Warehouse 13 season 4 episode 9 review: The Ones You Love

This review contains spoilers.

4.9 The Ones You love

Holy cow, what an episode! I feel as if I called part of this, but I don’t know if anyone saw the full reveal coming. OK, let’s start from the beginning. The episode starts out with a bang: Artie is checking up on some key artifacts from his past when Brother Adrian appears in the aisle across from him. After a struggle, Artie realizes that Adrian can’t kill him – a bit obvious really – and Adrian tells him he will punish the ones Artie loves instead. Pete and Myka are racing to Artie’s aid, only to arrive too late. Brother Adrian has vanished. The excitement continues non-stop from there.

We have five separate plots this week, but due to their very specific natures, and the single tie-in, it works quite well. Artie and Leena stay in the Warehouse to try and find Adrian, while Pete, Myka and Claudia all have to go to save their loved ones from artifacts sent by our good Brother, and Mrs Frederic and Jinks are in Rome, attempting to speak with another representative of the Black Diamond Brotherhood.

We start Artie and Leena’s storyline, as Leena discovers Artie loading a gun, a convincingly extreme measure that deeply concerns her. She and Artie are both attempting to help the team out with their various artifact issues, and Artie is wandering the Warehouse with a gun searching for Brother Adrian. He’s certainly out of character here, hanging up on the team when they are obviously in trouble, but finding Adrian seems to have become more important to him than anything else.

Myka’s story begins with her visiting her pregnant sister, a sibling rivalry that becomes murderous when they hug and activate the artifact. This section is pretty hilarious, we get another taste of Myka as an awkward teen and her sister’s jealousy over her growing up to be more accomplished. Myka’s observation that the next family holiday will be a bit awkward was a nice touch, and a fun factoid regarding a certain “beauty mark” that seems to have been removed is a nice addition to the character. Amy Acker does a great job as Tracy Bering, Myka’s possessed sister, and while the solution to the artifact is a bit too “tied” to the pregnancy for my taste, it was a fun aside for Myka’s character and well-acted. After all, who’s the best Aunt? Myka is!

Pete’s ex-wife Amanda, played admirably by Jeri Ryan, gets the hit in his storyline. The artifact is a tattoo that explodes the person who contracts it. We find out the box that was sent to Amanda is made from the skin of history’s first suicide bomber and his tattoo is transferred by a skin-to-skin touch. When you think about it, how was there enough left for them to make the box after he blew himself up? But moving away from the macabre, does anyone else wish that the show would introduce Pete’s deaf sister? I know we already have a connection with his ex-wife, but you think that his mum or his sister would be the most obvious targets. Anyway, after a touching scene with Amanda, Pete neutralizes the tattoo and box, saving himself from exploding at the last minute. We see a lot of half-naked Eddie McClintock in this episode again; I think someone needs to tell him that his acting is good enough to carry the character without having to show his pecs all the time.

Claudia has to go to California to save her brother from an artifact that has encased him in amber. I’m always glad to see Tyler Hynes back on the show as Joshua, mostly because he’s excellent eye candy, but also because he’s a good addition to the cast. Our reigning tech-goddess finds her solution on the internets and saves her brother, only to find out some disturbing information. It turns out that Artie sent Joshua to Menlo Park and the “classified project” was his doing. That’s odd, considering Artie acted as though he had no idea Joshua was in California in the beginning of the episode. Joshua concedes that Artie was acting strangely when he approached him about the “project”, and that he didn’t sound at all like himself.

CCH Pounder as Mrs Frederic is in rare form this episode. In a mere two minutes she is suitably insulted by the implication that she would drop an artifact, amused by the priest’s blessing (“May God be with you”) and shows her stealth in bringing Jinks’ tesla gun inside the Vatican stating, “No one touches my purse.” We also see her magical teleportation abilities, but we’ve come to expect that.

Hers is by far the most important plot of the episode. She and Jinks are attempting to discover where the other members of the Brotherhood have gone; their library looks as if it were abandoned with little to no forethought. As they search, Jinks is the one who disappears, and we find that he and the Brotherhood have been sucked into a painting. As the prisoners are slowly let out of the painting we build to the big reveal. Brother Adrian has been in the painting this whole time. So if he’s been entrapped in a painting in Rome, who has Artie been struggling with this whole season? Struggling indeed…

And here’s where we begin to wrap up. As Mrs Frederic discovers the truth about Brother Adrian, Claudia informs Pete and Myka of Artie’s having lied about Joshua. She also points out that while Artie continues to claim that the artifact detection system is down, she has an alarm system in place to warn her of such an event, and it is showing all is well. They all agree they need to get back to the Warehouse as soon as possible to figure out what’s going on with Artie.

The last few minutes of this episode are really amazing. After shooting ‘Brother Adrian’, Artie takes him to the bronzing chamber, where it all begins to come together in the big reveal. A Fight Club twist has come to Warehouse 13, and the evil unleashed is IN Artie. He’s had a psychotic break and his subconscious has created an alternate personality that wants to reverse the astrolabe and has been working to endanger everyone Artie loves.

The best performance by far in this episode is from Genelle Williams as Leena. She has never been more powerful on screen as she slowly realizes Artie’s predicament. Saul Rubinek’s transformation from a confused and upset Artie to a cool, collected “other” is a good one too. It is a chilling ending to an exciting episode. Leena’s terror in the face of Artie’s “other” and Artie’s calm observation, “You are in my way,” leads us to a heartbreaking conclusion. Leena is dead. Artie, as the “other”, has shot her and it’s almost certainly fatal.

Next week’s episode is the mid-season finale, and frankly I’m interested in how they’ll top this episode. There’s real emotion here and tragedy both in Leena’s death and Artie’s psychosis. You’ll hear from me next week.

Read Jennifer’s review of last week’s episode, Second Chance, here.

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