The Librarians - '...and the Rise of Chaos'

Oh, hey; an actual ensemble effort.

Huzzah! It's the return of my annual happy viewing place, The Librarians.

We open with our team pretty solidly united, but with some signs of tension. Cassandra is still of the opinion that, with the shift in paradigm going on in the world, the Librarians should magic up, putting her at odds with the others. Eve is teaching Jake to fight, although he insists he is just a brawler, and that she's always going to be there for the fighting in a way that feels... significant.

And then the clipping book which gives them their assignments explodes. Cassandra reminds everyone that she's not just a wannawitch by using her visualisation powers to reassemble the words on the torn pages and it's off to the museum where an ancient and unspeakable force of evil is looking to open a portal to the realm of absolute evil. For a primordial force of utter negation, Apep is a bit of a one-trick pony: He can unleash the chaos inherent in any dynamic, a little like the Golden Apple, but more specifically interpersonal, thus heightening the tensions in the group for a while. Oh, and because he's possessed the body of a naval engineer, he can programme a submarine to do bad things.

Sadly, I can't get a decent picture of them actually singing.

Apep beats them to the key to the portal, although Flynn and Cassandra get to geek out about the mathematical relevance of the Eye of Horus(1), which is fun. The team eventually confront Apep at the portal and defeat him with a show of unity, which involves them standing together and singing at him. Amazingly, this works, because they accept that they are essentially a family, which means that they stand together even if they don't always agree.

Just to cap everything off, the team are ambushed by a group of Government magic-hunters calling themselves the Department of Statistical Anomalies. They are swiftly deflected by exposing them to Apep's chaos field, but the DSA and Apep are still around, and Jenkins warns Flynn that an Ultimate Battle between good and evil, the forces between which the Library is supposed to keep a balance, is already underway.

In the tradition of season openers, '...and the Rise of Chaos' has a fair bit of book-keeping to get out of the way, reminding us that Flynn is here, Cassandra <3 magic, and hinting that Eve is considering life beyond the Library (not something many Guardians get to do.) The actual plot of the episode is fun, but neither Apep nor the DSA is as instantly menacing as Dulaque or Prospero. Still, it is the season opener and a certain sog is not unusual. I'm optimistic of the season gathering pace, and even slightly slow Librarians is more fun than many shows at their best.

MVL of the Week

An easy win this episode for Cassandra. While Jake and Ezekiel are distracted playing with submarines, her anagramming and mathing are primary movers in the episode.

(1) All of which is totally true.