Warehouse 13

Recently I watched the first three seasons of the Syfy Channel’s Warehouse 13.  The upshot is that it’s fun and entertaining, but not necessarily something that will age very well or be particularly remembered.

There are two obvious shows to reference against: Bones and, of course, The X-Files.  In general the show seems aimed at a slightly younger audience than both.  It’s not nearly as dark and serious as X-Files mostly was.  With the exception of a few weird jokes late in the third season that stick out quite a bit, Warehouse also generally doesn’t have the occasional adult humor and mainstreamed stylish sexyness Bones tries to peddle at times.

It’s kind of funny to watch some of the forced comparisons with Bones in the first couple episodes.  Pete, the lead male character, comes across an awful lot like an even goofier Booth.  They even look extremely similar.  The tone is similar to Bones but without all the blood and unnecessary gross bits.  However, somewhat counter-intuitively, I actually find Warehouse a lot more coherent.  Bones to me never manages to strike a consistent tone between fantastical goofyness and serious crime drama.  By being rooted in precisely that fantastical goofyness, Warehouse actually works better around the viewers’ suspension of disbelief than Bones and a lot of high faux-science procedurals.

The production pitch is super obvious: Take the last scene from Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, and build a whole show around it. Dunnnzo!

Cue the Bond theme!

Unfortunately, I would say that Warehouse fairly quickly falls into the same trap that The X-Files continually danced around as it went forward, and eventually more or less fell into: Over-emphasis on long term story arc episodes at the cost of lighter, more fun and comprehensible one-shots.  My impression of Warehouse after the second season was actually fairly high.  Definitely a light show, but fun and going somewhere.  That momentum however really got dragged down in the third season by a steady stream of new characters, unnecessary webs of character relationships and family backgrounds, and an increasingly byzantine overarching story arc—all the same problems of complexity and weight that really plagued X-Files, though admittedly its true strength was the long-term development and complexity of the relationship between Mulder and Scully.  It’s a delicate line.  Warehouse has a good start on building up a bunch of interesting relationships, but I think launched the plot into the deep end a bit early.

On the upside, the show features a good number of solid female characters.  Myka, the female lead, is a bit stereotypical: The organized, controlled and controlling one who’s always just on the edge of emotionally cracking.  Otherwise though they’re pretty good.  Claudia is the most technologically savvy character on the show.  Mrs Frederick is both the consummate boss and fount of wisdom.  H.G. (Helena) Wells is a convincing and interesting super villain, and an interesting spin on a historical science fiction touchstone.  Leena’s new age trippyness I don’t find particularly compelling but the character’s not terrible when not being used for boob jokes.

Ooohmygod, they’ve got cookies! Cookies!

As an interesting design point, through the first season and a quarter or so the show has a somewhat unusual triple plot structure.  Most TV shows, especially those with an hour long format, run an A plot and a B sub-plot.  Until it settles down a bit in the second season, Warehouse often runs an A, B, and C sub-plot, where the A line is about the artifact du jour, the B line about some personal matter or relationship development among Myka and Pete, and the C line some near catastrophe in the warehouse occupying Artie (their boss) and Claudia.  These C plots are actually not too annoying and it’s an interesting way to build up the office and tech oriented Artie and Claudia characters before they become more mobile and active in the main plotlines.

“Look, don’t mess with me, I’m having a bad century.”

For what it’s worth, Warehouse is set in the same Syfy universe as Eureka (which I haven’t seen) and Alphas, which I’ve found pretty decent so far.  The tie-ins with Eureka are overt, with characters, gadgets, and companies appearing in both.  Connections with Alphas are a lot more implicit at the moment.  For example, Warehouse‘s third season character Steve is clearly some kind of Alpha though never explicitly labelled as such, and I would argue Claudia and several other characters show Alpha tendencies as well.  It’s a little fun trying to gauge which of Warehouse or Alphas has more budget.  I would guess Warehouse, given that it has a lot more setting variety, more gizmos, and actually a fair number of recognizable sci-fi actors.  However, I think Alphas is a lot more slick, the relatively more subtle and serious tone of the special effects making them seem more polished.  More importantly, the themes in Alphas seem a good bit more mature and deeper.

“Really? I will destroy you, and not even notice.”

“Listen, just because I was thown in here to compromise between being not-quite jailbait for all the sci-fi dudes, but still young and goofy enough for all the teenage dudettes to relate to, doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass. Ohmygod, I’m, like, so screwed up, you know?!”

Overall though, Warehouse 13 is a reasonably solid, warmhearted and goofy little science fiction show.  It’s probably a bit light for anyone besides teenagers/young adults to really really dig into, but not so much as to be offputting or especially boring.  It’s also fairly obvious in nature and execution, and thus easy to have on in the background or to pick up off and on.  So, I recommend it for fans of the genre looking for some digested entertainment, just don’t expect too too much.

Finally, Artie, the lead agent, is from Philadelphia… and a curmudgeon.  Bonus points for realism!

Alphas

There are no particularly meaningful spoilers in this review, though to recap for those looking to go in with a totally blank slate: It’s good, go watch it!

