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Warehouse 13 S04E10: "We All Fall Down"

The vision that's been haunting Artie all season long finally came to fruition tonight, and it wasn't at all how he expected it to be. At this point, I guess it was somewhat of a given that Claudia wouldn't be going Dark Side after all, and in my mind, that meant that the threat of her playing Brutus to Artie's Julius Ceasar was a thing of the past. Well, aren't I just silly.

With Brother Adrian and the rest of the Brotherhood assisting in the hunt for a cure to Artie's crazy, and Pete taking cues from what appeared to be Leena's ghost, Artie hit the road to find a very dangerous artifact from Warehouse 8 that would force Mrs. Frederic to let him use the astrolabe again, since she wasn't too keen on letting him anywhere near it anytime soon. As of the conclusion of "We All Fall Down," Magellan's astrolabe is still safe and sound with H.G Wells and H.G. appears to be way off the grid... which prompted Artie to enact his contingency plan.

Deep in the bowels of the long-gone Warehouse 8 there was an orchid that was capable of spreading a lethal "sweating sickness" across the globe. The orchid was so dangerous that the operatives of the time sealed the flower in an airtight glass case and when Warehouse 8 was eventually replaced by Warehouse 9, they simply left it buried beneath the old building—currently the headquarters of a German insurance firm. Insurance. How exciting. On a side note, though, isn't it kind of delightful how mundane locations can secretly have awesome histories? Take Monroeville Mall, near my hometown, which is a nice-enough mall full of typical, nice-enough mall things until you learn that the original Dawn of the Dead was filmed there in the '70s and suddenly the suburban staple is infinitely cooler because ZOMBIES.

Anyway, Claudia and the de-zombified Jinks were dispatched to Europe to locate the orchid before Artie, but all they found was a clue directing them to a small mill where the plant had been moved. Unfortunately, Artie already knew about the relocation, probably from those old Warehouse 8 records he torched before his pursuers could read them. He also tracked down the knife. THE KNIFE. The one Claudia was prophesied to use against him in his visions. The knife was meant to be used to crack the deadly orchid's otherwise-impenetrable glass case. Utilizing the time-stopping barometer from the USS Eldridge, Evil Artie's evil plan went through almost entirely without a hitch. Emphasis on ALMOST.

That moment when Claudia realized that the team had been manipulated into the very scenario they had tried so hard to avoid made this admittedly uneven season worth it. While the artifacts and the missions are fun and (usually) exciting, the relationships between these characters are, for me, the reason I keep watching. Where the Season 3 finale was devastating in the scope of what was lost, there was a smidgen of comfort to be found in the unity of the remaining warehouse agents. Artie had a plan and the others rallied around that plan.

This mid-season finale brought about a complete inversion of that situation, and yet the feelings of loss are almost exactly the same. The world is threatened, but that's par the course for finales. The remaining warehouse agents are anything but united, as fractured as Artie's sanity. In the end, the orchid's deadly contagion was sent into the world as Evil Artie planned, and while a solution isn't apparent at the moment, I suspect that fixing the orchid problem will be easier for the survivors than fixing their relationships with each other. Steve seemed certain that there is no cure for Artie's condition, but stopped short of saying as much to Claudia (though she got the message loud and clear anyway). Evil Artie may have twisted words and situations to hurt his agents' feelings and throw them off-kilter in their fight against him, but his verbal daggers were sharpened with some blunt facts: Pete really does feel guilty over his father's death, Myka has often felt alienated by being "smarter" than everyone in the room, and Claudia desperately wants nothing more than to be loved and accepted by the people she cares about. Should Mrs. Frederic and the Brotherhood succeed in restoring Artie's sanity, he must still live with what he did to Leena and what he said to the others. Throughout "We All Fall Down," we saw flashes of the genuine Artie struggling against his dark alternate persona, which means that on some level, the real Artie is "in there." He will always know that Leena died by his hand. Pete, Myka, and Claudia will know that even though Artie didn't mean what he said while under the astrolabe's influence, the taunts were crafted from knowledge that the real Artie possessed.

