Surfing SF: Warehouse 13 – “Age Before Beauty”
“This is like a game of gay Clue.”
Some girls play with Barbies, and some girls read Warehouse 13 spoilers…
One of the knocks I’ve heard on Warehouse 13 is that Pete and Myka feel less like real secret agents than they do like two little kids playing secret agent. This episode answered that critique to a certain degree by showing us the harder centers beneath the jokier exteriors of our lead pair. And, yes, the part where Joanne Kelly spends a large portion of the episode in a slinky dress didn’t hurt.
Myka was the star of this one. She showed how good of an agent she was, she got to sword fight, and she also is apparently a “natural” at fashion modeling. She’s so good, in fact, that the artifact which only works on models works on her. Pete, meanwhile, gets way more hardcore than we’ve seen from him when he thinks Myka’s life is in danger. Artie tells the bad guy Pete would be more than happy to beat him to death, and we believe it. Big fun Pete. And he and Myka also got that very sweet, if a little on the nose, moment behind the scenes at the fashion show… if such a thing as a Pete/Myka shipper exists, and I have no doubt that it does, this was probably their favorite episode yet.
The rest of the episode… well, Claudia got to basically ruin her first date with Todd with her own insecurities, which felt in-character but was not really that fun to watch. I want more of sarcastic Claudia, guys! I did like the way this story involved Artie, who Claudia actually calls her “father figure” here. The guest acting was uniformly atrocious to the point of being distracting, and it doesn’t help that normally I would find the world of high fashion insufferably annoying anyway. None of these people are fun to be around for me. So… I wish we could have found a way to tell this story without having to deal with all of that. As it is, I’ll take it for the character development and try and forget the rest.
Bits:
-The worst line ever delivered while winning a fight may be “Eat shield, stabby!” Seriously, Pete?
-The old age make-up was terrible, as all old age make-up apparently will be forever. Myka’s supposedly dying of old age and to me she looks like she’s maybe 65.
-Ray’s original pizza is an artifact, as is the Portrait of Dorian Gray. And Excalibur.
-Claudia’s favorite movie is The Godfather. And her text message notification is a Cylon saying “By Your Command”. How do I get one of those?
So, what did you think? Maybe it all played better to somebody who can actually stand Project Runway.
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