Warehouse 13 -- when writing goes bad

[jollyreaper]

I really like the show. The cast has a good chemistry, it's a fun premise, it's all good. At least, that is, until it goes sour.

Spoilers to follow.

HG was an interesting addition to the cast. I like what the actress did with her. It's also nice to see some of the earlier Warehouse lore even though you can tell they're making it up as they go since it lacks any real coherence. I mean why in the hell is the 60's version of the warehouse busier than the modern day version? They've got more regents than field agents. I know extras cost money but consider how they manage it with Eureka -- small cast of main characters, the impression that there's a huge town. How strange would it feel if the characters inside the town itself were limited to the starring cast?

Some of the writing weaknesses are just classic dumb TV stuff that seemed to go away as the show went on. This is the crap you see in every show. Let the villain talk and distract you, not shooting him immediately especially since you have a non-lethal stunner weapon, Pete being an idiot and triggering an artifact in self-inflicted stupidity not seen outside a holodeck episode. Still, they were moving away from that.

But then they had to stick in HG's weird compulsion to blow up North America. Made no sense for her, made little sense for McPherson to want to help her with that, and didn't even really tie with her character. Good people usually don't go axe-crazy like that. And if they do, it's the moral event horizon moment. You don't come back from that sort of thing. Stupid characters might try to forgive you but no competently-written character is going to overlook that sort of thing.

And it's a shame since I like the character. They already had some perfectly dark stuff in her past, daughter dying, what she was implied to have done to her killers. They could have left it at "Warehouse 12 people don't think she's safe to be let out in public, too unhinged" and her integrating with the team works everything out. But you don't come back from trying to blow up North America. And regents wouldn't lobotomize a threat like this and try to let her live out a life as a school teacher. That's what they have the whole goddamn bronze sector for.

But the cake really gets taken with the whole angry guy in a wheelchair. I don't care if the artifact implanted the dark seed of Dick Cheney into his chest cavity -- you undercut the competence of the entire warehouse project to suggest a guy starting from nothing can completely defeat your entire thousands of year old secret society. He's running an entire parallel artifact-hunting operation without the warehouse people finding out? Not only finding unknown artifacts but stuff Artie recognizes, stuff that was on the radar and would presumably be actively searched for? And when the artifact disappears nobody stops to ask where did it go?

So this guy is able to kill regents at will, get his stupid bracelet back and nuke the warehouse. Talk about being written into a corner. There's going to be some sort of lame bullshit Star Trek trick to undo the destruction of the warehouse. And i won't go into all the additional stupid shit about not shooting first, asking questions later, trying to negotiate with someone who is established to have had all humanity stripped from him, etc etc.

They really wrote themselves into a corner this season. This is a sad thing because it's such an enjoyable show. Try to go all dark and heavy and all the weaknesses will just be brought into sharp focus.

[Enigma]

I think Artie was carrying an artifact that lets him rewind time or something (barely remember the season finale). The last season finale had the warehouse destroyed but it will be undone. My guess is that Artie will rewind to before the bomb was planted and him and co. will prevent the disaster from happening in the first place.

[jollyreaper]

Yeah. I figure that's what they'll do and that is terrible writing. If you don't want to seriously have "everything changes" consequences, don't put in heavy drama storylines. Hitting the reset button just invalidates everything. This is supposed to be Warehouse, not the Battlestar remake. No need for darker and grittier.

[Alkaloid]

How far into Warehouse 13 are we? I don't watch it, but this sort of thing has a tendency to happen toward the end of season 3 as normally that is when the initial writers have mostly moved on, and new writers coming in without the same vision for the story, or with a different grasp of the characters, have taken over. So a character that's damaged and maybe a little bit dark might suddenly become an absolute monster just because the new writers only really saw that facet of her character when they watched the show, rather than the nuance that was intended. That said, new writers can flat out save a show as well, adding depth to previously one dimensional characters.

[jollyreaper]

Season 3 over, 4 in production, I think 20 episodes ordered. Will be the biggest season yet.

Eureka managed to keep itself evolving and interesting and never jumped a shark. The only critique I could name specifically is that it always has to be a disaster of the week, pretty much as solidly as Trek would be anomaly of the week. I would have liked to see some exploration beyond that. Loved the alternate timeline thing. That was one of those moves that would either be the shark jump or the needed jolt. It was a great jolt.

BSG pretty much went off the rails by the start of season 3 but in retrospect you could see that it was never solidly on the rails to begin with, they just hadn't made it to the curve yet and found out the train couldn't stay with it. They had poor planning right from the start.

[Archee]

I think Artie was carrying an artifact that lets him rewind time or something (barely remember the season finale). The last season finale had the warehouse destroyed but it will be undone. My guess is that Artie will rewind to before the bomb was planted and him and co. will prevent the disaster from happening in the first place.

Hi,
I am Archee. I didn't watch the last season of it.You said that had been destroyed, why? what happen in that season?

[jollyreaper]

It's rugged. Warehouse blowed up, secret reset button allows them to undo the damage except commander data guest stars as a monk whose order happens to be the Vatican warehouse and can break into our warehouse to steal artifacts. Character killed last season, resurrected, Claudia out of character and promising to be more evil because her hair is dyed darker, Artie carrying a bigger idiot ball than usual, and just really weak writing that isn't fun. Oh and Janeway cameos to piss off the reagents for an out of left field no good reason.

[Ted C]

Historically, I've found that the stand-alone episodes are far more entertaining that the season-ending "plot arc" episodes. The WH13 crew are supposed to be pretty smart, but someone has to hand them the idiot ball for the season ending crisis plot to work. Why are writers (in general) incapable of coming up with a story where there's drama and tension without making the main cast into incompetent fools to get it to work?

[jollyreaper]

Only thing I can think of is similar to why there are soapy dumb characters. Dumb is easier to write than smart, especially if smart is way smarter than you are. It's trying to come up with a brilliant twist and falling short of brillian, like someone who can't write romance giving it a go and you wind up with Anakin and Padme.

[The Yosemite Bear]

funny thing is that Warehouse 23 has been steve jackson game's online web site name for YEARS before warehouse 13, and W23 has a submit a rejected/forbidden item for storage near the lost ark of the covenant stuff from all of us internet types. makes me think that the guys at sci fi really did just steal the idea from the show from the website.....

[aussiemuscle308]

i don't like WH13. they always have a 'Get out of jail free' card of some type (like artie just happened to have that phoenix device when he was burned). Perhaps they need to change the way they structure the episode. instead of revealing the answer to the audience at the begining and letting us watch them very slowly work it out, perhaps we should also be in the dark as to what is going to happen. That way they don't appear as stupid as they do.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Personally since I originally thought of this as a rip off of the Steve Jackson game's online store, I would love a basic Illuminatii story line. The warehouse has always been at odds with the real masters of the universe, who probably have been manipulating things to create their own artifacts, ...