This review contains spoilers.
4.5 No Pain, No Gain
A middling episode to follow last week’s great instalment, No Pain, No Gain saw a pleasing emotional reconnection between Pete and Myka, but the artefact creation was a bit underwhelming. Artie and Steve's steps to stop the black diamond brotherhood from dismantling Artie's life’s work was a bit of a hand-holding exercise. My favourite parts were Myka admitting that she studied pre-med and pre-law before deciding on secret service, Claudia's voiceover in the women's bathroom "I'm guessing she had sex!", and Artie snuggling a giant custard-loving stuffed bear from Japan.
(As an aside, Claudia's Prius having Bing as the main search engine is ridiculous, that girl would not use Bing to save her life. Microsoft really wants to sucker punch people into using their search engine.)
Anyway! This episode was heavy on Pete and Myka action, which I always appreciate. There was a good fake-out with the artefact in this story. The culprit throws her keys in her purse and we see a rabbit's foot, which leads us to believe a good luck artefact has come into her hands. However, it turns out that she has her grandfather's dog tags which were imbued with wish-making properties after leading his friend through a death march during WWII.
An ordinary man who accomplished an extraordinary feat. That's the parallel to Claudia's education regarding the creation of artefacts. Wish-making properties in the hands of crazy Misery style fans, however, is not the best of powers, and so we see how artefacts become important to the Warehouse when they begin to cause trouble. Props to the woman who plays Judy for doing a very convincing crazy fan. Kathy Bates will always be the best, but this woman was definitely in the zone, the crazy zone.
But back to Pete and Myka. I think it's rare in TV today to have a male and female lead without having them interact with sexual tension or full blown intimate contact. I've always appreciated that these two have maintained their platonic status, and I felt like this episode showed how close they have become without crossing the barrier between friends and lovers. Pete inadvertently wishing Myka pregnant because of his desire for a family and his love for his partner had hilarious as well as moving results. I liked that Pete's admission was taken in Myka’s stride instead of becoming awkward, and that it was balanced by Myka's romantic interest in the hockey player and Pete's sassy best friend imitation. Frankly, I'd like to see more of Mr Hockey, it'd be nice to see Myka get involved with someone after all her ins and outs with romance. Overall, an overdue exploration of Pete and Myka's relationship this season with charming results.
Claudia and Mrs Fredrick's story was an underwhelming one. We see how an artefact is created. An ordinary person in an extraordinary situation makes an extraordinary gesture and something in their possession is imbued with an extraordinary trait (should I say extraordinary again?). I was really looking forward to this part of the episode, but maybe I built it up too much. After all, the ordinary person making extraordinary (ha!) decisions is, well, sort of everyday. I do have to admit that something got lodged in my eye around the time they visited Mrs Fredrick's grandson in the retirement home. With all of this "training" we're one step closer to Claudia taking over the Warehouse. As Artie said, with the Warehouse anything is possible. This story makes me wonder if they're going to find a way to turn back the clock AND save the warehouse. I guess we'll see.
Speaking of Artie, now he knows about Claudia and Steve, so the process of finding out more about the metronome and fixing the situation should be expedited. And Steve is person number four who has noticed that something is not quite right with Artimus. In fact, Steve would be quite stupid if he didn't ask himself why someone would try to dismantle Artie's life's work, and who that person is. Considering there hasn't been any follow-up from any of the other characters regarding Artie's behaviour, I won't hold my breath for Steve either. Next episode looks exciting, but it also seems to be another aside to avoid concluding this season's conflict too soon.
So! A decent episode with some interesting themes that will undoubtedly fulfil themselves as the season progresses, but I want more from Brother Adrian and give Myka a boyfriend already! Until next week.
Read Jennifer's review of last week's episode, There's Always A Downside, here.
Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.