The Librarians... - '...and the Hidden Sanctuary', '...and a Town Called Feud', '...and Some Dude Named Jeff', '...and the Trial of One' and '...and the Echoes of Memory'

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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.

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.

The Librarians - '…and the Steal of Fortune', '…and the Bleeding Crown', '…and the Graves of Time', and '…and the Disenchanted Forest'

Time for another binge of Season 4 of The Librarians, and boy howdy do we have some excitement this time out. 

Fortuna channels Cassandra's 'Honey Bear' character.

We begin with The Librarians 'and the Steal of Fortune'(1), in which Jake takes Ezekiel to visit an old buddy who trains race horses. Unfortunately for the friend, his luck has turned bad, and he is in the process of losing his last horse to the owner of the race track and casino, Bernie Konopka. Investigating, the two learn that Jake's friend is not the only one to suffer a run of bad luck, as freak accidents abound and race after race brings no winners, except for the owner of the winning horse; Bernie Konopka.

Suspecting a magical artefact, the Librarians turn out in force, but find themselves falling prey to the bad luck curse. Cassandra is sucked into playing roulette and Ezekiel the slots, losing time after time, until Cassie busts out her mega maths and Ezekiel gimmicks the machine to let him win. Ezekiel steals the suspected artefact, but it turns up a dud, while Cassie is abducted and accused of cheating. She and Jake realise at more or less the same time that Konopka's apparent arm-candy is in fact the goddess Fortuna, who has been stealing back her blessings of luck in order to return to her full power and - dare she say it - rule the world. The only way to beat her is to do as Cassie did and beat the curse, but how can you win when all luck is against you?

"It's like looking in a mirror..."

The Librarians 'and the Bleeding Crown' opens with the entire population of a small town becoming old overnight. The Librarians encounter Darrington Dare, a Librarian from the 1880s who was a huge inspiration to Flynn, and appears to have been pulled forward in time in pursuit of his nemesis, wizard and cloning pioneer Ambrose Gethick (played by The Musketeers' Howard Charles.) Dare is an effortlessly capable polymath, but has no time for friends and comrades, matching it to a secondary theme in '...and the Steal of Fortune', that Librarians can't have a normal life. Indeed, Dare tells Flynn that, with the extraordinary threat of Apep now past, it is his duty to dismiss the other Librarians lest a civil war break out, as once happened, resulting in the ignorance and superstition of the Dark Ages.

Dare and Flynn track down Gethick, who turns out to have captured Eve and the other Librarians in order to drain the Library's own power from them using the Bleeding Crown of Elizabeth Bathory to destroy Dare, who is impervious to all other magic. With the empowered Gethick too much for them, Flynn turns to his friends, getting the immortal Jenkins to overcharge the crown and causing Gethick to explode. Dare leaves and, contrary to prior history, connects with friends to live a long and happy life, but leaves a note for Flynn telling him he must still dismiss the other Librarians.

In an episode which might as well have been called The Guardians 'and the
Graves of Time'.

In The Librarians 'and the Graves of Time', Eve tracks down Nicole Noone, who is in pursuit of a group of Eastern European heavies who are breaking into her graves - she having been forced to 'die' from time to time in order to conceal her immortality - to steal artefacts. The rest of the team eventually join them, but then are split up, leaving Flynn and Nicole in pursuit of 'Koschei's Needle', a weapon which can kill anyone with a single wound, and even take the life of an immortal. The rest of the team wind up in the hands of the heavies and their boss - played by one-hit wonder Chris Heyerdahl - who tells them that he is the last descendent of the Romanovs, who were destroyed by Rasputin using sorcery taught to him by Noone.

The team go after Noone and Flynn, but it turns out that the supposed Romanov is in fact Rasputin himself, and that it was to kill him - not, as feared, Galahad - that Noone wanted the Needle. Noone is stabbed, but Eve and Flynn dummy Rasputin into stabbing a pipe full of radioactive waste, which the Needle - which turns out to be a kind of vampiric dagger - conducts into Rasputin until he explodes, which appears to be becoming a theme. To save Noone and make amends for misjudging her, Jenkins transfers his immortality to her, rendering him mortal once more. As if this were not enough of an upset, Flynn resigns from the Library, in order that there should be at least one fewer potential combatants in a Library Civil War. Of course, this upsets the planned binding ceremony between Flynn, Eve and the Library, and I wonder if Jenkins won't end up bound to restore his immortality and leave the others free(ish).

While '...and the Graves of Time' provided some important plot stuff, it felt
sooo good to get back to the ensemble after a Flynn-heavy couple of
episodes.

Anyway, all this melodrama leaves a somewhat shaken team at the top of The Librarians 'and the Disenchanted Forest'. With each one convinced that the others should step down if anyone has to, Eve takes them to a team building camp where weird things happen. The idyllic rural retreat proves to be rife with disappearances, and while Eve tried to ignore the potential cracks in her team, Jake becomes one of them. Cassandra tries to live out the summer camp pranks she has seen in movies, much to the annoyance of Ezekiel, but the come together - along with a team of DOSA agents - to seek out and rescue Jake, at least partially restoring their team mojo.