Artie is not the only warehouse operative who will have to live with his actions—assuming he lives to see the second half of this season. Despite the best of efforts to avoid Artie's vision, in the end, Claudia stabbed Artie with the knife, as she was meant to all along. The decision didn't come easily and Claudia certainly didn't embrace it willingly. Artie is her mentor, her father figure, her boss, and her friend. He's the reason she found a place at the warehouse and she knows that she owes him everything. Out of everyone, Claudia kept her faith in Artie the longest, refusing to believe that he had killed Leena and duped them all. Evil Artie ridiculed her loneliness and longing for friends and family, but in some ways, those things have always been a source of strength for Claudia. She doesn't take friendship or family lightly. It took her twelve years to free her brother from his inter-dimensional limbo back in Season 1, but she was ruthless and determined and she did it. When it was revealed that Claudia's role in the warehouse was to be the backup caretaker in the event Mrs. Frederic was ever unable to continue her duties, Claudia stepped up to her fate, despite her horror at being forced into the position. At the time, she made Artie promise to never again force her into doing something against her will, and while Artie and the others certainly didn't put the knife in her hand and blatantly force it, she still found herself left with only one option to act on in order to save the warehouse. She's not going to be very happy when we come back in April, I'm sure.

– When Jinks complained about being the backup team for Myka and Pete, Claudia corrected him with,"We aren't the B-team, fool! We're the second A-team!" Preach it, Claudia!

– Behold, Pete Lattimer not being written as a buffoon. Isn't it beautiful? Can we have more of that when Warehouse 13 returns in April, writers?

– Also, more Ghost Leena. Mrs. Frederic said that she broke a promise to Leena by enabling her to be killed. I feel like Mrs. Frederic isn't the sort of person to make promises lightly. Is there still hope for Leena to return in the flesh?

– What do you think we'll see when Warehouse 13 returns?

– What do you WANT to see when Warehouse 13 returns?

Warehouse 13 "We All Fall Down" Photos

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Fringe S05E01: "Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11"

Feel free to listen to some Yazoo's "Only You," the song from the final scene of tonight's episode, while reading this!

Fringe is no stranger to throwing things out the window. Just ask the perturbed fans of the show who whined about Season 4's reset, in which Peter Bishop was erased from the memory of Olivia, Peter, and everyone else in the new timeline that Etch-a-Sketch'd all the relationships that had been built up over three seasons. Similar things are afoot in Season 5, the series' final (sad face), as things have jumped forward two-dozen years to 2036.

This jump might be easier to land for fans, as all the characters' relationships are intact—it's just the setting that's changed. And we were all aptly prepared for the year 2036 thanks to Season 4's daring "Letters of Transit," one of the most ambitious episodes of Fringe to date. In fact, it's reasonable to say that Season 5 started with "Letters of Transit," as the "What if?" scenario posed in that episode proved to be more than a hypothetical question.

I love Fringe for these maneuvers; you just don't see a lot of television shows making these kinds of creative decisions nowadays. The idea of alternate universes in Seasons 2 and 3 posed all sorts of metaphysical questions about human nature, and Olivia and Peter's burgeoning romance put those questions in bold and became more important to me than the fate of the world. Season 4 did wonderful things with the idea of love being stronger than even existence when it erased Peter from Olivia's mind and the universe somehow slowly filled her heart with memories from another plane. It's deep stuff, guys. Fringe is a thinking person's show, the kind of nerdy philosophical drama where the greatest rewards come after episodes end and pay off for hours, days, and weeks while we stare at the ceiling in bed and contemplate not only what happened on screen, but how it relates to the core of being.

That's why I'm slightly hesitant about Fringe achieving that type of mind workout with Season 5 and its 2036 storyline. The entertainment value will be there for sure. I mean, "Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11" was awesome—just for different reasons. But I wonder where the questions will come from in a season that appears to be largely plot-driven in order to come up with a satisfactory conclusion for the series. And with 13 episodes, I'm not sure there's time for the show to put its finger on its chin and ponder the ramifications of jumping forward in time, being frozen in amber, or whatever else can be twisted into existential questions.

But there is one thing that might be the key to all that, and we'll get to it in a bit. "Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11" was Fringe without being Fringe, a sci-fi action movie where Hollywood leads were substituted for our favorite Fringe characters. Things picked up some time after "Letters of Transit" took place (at least enough time for Astrid to familiarize herself with the 2036 version of Words With Friends), with the most obvious goal being to find Olivia. A few amber gypsies later (really? Amber gypsies?) and we learned she's become the sweetest coffee table ever for Edward Markham, Peter's bibliologist buddy with a hard-on for Olivia. Still encased in amber, she was the Han Solo of the group, but was quickly ejected from her orange prison following a sweet fight with some very incompetent loyalist cops. I loved how well Olivia took waking up in the year 2036. That's a solid woman! What she didn't take so easily was seeing Henrietta, all grown up, standing before her (again, more on this later).

I'm not entirely happy with the "we found one team member but lost another team member so now we have to go looking for the other team member again" pattern that occurred after Walter was captured while rescuing Olivia, but it allowed for the great exchange between Observer bad guy Windmark and Walter, establishing Windmark as an irredeemable jerk and Walter as a feisty old man who's more than a handful. That was John Noble doing more work that Emmy voters refuse to acknowledge, and Michael Kopsa held his own right there with him.

