Warehouse 13 – An Evil Within – Review!

An Evil Within is the second episode of the fourth season of Warehouse 13 and it unfortunately continues the creative slowdown that seeped into the third season.

The plot of An Evil Within…

This episode has two main storylines. The first follows Myka (Joanne Kelly) and Pete (Eddie McClintock) as they try to find out why people are behaving in an hysteric way and claim to see monster with tentacles. Eventually Pete and Myka uncover that somebody is avenging the death of his fiancé by using an artifact in such a way that everybody things the victim is a monster and should be killed.

The second storyline follows Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) and Artie (Saul Rubinek) as they each try to undue past mistakes. Claudia gains access to the morgue where Steve’s bodies is being held and attempts to resurrect him with an artifact. Jane Lattimer (Kate Mulgrew) appears but against Artie’s protestations seems to approve of Claudia’s plan, later she even helps Claudia to perform the procedure. After Steve is resurrected Claudia attempts to make him understand what has happened and it takes Steve a while to come to accepts he has been dead. Meanwhile regent Kosan appears at the Warehouse 13 and makes his displeasure known about Jane Lattimer’s approval. He vows that if there are negative side effects to Steve’s resurrection he will disable the artifact that was used.

Artie meanwhile is approached by Brother Adrian who asks his help to find Magellan’s astrolabe. Brother Adrian states that a person who uses it will cause evil to spread throughout the world. Artie doesn’t tell him he has used it to save the warehouse and H.G. Wells but Brother Adrian seems to suspect something is a amiss. Artie ponders whether Claudia’s attempt at resurrecting Steve has anything to do with Adrian’s warning. This storyline ends without any dénouement and it seems to remain the main plot line for the foreseeable future of Warehouse 13.

Review…

I personally felt that this episode was a letdown, none of the events that took place in this made me care much for the characters. On the one hand there was Pete and Myka’s chase of the culprit that tries to avenge the death of his fiancé which though introduced drama also violated the suspense of disbelief when artifacts were openly discussed with members of the public. Myka’s comment on how she understood why a person might avenge the death of a loved one was an allusion to the trials of H.G. Wells. This made Jaime Murray’s absence from the episode all the more felt.

Claudia’s and Artie’s story remained throughout most of the episode interesting but after Claudia had resurrected Steve and Artie had his gazillion coffee and scones with Brent Spiner’s character I stopped caring. Though Steve Jinks broke a wall with him being openly gay he brought too few other traits to really merit coming back on the show. His character gets in the way of Artie and Claudia working together which was one of the highlights of the earlier seasons. This episode already seems to foreshadow Steve second death as the other regents don’t approve of what regent Lattimer has done. Claudia’s attempts at gaining access to the morgue are the main highlight of this episode as they are quite funny.

Kate Mulgrew’s guest appearance was poorly used  and her behavior as a regent was out of character, Brent Spiner’s character was reasonably effective and makes for an interesting character for this show.

If Jaime Murray doesn’t return to the show as a regular than I can only hope that her rumored spinoff series gets off the ground quick because Warehouse 13 seems to have run out of ideas.

Score; 7 / 10.