Stentz, a somewhat obscure shout out to writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Edward Miller.
Over at IMDb.com, there’s a collection of photos from this episode, and one of them shows (Highlight for SPOILER: Anthony Micheal Hall) in the wheelchair. That should be fun to watch as it plays out.