It turns out that the forest is at the heart of all forests. The tree spirits have been protecting it, while the owner of the camp has been covering up the disappearances as people quitting. Destroying the heart tree would doom all forests, but with Jake's linguistic gifts the tree is able to communicate this. It entrusts a 'zero seed' to Eve, and the DOSA agent in charge offers permanent 'Area 51 status'. Jake then shows a journalist he has become close to the Library and explains that she can't talk about it, and that he can't be with her, putting him at the top of the list if there is to be a singular Librarian at the end of this.

So, it's all change this season, and honestly there's an end of an era/series finale sort of vibe going on. No word on a fifth season yet, and there are two episodes as yet unaired anywhere, but I would not be surprised if this was it for out intrepid bibliophiles. If so, it's been a good run, and I'm glad it seems to be going out on a high, with some strong episodes in this run, and a strong thematic spine of renewal and change.

(1) Actually the second episode of the series, but shuffled around to allow '...and the Christmas Thief' to be shown at Christmas.

The Librarians - '... and the Dark Secret', '... and the Christmas Thief' and '... and the Silver Screen'

I don't think proper priests do like this.

What's that you say? A new season of The Librarians? I don't mind if I do.

We begin this series with 'The Librarians and the Dark Secret', in which a group of bad, bad Catholics(1) calling themselves the Order of Shadows, and devoted to destroying the Library in order to snuff out reason and learning, and bring about a new Dark Age. They have found a map which shows the locations of the four cornerstones of the original Library of Alexandria, which can be used to tear down the current incarnation of the Library. The Librarians' only hope is a secret Jenkins has been keeping from everyone; a prisoner held in the Library after seeking to destroy it. That prisoner is Nicole Noone, Flynn's first Guardian, thought dead but actually displaced in time. Can they trust Noone now, or is she pursuing a grudge of her own against the Library - and perhaps the Librarian - that never came to bring her back?

It's possible some of the Joneses may be adopted.

There might be some mucking with the order of episodes again, as we seem to have skipped '...and the Steal of Fortune' to get to 'The Librarians and the Christmas Thief' in time for the season. In this episode, we meet Ezekiel's family of thieves. Devotees of a figure called the Saint of Thieves, they celebrate the holiday of Thankstaking, and all look down on Ezekiel for his failure to steal anything worthwhile, since his dedication to moral thievery and now to his Library commitments prevents him doing the kind of stealing that they respect. As with many episodes focusing on this most superficial of the Librarians, it is one of the deeper and most emotional episodes, as any time you scratch the surface of Ezekiel the hidden depths just gush out and smack you in the feels.

'...and the Dark Secret' is arc led, but '...and the Christmas Thief' is character driven, and the better for it. As ever, John Kim digs deep to convince us that, for all his smarts, he would be willing to risk everything by showing his mother the Library. He does also get the chance to be recognised as one of the greatest thieves in the world, to defeat the Saint of Thieves, and make his mother and Santa Claus proud. The Librarians also have to 'borrow' Santa's sleigh to retrieve the magic door from Ezekiel's mother, which is really the sort of thing that lies at the heart of how much I love this series.

Also,I love noir.

Similarly, '...and the Silver Screen' does one of my favourite things and traps our heroes in a work of fiction. Eve and Flynn's date ends up with them trapped in one of her favourite noir classics. They try to follow the plot along to the end in order to escape - because this is The Librarians; of course they have protocols for this sort of thing - but it doesn't work, leading them to wonder if the film actually ends the way it was supposed to. That's a fascinating exploration of authorial intent right there. 

Also, the junior Librarians get trapped in a western trying to help, then wind up in a scifi B-movie, both of which are huge fun, before stumbling into the noir thriller to save the day with lassos and rayguns.

I found '...and the Dark Secret' to be a bit of a wobbly start, but the stand-alone episodes - in as much as The Librarians have actual stand-alone elements; traditionally, everything links in the end - were superb, not least because they moved Flynn back out of the limelight to let the junior team do their stuff. I don't hate Flynn, but I've grown to love the team, and our opener this year was very much about Flynn and his relationship with Noone. It also took out John Noble's dubious monsignor a little too quickly - few things are better for losing John Noble, although Sleepy Hollow certainly got worse, if not for keeping him around too long then for reasons relating to it - which means that the Order of Shadows and the Keystones probably aren't the arc plot. Which does beg the question what, if anything, is?

Oh, right! Flynn and Eve marrying the Library.

(1) No real priest would go around stabbing construction workers, or being played by John Noble(2).
(2) It is entirely possible, even likely, that John Noble would play a brilliant priest.

The Librarians - '...and the Curse of Cyndi', '...and the Eternal Question', '...and the Fatal Separation' and '...and the Wrath of Chaos'

"I'm a bloodsucking fiend; look at my outfit."

Okay, it's been a little while, but I've got the rest of Season 3 of The Librarians watched now, so let's bring it on home.

