It is with a heavy heart that I
turn to this review, of the final five episodes of The Librarians. The word is out and the series has been cancelled,
but at least it got a suitable send off.
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| Normal. |
'...and the Hidden Sanctuary'
sees Cassandra taking a sabbatical in the safest town in America, to ty out
what a normal life feels like and decide if it might be for her if she had to
quit the Library to prevent a civil war. Unfortunately, while the town is
almost impossibly safe, her arrival seems to coincide with a breakdown of its
perfect order. With the help of a young boy who has realised since moving to
the town that something is very wrong, but all the adults too scare to speak
about it, she discovers that the town is protected by a bound faerie.
Unfortunately, her arrival by magic door has fractured the binding, releasing
the now heartily pissed of faerie. Only Cassandra has any chance of stopping
the rampage, but first she'll have to convince the town that stoning her won't
solve their problems.
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| "Does it say 'colonel' anywhere on my uniform?" |
Then it's time for Jake and
Ezekiel to explore the threat of civil war, as they travel to a town called Feud
in '...and a Town Called Feud'. Feud is a town that thrives on Civil War
tourism, especially around the bloody rift between two brothers, one a Rebel
and the other a Union man. The owner of the local museum is determined to
reunite the two halves of a locket symbolising their broken fraternal bond, but
the ghosts of the dead seem set on perpetuating the struggle. Yet as the
Librarians are caught up in the hauntings, all may not be as it seems.
Meanwhile, back in the annex, Cassandra treats Jenkins to high tea and they
look for more information on the Library civil war, which convinced Cassandra
that there truly can be only one.
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| "Clean up, aisle seven." |
Before we hit the big finish,
it's Jenkins' - and John Laroquette's - time to shine, in '...and Some Dude Named Jeff'. Jenkins wakes up
in a basement room, while his place in the annex has been taken by a slacker
named Jeff. Jenkins discovers that
Jeff has been studying the Librarians and idolising Jenkins for months, before
finding a spell book on the internet which allowed him to Freak Friday his hero. Unfortunately, the book is also one of the most
dangerous in existence, and Jenkins must call on the courage and resourcefulness
of Jeff's D&D group to aid him in penetrating the Library's back door, in order to find Jeff and reverse the spell, before
a monstrous force can destroy... well, pretty much everything.
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| This could be going better. |
With the critical equinox
closing in and no decision as to who will anchor the Library to humanity
alongside Baird, the Librarians enact a spell to cause the Library to choose in
'...and the Trial of One'. Unfortunately, this trial is to the death, and the
three Librarians are forced to face their worst nightmares. Escaping these
requires them to surrender the memory of their friends, thus allowing them to
fight to the death. Baird is able to break out of her own nightmare to aid
them, but the Library - perhaps already drifting away from humanity, because it's being a real dick about the whole business - has
decreed that the trials will be completed, two Librarians will be killed, or else Jenkins will die. Despite their best efforts, the Librarians can not overcome the Library, and the
enacting of this penalty ultimately drives all three to resign.
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| The Librarians? |
Finally, '...and the Echoes
of Memory' (and to an extent the final scene of '...and the Trial of One') reveals that Nicole Noone has been playing a long game all along. She kidnapped Flynn and faked his resignation, as well as engineering the loss of
Jenkins' immortality to provoke the others to leave, so that she can rule a
world in which the Library never was. Such a world is a dystopian mehhole of conformity and bureaucracy. In this monochrome nightmare, Baird struggles
to hold onto enough memory of the Library to recruit the three Librarians, find
Flynn and somehow undo what Noone has done before it becomes irreversible.
And so, it ends. It ends, in fact, with a
reversal of time which undoes most of this season's action, although I like to
think that most of it plays out anyway, and especially that Jenkins is still DMing
for Jeff and his mates, because that shit was adorable. I also like to think that they were able to convince Derrington Dare that he was full of it, tweak the nose of the Saint of Thieves, and just straight up punch Rasputin in his face. I kind of want to write the revised events as fanfic now, because... I won't deny it, I'm going to miss The Librarians, in all its whimsical and
closely plotted glory. It's been a highlight of the television calendar for the
last four years, and now it's gone. On the other hand, at least it didn't
outstay its welcome and fade away into something I wasn't sorry to see end.
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