Bad Tip

Warehouse 13
Syfy Channel, Mondays, 8/7 C

"Insatiable"

Written by Deric A. Hughes & Benjamin Raab

Directed by Constantine Makris

"We deal with artifacts, not fairy tales." – Myka

What is it with zombies and cannibalism this week? First Haven airs a show about teenage cannibals and now Warehouse 13 has Myka lusting after Pete's flesh – for dinner. True Blood ended its season with a Halloween party involving zombies. All we needed was a rerun of Walking Dead. This is giving new meaning to the phrase "dinner theatre". At least in this one the zombies ran instead of shuffling. This was a 'standalone' episode, having little to do with other issues raises this season, but that's okay. I, for one, needed a bit of a breather after the last intense couple of weeks. At least in this story, we were spared Pete doing Thriller jokes.

"You don't talk to the living dead." -- Pete

Pete and Myka are sent to Ithaca to investigate a strange human-bite case. No sooner do they enter the woods (at night, naturally, with no backup) then they run across Kevin Munro, a local resident, eating a deer -- raw. He's blue, he's shuddering, he walks funny, and he drools – all classic zombie symptoms. He attacks them, and Myka zaps him with the Tesla gun. Easy peasy. Except Pete is very nervous, fearing that one bite will turn one of them into a zombie. While Myka is still trying to persuade him that zombies aren't real, they are called to another scene of mass hysteria, the Ψ Φ Ζ fraternity. Yes, that's "SyFy Zeta", if you translate the Greek letters. Cute. Even cuter, the ravenous victim this time is a guy named Moose Mulder.

"He bit me, Mykes! He bit me!" – Pete

I can't help but flash back to the famous Monty Python and the Holy Grail credit sequence "A Moose once bit my sister…" Pete doesn't think it's funny when Moose bites him, and he solemnly begs Myka to shoot him in the head when his time comes. She gleefully agrees; I liked this back-and-forth between them, which had the sibling vibe I love about this show. Pete talks Myka into buying him a taco from a lunch truck, just to make sure he doesn't start munching on the bystanders. Though the evidence is mounting that a mere bite does not cause people to turn into zombies, the team still can't figure out why the victims are experiencing extreme cold and then starvation. Pete, far from feeling zombified, is hale enough to take out Moose when he gets loose (heh); and even as he discusses this with Artie they realize that Myka, not Pete, is coming down with the zombie symptoms.

"Please tell me I didn't eat anyone." – Myka

Once they finally get around to asking Munro's son a couple of questions, it becomes clear that the taco truck is the link between all the zombie outbreaks. I knew there was a reason to avoid the roach coach. By now, Myka is eyeing Pete like an hors d'oeuvre at a buffet, and winds up cornering him in the taco truck with the owner. Pete susses out the Artifact to blame for all this: a jar the taco man dug out of the desert. He smashes it, and all involved return to normal -- although I don't think Pete is going to let Myka live down her attempt to snack on him for a long time. Artie learns that the jar in question once belonged to the infamous Donner Party, a wagon train of pioneers who, trapped in the Sierra Nevada over the winter of 1846-47, resorted to cannibalism to survive. It made perfect sense that something belonging to that ill-fated party would induce freezing and starvation..

"We were co-workers and now we're not, which makes us nothing." – Steve Jinks

Claudia has not gotten over the loss of her BFF, Steve Jinks. Artie tells Leena something Claudia does not know: that Jinks has been blacklisted by every Federal agency, his credit rating has been burned and his passport revoked. Leena is stunned by this level of vindictiveness on Mrs. Frederick's part, and so was I – for about two minutes. Then it started to look like a sting operation designed to give Jinks "cover" for an infiltration assignment. Was that whole out-of-character torture episode two weeks ago staged, for Agent Stukowski's benefit? Better yet, for Marcus Diamond's benefit? If so, it looks like it worked, as Diamond approaches a morose and drinking Jinks with an offer to join the Dark Side. I guess we'll find out next week.

"I'm marked for death." – Claudia

I think this episode would have worked better if Claudia had been the one facing a zombie infestation. Pete was a little too frightened, and Myka a little too offhand, to make the menace seem real. On the other hand, a ravenous Claudia contemplating taking a bite out of a co-worker might have been truly frightening. Instead, she gets a story about being invited to join a local band and a bad day at the Warehouse with a fortune-telling machine. I'm suspicious of this new boyfriend, Dwayne (Johnny Pacar, Zombie Apocalypse). He's a little too eager, and practically the first thing he does is pin a band button on Claudia. Alarm bells went off in my head at this too-familiar gesture, and I'm wondering if that button is more than it seems. Microphone? Tracking device? Thought controller? I will not be surprised if Dwayne turns out to be a mole.

"This isn't a horror movie, Pete." – Myka

I'm pretty neutral about this episode. My first thought was "What, zombies again?", having seen so many so recently. It did strike me as rather out of character for the show to be dealing with (implied) supernatural entities; in a show built on the inexplicable, dragging in magic is gilding the lily. The writers don't seem all that comfortable with the idea, either. They even write in a line where Pete has to remind Myka of something she already knows; they have dealt with fairy tale Artifacts once before. All in all, this episode felt like, if not filler, then the last course before dessert, something design not to satisfy the palate but to prepare it for the finale. Which, alas, we must wait two weeks for. The season finale of Warehouse 13 will air October 3 as a two-hour show. It looks like H. G. Wells is back, and nothing would surprise me less than to see that she survives to start her own show. Warehouse 14, anyone?

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