'...and the Curse of Cyndi' (or possibly 'Cindy'; the character in question changed her name one way or the other,) takes the entire team to a cult compound in search of an artefact responsible for the cult's meteoric rise. The Centre of the cult is Cyndi, a seemingly ordinary young woman and unlikely focus of absolute devotion, who effortlessly sucks Flynn and Jake into her orbit, although she has no effect on Ezekiel. Jenkins suggests that the cause is an obsession potion, and that Ezekiel is immune because of his total devotion to himself. As the team seek out the maker of the potion, however, it is Ezekiel who is able to reach Cyndi herself, convince her of the lie of her existence and that there is a better way to live with loss and rejection than mass ensorcelment.

MVL of the Week: Totally Ezekiel. This is one of those episodes which reminds us that Ezekiel is more than just a one-note trickster, and like '...and the Point of Salvation' it once more does so in a way that emphasises his determination to hide his better self from his teammates. He would rather be thought of as too much of a selfish jerk to be affected by a love spell than have it be thought he possesses a sensitive soul. Moreover, it is critical that he presents himself to Cyndi as a friend, and the show never suggests that he might have done otherwise. It is established that he is in love with her, and clear that she is utterly for any kind of affection. Ezekiel gives her the validation that she needs in an utterly selfish fashion and, and this is rare, without anyone ever making a big deal about it. It would be utterly reprehensible to take advantage of Cyndi, but not doing so is not admirable, it's just right.

Also, I love that the moral of the story is 'when other people cast you aside, seek solace in egoism.'

"I actually am a bloodsucking fiend."

Solace is also being sought in '...and the Eternal Question', as Cassandra learns that her mathemagical tumour is about to kill her. She invites Jenkins on a date, which is kind of awkward, as he explains that as fond as he is of her, he swore his love eternally to another, who did not choose him. He is also a little distracted, helping Flynn to decoy Eve off on holiday.

Back on the ranch, as it were, a golfer and his wife spontaneously combust after his cancer was miraculously cursed at a spa, the Librarians discover that the spa is run by vampires, but vampires who walk in the sunlight and do not appear to feed on blood. They learn that the owner of the refuge came there with her children from Spain and found that the place seemed to free them from the curses of vampiric life. Cassandra forms a bond with the daughter of the family, Estrella, who is shocked that the golfer and his wife seemed to have been turned, let alone that they were able to survive away from the sanctuary. When Estrella's brother turns out to be experimenting on guests to try to become an unstoppable, daywalking predator, Jenkins appears to settle the hash of his goons, while Estrella and Cassandra take down the brother.

Cassandra collapses and agrees to surgery, despite knowing that she might lose her gift and fearing that she might then become a liability to the team. In fact, she soon discovers that her gift has grown with the removal of the tumour, allowing her to project thoughts into other people's heads.

MVL of the Week: Actually, all three of these episodes are pretty easy, as they each focus on a different character, much as '...and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy' was Baird's and '...and the Trial of the Triangle' Flynn's. This was Cassandra's show, exploring both her fear of irrelevance and her openness to the supernatural world. Where Jake and Ezekiel immediately begin collecting crucifixes, she doesn't need to be told that Flynn once loved a vampire to put her trust in Estrella.

Honourable mention to Jenkins for being a total badass.

"We're relic hunting fiends; just look at our outfits."

'...and the Fatal Separation' takes the team to Shangri-La, where Jake has been training for a month with the Monkey King, because of course he has. When Shangri-La is invaded by ninja, Jake summons the team to help. Cassandra and Ezekiel hilariously pose as relic smugglers, but Eve is dummied away and accosted by her ex-boss and mentor, a general who now runs DOSA and wants her to betray the Library to them for the good of the nation. She also claims that Eve was placed in the Library by arranging her encounter with Flynn, although that seems hinky given that she received a magical invitation and all. Back in this week's plot, Jake has to fight his sifu, who has been driven into a rage by a relic, while Flynn discovers that Charlene arranged to be captured by the ninjas as the ideal place to hide from Apep. It all ends well, but then Charlene has to sever her connection with the Library so that she can not be used to attack it, which results in the loss of her immortality after a fond farewell to her knight, Jenkins.

MVL of the Week: Jake takes a serious level in badass this week, but he does have to share the spotlight with a arc-service far more than the others did.

"Just look at our outfits."

Which brings us to '...and the Wrath of Chaos', as the team are dummied into the wilds while Eve lets DOSA into the Library. Flynn attempts to hide as many artefacts as possible, while Jenkins tries to delay the invaders, only to be confronted by the head of Medusa, nicked by Eve for the purpose. The three Librarians rescue Jenkins from a cage designed to be Librarian proof (the right answers trigger security measures; only the exact opposites will work,) while Eve's insistence that DOSA's Apep containment is substandard causes the General to check and be possessed. She then brings a bomb to the Library, where Eve reveals that she has been working with Flynn to set a trap for Apep, although only Jenkins knows that Eye of Ra-ing the God of Chaos requires that Flynn sacrifice his own life.