The rest of the episode was a lot of fixing broken things (the titular Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11) to repair other things (Walter's mind) and rescuing the old man with some other unusual technology. And this is where this season of Fringe will depart drastically from what was the core of the show in Season 1. It's called Fringe because the show has dealt with fringe science, technological advances just out of our reach. But in going to 2036, Fringe might want to change its name to Far Out, because the series has now moved into pure science-fiction with its ability to partition brains to obscure thoughts and create serums to simulate death (though to be fair, there are no flying cars or personal jet packs). Again, this isn't a problem for the series, as so far everything has stayed within fathomable canon, it's just become a show with a different set of roots compared to those of Season 1.

But underneath, Season 5 of Fringe is still Fringe. It may be in a new place with new enemies and new science, but the show is still so very strong in its characters and character relationships. You can see it in the genuine glances everyone gives each other, and it was especially strong tonight in the episode's emotional ending, when Walter followed the beacon to the CD tree and abandoned taxi cab. Earlier in the hour, he and Windmark had discussed music, something Windmark didn't understand. It's a fact that was clearly meant to distinguish Observers from us (they do party to shitty techno, after all), as if their milky white skin and need to make everything such a formal occasion with suits weren't enough. (Note to self: Invest in Men's Wearhouse in 2015.) But to Walter, music is a sign of something more. It's hope. And as Walter sat by himself blasting Yazoo's "Only You," he saw the ultimate sign of hope in this wasteland desolated by the Observers: a lone dandelion with the strength to crack the pavement. (What, no tulips?)

Maybe it's a sign that getting rid of the clean-air hating Observers lies in reclaiming the planet with shrubbery and other Oxygen-creating vegetation (remember, they paved over a park to create carbon monoxide pumps, as they aren't fans of Earth's Oxygen-rich atmosphere). But it's also more than just a Wall-E moment. It's a sign that their hope is pinned on Henrietta. If the official plant for Olivia, Walter, and Peter is the White Tulip, then the dandelion is Henrietta. We saw her playing with one in the opening flashback to 2015 when the Observers came, and it's her symbol.

And that leads us to what is perhaps the most important point of discussion of the episode. Henrietta. We don't know everything that's going on with her, but we have enough info to have questions. I'm not even sure she's who she thinks she is. Did Peter really mean that they "lost her" in the past? Did she actually die in that opening flashback? Was that enough to put so much stress on Olivia and Peter's relationship that they split up, enabling Olivia and Walter to move on and work on saving the world while Peter stayed behind to find a way to bring her back? Was she captured by the Observers? Olivia said Henrietta was three years old and change when she last saw her, but Henrietta swears she was four years old when she last saw her parents. That's not just a detail thrown in to show that Henrietta has memory issues. There's something big going on here, and I'm happy the episode didn't make a big deal out of it, instead allowing us to say, "Wait, WHAT?" and pursue it on our own. I welcome all your theories in the comments.

We're in the year 2036, Gene the cow is probably long dead, and alternate universes are a thing of the past. But Fringe returned strong because of the show's constants: showrunner J.H. Wyman's strong vision, impossible production values on a shoestring budget, and impeccable acting and unbreakable passion by the cast and crew. Things on the outside may be different, but the heart and soul of Fringe lives on.

NOTES

– Anyone else think the action-packed rescue of Walter was an homage to rescuing Princess Leia in Star Wars? Straight down to the sounds of the pew-pew lasers. And seriously, how horrible of an enemy are these loyalists? Olivia and Peter had no problem shooting multiple guys before they could even get a single shot off. Stormtroopers are better than these guys. Our Fringe agents thawed out more badass than ever, apparently.

– I loved Peter's reasoning while trying to cut off the machine in Observer HQ: "It's always the red wire." *Nothing* "Unless it's the white wire."

– More Hollywood eco-conscious propaganda! Plants good! Fifty square miles of asphalt bad! Maybe some of us LIKE coughing up brown chunks of phlegm after a walk around the block, ever think of that, Tinseltown?

– It looked like Henrietta was wearing an old bullet around her neck. Was that the same bullet that "killed" Olivia in the Season 4 finale? I think so!

– Henrietta and Olivia! Hottest mom-daughter duo on television? Yes and YES! What about Rachel and Charlie from Revolution? Or Honey Boo Boo and Mama Boo Boo?

Follow TV.com writer Tim Surette on Twitter: @TimAtTVDotCom

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