Recently I watched the first season of Alphas, a somewhat modest superhero drama from the SyFy channel that had been popping up in our NetFlix suggestions for some time.  I had avoided it because, let’s face it, with a few—ok, maybe only one—standout exceptions like BattleStar Galactica, the SyFy channel is not exactly known for quality.  Sharktopus?  Mansquito?  However, I’m glad I gave it a try.

Plot and Characters

Alphas definitely treads familiar ground.  The lead, Dr Rosen, and his team are direct riffs on Dr X and the X-Men.  Bill Harken, a more dominant member of the team, is a mini-Hulk that doesn’t turn green.  Undoubtedly it all also seems even more familiar to watchers of Heroes or the other superhero ensemble shows of the past few years, none of which I’ve watched.  There are in general a fair number of cliches and fairly standard plot setups.

However, Alphas is just different enough to remain interesting, in large part because of its focus on the human experience.  This is captured well by one of the taglines: Super but human.  Again, this is ground well covered by others, but I think it’s a rich enough space to keep exploring.  Refreshingly, although more and more action creeps in as the season goes along, Alphas sticks decidedly toward the simpler, more understated end of the spectrum in terms of superhero powers and special effects.  This helps keep the real thrust of the series focused on the team and the interactions between both themselves and the outside world.

Fortunately, there have been no vampires. Yet.

Plot-wise, the first episode didn’t really hook me in, but the overall story started to take hold in the second one.  At that point it sets off on what seems the planned main arc of the first couple seasons: The tensions and seemingly inevitable conflict between normals and alphas.  So far this plot has been done with an even enough hand that it’s interesting without being overdramatic, a definite risk with these kinds of paradigm change, government conspiracy type stories.  Alphas also manages to not wear this plot thread thin despite it also being a major theme of really solid previous work like Straczynski’s (excellent) Rising Stars and Supreme Power comic book lines.  Starting with that second episode it starts to build a nice air of foreshadowing and building apocalypse that I think works well.  I particularly liked the fairly original, nicely done set piece for a major turn in this story arc at the very end of Season 1, and the Marcus and Anna characters hinting at the storm to come in earlier episodes.

Diversity

Notably, and great to see, Alphas does a good job incorporating a lot of diversity without making a big deal of it.  Of the main team of six, two are women, one is black, one is Indian, and one a functional autistic.  At face value this is great, though it’s diminished a bit by them being very standard: Of course the black guy is the super strong, more combative one; the one woman’s power is manipulating people and she’s fairly materialistic on the surface; the other, Indian, woman’s superpower is listening, and fighting off arranged weddings; the autistic is obviously the computer whiz.  However, the mere fact that all these demographics are there in primary characters puts Alphas in a better place than standard whitebread American TV.

“Pull my finger. No, seriously.”

Better, those shortcomings are countered by a lot of diversity and non-traditional representations among the larger pool of characters.  Women are handled especially well.  A big part of the success of recent superhero movies is that they’ve actually managed to do a good job of appealing to women audiences through relatively strong female characters, and Alphas fits right in with that.  Pretty much all of the women characters are clearly supposed to be at least attractive, if not hot, but so are all the dudes.  More importantly, none of them are overly sexualized and none at all come across as helpless, shrill, or other traditional female characterizations.  Of the team’s two main liaisons with the government, the ranking one is a woman who seems nothing but competent.  One of the more dangerous assassins the team faces is a woman who relies on speed, tactics, and invisibility to fight, which works well in terms of having women-specific fighting styles.  Three other sympathetic “bad guys,” a significant portion of the show, are both female and hyper geniuses.

Other groups also make out well.  The other government liaison is a black man with potentially complex moral standing and a few pretty good scenes so far.  Two main characters have mental disabilities: Gary on the main team is autistic while Anna, one of the key “villains,” has apraxia (an inability to move).  Gary is probably actually the hidden star of the show as he is largely the most compelling to watch.  I can’t immediately think of any other TV show that has given such positive, prominent placing to characters with those sorts of handicaps.

“Bring it, freaks!”

Summary

Alphas is pretty low key, and I think it’s one of those cases were less is more.  By operating under a comparatively restricted budget, they’ve been forced to focus a bit more on characters rather than effects, and kept to a fairly understated approach.  It probably won’t blow anyone away, but by the end of the first season I was really enjoying it.  Importantly, that focus on characters and the diversity of them means that it’s probably fairly appealing to those who would not otherwise be particularly interested in science fiction or superheroes.

“Yeeppp, I’m pretty sure the women can handle this one.”

The first season, comprising eleven episodes, is available streaming on NetFlix.  Another five from the start of the second season are available to stream from the SyFy channel website right now.  Go check it out!

Sidenote: “The SyFy Channel” remains and will remain a really stupid, disappointing name change.

UPDATE: I realized later that Walt Jr in Breaking Bad is of course another currently prominent handicapped character.  I’ll have to think about that some more.  He’s not active as a character in the same way as those here, though he’s a good character well played, and one of the very few positive, “good” characters in that show.