In the final confrontation, the Librarians unleash their secret weapons on Apep - the 'gift of inner soul' awarded by the Monkey King, Cassandra's ability to transmit thought, and the last of Cyndi's love potion so that Apep can 'have a heart'. The god is thus granted all the essential qualities of a human being, and his life can be sacrificed to contain the evil he sought to unleash in the Eye of Ra. Flynn and Eve point out how easily the General was tricked into becoming the host of Chaos and rather gleefully take back all their things, while the Librarians swear off using magic save as a last resort, having seen how easily it can corrupt or be abused.

MVL of the Week: The ensemble, for sure.

This final batch of episodes are a slightly mixed bag. '..and the Curse of Cyndi' is top notch, as Ezekiel episodes often are. '...and the Eternal Question' is decent, but '...and the Fatal Separation' is trying to do too many things at once and the finale does not cap off the season as beautifully as the first two seasons. I still love the show, but that's probably why I'm tougher on it than I might be if it were purely disposable to me.

The Librarians - '...and the Tears of a Clown' and '...and the Trial of the Triangle'

"I don't have to work with you clowns."

Here comes the circus(1)!

Jenkins is 'enjoying' this particular circus, because he received a call from Eve telling him on no account to try to rescue team Library from the circus. Fortunately, he is able to avoid the marauding clowns and weirdly monotonous staff of the fair and rescue his colleagues, who have been transformed into sideshow freaks. A bit of investigation reveals that the head of the circus is a magician (played by Sean Astin) who is searching for the lost love of his youth (played by Felicia Day) and intends to use magic to ensure that she loves him forever; because that's not creepy.

MVL of the week: Jenkins gets a strong showing, but I'm giving this week as a tie to Cassandra and Ezekiel, the former for her enthusiastic skill at circus costuming, and the latter for his showmanship and sleight of hand.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore..."

'...and the Trial of the Triangle' see the return of Flynn, only to face a stern intervention from Eve and the other Librarians, who feel that he is distancing them from his battle against the rising ultimate evil. They're right, of course, and as the team set off to seek the Eye of Ra in the Bermuda Triangle, his refusal to include them threatens the mission of the Library itself.

The show has a bit of fun this episode, with the other actors playing the figures in a phantasmal otherworld of literary figures, riddles and self-discovery. It's interesting less because it picks out any unsuspected flaws in Flynn's character, and more because it so baldly faces the ones that have always been apparent (especially in the almost ludicrously heightened version of the character that appears in the series.)

MVL of the week: This one, in fairness, belongs to Flynn; rules bedamned.

(1) Or, you know, the Devil.

The Librarians... - '... and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy'

"Am I Abraham Lincoln?"

It's deadly danger and amnesia for Eve Baird this week, as someone summons a deadly Reaper to kill her in accordance with a prophecy locked in a glass box. Not that we know that to begin with, as the episode begins in media res with Eve, Jake and Ezekiel trapped in a labyrinth with a mysterious hourglass and no idea how they got there. As they piece together their memories in morning after style, they remember the threat of the Reaper and leaving the library to escape the terms of the prophecy. They find that they are also trapped with the principal, swim captain and cleaning woman of a high school, who were apparently transported to the labyrinth with them via a swimming pool dosed with magical waters from Mount Parnassus.

While they struggle to both make use of and escape the prophecy, Cassie and Jenkins are looking for an out from the outside. The only ways are, apparently, 1) outside intervention, and 2) get a bigger prophecy. Option 2 turns out to be a no-no, as the prophesied death of Eve outranks that of several Librarians(1), and in fact has already been invoked by the Oracle of Delphi to escape her own foretold demise. Things come to a head when the Oracle reveals that they are inside the prophecy cube, which is inside the library, prompting Baird to signal Jenkins to throw the cube outside, thus breaking her own prophecy (option 1) and invalidating the Oracle's option 2.

'...and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy' plays cleverly with the tropes of prescience and destiny, and is one of the best episodes yet this season, not least because the show has built up to it with Eve training the Librarians to manage without her, meaning that there is a very real sense that she could die. There is also a pretty moving scene where the Librarians admit that they are worried that she may be feeling lonely, what with her SO vanishing once more.

MVL of the Week
You know what, the former Librarians in Training have all become good enough that I feel able to throw everyone into the hat for this award now, so this week I'm giving the title Most Valuable Librarian to Jenkins. Not only does he give Eve the (unfollowed) best advice of the episode - not to leave the Library - but knows Morse code and, when Eve wonders where the pocket mirror she signaled with came from, explains in his Jenkinsy way that the Guardian protects the Librarians, but the Library protects the Guardian.

(1) I guess Jenkins might be a bigger deal, but he can't die so...

The Librarians - '... and the Reunion of Evil'

Ezekiel is left holding the baby...

I'm now two episodes behind on watching The Librarians and three on reviews, so let's fix the latter at least.

In The Librarians '...and the Reunion of Evil', Jake and Cassie are on a mission to retrieve a powerful mystical gem from a glacier. They get into fight with an unidentified rival collector, and when Cassie busts out the magic to help with the extraction, the Gem of Angrboda becomes lodged in her chest, which surely can't be good. Meanwhile, back at the Library, Eve and Jenkins entrust Ezekiel with caring for the Loch Ness Monster's egg, as part of Eve's drive to push the Librarians to be more than they are in case she isn't around some day.

