The Librarians... 'and the Broken Staff'

"He's afraid of fire, right?"
"In the movie!"
"It's not the same as the book?"

With his book recovered and his sprite in his control, Prospero seeks only to replace his broken staff in order to regain the might he enjoyed in fiction before his author had him repent of his power. While Flynn and Eve race to recover the pieces of the staff from the house of John Dee, the younger Librarians hit the stacks, but when Prospero tries to claim a new staff from the Tree of Knowledge at the heart of the Library itself, the battle moves to home ground and a shocking secret is revealed.

Essentially the second half of the opening two-parter, '...and the Broken Staff' continues the set up of our new seasonal antagonist and his cohort of fictional badasses (or, as Moriarty dubs them, Team Fiction.) Moriarty is very much the life and soul of this partnership, for while Richard Cox's Prospero is gravelly and seething, David S Lee's Moriarty is a perfect counterpoint, joyous in his affable villainy while clearly marking up each snippy summons from his master in the vengeance column of his ledger. The other two fictionals to appear this episode are the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland (as distinct from the Red Queen; doing well, The Librarians,) a cackling, psychotic caricature, and Frankenstein's creature, who is erudite, not remotely afraid of fire, and is dissuaded from a life of mayhem when Ezekiel suggests a good plastic surgeon could let people see the man behind the scarred exterior.

Noah Wylie is still very centre stage in this one, leaving the other three Librarians to do their things around the periphery, but at the end he decides to head off to look for artefacts that are missing from the library, while Team Library focuses on new clippings and the missing pieces of the Library itself, apparently yet to realign with the main structure's dimensional ontology.

MVL of the Week

In a new feature, I will be putting forward my vote for most valuable Librarian each week (not including Flynn.) This refers only to the three Librarians proper, since Eve beats them all most weeks and if she doesn't, Jenkins does.

In '...and the Drowned Book', the award goes to Cassandra, who effortlessly extracts the pearl earrings that Ezekiel has been trying to charm from an Italian heiress all night simply by getting her to listen to the cries of Ariel in the storm through headphones.

In '...and the Broken Staff' Ezekiel pulls it back with his knowledge of the Library's security measures.

"Does no-one else read the security manuals?"

Honourable mention to Jake for knowing the difference between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts.