Warehouse 13: Season Three

Is it conceivable that wearing Richard Nixon's wingtips could enable you to lie without anyone knowing, while Gandhi's sandals provide their wearer with a profound sense of peace and serenity? Did you know that using Marilyn Monroe's hairbrush will turn you into a blonde, or that Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov's bell really does attract dogs? These are but a few of the revelations unearthed in the third season of Warehouse 13 (12 episodes, plus extra material and a "bonus holiday episode" at the end), SyFy's series about the intrepid agents of the very Secret Service whose mission is to "snag, bag, and tag" the bewildering array of artifacts, relics, and curios that are stored in an enormous facility located somewhere in South Dakota. Many of these artifacts--and there are enough of them to fill a space (variously known as "America's attic," "the world's junk drawer," and "the Artifact Roadshow") at least as big as the warehouse depicted in the final shot of the first Indiana Jones movie--are benign and fun. But it's the ones that "misbehave" after falling into the wrong hands, on purpose or otherwise, that must be neutralized by agents Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock), Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly), Artie Nielsen (Saul Rubinek), and the rest of the team, some of whom have some pretty fancy talents of their own--like new addition Steve Jinks (Aaron Ashmore), who has an uncanny ability to tell when someone's lying. This time out, malevolent artifacts include legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille's riding crop, which can be used to bend people's bodies to the will of whoever possesses it (a very bad thing when it falls into the hands of Anthony Michael Hall's bitter, vengeful Walter Sykes, the season's principal villain); William Shakespeare's "lost folio," which causes its victims to expire in the exact manner of some of the Bard's most famous characters; the so-called "Janus coin," an ancient Roman item that wipes out people's memories; and an amulet that, when transmitted via computer, creates a virus that turns people into clay. All of this is consistently amusing and entertaining--sometimes more so than the plot lines in which the artifacts appear, some of which involve the fate of the "Regents," who serve as the guardians of Warehouse 13 and its contents. The show is serialized, so while it ends with a major cliffhanger, the fact that there's a fourth season is good news for viewers of this delightful show.