Grounded by a blizzard, Jake and Cassie head for shelter in a mountain hotel and are obliged to pretend to be part of a convention, which turns out to be a reunion of disaster-causing, body-snatching Frost Giants. Jake has fun blending in during the drinking and boasting parts of the act, but when it becomes apparent that a) they are here for the Gem and b) that Cassandra glows when the Gem is named, they try to book, only for the rival collector to appear and turn out to be the Frost Giant that Jake is impersonating.

...while Jake and Cassie get the cold shoulder.

Bound for human sacrifice, Jake - who has been arguing against the use of magic all episode - uses his allowed final words to urge Cassie to go for it. They break loose, and despite some trouble focusing the doors make a spectacular escape with the Gem, presumably dealing a serious blow to the Giants ability to cause chaos in the world.

Baby Nessie hatches and is adorable, and the question of whether magic is good or bad is left up in the air. I like that the show is remaining ambiguous about the use of magic, with neither side clearly wrong or right. Magic is useful, but it is dangerous; Cassie is somewhat shooting in the dark, but that's in part because Jenkins won't let her access any resources to guide her learning. Otherwise, this is a fun episode which continues to foreshadow some manner of major upset in the series.

MVL of the Week

It's a tough call this week, with both Jake and Cassie getting their share of good moments. Ultimately, I'm calling this one for Jake, both for recognising the value of Cassie's magic in a pinch, and for sticking to his concerns after the fact: "It's the 'not bad' parts that make people think the 'bad' parts really aren't that bad. It's dangerous. Yeah, magic got us out of trouble today. But it's also what put is in it, too."

The Librarians - '...and the Fangs of Death'

"This can only end brilliantly!"

With the ultimate battle 'twixt good and evil in its opening stages, Flynn has a dream which seems to point at the critical player being Charlene, the Library's erstwhile accountant. He and Eve track Charlene to a Mayan cult's temple, where they are worshipping her as a goddess thanks to some mystical malarkey she's pulled off to make them think she's a Mayan goddess (which is a bit creepy, really.) Unfortunately, the cult are then wiped out when Apep drives them to infighting and kidnaps Charlene. asked why she is so important, Jenkins explains that Charlene is a Guardian; the first Guardian to the first Librarian, the now departed Judson.

Flynn tries to use the Annex Door to track Charlene, but his hack doesn't hold. The four Librarians make it through to a supercollider bunker in Canada, but Eve is locked out, eventually arriving outside the facility with Jenkins. While the Librarians struggle against unstable reactors and Egyptian werewolves led by Anubis, Eve and Jenkins encounter Apep himself, possessing a guard in order to ensure that all the Librarians are in place before springing his trap. The Librarians must face an all-but unbeatable foe, with Flynn starting to fall to pieces when it looks as if Charlene may already be dead. While they eventually emerge victorious, the cost is high, and although Flynn confides in Eve that the last battle is upon them, he leaves her behind for her own protection and sets out to seek for Charlene alone.

MVL of the Week

In a somewhat dark episode, Ezekiel can usually be relied on to bring the fun, but this week he's infected with Anubite lycanthropy and acts as the inside man in the pack even as he heads towards an irreversible transformation. Fun Ezekiel is great, but there's something about serious Ezekiel that nails LotW (see also '...and the Point of Salvation'.)

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.

The Librarians - '...and the Point of Salvation', '...and the Happily Ever Afters' and '...and the Final Curtain'

Serious Ezekiel

A triple bill of The Librarians to close out Season 2, and oh my it is glorious.

'..and the Point of Salvation' takes the team to a quantum computing research facility on the verge of disaster. Faced with a series of almost nonsensical trials, Librarians die again and again, only to return to the back door, and only Ezekiel remembers. At first assuming a time loop, he comes to realise that they are actually trapped in a computer game thanks to an overload in a quantum computer driven by a nugget of scary Atlantis quartz.

"I can't watch you die anymore."

As he struggles to get the whole team through the 'level' safely, Ezekiel begins to be worn down by seeing his friends die, over and over again, even as he draws on all of their abilities to help him overcome each of the game's challenges. Eventually, he just takes to locking them in while he chases the answer.

MVL of the Week

Hands down, this is Ezekiel's show. I'm so torn on his reversion to original Ezekiel after he sacrifices himself at the last hurdle. On the one hand, I hate to see character development undone; on the other, I can see that this was a lot of development to drop on other writers through one episode. For myself, I choose to believe that Ezekiel retains some subconscious knowledge of what happened, influencing his role in the coming episodes.

Honorable mention to Jake for commiserating with Ezekiel when he realises that the rest of the team have become Ezekiel's escort mission.

Also, I love the title, referring both to Ezekiel saving the team and to the literal save point at which they constantly respawn.

Meet the new team, same as the old team. Almost.

At the close of the episode, Jenkins learns that Prospero's plan is starting now, and runs to warn the Librarians - just too late - that they are walking into a trap. Then something goes wibbly and Jenkins acts as if all were normal.

