Warehouse 13 - Season 3 Episode 1

If, like me, you’ve never watched this show before, this opener to the third season is as good an episode as any that’s not the first to jump in on. Titled ‘The New Guy’, it introduces a – you guessed it – new guy into the existing cast and as he gets to know them and learn about what they do at Warehouse 13, so do we.

His name is Steve Jinks. Yep. Played by Aaron Ashmore (who Wikipedia tells me was Jimmy Olsen in Smallville, another show I’ve never watched, but I can totally see him as Jimmy Olsen), Jinks has a pretty face, and is a Buddhist who knows when people are lying. Not in the pseudo-scientific way that Tim Roth’s Lie To Me leading dude Cal Lightman knows, but it the totally pseudo mystical paranormal way that he just knows, y’know.

Anyway, I like pretty Steve Jinks and after watching him in this episode, I think the show is pretty silly. But I like silly shows. And speaking of, this episode opens with one of the silliest things I’ve seen on TV in a while, as Jimi Hendrix’s guitar gets all Thor up in some museum’s grill, and starts chucking blue and purple lightning bolts about the place. To shut it up, and prevent it from frying the entire city, an annoyingly sassy redheaded chick called Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) has to play it. As you do.

Hendrix obsessives shouldn’t watch this bit, as they might have apoplexies. Claudia plays it right handed, you see, and people who know more about these things than me assure me that because Jimi was left handed and strung his guitars upside down, playing it right handed would sound whack.

Regardless, she plays the guitar and saves the day. And also meets Jinks for the first time. She and we meet him again later for an extended Prius product placement scene out the front of Warehouse 13, and now he and we learn that it’s a top-secret storehouse for supernatural artefacts. And his new job as an agent working there is to find and retrieve said artefacts. So basically it’s The Librarian without Noah Wyle.

(Sidebar: If you’ve never seen The Librarian made-for-TV movies, go away and do that right now. They are also silly.)

Jinks and his new partner Agent Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClinktock) deal with some cursed literature and Lattimer’s old partner Myka (Joanne Kelly), who stormed off at the end of last season for some apocalyptic reason. Meanwhile, there’s a subplot about some statues of Zeus and Hera going all Hendrix’s guitar on each other. And everybody stays in contact with Artie (Saul Rubinek), the Warehouse’s father-figure caretaker, via steam-punk smart phones.

It’s all completely ridiculous. And hence, I rather enjoyed it. It’s not the greatest show of its genre by a long shot, but it’s a fun and fluffy family-hour sci-fi. If you’ve ever wished Mulder and Scully would team up with Indiana Jones, give it a go.

Rating: 3 stars

Warehouse 13
Season 3, episode 1
Australian premiere on SCI FI Channel
Friday January 27 at 8.30pm