In '...and the Happily Ever Afters', Flynn Carson returns to the Library to find that the team are gone and Jenkins doesn't remember them. He tracks his friends to Cicely, Washington, where Eve is apparently the Sheriff, working with ladies' man, saviour of world heritage and polymath professor Jake, astronaut, science teacher and barista Cassandra and Special Agent Ezekiel Stone, head of the FBI field office on an island of 2000 people which has its own university to safeguard their home. Also on the team is Mayor James Moriarty, Eve's perfect boyfriend.

"And this guy! Special agent? He's like fifteen! And Australian! How could he be FBI?"

Flynn and Jenkins deduce that the team are under a spell which creates a perfect life for each of them; an ideal happy ever after. They then run into Ariel, currently on the run and appearing not as a tiny sprite but an adorable bovver booted Scots pixie, who explains that she isn't fictional (although she seems to struggle to remember that the Librarians aren't just characters in some story*) but is a real fairy who was ensnared by Prospero.

With the team deciding that Flynn and Ariel have stolen Cicely's beloved totem pole, Flynn lures them back to the Library and confronts them with their real lives, but to break the spell for good they have to formally reject the new stories. Once this is done, however, they find themselves locked out of the Library itself, until Eve cracks the last piece of the puzzle: She has rejected her new story, as have the other Librarians, but Flynn is still under the spell, which has given him his happy ever after: Being the Librarian, faced by a life of adventure and puzzles that no-one else can solve.

MVL of the Week

This is another Flynn week, not only cracking the main mystery, but beginning to repair his relationship with Eve. We're also saved from an overly indulgent big name star love in as the denouement rebalances the entire episode to show Eve and Flynn in particular as equals, and for her to save him with a 'true love's' kiss. Also, each of the main team is a delight in their new role, especially Ezekiel Jones, FBI, who introduces himself by swaggering into the room and announcing straight-faced: "I'm a rule-breaking maverick, but I get results."

Time travel has its own special embarrassments.

'...and the Final Curtain' wraps up the season with a bit of time travel, as Eve identifies a note found in place of Prospero's broken staff as being written in Flynn's left-handed handwriting and they determine that they have to use one of the Library's many confiscated time machines to snag the staff and undo the spell which Prospero has cast to return the world to primordial forest.

Things go awry when the time machine implodes, trapping Eve and Flynn in the past, and the remaining Librarians begin to follow a trail of clues embedded in the original note by Flynn to seek a means to defeat Prospero in the present. In the past, Flynn and Eve encounter Moriarty, now apparently turned on his master, and Shakespeare, who is composing his final play: The Triumph of Prospero using a pen carved form the wood of the Tree of Knowledge and given to him by John Dee.

Shakespeare's bitterness at his impending enforced retirement allows the spirit of Prospero to inhabit his form, meshing the wizard's fictional power with the author's imagination and ambition. With Moriarty's help, Flynn and Baird steal and drown Prospero's book, and when the Wizard in turn tries to drown Baird she is rescued by the Lady of the Lake, who gives her Excalibur to give to Flynn to break the staff. I will not lie; I squeed a bit when Cal came back and knew his old buddy Flynn, even more than when Moriarty comes good at the last and sacrifices himself for Eve.

In the present day, Jenkins uses the clues from the past to set up an exorcism, and the Librarians use Shakespeare's words to force Prospero from his creator's body, each choosing a quotation which encompasses their greatest lesson. Temporal inertia then draws Shakespeare back to the past, but Eve and Flynn are trapped; at least until a locked door in the Library yields to Eve's name and reveals a statue of Eve and Flynn, which comes to life.

Oh, gosh; I enjoyed this. '...and the Final Curtain' is so dense and full of call backs, but still manages to be a pacy adventure. Seriously, Doctor Who could learn from this series when it comes to mixing episodic and arc stories in a 45 minute format.

MVL of the Week

This week, it's everyone, as the show once more delivers a proper ensemble mystery. Flynn gets more solo time, but the three in the present work together to solve the puzzles left behind, and deliver their knockout punches with not-so-subtle reference to their own growth as characters (Caesar's rejection of death's power, Kent's self-knowledge in Lear, and Prince Hal putting on the character of the fool to wow people when he becomes Henry V.)

The Librarians has been renewed for Season 3, and I for one say huzzah and don't much care who hears me do it.

* A twisty bit of metafiction that is thankfully managed without a single comedy turn to camera.

The Librarians - '...and the Image of Image'

That's some heels right there.

When the Librarians stumble across bad magic that the clipping book hasn't warned them of, it's time to investigate, and in this case investigation means... going clubbing.

Having some fun with Rebecca Romijn's height and past career as a model and the general fish out of waterness of our nerdy dream team trying to get into a swinging night spot, the episode gets a little heavier once the villain emerges: Dorian Gray, not a fictional but a former 'special friend' of Oscar Wilde whose meddling with bad magic inspired the novel, written as a warning against dabbling. Cassandra's increasing inebriation as Gray's drinking transfers its effects to her is at first played for laughs, then as a threat.

The episode gets Gray pretty much spot on, not really malevolent, just monstrously self-absorbed. It also provides some extra motivation by suggesting that insulating himself from the effects of his sins has cut him off from their pleasures, pushing him to greater and greater extremes. It also plays a little with our expectations, giving us a more original denouement than just slashing the painting.

MVL of the Week

Drunk Cassandra trying to keep tiny rhinos out of her mental workspace is good for a laugh, but this has to go to Jake this week: Increasing frustrated that everyone but him can get into the club (including Jenkins, who sneaks in with the band,) he attempts to distract the bouncer by getting into a generic argument about the relative merits of America and England, which quickly escalates into a literary showdown with the unexpectedly literate doorman.

The Librarians - '...and the Infernal Contract'

"Now there's something not many motel rooms have these days."

Baird is called on by an old Army buddy when one of his mayoral campaign workers vanishes, only for the clipping book to direct the Librarians to the same case. A 17th Century witch mark reveals that this is likely a case of a deal with the Devil, an infernal contract overseen by an 'Executor' which ensures the success of its holder by manipulating luck and fate, and providing a massive crisis for them to exploit every 44 years.

With the next crisis due, the team sets out to steal the contract from the rival mayoral candidate. Their wily, undercover shenanigans are swiftly blown when the contract turns their luck bad in self-defence and the Executor recognises Jenkins as the great white whale of his profession, but they snatch the document, only for Baird's buddy Sam to snatch the contract and try to make good from bad; because he's a pillock.

We need someone to play a snarky, omnipotent... Never mind.

The Librarians risk their lives to prevent the coming disaster and end up trapped, with the Executor offering them a deal to save them. They all refuse, but when he suggests that one of them could make the deal to save the others, they start to wonder if maybe they could do it and then find a loophole. Fortunately, Baird has already recovered the contract and written in her own name. Jenkins goes in to get the team out, shrugging off the attacks of the contract because however unlucky he gets he is literally unkillable, while the Executor urges Baird to 'make a wish'; which she does, wishing him human, thus making him unable to complete his part of the bargain and rendering the contract void. BAM!

MVL of the Week
It's a tough draw this week, as '...and the Infernal Contract' is really Baird and Jenkins' show. Points go to Jake for his excitement at getting a smokehouse set up for Chupacabra jerky:

Jake: Get ready for Chupacabra jerky!
Cassandra: Ew, you're cooking it?!
Jake: [excited] No, he's making it! The Chupacabra, he's *awesome*!
Ezekiel: [dubious] Is that *safe*?
Jenkins: As long as we keep it away from the goats on Level Four.
Cassandra/Ezekiel: [simultaneously] We've got goats?!

"I like boats!"

Also to Ezekiel for his horror when Jake accuses him of becoming honest since he doesn't use the Library's magic for thieving:

"I said; it's easy. Ezekiel Jones doesn't do easy; he does impossible."

But in the end I'm going to give the prize to Cassandra for 'Sugar Bear', her tooth-grating undercover turn as Jenkins' arm candy (see left.)

The Librarians - '...and the Hollow Men'

Flynn comes over all Stockholm Syndrome.

As they search for an artefact called the Eye of Zarathustra, Team Library run across none other than Flynn Carson, seeking out the same item. He and Eve realise at the same moment that it is a trap, only for the Pipes of Pan to send them both - and Jake and Ezekiel - to sleep and Flynn to be kidnapped.

After a slightly abortive rescue effort, the story splits into three threads:

1) Flynn and his abductor, an affable man named Ray (played by Drew Powell, Gotham's Butch Gilzean), who is prone to supernaturally powerful rages and keeps finding powerful Library artefacts in his pockets, seek for the Staff of Knowledge to restore Ray's memory.

2) Eve reluctantly teams up with Moriarty and Ariel to track Flynn.

3) Team Librarian stand around in the dark.

"So to sum up, we plugged in some light bulbs."

Flynn's bonding adventure with a man he comes to recognise as the embodiment of the Library's organising consciousness is wonderfully touching, and Eve's snarky flirtfest with Moriarty is good fun. The rest of the team are, alas, a little out in the cold with Mr Star back in the picture. I liked the ideas in their section - fueling the Library with the stored emotion of a thousand theatrical lights; Jenkins' willingness to sustain the Library with his own life while the others escaped - but there just wasn't much happening. Sadly, this is a common theme when Flynn returns to the series, as nice as it is to see him again.

MVL of the Week
Tough one this week, as the three valid candidates take minor roles in what really is Flynn's show. Still, it was only Eve and Jenkins I ruled out, so I guess the MVL of the week is Flynn Carson.

Honourable mention to Cassandra for geeking out and provoking the line: "Cassandra! Don't fangirl over the archvillain."

The Librarians - '...and the Cost of Education'

"Like all colleges, 1 in 5 students vanish or transfer out without trace."

When a college mascot disappears, it doesn't seem like a job for the Librarians, but this is no ordinary college. Founded by a mad genius, riddled with occult architecture and the inspiration for HP Lovecraft's Miskatonic University, Wexler College is a nexus of weirdness so intense that most of its residents have stopped noticing, just assuming that all colleges have a 20% attrition rate among faculty and students alike and mottos about infernal fire.

During the investigation, Jake meets one of his academic heroes and finds he has feet of clay, while Ezekiel ignores Jenkins' advice and meets the gaze of a gargoyle, which then follows him around like a harmless and affectionate Weeping Angel. Cassandra, meanwhile, bonds with Lucy, a young physicist with an interest in magic, who is also tracking the disappearances and may have revolutionised particle physics; that or punched a hole into the Dungeon Dimensions.

MVL of the Week
It's another good week for Jake Stone, who after his sparring match with Professor Skeptic is interrupted by a tentacle monster gets to stand up and teach a class his own theories of architecture and solve part of the puzzle at the same time. Once more, Ezekiel gets most of the good comedy moments, bonding with Stumpy the Gargoyle and boasting for all he is worth to decoy the pride-eating gribbly.

Despite this, '...and the Cost of Education' is Cassandra's show, not just because she gets to be the solver this week, but for her delight in the university atmosphere she never got to be a part of because of her illness and her willingness to stand up to her mentor figures, giving both Eve and Jenkins a piece of her mind. When Eve suggests that rescuing Lucy can't be a priority in the balance, Cassandra retorts that she has learned as a Librarian that 'what's best isn't always what's right', and when Jenkins tries to caution her against getting too comfortable with magic after an invitation to join a technomagical cybercoven, she pointedly reminds him that she has already chosen the Library, even if she is questioning its purely containment-oriented methods in the magically reinvigorated world.

The Librarians... - '...and what Lies Beneath the Stones'

In my head, Jake's Grandpappy is Sam Elliot.

The Junior Librarians are summoned to a construction site where a trickster spirit has been released and is intent on causing chaos. Unfortunately it feeds on lies, and lies abound, especially in the shady dealings of construction manager Isaac Stone and his relationship with his estranged son Jake (yep, our Jake.)

While Jake plays deliberate third fiddle to Cassandra and Ezekiel (introducing the latter under one of the pseudonyms he himself uses for publishing articles on native American anthropology,) the trickster thrives on the conflict between Isaac and protestors who believe he is violating a sacred site. Ultimately, Jake recognises the nature of the shapeshifter and the Librarians attack it with truths, most tellingly Jake's confession (to the shapeshifter itself) of the fears that led him to hide his genius from his father, who now blames Jake's bookkeeping for the family firm's decline. Armed with truth, he forces the trickster back into its prison and the three Librarians seal it in with truths that affirm their bond as a team.

In the end, Jake never makes his peace with his father, even recognising the shapeshifter because his father would never say that he loved him, but it doesn't matter. As he says: "The truth is, I don't need your approval anymore."

And of course I love that the title of the episode is a pun.

MVL of the Week

This is the first strong team episode of the season, but with all his daddy issues, Jake is far and away the MVL. Aside form the character development, it is his area of expertise that makes all the difference here.

Honourable mention to Cassandra, however, both for her outpouring of truths to keep the door open, and for her adorkable TV habits:

"You know that thing where you're watching TV and you subconsciously compute the size of the set based on the height of the actor and the number of steps it takes them to walk the width of them? Like how Nathan Fillion is six foot two and it takes him 43 steps to walk across Serenity so you know the spaceship is 204 feet across?"

"No. No-one knows that thing."

Also, a shout out to Ezekiel's truth, that he once stole things on Her Majesty's Secret Service.

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.

The Librarians... and the Drowned Book

"Well, there's something you don't see every day."

The Clipping Book summons Flynn and his fellow Librarians to a single event at the museum where he once worked. What connects a shipwreck, a Milanese chess set, a weather monitoring centre and a pair of pearl earrings*? What role is played by the smooth talking academic and the affable old caretaker**? And can the Librarians overcome their desire for independence and work together to overcome the threat***?

Our season 2 opener (SyFy UK once more poopoos the idea of running the two-parter back to back as the stateside broadcast does) is once more Flynn heavy, capitalising on Noah Wyle for as long as they can budget for him. The centrepiece is the flirting and bickering between him and Eve, the latter showing her chops as not only the muscle, but the glue that holds a team of intellectual egoists together. The other three Librarians are as charmingly dysfunctional as ever, with Cassandra still conjuring complex hallucinations to deduce that a scientist is going to accidentally turn herself into a goat, Jake the secret sophisticate, and Ezekiel creating apps for his phone to access his Clipping Book and the Library's magic door.

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as pistols, science guns,
magic and snarky looks.

For most of the episode, the four Librarians solo it and are so distracted by squabbling that they completely fail to stop the rogue fictionals achieving their goals, before working together to stop a monster storm (or, if you will, tempest) using magic doors and a second sun. Hopefully we'll manage a balance between last season's no Library and regular Dei ex Libris conclusions, but this one was rather fun.

The Librarians are back. I am so happy.

* Shakespeare.
** They're fictional characters, brought to life and bent on world-domination.
*** Sort of.